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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (33770)	3/6/2009 6:08:22 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

So far Steve you haven't written anything worth responding to. You have posted two ad hominem attacks in responses to my posts. If you want to discuss the democrat talking points Bartlett is parroting you will have to engage in dialog rather than criticism.

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (33770)	3/9/2009 1:48:31 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 71588

and now you attack Bruce Bartlett instead of his argument. That's called ad hominem. Attacking someone making the argument isn't automatically ad hominem. Its ad hominem if you say or imply or deliberately suggest that an argument is wrong because of the person that makes the argument. If there is no such statement, implication, or suggestion, then while a statement might be an irrelevant personal attack, it wouldn't actually be ad hominem. As for Peter's comment "Bartlett is a hit journalist with no credibility.", that wouldn't be relevant to Bartlett's arguments, but it would be relevant to any argument relying on Bartlett as an authority. Peter doesn't find Barlett to be a credible authority, so he would nearly totally discount any argument from authority involving Bartlett. Also one can only spend so much time responding to, or even paying attention to arguments, so it makes sense to exclude some that you don't see as credible from the outset, and doing so isn't engaging in ad hominem. OTOH - I think Bartlett's points do deserve a response, so Message 25478288