According to Merriam Webster's, a loophole can be considered "an ambiguity or omission in the text through which the intent of a statute, contract, or obligation may be evaded." The author's assertion that the parties mentioned in the above examples are acting within their legal rights is certainly true, yet I think he misses the point of using the word. It is an implication that while the letter of the law is being followed, the intent is not.

In the cited example regarding business taxes in Mexico, the author's proposed headline of "Mexican President Calls for More Taxes" would not be accurate. In fact, the government is attempting to rewrite the tax law to collect the taxes from businesses it desired when the laws were first (erroneously) composed.

I agree with the author in that use of the word needs to be monitored to avoid editorializing. However, eliminating the use of the word in a time in which legal implementation of policy can frequently stray from the mark would deprive journalists with a useful tool in being concise in the appropriate articles.

Bingo. In fact, I can't really think of any loopholes that could exist simply by violating the letter of the law - and not the intent as well. Violating the letter of the law would require a law that is in some way self-contradictory (and I can't think of any). So of course using a loophole is an excercise in freedom - a freedom that the law in question simply did not have the foresight to declare illegal.

Absolutely correct! Shafer is way off base on this one.

I don't think the article's "way off base." Yes, "loophole" is often the perfect word to describe a situation where a technical oversight in the drafting of a statute or regulation leads to a silly result. But quite often, exceptions are carved out of such rules -- precisely because the drafters wanted to create such exemptions.

In these cases (and there are many), it is prejudicial to state that one is taking advantage of a "loophole" in the regulation, because that implies that one sneakily exploited a technical flaw in the rule. In reality, the person is merely taking advantage of something to which he is genuinely entitled.

Quite right. The state of our tax code is such that most "loopholes" are not made in error but rather by deliberate design. Loophole is useful to describe something made by oversight or by scrviner's error. But most of these "loopholes" reflect conscious decisions by lawmakers to help some person or industry through legislative legerdemain.

Equally annoying to me is the use of the word "technicality," as in "the defendant got off on a technicality. The law is very technical; indeed, it's all technicalities. That's how we apply general principals like "fairness" and "justice." When a reporter says that the accused got off on a technicality, what he really means is he got off through application of the law in a manner the reporter deems distasteful.

Here's another one: "pandering." What does this word mean? As far as I can tell, when a political analyst says a candidate is "pandering," he usually means "appealing to a base constituancy of which I am not a member." Pandering is uniformly seen as negative. But how is it any different from espousing a popular position, something all candidates hope to do? Or do reporters and analysts think that an honest candidate should be a Kantian Profile in Courage, espousing only unpopular positions, to the detriment of his candidacy?

Your point about the use of the term "pandering" is the best example yet. I wish I'd thought of it, damnit.