[ferdo]

> It's a site about law, courts, and lawsuits. These things are all about process.

Reading Orin Kerr is akin to reading someone critique the actions of the principals in a waterboarding without critiquing the rightness or wrongness of waterboarding itself.

There's a creepy overtone to that kind of commentary.

[tptacek]

This comment perfectly encapsulates everything that is horrible about legal discussions on HN: they are anti-intellectual, in the sense that they penalize knowledge or understanding insofar as such understanding complicates some poorly-stated valence issue (most often "the government should honor everybody's right to privacy"). It's not that the angry HN commenter has a carefully-considered (or even specific) complaint about Orin Kerr†. Rather, the angry HN commenter is angry that anyone has taken the time to understand the legal issue at all, instead of simply joining them in baying at the moon.

You should be embarrassed to argue this way. You should want to first understand the issues that are at play, and then figure out how your principles engage with those issues. You obviously shouldn't be trying to dismiss dense sources of information that you clearly didn't already have access to by making allusions to torture. But you do anyways, as do many on HN, adding no value, no original insights, no new information, not even a meaningful criticism of someone else's insight or information --- just, "new information that doesn't fit my worldview: BAD".

I've been here long enough to know that you're getting upvoted for comments like these, hopping from thread to thread shouting down anyone who fails to scoop out their eyeballs, pick up the accursed panflute or vile drum, and dance idiotically around the formless confusion of whatever issue you think you're advocating for. Just know, the same people upvoting you for poisoning threads are also the ones upvoting the incomprehensible douchebags who snark about "getting their side project acquired next time they get a job offer". You're two sides of the same debased coin.

† You can, once in a blue moon, find a carefully considered criticism of Orin Kerr on HN, but they've uniformly come from people on HN with law degrees and are thus obviously suspicious.

[ferdo]

> You should be embarrassed to argue this way.

You should be embarrassed for defending Orin Kerr.

> I've been here long enough to know that you're getting upvoted for comments like these

I got downvoted. Maybe you want to revisit what you think you think you know and enjoy bloviating about.

[tptacek]

Unfortunately, I read things before I decide whether to yell at them, and so find myself unable to howl maniacally at Orin Kerr.

[tedunangst]

All you establishment types. Always banding together to oppress the little guy.