Innocent until proven guilty, then innocent anyway (if you're conservative).

Via Glenn Greenwald

Thomas Sowell, from his Townhall column today:

We all believe that people are innocent until proven guilty. Some on the left believe that they are innocent even after being proven guilty.

Thomas Sowell, March 2007, on Lewis Libby's conviction on four felony counts:

In the course of this pointless investigation, it turned out that some of Scooter Libby's statements conflicted with the statements of some reporters. So Libby was prosecuted for perjury and obstruction of justice -- and a Washington jury convicted him.

Not only did Libby's recollections differ from that of some reporters, some of those reporters differed among themselves as to what had been said and some differed in their later testimony from what they had said in their earlier testimony.

The information about Joe Wilson's wife was so incidental and trivial at the time that it is hardly surprising that it was not fixed in people's minds as something memorable. Only later hype in the media made it look big.

With Libby handling heavy duties in the White House, there is no reason for his memory to be expected to be better than that of others about something like this -- much less to convict him of perjury. . . .

A man's life has been ruined because his memories differed from that of others -- whose memories also differed among themselves -- and media liberals are exulting as if their conspiracy theories had been vindicated.

Or, put another way, Sowell -- like most of the Bush-following movement -- believes Libby to be innocent even after he was proven guilty.

Like I said before:

Double standard and hypocrisy in and of themselves don't upset me all that much. What really gets me is that the double standard and hypocrisy are part of what Neiwert has termed a projection strategy of folks like Coulter, Hannity, Malkin, O'Reilly, et all who demonize their political opponents as extremist thugs while providing cognitive cover for their own extremist ranks which they manage not to ever realize exists by accusing their enemies of what they themselves are guilty of.

Which is pretty similar to what Greenwald had to say about this, too.

Neither Thomas Sowell nor this specific episode, standing alone, is particularly significant, but I cannot help being endlessly amazed by the capacity of right-wing authoritarians so blatantly to hold and espouse completely contradictory thoughts at once without realizing they are doing it.

Indeed, it's remarkable. But I suppose it isn't that surprising considering we're dealing with a movement whose biggest media star thinks that carrots are deadlier than cigarettes.