Hauser Replies to Pate on the Gerrymandering Myth

Responding to A.J. Pate's comments in this post, Jeff Hauser writes:

J Pate's letter is a semi-tragicomic effort at correcting an (admittedly deeply and embarassingly flawed) article.

Re the "legality" of DeLay's actions with the FAA... we all know that for many reasons -- including prosecutorial discretion and the necessity to prove beyond a reasonable doubt facts about which one can otherwise make reasonable deductions -- not every illegal act is prosecuted.

But consider the bipartisan House Ethics Committee's letter to DeLay:

"Your intervention in a partisan conflict in the Texas House of Representatives using the resources of a Federal agency, the Federal Aviation Administration, raises serious concerns under these standards of conduct. Your contacts with the FAA were in connection with the dispute over congressional redistricting in the Texas House of
Representatives that occurred in May 2003. The purpose of these contacts was to obtain information on the whereabouts of Democratic Members of the Texas House who had absented themselves from Austin for
the purpose of denying the House a quorum. You have stated to us that you made these contacts at the request of the Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, who was seeking information on the location of an
airplane that was shuttling the absent legislators, and that you relayed the information you had obtained on the location of the airplane solely to the Texas House Speaker.

The submissions that you made to the Committee argue that those contacts with the FAA were proper, but those arguments are not persuasive. [. . .] In sum, the statements made by the FAA official regarding his views of his actions after he had learned the purpose of the requests, and the FAA's later establishment of a restrictive policy on responding to such requests, indicate a larger concern about the propriety of the FAA's response to your requests for information, regardless of whether, in the specific circumstances, the actions of the FAA official did not violate the FAA rules or regulations that were in effect at the time."

UPDATE Pate has now replied to Hauser. See the extended entry below. If these gentlemen have additional responses, I'll let them take them to their own blogs.

A.J. Pate writes:

I am not sure I understand Hauser's characterization of my comments, however I will restrain from responding in kind with puerile invective and simply deal with the facts. Hauser may do well to ponder the words of John Adams: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of the facts and evidence.”

Mr. Hauser's rage is selective, and he dwells on only one of the five errors I noted. I can only presume that his visceral dislike for DeLay blinds him to any standards of fairness or truth in connection with DeLay. My comment on this issue was rather muted. I merely said that "I don't believe DeLay has been charged with any violations of the law in connection with the runaway Democrats." A simple statement of my knowledge, which I presume must be true since I am sure Hauser would have been quick to correct me. Then I even helpfully suggested how the scholars could have phrased their remark more appropriately: "A more accurate, or at least less biased, account would have added the word 'alleged' ". That is the totality of my remarks, which somehow provoked such a passionate prosecution by Hauser.

It is obvious to any reasonable person that I was neither defending nor condoning the actions of DeLay. Now, maybe I am naive, but all I did was state the simple fact that DeLay had been charged with no related crimes and, under our system of justice, even if he had, the crimes would be "alleged" until proven in a court of law. This is the presumption of innocence that our system extends to even the most vicious killers and rapists among us.

Hauser's lengthy quote from the House Committee's letter was a waste of his effort, only muddying the water like a squid squirting ink. It did nothing to refute what I wrote, and, to the contrary, to a discerning and judicious reader only reinforced my comments. The Committee letter used the following terms: "serious concerns", "[not] proper", and "[lack of] propriety", but never "illegal". The last paragraph of the Committee's letter in fact said that the FAA "later establish[ed] ... a restrictive policy on responding to such requests" and that "the actions of the FAA official did not violate the FAA rules or regulations that were in effect at the time". Do I hear any cheers for ex post facto?

To summarize Hauser's response to my comments: Despite any evidence to the contrary, he leaps to a very illiberal presumption of guilt for DeLay, his proof being (1) that "not every illegal act is prosecuted", and (2) citing a letter which never uses the word "illegal" nor even implies illegality. This is a breathtaking and dazzling leap of logic. But hardly Aristotelian. As someone once said, "If Aristotle were alive today, he'd be turning over in his grave." My challenge to Mr. Hauser is to structure a syllogism based on his response to me. That I would love to see.

Posted by Rick Hasen at June 7, 2006 07:43 AM