Originally posted by fudgester:
Ah I see... LBY's definition of 'rebutting' opposing views is
shutting up the people who would come up with those opposing
views.
Oh dear... I was a school debater once, and one of the first things
I learnt was that to rebut an argument is to either provide facts
that undermine the argument or to provide a counterargument with
facts supporting the latter.
Typing 'define:rebut' in Google yields the following
definition:
[b]
refute: overthrow by argument, evidence, or proof; "The speaker
refuted his opponent's arguments"
refute: prove to be false or incorrect
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
There are several other similar definitions provided, all of them
are in a similar vein. But I'll just focus on one for the sake of
clarity.
So I suppose they're going to say that the Princeton definition of
'rebut' is wrong then? That to 'rebut' means to shut up the
opposing side?
Truth be told, I am losing whatever remaining confidence I have in
the Government from the way they're 'rebutting' Mr Brown. 
[/b]
Rebut can be more correct if both sides debate based on their
factual findings. It is always easy to have a panel of esteem
judges to judge who is actually telling the truth and who is
distorting the truth with the findings in a moot environment.
However, this case is no longer so clear cut when involving the
mass public. Definitely being a responsible government, the next
course of action would have to rectify what is wrong and put it
right, henceforth answerable to the public.
To be a truely administrative efficient government is not to fight
fire all the time as the nation well being should be the topmost
agenda. The establishment of the feedback department serve this
purpose with officials ready to response to genuine public concerns
and feedbacks. I am sure the last thing we want to see is our
leaders performing firefighting stunt instead of solving fellow
countrymen livelihood problem. 
