The truth
is inconvenient.
From the
AP:
The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush administration today to seek criminal charges against newspapers that reported on a secret financial-monitoring program used to trace terrorists.
Rep. Peter King cited The New York Times in particular for publishing a story last week that the Treasury Department was working with the CIA to examine messages within a massive international database of money-transfer records.
King, R-N.Y., said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the nation's chief law enforcer "begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times -- the reporters, the editors and the publisher.''
"We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous,'' King told The Associated Press.
For those who pay attention to the right-wing blogosphere, their well-coordinated assault on freedom of the press is old news. However, when an influential Republican like Peter King (R-Nuremberg) takes that brownshirt fervor and tries to make it policy, then we need to take notice.
First, we need to loudly and repeatedly remind our fellow Americans that this nation is not at war. With anyone. Anywhere. We might occupy Iraq, but it was never a war. And it's been pointed out numerous times that our bogus "war on terror" is an absurd attempt to quell a tactic rather than a defined enemy. So if we reject the nonsensical "war" propaganda from the beginning, the rest of their argument doesn't even get off the runway.
Second, bloggers need to take up the responsibility to disseminate any and all information damning to the government should the mainstream press feel the chill of right-wing persecution. In the six years the Bush administration has been in power, they've proven that they will expand the definition of "national security" so expediently that the very term "national security" has become meaningless. Don't grant their claims legitimacy. They've lost the right to be trusted.
Lastly, as members of the reality-based community, our only obligation is to the truth. No matter how much the enemy may twist things, reporting a crime is never a crime. If we want to be on the right side of history, we must never forget this.