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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mary Cluney who wrote (103206)	2/5/2009 11:42:31 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 544141

Trying to find out what makes these people tick. Part of a due diligence process. You might find it interesting, that's a personal thing, but I don't think it does much for "due diligence", except perhaps in extreme cases where you find out someone has a record of fraud or something like that. It might have some bearing on arguments from authority, when your told "X is right, because Y says it is right", but these really aren't those types of arguments, and no matter what someone's background is, arguments from authority are weak. Even if Bush is the worst president ever (an idea I find ridiculous, but a lot of people here seem to accept it, so I'll go with it for a moment), and if other negative claims about his background or actions are true and significant, that wouldn't mean that he hadn't made true statements and valid arguments about a number of issues. If Holder is very bright and worked very hard, that doesn't mean he's going to be right about his claims, you find bright, honest, hard workers, on opposite sides of issues all the time. You can't tell if some point is correct by the background of the person making the point. Truth is not determined by status or personal history. What's said, and how its backed up, is a lot more important than who says it (at least in terms of the truth of an idea, not so much in terms of whether the idea will get a lot of attention from others).