Emily Mills responds to my criticism of her unsubstantiated accusation that I went to "great and terrible lengths" to defend Justice Prosser.

I'm linking so you can get started talking about it in the comments here and over there. I haven't read the entire thing, but it looks as though she only apologizes for not linking to me, which wasn't the real problem. The real problem — which I describe here — was her unsubstantiated accusations. Does she now provide the evidence that was lacking before? I don't see how she can, because I know what she wrote about me was wrong, but I will read it now, and I hope you do too.

ADDED: First, let's look at the positive. Emily Mills has admitted that we don't know what really happened that day in the Supreme Court. I think that originally she, like Bill Wineke, thought she could be part of a media noise machine that could ruin Prosser. But now, it seems, she's let go of the belief that she can simply be hardcore anti-Prosser. That's not a comfortable place anymore. Good. I've pulled the Madison cocoon open. I'm happy about that. Time to grow up and live in the wider world.

Now, the negative. Mills strains to read between the lines of things I've written and to imagine things I must be thinking:

What I'm calling out, then, is what I perceived to be an all-too quick jump to the "it was probably Bradley's/Abrahamson's/liberals fault" line of argument existent in Ann's and other's [sic] musings on the matter.

That quote isn't a quote from me. It's Mills's own expression of her perceptions when she read my mind. I thought Mills was going to substantiate her accusations with words that I wrote, not reports of her feelings when she read what I wrote.

It's important, when you're reading and you get a feeling to stop and think: What made me feel like that? It can be very enlightening! Go back over the precise words that set you off. There may be an interesting discrepancy between those words and your feelings. Pay attention to your own mind. Confront the ways in which other people's minds are genuinely different from yours.

To some extent, it's good to imagine that another person's thoughts resemble yours. Emily Mills wants the liberal side to win, so when she's reading something I wrote that doesn't help, she presumes I'm on the other side. She knows how she embodies her thoughts cagily into words, and she imagines that I'm doing the same kind of thing. But other people deserve to be recognized as separate and different. One of the reasons to read is to get the feeling of how another person thinks. Don't close yourself off to that. You'll be a better reader, and, I would argue, a better person, because you will be accepting and confronting the author's humanity and individuality.

ALSO: That phrase "great and terrible" is a big Old Testament phrase. Example:

And the LORD shall utter his voice before his army: for his camp is very great: for he is strong that executeth his word: for the day of the LORD is great and very terrible; and who can abide it?

I'm not that powerful, Emily.