In Defense of Punctuation

Recently a NYTimes reporter reported on the Tea Partiers' intellectual lineage.  In the course of this she quoted Ron Johnson, who is running to be the new and infinitely incompetent Senator of the this great State, who

asserted that the $20 billion escrow fund that the Obama administration forced BP to set up to pay damages from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill circumvented “the rule of law,” Hayek’s term for the unwritten code that prohibits the government from interfering with the pursuit of “personal ends and desires.”

Various Conservatives and Gliberatarians jumped to the conclusion that the reporter reporting Johnson's remarks doesn't know what the rule of law, let alone Hayek's view of it, is.  I wonder how it is they arrive at this conclusion. The false claim that the 20 billion escrow fund violates the rule of law comes from Johnson; it was he who introduced the phrase "rule of law"; we have no reason to think the next quote isn't from Johnson.  While it's true that he is a manufacturer and an accountant, his views on punishing child abusers and climate change aren't examples of a man who can think things through. Indeed, the garbled definition of the rule of law reads exactly like what someone who has never thought about the rule of law or read Hayek might end up burbling.  Johnson is, after all, a Tea Partier and their intellectual leader is Glenn Beck, a man who never lets an opportunity to misrepresent the past by garbling and misrepresenting quotations and ideas pass him by.

UPDATE:
The punctuation mark defended here, I should have been clear, is the coma.  Comas link things to previous things, like the individual expressing an idea to the idea's content.  Periods, on the other and, mark the end of sentence, after which the speaker might change.

UPDATE:
Here is Kate Zernike reporting on McCain's and Obama's response to a supreme court ruling.  She quotes Obama as praising the because it is

re-establishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus.

She doesn't add any odd definitions here.

Here she quotes Bush to the effect that

Saddam Hussein’s trial is a milestone in the Iraqi people’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.

Again no odd interpretation added.

I'll ask, who do you think made the error? Zernike or Johnson?  My money's on the manufacturer and accountant because, after all, only a lawyer would care about the rule of law.

UPDATE:
Here she quotes Maliwki:

Iraq will not forget those who stood with her and continue to stand with her in times of need,” he told Congress. “We have gone from mass graves and torture chambers and chemical weapons to the rule of law and human rights.

 Here she provides a quote that modifies the rule of law

'There's the rule of law, and there's the rule of law in Texas,'' said Rob Martin, a 38-year-old resident in neurosurgery who had come to watch the trial today. ''The rule of law in Texas is kind of cowboy law."

It's very hard to believe that she doesn't know what the rule of law is; and it is very easy to believe that Ron Johnson doesn't.