Talk:Stephen Halbrook

Amusing removal of well-sourced material -- midsentence!

User:Justanonymous added the entire Bernard Harcourt quotation on Halbrook to the article with the edit summary per WP:BLP we have to be discrete here about exactly what was said. Took the actual quote and source., but User:Capitalismojo removed it[1], saying "remove unrelated neo-nazi material from BLP". This is some extremely funny stuff. Removing part of a quotation mid-sentence because it contains "unrelated neo-nazi material"! And he is backed up by User:Gaijin42[2]. The patent abuse of WP:BLP policy here is simply boggling. — goethean 21:50, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

So your interpretation of BLP is that the part of a sentence NOT talking about Halbrook is relevant in an article about Halbrook? Gaijin42 (talk) 22:10, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

My interpretation is straight-forward. There's no reason to chop up a quotation — in the middle of a clause! — because you personally dislike the contents of that clause. There's no other reason to remove a few words. The sentence doesn't even make sense now that you've butchered it — one of the dashes is now missing. Let's just excise a few words out of the middle of a clause because we don't like that they discuss our favorite gun control ideologue in connection with a controversial figure. — goethean 22:22, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

The conflation of an unrelated white-power neo-nazi with a prominent attorney in a quote adds nothing to this BLP. The opinion of one professor/lawyer concerning another former professor/lawyer is a barely defensible addition to a BLP without the unrelated junk included. Capitalismojo (talk) 17:02, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Utter nonsense. There is nothing in the Harcourt material which comes close to violating BLP. Your chopping up a sentence and sticking it back together in an ungrammatical and unreadable way does not improve the article and should be reverted. — goethean 18:05, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Undue

Is there any evidence that the opinion of one lawyer/professor (absent a pattern of similar RS criticism) is an appropriate addition to a BLP? Should the criticism from Harcourt be included at all? I am doubtful. It seems WP:UNDUE Capitalismojo (talk) 23:26, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I have the same reservations. Could be construed as libel particularly where the source was coming from.....looking at white supremacists. We might want to consider removing. The criticism came in one paper in 2002-4 where Halbrook is lumped with white supremacists and interestingly the JPFO. I'd like to get consensus here before we remove. -Justanonymous (talk) 18:17, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Putting the halbrook criticism here for discussion:

Criticism University of Chicago Law School law professor Bernard Harcourt wrote in a 2004, Fordham Law Review article titled, On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi Gun Laws: Exploding the Gun Culture Wars (A Call to Historians) wrote about Stephen Halbrook that his, "...ideological commitments are so flagrant - Halbrook as a pro-gun litigator" that he could not "be trusted entirely in these historical and statutory debates."

Issues:

1. Undue- this appears to be a minority held viewpoint, there aren't a lot of WP RS that claim this that I could find. Maybe someon else can
2. Libel - the article that mentions this lumps Halbrook with white supremacists....I think that could be libelous.professor Halbrook has given testimony in Supreme Court appointments and won 3 cases against the Supreme Court. It could be seen as a smear campaign to lump him with white supremacists.

Since this is a BLP, let's be extra careful as the policy requires. Being RS is not enough.-Justanonymous (talk) 19:18, 5 January 2014 (UTC)