Is it a "personal attack" to claim GG's reporting has been sloppy and/or hyperbolic?

[Jim Lane]

91. Political candidates are a separate issue.

To take your example, suppose someone makes a disparaging comment about Weiner's texting or some other aspect of his sex life. Certainly that's a personal attack, whether or not it's true. Is it the ad hominem fallacy? If it's in response to "During the Congressional debate about ACA, Weiner made a great point about the health insurance industry when he said...." then, yes, it's the ad hominem fallacy, because Weiner's sexting has no relationship to the validity of his policy analysis. OTOH, if it's in response to "Weiner has exhibited good judgment and is the best candidate for Mayor," then it's not a fallacy because the issue is Weiner's character, not the truth or falsity of any particular statement.

So, when I talked about avoiding personal attacks, I see now that I wasn't being precise enough. I meant it in the context of assessing the truth or falsity of someone's statement. In that context, ad hominem arguments are generally fallacies.

The exception would be if credibility were at issue. If there's a good-faith dispute about truth or falsity, and it rests in part on the speaker's own testimony, then statements like "this columnist always has it in for Democrats" or "this climate change researcher is paid by Big Oil" are still personal attacks, but they're relevant. I haven't followed the Snowden/Greenwald/NSA reporting in great detail, but I have the impression that Greenwald's criticisms do NOT rest primarily on matters as to which he's asking us to take his word concerning a fact. For example, if the facts about the FISA court are undisputed, and Greenwald opines that the safeguards are a joke while an Obama administration lawyer opines that they're marvelous, that's not an issue of credibility. Each argument should be assessed on its merits, not based on its source.

You write, "You are confusing robust criticism of public figures with personal insults directed towards private individuals with a goal to hurt their feelings." No, I'm not. You see it that way because you have a definition of "personal attack" that I (and, apparently, others) find unduly narrow. Your example comments about Boehner and Weiner are personal attacks in what I think is the most common understanding of that term.

I asked you about your definition of "attack" because, in your #51, you didn't limit your statement to personal attacks. You wrote: "An attack requires that the person being attacked participate and react to the process." That appears to me to require you to disagree with Kolesar's #31, even though Kolesar didn't specify "personal" attack. This doesn't mean I belong to some weird Kolesar infallibilty cult. I was simply trying to understand how you were using these various terms, and took that post as an example to ask you about.