April 17, 2014

HLN, formerly CNN Headline News, apparently ran out of facts or sensible commentary about the disappearance of the Malaysian Airlines plane. On March 21, It turned to a psychic, one Lisa Williams, to help locating the missing aircraft. She offered a summary of her technique: "Naturally, I don’t actually have hard, concrete evidence," she acknowledged. "I think any psychic who has hard, concrete evidence can’t do their job correctly. . . . They’ll just work on what they know, so I tend to work off what I don’t know."[22] 

That could serve as the motto of the political right, for example in its attitude toward climate change.

A somewhat similar disdain for facts is present at the Supreme Court, whose decisions in campaign-finance cases are based on not knowing something which everyone else in the country knows: the injection of vast sums of money into politics has a corrupting influence. The Court’s see-no-evil mindset isn’t the only flaw in that line of decisions. Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC reflect a flawed definition of corruption, an intrusion on separation of powers, and partisanship. More on that later.

A final — no, merely another — example of defiant ignorance was provided by an angry Nevada rancher who disputes federal control of land he uses for grazing cattle. His reasoning: "I don’t recognize [the] United States Government as even existing." That’s only a somewhat more extreme statement of personal or collective secession than those put forth by hyper-libertarians and nullifiers.[23]

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22. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hln-psychic-malaysia-jet">http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/hln-psychic-malaysia-jet
23. http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/04/14/3426222/militia-rancher-behind-bars/