What's with these special prosecutors anyway? Kenneth Starr is hired to investigate an obscure land deal and ends up impeaching the President for not coming clean about his sex life. And now Patrick Fitzgerald, the US Attorney from Chicago appointed to find out who violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by leaking to conservative columnist Robert Novak the identity of a covert CIA employee, ends up sending to prison a New York Times reporter who never wrote about the case.* ...
First and foremost, it is wrong to put reporters in prison for keeping faith with their sources. Our ideal of an open society, and the free flow of information it presupposes, depends on protecting and encouraging such whistle-blowers. Also, as Justice William O. Douglas has written, when juridical values conflict, "the press has a preferred position in our constitutional scheme, not to enable it to make money, not to set newsmen apart as a favored class but to bring to fulfillment the public's right to know." Last and far from least, under the Bush Administration the free press has suffered a series of setbacks. ...
Be that as it may, if I am right, the matter of a reporter's relationship to his/her sources won't be resolved until we break up the media behemoths; transform the judiciary into one that shares the views of Justices Hugo Black, William O. Douglas and William Brennan about the primacy of the First Amendment; repeal the Intelligence Identities Protection Act; and recognize that criminalizing journalists' conversations has only contributed to the confusions of the present situation.
-- Victor Navasky (The Nation)
What the hell is this guy talking about? The Clinton Chronicles are not in any way on par with outing a CIA agent for sordid political reasons! Let's repeat: obscure land deals and bjs are not on par with outing a CIA agent because top White House officials do not like the fact her husband informed the public how the President lied us into a war. So what the f--- is this guy from the NATION comparing the two for?
Some sort of misguided protection of the freedom of the press. See this thread for more rational discussion. But, again, let's look at Navasky's comments. Karl Rove is not a "whistle-blower." You know this right? Bringing up how Bushites hurt the press while ignoring how the media has basically helped them is downright stupid. My anger is raw here because this "not bloody getting it" from people who should know better really drives me up the wall.
I'm also not sure how media monopolies (I guess because Cooper's employers caved -- note how the "public's right to know" is finally coming out now that they did) factor in here. And, again, only when Cooper's hand was forced was the information released. Again, HELLOOOO. Maybe his last comment is right (as the facts played, it's surely not obvious), but you have to do a better job than this (usual press friendly platitudes, a somewhat off topic anti-Bush shot, and missing or ignoring the complexities of the case).
And, then there are those like Tim Noah in Slate and Richard Cohen in the Washington Post. They, reformed reluctant hawks, are part of the "reality community" so basically know Bushies are scumballs. Cohen in particular has been angry of late at how scummy they have been. But, they have to continue to try to be rational souls, middle of the roaders who aren't TOO strident. So, Noah basically suggests Rove didn't quite know what he was doing.
Cohen starts a today's column by basically suggesting Rove is just doing what political operatives always do. Nothing special with "turd blossom" here. It's just politics. To wit:
If I were a nicer person, I would have some sympathy for Karl Rove. After all, in a town where many of the people, if they're honest about their job titles, would put down "character assassin," Rove merely tried to impugn the bona fides of a Bush administration critic, the former diplomat Joseph Wilson. This is what Rove is supposed to do and what he has done for so long.
He too notes: "But I do have to concede that he probably did not set out to expose a CIA operative, the by-now overexposed Valerie Wilson (nee Plame), a specialist in weapons of mass destruction." Surely he wouldn't do that! What exactly does this mean? When he talked to reporters and spoke of Joseph Wilson's wife as a CIA agent, did he not "set out" to expose the fact? I assume if there was another way to "impugn," he would have used it. OTOH, those who know the guy, speak of him as a SOB. Not that you know it from this column. He ends:
But the real scandal is the ongoing mess in Iraq, the murder of innocent children (is there any other kind?) and the false notion that, somehow, taking out Saddam would make us all safer. London gives the lie to that.
This reflects the editorial's title: "Crime of Karlgate is that it keeps us from real issues." As someone noted, this misses the point so badly it's rather sad. Remember how we got into this "mess?" Yup -- with a mentality that winning meant more than the facts, since those in power in the White House were right anyway. So, however we can accomplish our ends, it's fine. Truth is but relative. This is the real issue. And, the Plame Case -- in a way that hits home to a lot of people because of its basic simplicity -- is this in spades.
Paul Krugman in Friday's NYT realizes the fact:
Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.
Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?
Anyway, I'm reading an interesting book that does help me refresh my faith in human nature, entitled Religious Revolutionaries: The Rebels Who Shaped American Religion by Robert C. Fuller. Interesting stuff while providing a nice summary of some important figures in American religious history. Just one more area that is useful to know, but is sometimes too easily forgotten.
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* This tidbit is raised various times. Just what is it supposed to prove? Since she never wrote anything, I'm not sure how much the public was informed. This is the point right? And, the author clearly knows the various gossip on why she was called to testify. The fact she never wrote the article is largely irrelevant one way or the other.