Well, considering that my comment said nothing specifically about journalists or their being a constitutional right to protect one's sources, we must have different understandings of what a fair interpretation is, and what obvious means.
What strikes me as obvious, from the content of my comment and a political theoretic standpoint is what I stated—this administration is running afoul of what we've taken for granted, and the branches are not properly balancing each other's powers to protect the Constitution and the governed.
It's disingenuous to pretend that you weren't talking about journalists when your comment roots a thread on a story about journalists. What else would you have been talking about? I think, rather, that you see 'coldtea as supporting you, and are now in turn sticking up for him; you see yourselves now as a faction, which is unfortunate.
Are you kidding me? You're now, from the comfort of your detached position, attributing intent and making a ridiculous assertion of seeing myself and other complete strangers on the Internet as a faction? This is what's unfortunate—that you think you can even figure out the complexities of my thoughts based on your subjective experience as an outsider.
Care to explain just how exactly you can possibly determine from your vantage point the evidence that supports the claim that I am pretending? That's pretty much accusing me of behaving falsely, and you've got all that from a couple sentences? Who is coldtea to me but an Internet stranger? Why would I care to stick up for him? Moreover, why would I behave falsely and betray my original intent to support a stranger? I hadn't even read his comments before I replied to you (see how I replied to yours before rayiner's? I'm replying from email links in which all I have is the direct reply text, not surrounding context).
> What else would you have been talking about?
Would you like me to get a mathematical estimate of how many possible combinations exist for what else I might have been talking about? Please, don't make such a fool's mistake of thinking you can reliably determine what is happening inside my head and my motivations from a couple of sentences.
Your comments show a far greater potential for seeing yourself in some kind of a faction with rayiner. I usually appreciate many of your comments, but goddamn, you really like to defend the shit out of rayiner way overstepping interpretation and not bothering to verify he's on the correct trajectory.
In this context, Thomas's "let's agree to disagree" is clearly a euphemism for each of us is wasting his time trying to change the other's mind, so let's not bother any more.
> Two rational people cannot agree to disagree. One of them is doing something wrong.
Your first quoted sentence goes too far [0]. Rational people can and do agree to disagree over, for example, whether the universe has 10 dimensions, or 11, or 26 [1].
Your second sentence doesn't go far enough: Both (of the putatively rational people) could be doing something wrong.
[0] All categorical statements are bad --- including this one.
What strikes me as obvious, from the content of my comment and a political theoretic standpoint is what I stated—this administration is running afoul of what we've taken for granted, and the branches are not properly balancing each other's powers to protect the Constitution and the governed.