My Next Door Neighbor Just Told Me Ted Olson has always been a liberal

[rbrnmw]

She started in on Prop 8 and I said well a Reagan appointed judge is who rendered the decision and one of the attorney's seeking to overturn it was United States Solicitor General under George W. Bush. She looked at me and said well he was one of the liberals Bush appointed So I said so this same "liberal" argued on behalf of Bush in the Bush V Gore case? She didn't have a response. What the Hell is the matter with these people?

[no_hypocrisy]

1. His marriage may have mirrored Carville and Matalin.

As for his defense of Bush being installed in the White House, he was doing his job as a legal advocate/representative. He may not have endorsed Bush, etc.

[rbrnmw]

9. huh?

He is a very Conservative Republican

[no_hypocrisy]

16. I was surmising if the OP was credible, which I don't know it is.

[femmocrat]

They are ignorant and like it that way.

:eyes:

[LostinVA]

2. I don't think Olson is a liberal NOW

[rbrnmw]

6. He's NOT that is what makes it even more mind numbing

[LostinVA]

10. I know!

[joeybee12]

3. What the hell is the matter? Simple, your neighbor is watching Fox News...

propoganda and lies 24x7.

[WillParkinson]

4. As I said in another thread...

When they don't agree with people they will latch on to whatever 'flaw' they can find so as to make themselves feel better.

[Touchdown]

5. I don't care what side Ted Olsen is. He's a great and principled man

That's all that should matter in this instance.

[rbrnmw]

8. you are right kudos to Ted on this one

[sandnsea]

20. He did the right thing in this instance

That does not make him a great and principled man.

[NewJeffCT]

7. It doesn't matter - Tom DeLay once said Scalia was an "activist judge"

for Scalia denying something for DeLay. He was speaking to somebody in the press afer he was denied and decried activist judges... when the person told him it was Antonin Scalia that denied him, he still complained about the activism.

[rbrnmw]

13. that's funny

[Renew Deal]

11. In the extremist world of "these people" he is a liberal.

He is either a RW mujahadeen or a liberal.

[Whoa_Nelly]

12. This is what's "wrong" with these types of people...

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/

How facts backfire
Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains

It’s one of the great assumptions underlying modern democracy that an informed citizenry is preferable to an uninformed one. “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1789. This notion, carried down through the years, underlies everything from humble political pamphlets to presidential debates to the very notion of a free press. Mankind may be crooked timber, as Kant put it, uniquely susceptible to ignorance and misinformation, but it’s an article of faith that knowledge is the best remedy. If people are furnished with the facts, they will be clearer thinkers and better citizens. If they are ignorant, facts will enlighten them. If they are mistaken, facts will set them straight.

In the end, truth will out. Won’t it?

Maybe not. Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.

This bodes ill for a democracy, because most voters — the people making decisions about how the country runs — aren’t blank slates. They already have beliefs, and a set of facts lodged in their minds. The problem is that sometimes the things they think they know are objectively, provably false. And in the presence of the correct information, such people react very, very differently than the merely uninformed. Instead of changing their minds to reflect the correct information, they can entrench themselves even deeper.

“The general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong,” says political scientist Brendan Nyhan, the lead researcher on the Michigan study. The phenomenon — known as “backfire” — is “a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”

...a lot more at the link...very interesting

[Stinky The Clown]

14. What is the matter with "these people" is the same affliction that hits some liberals

An aversion to reality or a proclivity to only believing what suits one's world view.

Some of "these people" sound perfectly rational, even calm, educated, and articulate. Others sound like raving lunatics. Some are liberal and some are conservative and some are the typical rudderless, drifty types one finds at the center point of any given issue.

[hobbit709]

15. To these people anyone to the left of Temujin is a liberal.

[blondeatlast]

17. He's an incredibly skilled lawyer, admitted to the SCOTUS bar,

who probably loves a challenge regardless of his personal feelings.

Lawyers HAVE to sincerely believe in the righteousness of their case--even guilty criminals must be given an aggressive defense. That's the beauty of the adversarial system.

[Gormy Cuss]

21. Also considered for AG and rumored to have been considered for SCOTUS by W.

About the only "liberal" taint on this man is that he grew up in the SF Bay area and graduated from Boalt.

[blondeatlast]

22. I'm not propping him; but I'm a paralegal and have been amazed at the skill

of really good lawyers to defend things they actually abhor, including criminals.

[Gormy Cuss]

25. I know you're not propping him.

It just amazes me that some people (like the OP's neighbor) don't understand that lawyers do defend things that way.

[Ozymanithrax]

18. Anyone can be a conservative until he steps one fot out of line...

then he is viewed as a life long liberal.

[Winterblues]

19. Yes he is a Liberal and he pals around with that other well known Liberal Ken Starr.

Also pals around with a couple of Liberal Justices Scalia and Roberts.

[Spazito]

28. Yep, and add to that the Arkansas Project/Scaiffe involvement...

He is a POS and I will credit David Boies for the overturning of Prop 8 and certainly not Olson.

Olson did nothing, repeat nothing, for civil rights when he had the power and influence to do so as Solicitor General in the bush regime and Assistant Attorney General under the Reagan reign.

[calico1]

23. From what I understand a lot of Conservatives back

in the 60's were all for granting full civil rights to Blacks. They were not for any government programs because they believed that if you have full civil rights then that makes you equal in the eyes of the law and the government shouldn't be giving you any extra help.
I think he is one of these old fashioned Conservatives.

I don't know how far to the Right your neighbor is but most of the "Conservatives" of today are not like the old school Conservatives at all. Most of them were not racist.
To the tea party type Republicans today, anyone to the left of Attila the Hun is a "Liberal."

[TlalocW]

24. Bush V. Gore will always stick in my craw (along with Olson's involvement in it)

But I have to grudgingly give it to Ted - he knew going into this that he would be disowned by his party. If he had lost, he might have been welcomed back, but he won so they're going to go after him with the worst perceived insult they have - liberal.

TlalocW

[Sebastian Doyle]

26. Ted Olson worked for the Bush Crime Family for DECADES.

The Bush Crime Family doesn't hire "liberals". Furthermore, Judge Walker (a Poppy Bush appointee)might actually BE related to the Bush Crime Family. Prescott Bush's wife was Dorothy Walker, and his father in law, George Herbert Walker, is the guy that both Poppy and Chimpy were named after.

Can't blame this one on the "libruls".

[rbrnmw]

27. Isn't it ironic that 2 of the major players were from their side

one they whole-heartedly agreed with in 2000?