I previously discussed the slew of recent conservatives who has “had a change of heart” on equal rights of gays and lesbians after a family member who out as homosexual. Like some conservative women who reject most privacy principles except abortion rights, it is hard to celebrate belated endorsements of civil liberties which happen to benefit these politicians or their families. I had the same reaction to some journalists who gave only passing attention to President Obama’s various attacks on civil liberties over the last four years. However, now that his Administration has turned on journalists, we are seeing editorials like today’s New York Times column stating “the Obama administration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.”
This sense of outrage is justified. The investigation of AP and Fox reporters is one of the greatest attacks on a free press in modern history. However, for civil libertarians, it would have been more fulfilling to see this type of outrage over torture, warrantless surveillance, kill lists and the rest. It should not take a fire on your roof, to become concerned about arson.
The same can be said of Democratic members of Congress who have been mumbling expressions of concern after years to staring at their feet amid criticism of Obama by civil libertarians. One can only imagine their response if George Bush had taken these abusive steps.
Of course, civil libertarians are used to having transient friends. If only everyone’s interests could threatened at the same time . . . then we might actually have the votes to protect all of our constitutional rights.
Source: NY Times
I sure hope you’re right, mespo.
I think the pendulum has reached the end of its security swinging arch. I suspect a bipartisan effort to rewrite laws to aid the swing back towards protecting civil rights. It seems targeting reporters outrages both sides of the aisle and gives pause to all about further bolstering an imperial executive.
Poor Randyjet is clearly an Obamabot. He would have you believe that there is no war on whistleblowers and investigative journalists. Tell that to James Risen, Jeremy Scahill, Daniel Ellsburg, Tom Drake, John Kiriakou, John Dodson, Abdulelah Haider Shaye, Jacob Appelbaum, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, etc.
it is hard to celebrate belated endorsements of civil liberties which happen to benefit these politicians or their families.
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Do you want to buy thousands of acres of land in Latin America? They’re going to kill you.
Obama? Bush? Republicans? Democrats? Chances are, if that many politicians are for it then a bigger system is forcing/lobbying/bribing it on them. Who would stand to gain?
The politicians are just shills, all of them.
junction, LOL! I am a big fan but I only have seen that episode once. I was in an Einstein’s bagel shop and was struck down like St. Luke. I passed out from the pain and next remember being in an ambulance. The nurse in the ER said she has empathy for men w/ kidney stones because they now know what childbirth is like. When I passed the mofo the next morning in the hospital the nurse looked @ it and said, “Big and jagged!”
Nick – like this?
http://youtu.be/t6tni0uYEWw
It is time for the American people to force the resignation of Obama
junction, Gout is a mofo, had it once in my big toe. The only worse pain I ever experienced was a kidney stone.
Ralph, Well, Matthews is 5 years older and we all lose some “tingle” every year!
“The Ship of State leaks from the top” — U.S. President John F. Kennedy
“Kill the chicken, scare the monkey” — Ancient Chinese proverb
Hence:
Free Bradley Manning (in forty-four syllables)
Petulant President
Barack Obama who
Hates him some leakers (just
Not from the top),
Makes an example of
Low-level privates so
Cabinet ministers
Don’t have to stop.
Michael Murry, “The Misfortune Teller,” Copyright © 2012
The mainstream press has muzzled themselves for a dozen years and still goes out of their way to denigrate and (with venal take-down demands) stifle the online press. I have no personal sympathy for the AP, the NYT or ‘them’ as a bunch. As a purely ideological matter though transparency in government is inherent to a functioning democracy and that must be protected. The government can not be allowed to classify (historically to avoid embarrassment and cover up poor decision making) anything and everything and must be made to fulfill the government’s end of the democracy bargain.
Citizens have a right and an obligation to know what the government is doing in our name and a government that hides that information is in the main, up to no good, in our name. That knowledge, weather it is the extent of electronic interception of our electronic communication, being a bag-man for a tin-pot dictator, shipping prisoners off to be tortured, the effects of our depleted uranium munitions, or making sweet-heart deals with industry, must be public knowledge for democracy to have a chance to work. It was never supposed to be a guerrilla war to get information into the electorate’s hands. Information about government isn’t a gift from the government, it’s a right. The governments actions in this broad-brush surveillance is antithetical to democracy and needs to be punished.
That the NYT is just now awakened to the danger of “the
Obamaadministration has moved beyond protecting government secrets to threatening fundamental freedoms of the press to gather news.” after 12 years does not impress me; it should have replaced “All the news….” as their slogan a decade ago.Are you Obama fans out there starting to feel that “The Thrill Is Gone”? (To borrow the title of the great blues classic written by Roy Hawkins and Rick Darnell in 1951 and famously rendered by B.B. King.)
Nick, do you mean Chris Matthews is no longer feeling that strange “tingle” in his leg that he says that he used to experience by the mere thought of President Obama?
