No need to be a schmuck. I didn’t know if he was referring to the topic of the thread or the Libby case which he mentioned in the same post immediately preceding it.
No, he doesn’t have a point. He’s a one-trick pony. Everything that he doesn’t like helps the terrorists.
I just want to jump in for a moment and say how much I appreciate the journalists and reporters quoting unknown, rather undisclosed, sources for the articles. We get statements/opinions from “Senior Aides”, “Foreign Diplomats”, “Senate/House Staffers”, “Sources close to whomever”. et al]
Newsweek was the first to actually explain to us why they couldn’t tell us who it was saying it. Close to the souce, didn’t wan’t to anger their boss, didn’t want to hurt their carreer, etc. Maybe they said it. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it really did happen. Or maybe it was made up. I can tell you a Senior Aide told me the Iraq War is actually a ruse to conquer Jamaica to kill the natives in order to turn it into a cash cow for tourism. But if I say I’m a reporter, you cannot demand I prove whether or not it was said. But if I get a blog going with enough following? Doesn’t matter. You can’t question it.
Sometimes the behind-the-scenes stuff needs to remain that. Not plastered on the front pages. There are very legitimate instances where a “scoop” is needed for the public good.
Cases, yes even in this Administration, sometimes need to be handled with discretion at the benefit of the public. We don’t need to know every single piece of minutiae to dissect in foreign policy. Neither do those intentionally not involved in the discussions.
Every now and then, an editor should realize there are some instances where it isn’t a benefit to the readers to expose all.
But I’m sure I’m wrong.
Doesn’t seem to me to be a fallacy, at least not in terms of this discussion, here and now. In the GD thread, someone proposed that the only consequence the Times should face for their actions should be market-based (ie people shouldn’t buy their newspapers).
That got me wondering: seeing as how any government action against the Times would be seen (properly or not) as censorship, and seeing as how most folks in this thread don’t want the government to take any such censoring action against them, then I really wonder: does that mean that no one wants any official action to be taken against them? Add that to the fact that all of the discussion has been in very specific terms (the shadiness of the Bush Administration, and of the project revealed in the Times), and I really DON’T know what is being said sometimes.
So I asked.
I should amend that with this:
It’s not that I’m necessarily upset with a reporter looking for a quote in the cut-throat industry of selling papers/magazines. It’s the people that leak this shit (all people) to the press under the cover of annonimity. What is the point of security if those in the know can just tell anyone with a microphone?
Today’s news is little more than the “pals” quoted in the Enquirer packaged as breaking news. Either the media are proving untrustworthy by hyping obviously untrustworthy “sources close to whatever refusing to be named”, or the people with sensitive information (we see it every day) can’t be trusted. I suspect it’s both.
The news is little more than a cat fight seen rarely outside celebrity rags. Global warming will be taken care of by Cronkite spinning in his grave.
And I should add that if people said, yes, the press shouldn’t ever face government or legal consequence for publishing any sort of state secret at all, I’d actually be sympathetic to that argument. After all, many folks on the GD thread have asserted that the basics of free speech is more important to them than any state secret, or even their own sense of safety, and I could understand that. I’d just like to know.
Leaper, this isn’t in any way directed to you. But it’s somewhat relevant to all the leaks.
No, not Godwinizing.
What if the NYTimes announced the scoop, leaked by a “Senior Official”, that we cracked the code?
What if a “Senior military officer” leaked the info on the “Windtalkers”?
That would have sold some papers I’m sure. Imagine the ink used on the investigations of those two stories alone! And dammit, where the hell was the Times on those secret programs?!? Americans deserved to know everything the government was doing!
We would have been so much better off had we known of those “secret” programs. How dare the government keep anything secret from us. Nobody outside the U.S. has access to U.S. news. so why keep it secret?
My viewpoint comes pretty close to that. IANAL, but I think as the law stands now we can only punish government employees for leaking information, not the members of the press. The government employees who handle classified information have already voluntarily signed a contract waiving their rights, so it’s a different deal.
