I must apologize for neglecting Israel in my recent attacks against Christianity and Islam. I'm sorry that I can't attack Judaism or Jews directly because I rather like some of the liberal scholarship of Judaism but I'll try to sometime in the future.
There is a lawsuit pending, due to come to court in January of next year, the U.S. Justice Department versus Keith Weissman and Steven J. Rosen, although I don't know the exact name of the case. Gabriel Schoenfeld, editor for the NeoCon rag Commentary, has an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal.
The pending lawsuit concerns leaks of classified information concerning national security to agents of Israel, contrary to our longterm national interest.
Spying, lobbying, leaking, what's the dif?
In an important trial set to begin in January, the Justice Department has irresponsibly confused the distinction between spying and lobbying. Keith Weissman and Steven J. Rosen, two former employees of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying organization, are charged with unlawfully receiving and transmitting classified national-defense information.
According to Schoenfeld, the presiding judge, T.S. Ellis III, seems to be leaning away from the Justice Department towards the defense:
This past Friday, the same judge decided a pivotal preliminary issue in the Weissman-Rosen case. The defense has subpoenaed 20 present and former administration officials to appear as witnesses for its side....to use their testimony to demonstrate that their clients had every reason to believe that what Mr. Franklin told them in conversation -- no classified documents ever changed hands in this case -- was part and parcel of the normal back-channel method by which the U.S. government sometimes conveys information to the media and/or to allied countries, in this case, to Israel. . . . Prosecutors have resisted this contention and moved to quash the subpoenas to almost all of the officials. On Friday, Judge Ellis ruled against the prosecutors.
And he, Schoenfeld, raises the strawmen of those blasted journalists who have been leaked material, and the dreadful New York Times which:
Back in February 2006, the New York Times published classified information that compromised the NSA's terrorist-surveillance program aimed at intercepting the communications of al-Qaeda suspects around the world. While the Justice Department did not prosecute the paper, it was clear that the Times had run afoul of Section 798 of Title 18, which protects the ultra-sensitive category of communications intelligence. Under it, intent is irrelevant; the willful disclosure of classified information is itself the crime. Even observers sympathetic to the Times acknowledge that it broke black-letter law.
Schoenfeld whines that, "this is a case that should never have been brought. No fair-minded jury could conclude that Mr. Weissman and Mr. Rosen acted with criminal intent." It's only a case of two innocent little lobbyists "going about their jobs, interacting with government officials in an ordinary fashion as other lobbyists do all the time."
Oh, Schoenfeld consdescendingly allows that there is a slight issue of national security, but Pshaw! Must we be so mean to sweet little lobbyists from Israel?