Had a tingle up my leg/s before the 2008 elections – Turned out it was restless leg syndrome, neuropathy, and gout. Guess the US of A is now suffering from the political equivalent.
He should be condemned for his “so-called environmental policy” in the Arctic, and in the Gulf of Mexico too.
The policy is the horrid drill baby drill policy.
The NYT finally stops drinking the koolaid. One would have thought, after the Pentagon Papers, they would have come out sooner. Better late than never. The attorney who represented the NYT in the Pentagon Papers stated last week that this AP deal is worse. That was before the other info came out. I think all The Chicago Machine has on their side now is MSNBC. But, I read even the spittle spewing Chris Matthews is jumping ship. I just can’t watch him for more than 5 minutes. When Maddow jumps..it’s over.
So, the Leftist hypocrites at the NYT are “blasting” Obama for carrying out the Leftist policies that attack freedom of speech?
On the Saturday Night Live show from years ago, there was a character named “the Church Lady,” played by Dana Carvey (a sort of politicized version of the “Maude Frickett” creation of the the late, great legendary humorist Jonathan Winters). As the Church Lady would say in trademark fashion: “How conveeeeeeenient!”
And as I’ve repeatedly pointed out, the Left and the Right are merely different halves of the same ugly face. People who want freedom, free speech, liberty, and the like should never support the Left OR the Right. And if you think there’s a “difference,” then you would also think that the old Castellammarese Mafia war between the Masseria family and the Maranzano family was an ideological one, rather than a war over control of the turf. But you’re deluding yourself.
Consider this citation:
“English writers who consider Communism and Fascism to be the same thing invariably hold that both are monstrous evils which must be fought to the death; on the other hand, any Englishman who believes Communism and Fascism to be opposites will feel that he ought to side with one or the other. The only exception I am able to think of is Bernard Shaw, who, for some years at any rate, declared Communism and Fascism to be much the same thing, and was in favour of both of them.”– George Orwell, “James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution,” 1946.
At least Shaw was somewhat “honest” about his Leftist “values”–and all that went with that (anti-Semitism, anti-free speech, pro-euthanasia, etc.) The NYT should shut-up. Their hypocracy is beyond annoying. The NYT is vile and disgusting.
“Whistleblowers are those who observe ILLEGAL acts done by some government officials and disclosing them. Manning is in no possible way a whistleblower since he disclosed massive amounts of government documents that are supposed to be secret.” That happened to reveal illegalities by government and military officials.
Don’t gloss over that bit.
Manning is every bit a whistleblower regardless of if the crimes were classified or not. In fact, even more so because some of them were secrets. “National security” isn’t a blanket meant to be used to hide criminal activity.
@Randyjet: Call me very confused. You’re equating misdeeds by the government to undermine groups like the Panthers through COINTELPRO with making direct attacks on the fourth estate. That is not the same thing.
Both as a journalist and as someone old enough to have been involved in the anti-war movement and SDS, I’m quite aware of COINTELPRO’s tactics. A personal experience was the FBI’s photographing students like myself at anti-war demonstrations and sending pictures to our parents and local media. This is different from secretly seizing reporters’ mail and phone records and arresting reporters under trumped-up charges.
By the way, COINTELPRO came to an end after a whistleblower went to the media.
And, yes, there is someone in jail: Bradley Manning, for example. We’re still waiting for someone at the NYT to be indicted as co-conspirator in publishing the Wikileaks revelations.
Generally, Barack Obama has “normalized” and expanded Bush’s ad hoc surveillance state to a breathtaking degree, with the help, of course, of the US Congress — to say nothing of the media’s own cooperation. Now, the timid reporters have become victims of the surveillance they enabled. Perhaps they will next join those incarcerated without habeas corpus.
cliff2, COINTELPRO did encompass pursing the press and trying to muzzle them. The phone records were taken according to US law by the way. Nixon and his operations were NOT done according to law and in fact were contrary to it. There are no jounalists in prison now or even the prospect of it. Having lived in a dictatorship and visited many of them, what Obama has done is in NO possible way comparable to them. It is spurious.
Whistleblowers are those who observe ILLEGAL acts done by some government officials and disclosing them. Manning is in no possible way a whistleblower since he disclosed massive amounts of government documents that are supposed to be secret. Now if you wish to say the government has NO right to secrets, then we might as well do the same for the attorney/client privelege since nobody should have any secrets. I think that most people have a fairly good idea that the government DOES have the right to secrets and rightly so. I agree that the military has an overclasification of information, but it hardly means that they should have no secrets at all. Manning did not act as a whistleblower and he broke military laws and will pay the price. Once the material is out, there is no reason to go after reporters since the damage has already been done. The government DOES have the right to try and find out who the persons are who let the intel out.
Let me know when some journalists are in jail for taking the information public, and THEN you will have something to cry about. So far there are none.
Just wait until Atkisson from CBS reports to us about her dealings with the Obama adminstration !!!