Billing itself as the Question Dean Blog, a new weblog attacks Howard Dean. It's written by a Vermonter under a pseudonym. We will support Dean if he's the candidate, and don't want to engage in Dean-bashing. We may endorse him before then --we just haven't made up our minds, and we like Clark and Edwards too. But we have, from time to time, pointed out his weaknesses on criminal justice issues and civil liberties. This article, from Vermont's Rutland Herald a few days after the 9/11 attacks, does cause us concern. We think the solution is for the Dean team to address and explain such prior remarks. If he doesn't think now that which he did but shouldn't have thought then, let's hear about it.

Dean's comments on civil liberties cause alarm
September 14, 2001

Gov. Howard Dean's call for a “re-evaluation” of some of America's civil liberties following this week's terrorist attacks was criticised Thursday by a Vermont Law School professor. “Good God,” Vermont Law School Professor Michael Mello said when read the remarks Dean made at a Wednesday news conference. “It's terribly irresponsible for the leader of our state to be saying stuff like that right now.”

....Dean said Wednesday he believed that the attacks and their aftermath would “require a re-evaluation of the importance of some of our specific civil liberties. I think there are going to be debates about what can be said where, what can be printed where, what kind of freedom of movement people have and whether it's OK for a policeman to ask for your ID just because you're walking down the street.”

Now, had we stopped reading there, we would be left with the impression that Dean was calling for a reduction of our civil liberties. But, reading the whole article, he didn't say that--he said he hadn't made up his mind and he expected there would be a debate on these issues.

Dean said he had not taken a position on these questions. Asked whether he meant that specific rights described in the Bill of Rights — the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution — would have to be trimmed, the governor said: “I haven't gotten that far yet. I think that's unlikely, but I frankly haven't gotten that far. Again, I think that's a debate that we will have.”

So, the Question Dean blog is valuable for pointing us to source articles, but not so valuable at telling us what they reflect about Dean. Again, we think it should be Dean's people that point this stuff out first and diffuse it.

On the other hand, we doubt Wesley Clark would have been indecisive on the issue--even right after 9/11.

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