As someone on the other side of the health care divide, a patient with massive issues, I would prefer that my providers not talk about me at all in situations not related to my care. I live in a small town and have overheard doctors talking about me in the local airport as an example. I find that completely inappropriate.

I would no more appreciate those same individuals talking about me at home with their family even though I would be much less likely to find out about it.

You quote a line publius did not himself write, but that he enjoyed enough to repeat at the end of a post explaining why he agreed with it, following several more substantive posts over a period of time during which Whelan was not always completely polite either. In short, publius, caught up in the heat of an intellectual quarrel, a dispute over ideas and policy, used a “zinger” to sum up his position. Perhaps you have never done that. Whelan has, so have most of us, and it’s no big deal.

You skip over the question of whether Whelan IS, in publius’s jocular sense of the word, a “hitman,” — DOES Whelan “pore over [a nominee’s] record, finds some trivial fact that, when distorted and taken totally out of context, makes that person look like some sort of extremist.” If he does, is there something wrong with saying so? I think not. If the shoe fits, Mr. Whelan should wear it. My personal opinion, and I won’t bother repeating the reasons for it, which are all over the web, is that publius is right. Whelan does purposefully quote out of context and does use his credentials to bolster poor arguments.

But even if publius were wrong about that, just couldn’t see the true genius that is Whelan — so what? The real issue here is that Whelan brought a gun to a knife fight, used a body block in a touch football game, kneed his wrestling partner in the groin. He turned a casual intellectual dispute into a job and family threat. He did it quite purposefully. What you think of publius is pretty irrelevant to the fact that Whelan’s conduct stank.

One of Publius’ comments to Ed Whelan:

[Ed Whelan is] “essentially a legal hitman” who “pores over [a nominee’s] record, finds some trivial fact that, when distorted and taken totally out of context, makes that person look like some sort of extremist.”

Hey, Dennis, does the description “cowardice and complete lack of character” apply to a person who posts that insult anonymously during a discussion of a judicial nominee’s qualifications?

Viva anonymity!

Funny that no two bloggers remind me more of each other–in tone and rhetoric–than Ed Whelan and Brian Leiter (although I tend to agree with one much more often than the other, they both make me cringe).

For the record, let me say my views on the Ed Whelan/”Publius”/John Blevins affair differ widely from those of my valued co-blogger Michael Krauss. I understand why “hiding behind a pseudonym while sniping at a critic who is out in……