I don’t see how anybody can compare leaking information about the government monitoring financial records with leaking information about breaking codes during WWII. If I know that some military code has been broken, that compromises national security, but it’s of no advantage to me if that is public knowledge. On the other hand, if my phones are tapped and my internet activity and financial records are being monitored, I do want to know about it, because it affects me personally and I don’t like the idea of the government intruding on my privacy to make me “safer.” The way I see it, that’s the key difference.
It’s possible (I’ll even play devil’s advocate and say “probable”) that this particular program wasn’t being abused, but as others have said, this administration does have an astonishing track record of crying “The terrorists will win if you know this information” every time news comes out that suggests they might be pushing the limits of their power. I know they need some information to be classified for national security, but when I look at things like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib it makes me suspicious that this administration keeps so much of its activity secret.
Sorry for dredging up a tangentially related post from page 2, but this was bugging me: Your analogy doesn’t make any sense. The government is not infringing your rights by making you wear a seatbelt and punishing you for driving drunk. Nowhere is it written or implied that you have a right to drive a car. When you get your drivers’ license and then get behind the wheel of your car to drive on public roads, you are consenting to those conditions. You are perfectly within your rights to not wear a seatbelt - just don’t drive. Driving may seem like a practical necessity in our society, but that hardly makes it a right. You should, however, expect to have a right to privacy. (And I make an exception if you have some kind of warrant, but I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here.)
This sums up my feelings on the situation entirely.
There is still an ongoing investifation, and I doubt Fitz would waste his time unless he thought there was something. Also, there is now a Democrat panel examining the whole mess. If the Dems take the House and/or Senate, the shit may fly.
“They” have made a lot of claims that were bullshit. Don’t make me write up a list. “Their” credibility is zilch. I could claim the sky is pink with purple polka dots. So what. The sky is pink with purple polka dots. I can’t show you the evidence, cuz it’s secret :rolleyes:
I was referring to the topic of the thread.
Fine then. Why not go all the way? Why not arrange to embed reporters at cabinet meetings and high level government department offices for some real transparency? Embedding reporters seems to have worked quite well in the US rebuilding effort in Iraq.
This is all just the Bush Administration showing alarm because a news organization has shown evidence of having grown a pair. It’s just George Bush telling the Times, “Hey, get your face back in my lap, bitch!”
The sad thing is, he hasn’t had to say that to many other news organizations in the last few years.
And we are asked to believe that any problems that may occur as a result of refusing to do so are the fault of the people who refused rather than of the people who pissed away their credibility in the first place. Lousy fools and cowards, who didn’t show up to fight the wolf when it did come…
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDVhYWQzMmQ3YWRlNzFkYjRmZmY4ZTQzZmUwZjJhZjI=
National Review Online
Undermining the war on terror. Whenever you have no fucking justification, just call up the Terror Boogeyman. Body blow to the war effort. Gee. That sounds like Giving Aid To The Enemy. Which sounds like Treason. Maybe it’s just me.
pay a price…prosecute…
Uh huh, just like all wiretapping etc were completely legal and didn’t spy on American citizens… except when they did spy on us, and there was no effort to comply with FISA. This financial tracking is just more of the same. SWIFT is not a financial institution… so fucking what? It is a private information clearinghouse. Yepper, national security is now being farmed out to a company / conmglomerate / whatever in Europe.
Uh huh, just like they scrupulously narrowed their wiretap (whatever the semantic name) search and complied with FISA - except when inconvenient.
But I thought it was all legit and wasn’t so secret. But now it is again. But it isn’t. But it is.
Except as so graphically documented by the Downing Street memo and ret Lt Col Kwiatkowski, the intelligence doesn’t follow the party line.
So. Only “news” that has been blessed by The Party will ever be printed, because otherwise, the news publishers will be forced to burn their sources and/or face contempt charges.
