Here are some choice opinion columns from today and over the weekend past, with some good discussion on the Plame case and its implications for press freedom vs responsibility, as well as Bush's campaign to control the media:
From the Chicago Tribune, Steve Chapman dissents from his press colleagues who've taken sides with reporters Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper under threat of jail for failing to cooperate in the Valerie Plame case on the grounds that they have a right to protect their sources:
In court, though, that argument has stood up about as well as a glass house in a rock slide. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that they must testify or face jail for contempt. Neither the 1st Amendment nor any other legal protection, the court said, excuses them from the obligation of all citizens to provide evidence they have of criminal wrongdoing.
More after the jump...
This comes as no surprise. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the idea that journalists have special privileges in criminal investigations. "We cannot seriously entertain the notion that the 1st Amendment protects a newsman's agreement to conceal the criminal conduct of his source," said the justices.
Michael Kinsley takes issue in a weak way:
Asking the government to protect journalists who protect leakers who expose what the government wants to keep secret amounts to asking democracy to institutionalize the assumption that it can be wrong. A great and stable democracy like ours can do this, and should do it. But it is a helluva lot to ask, and might be asked with a bit more humility.
Back at the Trib, Clarence Page slaps at the White House and its "media lap dogs", particularly Mr. James Guckert. Page rightly points out that Guckert's connection with Hotmilitarystud.com is a "sideshow" compared to his connection with the Plame case:
In 2003 Guckert wrote in Talon News that he had asked Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, about "an internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel" that revealed his wife's CIA role.
Revealing a CIA agent's identity is a federal crime. A Time magazine reporter and a New York Times reporter face possible jail sentences for refusing to say who revealed Plame's CIA role to them in an apparent effort to discredit Wilson's criticism of the Bush administration's Iraq war policy. Is the prosecutor putting Guckert's feet to the fire too? If not, why not?
And the NY Time's Frank Rich does a great job connecting the many dots of the Bush version of "Daily Show" fake news:
By my count, "Jeff Gannon" is now at least the sixth "journalist" (four of whom have been unmasked so far this year) to have been a propagandist on the payroll of either the Bush administration or a barely arms-length ally like Talon News while simultaneously appearing in print or broadcast forums that purport to be real news. ...
It is a brilliant strategy. When the Bush administration isn't using taxpayers' money to buy its own fake news, it does everything it can to shut out and pillory real reporters who might tell Americans what is happening in what is, at least in theory, their own government. Paul Farhi of The Washington Post discovered that even at an inaugural ball he was assigned "minders" - attractive women who wouldn't give him their full names - to let the revelers know that Big Brother was watching should they be tempted to say anything remotely off message.
The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne quotes from "one of the best political speeches" of the 1990's:
We are a nation of rugged individuals. But we are also the country of the second chance, tied together by bonds of friendship and community and solidarity. We are a nation of high purpose and restless reform, of child labor laws and emancipation and suffrage and civil rights. . . . We can, in our imperfect way, rise now and again to the example of St. Francis, where there is hatred, sowing love; where there is darkness, shedding light; where there is despair, bringing hope.
Yes, hard to imagine, those were the "compassionate" words of George W. Bush in 1999. Words that made the liberal Dionne feel like "standing up and cheering".
Dionne has been a defender of Bush's concept of faith-based initiatives to fight poverty and other social ills. But he quotes David Kuo, an original compassionate-conservative before Bush coined the phrase, and former deputy director of Bush's White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives:
"From tax cuts to Medicare, the White House gets what the White House really wants," Kuo wrote in his essay on Beliefnet.com. "It never really wanted the 'poor people stuff.' "
The Post's
Jim Hoagland cautions Bush against grand bargains in his kiss-and-make-up trip to Europe, particularly in light of German Chancellor Schroeder's call for diminishing the U.S.'s role in NATO. Hoagland points out that the deeper divisions are evolving, based on the fundamental core of the European Union:
One European official recently began to articulate it by noting in passing that "the European Union is a peace process in itself." Formed to keep France and Germany from going to war again, the 25-member union has become a bloc of populations who believe fundamentally that war can never again serve any useful purpose.
This is the final achievement of George Kennan's containment doctrine: to convince Europeans that the downfall of Soviet imperialism was always inevitable and flowed from Helsinki 1975, not Berlin 1948. (Both were needed.)
In a private meeting in Berlin on Feb. 4, Schroeder urged Rice to rethink the administration's refusal to engage Iran. He noted that the Helsinki security conference had granted the Soviet Union legitimacy but eventually undermined that regime, according to a person present.
"Different people draw different lessons from their experiences," Rice replied. Stitch those words on a needlepoint pillow for Bush to take with him to a Europe that draws lessons from the past four years that are very different from his.
The NY Times' Bob Herbert hears Porter Goss's recent Senate Intelligence Committee testimony and seems to say, "I told ya so.":
Porter Goss, the C.I.A. director, told the committee, "Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists." He added, "These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focus on acts of urban terrorism."...
So tell me again. What was this war about? In terms of the fight against terror, the war in Iraq has been a big loss. We've energized the enemy. We've wasted the talents of the many men and women who have fought bravely and tenaciously in Iraq. Thousands upon thousands of American men and women have lost arms or legs, or been paralyzed or blinded or horribly burned or killed in this ill-advised war. A wiser administration would have avoided that carnage and marshaled instead a more robust effort against Al Qaeda, which remains a deadly threat to America.
The SF Chronicle's Harley Sorensen goes after Bush's second term nominees, including Negroponte:
The darkest part of Negroponte's history, in brief, was his activity when he was U.S. ambassador to Honduras, during the Reagan administration.
At that time, according to numerous published reports, he falsified State Department human rights reports, overlooking the so-called "death squads" organized and led by the CIA. Christian missionaries and other opponents of the existing Honduran regime were murdered by the CIA-trained Honduran Battalion 3-16, according to news reports.
If this is so, and it appears to be, Negroponte is either the Scarecrow or the Tin Man, lacking either a brain or a heart.
Is America so impoverished of talent, one wonders, that our president has to nominate seriously tarnished men to hold some of our most important positions?
Why are there no Senators in the Democratic Caucus pointing this out?