Uncritical outrage or baseless accusations say more about you than the person being accused

Mrs. PruDog is currently annoyed with me for engaging a winger friend on facebook over his unsourced or substantiated assertion that Chris Dodd inserted language into a provision he sponsored that protect the AIG bonuses.

The real story is long and complicated because it requires the reader to sort through dueling accounts as well as developing an understanding of the legislative process. The use of the word "insert" is non-trivial because it carries a different meaning in the legislative than the everday use implies.

If you care to know the details of the provision in question firedoglake and glennzila have extremely well sourced analysis.

The sourcing is the key: you are free to take issue with Dodd's role in this. You are free to disagree with their analysis. But both pieces provide first order sourcing that you can go read for yourself. And their analysis is based on actually taking the time to read these sources.

The winger and his friends were willing to make accusations. They showed no understanding of the legislative process (using commttee and conference interchangibly for example)and where unable to provide sourcing to substantiate their claims. I quit the conversation after Winger claimed that Dodd admitted he lied and had inserted the language in question. I asked if this claim was based on the CNN interview yesterday. Since no source was given it seemed reasonable this might be the basis for his claim. In fairness CNN's headline asserted something like "Dodd admits he inserted language" (and subsequently changed it to "Dodd admits role.." which I think is still misleadig but more accurate) If so, I was going to point out that's not what Dodd says in the video although you have to listen to the *entire* interview to understand what happened. And it is also consistent with his previous statements*. Anyway, the response was "I don't watch CNN" with no reference to a source.

What does this tell me? Well it tells me that Winger's opining may carry weight with his like-minded friends. But I won't waste anymore time giving his opinions any weight: he's established himself as someone willing to make assetions of fact without bothering to check to see if the evidence supports this. Or, he is lying. Frankly, it doesn't matter which.

*The gotcha moment in the CNN interview is that Dodd had said in a previous interview that he didn't know about the "February 11th insertion". This seems to be thin gruel to me for 2 reasons. 1st, he had already released a statement prior to the interview explaining how the change was made. 2nd, it seems to me (and his explaination was ackward but seemed to be the same) that he misunderstood the question which started out as a question about campign contributions and then refered to the change by the date. In otherwards, it seemed to me that the question was poorly worded, he misunderstood it, then did a poor job of explaining he misunderstood it. But again, this balances against previous, consistent statements he's made about his role.

Update: for a lengthier version of what I am talking about here's an Obama winger doing the same thing.

The core allegation relies on a misrepresentation of how amendments & provisions are written. The allegation conflates the group writting process and negotiation that occurs in committee with someone writting for themselves only. It also conflates what it means to agree to something versus actually wanting something to happen.

And I didn't find one example in the article were the writer, who unlike myself is a professional journalist, link to actual evidence of his position*. He links to what bloggers said. But he doesn't link to Dodd's interview, press release, the Wall Street journal article or any of the abundance of source material out there.

*he does link to an article written by Sam Stein, which he claims is an interview with Dodd but is just a report of the CNN interview, that leads with this:

The Treasury Department demanded that Sen. Chris Dodd insert exemptions into the stimulus bill that allowed bailout recipients to receive bonuses, the Connecticut Democrat said on Wednesday.

Which is, you know, exactly what Dodd has been saying. Again, the key is to understand that this was done in conference. That means that Dodd's name was on the provision but it was re-written by a group of legislators.