In searching for a recent post on RedState’s monumentally successful (?) fundraiser, I found this piece of stupidity from front pager Moe Lane. Lane, apparently incensed by Dodd’s references to the defense offered by Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg, tries to do some logical jiu-jitsu and ends up falling flat on his face.

In case you’re wondering, it was the telecom industry that he was comparing to Nazis: amusingly, it seems to have escaped his noticed that if the telecoms are Nazis for working with the administration, then the administration must be Nazis, too – and, hey, what does Senator Chris Dodd do for a living? That’s right, he works with the administration. He’s not, say, out in the countryside shooting the military governor of Topeka and stocking up for the Liberation. He’s right there in Washington DC, implicitly supporting the Bush Regime’s claim to legitimacy! He’s just like the telecoms!

[stunned look] It’s all terrifyingly clear, now. Chris Dodd is confessing to being a Nazi!

Um, no.

It’s actually really funny that Lane thinks he’s taking Dodd down for using a poor argument in connection to Nuremberg and the defenses offered there. I doubt Lane knows that Dodd’s father, Tom Dodd, was a lead prosecutor there or that Dodd has authored a book about his father’s work at Nuremberg.

Being a member of Congress and occasionally working with the administration does not equal being a Nazi. And, if Lane was paying attention to what Dodd said and the context in which he said it, he is using his constitutionally given opportunity as a member of a co-equal branch of government to conduct oversight of the administration, with the specific goal of stopping activity that he finds reprehensible. Which, following Lane’s mistaken argument,

More importantly, working with the Bush administration isn’t the crime Dodd is accusing the telecoms of committing. He’s attacking the telecoms defense in response to the suits against them — that they were ordered to do what they did by the Bush administration and were obligated to comply. That’s the same defense defendants at Nuremberg offered and it was one that humanity and the rule of law did not look kindly upon.