Thursday, April 05, 2007

In Defense of Giuliani   [Ramesh Ponnuru]

He is getting attacked a lot in the left end of the blogosphere over something I posted over the weekend. (Romney's taking some hits too.) Supposedly Giuliani has shown that he's a dictator, a fascist, etc. Also freedom in America has already been extinguished.

What happened is that Ed Crane, the head of the libertarian Cato Institute, asked Romney and Giuliani on separate occasions a polemically-phrased question about the president's authority to designate detainees as enemy combatants—or, as Crane put it, arrest citizens without review. Crane thinks, along with the left-wing bloggers, that the president has no such authority (although some of the bloggers are unaware he's on their side). Romney ducked the question. Giuliani said he would use the authority infrequently.

For a smart liberal take on these questions that is critical of the Bush administration but also avoids the dictatorship hysteria, I once again commend Benjamin Wittes. (And for a smart conservative take that reaches similar conclusions, I'd recommend anything Andrew McCarthy has written on the subject.)

04/05 05:51 PMShare