Why is it, that when the White House leaks something it is good or at the least no big deal, but when someoene else reports something it is bad? I call bullshit on it, and I call bullshit on the biased hacks flunkies and Koolaid drinkers who defend it. Bull. Fucking. Shit. Evil One questioned the wisdom of the NYT reporting. Cool. Reasonable. Others are saying it should be flat out stopped or banned and investigations/charges/etc be made. Bullshit. Welcome to Oceania.
That’s about all I can stomach right now. Only news that has the White House stamp of approval may be published from now on. Fuck that shit.
Well, there’s always a bagman with a bag (hence the name) containing many pictures of dead presidents. Of course, then you run the risk that the bagman will realize that the pictures of dead presidents will enable him to get virgins, or even women who know what they’re doing in bed, without the inconvenience of dying.
The Pentagon paperes ruling
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=403&invol=713
“Any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this Court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity.” Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 70 (1963); see also Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931). The Government “thus carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint.” Organization for a Better Austin v. Keefe, 402 U.S. 415, 419 (1971). The District Court for the Southern District of New York in the New York Times case and the District Court for the District of Columbia and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the Washington Post case held that the Government had not met that burden. We agree.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is therefore affirmed. The order of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is reversed and the case is remanded with directions to enter a judgment affirming the judgment of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. The stays entered June 25, 1971, by the Court are vacated. The judgments shall issue forthwith.
So ordered.
MR. JUSTICE BLACK, with whom MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS joins, concurring.
I adhere to the view that the Government’s case against the Washington Post should have been dismissed and that the injunction against the New York Times should have been vacated without oral argument when the cases were first presented to this Court. I believe [403 U.S. 713, 715] that every moment’s continuance of the injunctions against these newspapers amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment. Furthermore, after oral argument, I agree completely that we must affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for the reasons stated by my Brothers DOUGLAS and BRENNAN. In my view it is unfortunate that some of my Brethren are apparently willing to hold that the publication of news may sometimes be enjoined. Such a holding would make a shambles of the First Amendment.
========================================================
A quote that still holds true today, and may be even MORE true than ever before…
“But out of the gobbledygook, comes a very clear thing: [unclear] you can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their judgment; and the – the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the President can be wrong.”
– H.R. Haldeman to President Nixon, Monday, 14 June 1971, 3:09 p.m. meeting
Here are SOME of the wingnuts I mentioned earlier…
http://hughesforamerica.typepad.com/hughes_for_america/
Calls of treason on “Hardball”
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you Melanie, do you really mean treason? You mean put them in jail for life? I don’t know what treason carries as a sanction, but I assume the penalties are incredible severe, 20 years perhaps.
[MELANIE] MORGAN: Yes.
MATTHEWS: You are saying to put Bill Keller and his associates in prison for 20 years?
MORGAN: Absolutely. I am absolutely advocating that. What has happened is shameful If he’s the one that is ultimately responsible for making this decision.
MATTHEWS: Well, it’s his call. What about the NSA? Would you do the same in the NSA case?
MORGAN: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely I would.
MATTHEWS: You’d put them in jail for 20 years for that.
MORGAN: Yes, I would. When you break the law, you break the law. And the press, the media in this country have to learn one thing. They have to operate under the same laws and the same rules and regulations that all of the rest of the American people do.
*My comment… the LAWS and the Supreme Court in a prior similar ruling say BULLSHIT ON THIS. Freedom of the press. It’s in the fucking Constitution. It’s America. Why do you hate America? *
Now, now, it’s not the case that the press cannot, simply by virtue if them being the press, be complicit in treasonous activity. If a traitor leaked secret troop movements to someone in the press and they reported it, I think you would agree that the act was treasonous.
I also recall a proposal to expand bank surveillance, under the name “Know Your Customer”. Conservatives went ballistic, because at the time the President was named “Bill Clinton”. I suppose magellan01 wasn’t around to explain to them that we have no choice but to trust the President. :rolleyes: