Media Chorus: We don't have to obey SCOTUS

[Moses]

We are above the law, says NYTimes

This is such a crock. They aren't protecting a government whistleblower, but are protecting Bush Administration criminals who conspired to bring about a war with the help of the New York Times.

[Moses]

 
MSNBC Analyst Says Cooper Documents Reveal Karl Rove as Source in Plame Case

By Greg Mitchell

Published: July 01, 2005 11:30 PM ET updated 1:00 PM Saturday

NEW YORK Now that Time Inc. has turned over documents to federal court, presumably revealing who its reporter, Matt Cooper, identified as his source in the Valerie Plame/CIA case, speculation runs rampant on the name of that source, and what might happen to him or her. Friday night, on the syndicated McLaughlin Group political talk show, Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, claimed to know that name--and it is, according to him, top White House mastermind Karl Rove. [Isn't this so typical of the times? Protecting the Powerful. ]

Today, O'Donnell went further, writing a brief entry at the Huffington Post blog:

"I revealed in yesterday's taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine's e-mails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source. I have known this for months but didn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.

"McLaughlin is seen in some markets on Friday night, so some websites have picked it up, including Drudge, but I don't expect it to have much impact because McLaughlin is not considered a news show and it will be pre-empted in the big markets on Sunday because of tennis.

"Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow."

Here is the transcript of O'Donnell's McLaughlin Group remarks:

"What we're going to go to now in the next stage, when Matt Cooper's e-mails, within Time Magazine, are handed over to the grand jury--the ultimate revelation, probably within the week of who his source is.

"I know I'm going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of...for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time magazine's going to do with the grand jury."

Other panelists then joined in discussing whether, if true, this would suggest a perjury rap for Rove, if he told the grand jury he did not leak to Cooper.

Besides his career at a TV journalist, O'Donnell has served as a producer and writer for the series "The West Wing."

According to published reports, Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the case, has interviewed President Bush and Vice President Cheney and called Karl Rove, among others, to testify before the grand jury.

"The breadth of Fitzgerald's inquiry has led to speculation that it has evolved into an investigation of a conspiracy to leak Plame's identity," the Chicago Tribune observed on Friday, "or of an attempt to cover up White House involvement in the leak."

Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller, held in contempt for refusing to name sources, tried Friday to stay out of jail by arguing for home detention instead after Time Inc. surrendered its reporter's notes to a prosecutor.

Miller argued that it was pointless to imprison her because she will never talk. She submitted letters from soldiers and military officers with whom she was embedded during the war in Iraq attesting to that. [People like Challabi, whose lies she printed with impunity, and the cost of how many lives, how many broken lives?] (Miller's pre-war coverage of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction has drawn much criticism.)

She asked the judge for "very restrictive home detention," if confined at all, including an electronic bracelet and excluding Internet access and cellular phones. As an alternative, she asked to be sent to the federal prison camp for women in Danbury, Conn. [Put her in jail in Iraq--]

Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said Friday that several unidentified Senate Republicans had placed a hold on a proposed resolution declaring support for Miller and Cooper. [Give me a break: they are protecting the most powerful man in America-- a propagandist similar to Goering. ]

``Cowards!'' Lautenberg said of the Republicans. ``Under the rules, they have a right to refuse to reveal who they are. Sound familiar?''

Lautenberg's resolution is co-sponsored by Sens. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) and Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) It says no purpose is served by imprisoning Miller and Cooper and that the First Amendment guarantees freedom of the press.

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Greg Mitchell ([e-mail]) is editor of E&P.
 
 
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[Moses]

6/30/2005

To hell with Judith Miller
Stan Goff



That’s what I said. And to hell with the press’s sanctimonious lamentations over First Amendment rights. If they were so f**king committed to the press being some kind of democratic tripwire, they wouldn’t behave like such craven hucksters about virtually every real issue that comes along. In particular, they would be critical of themselves about the likes of propaganda hacks like Judith Miller.

Jose Padilla, Wen Ho Lee, and lengthening list of others have had their Constitutional rights trampled as public spectacles in which the press participates as eagerly as any lynching crowd on a picnic, but where was Judith Miller when all this was happening?

She was working for the White House as a disinformation specialist even as she worked for the mighty New York f**king Times, helping the administration make its case for the war in Iraq. No single reporter was more solicitous in retransmitting the Rendon Group’s fabrication about mushroom clouds over New York and the Saddam-A-bomb.

It’s unlikely that more than a handful of reporters in the ntaion had as many chances as Miller to rub elbows with Dick Cheney’s favorite Iraqi advisor, Rendon Group vet, con man, and convicted embezzler, Ahmed Chalabi. Miller appeared at one point in Iraq to be actually working for Chalabi while working as an embedded reporter.

Little wonder, then, that Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Scooter Libby, is a prime target of the investigation into the administration’s vengeance outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, when her husband Joseph Wilson refused to doctor evidence for the Bush administration to develop the weird claim that Iraq was buying weaponizable uranium from Niger. Libby, or whomever (someone on the White House staff) “leaked” Plame’s identity as a U.S. intelligence operative abroad - which is a felony violation of federal law.

Me. I don’t sit around losing sleep at night about the disempowerments of the Cenral Intelligence Agency (they’ve done more to disempower themselves than any opponent could ever do). I admit I’m seriously into situational ethics here… the ethics being whether the protections that ostensibly exist for journalists and their sources being a means to protect the public FROM official power can be reasonably claimed when a reporter lets themselves be used BY official power to punish people like Wilson for having a shred of integrity. I’ve always thought the categorical imperative is a form of detached philospohical stupidity anyhow. This case seems to prove that.

It’s an obligation for political activists to know what the masses are watching on television, so every day I try to force myself to see a bit of CNN, a bit of MSNBC, a bit of local affiliate news. It’s about as joyful as having a sea urchin packed up your ass, but it still seems like an obligation. It seldom changes, this self-referential parade of air-brushed news-models regurgitating the manufactured cliche of the day, and slobbering over think-tank reptiles and retired generals who are themselves reduced to preaning cheap-jackery before narcotic America.

It’s only the shortest step between this and Judith Miller’s breathless ranting about Saddam’s bombs on the flagnuts NYT. I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would give the NYT any more credence than the f**king Debka-file. They get things right about equally as often.

When I see them give as much ink to Jose Padilla as they are to this vicious, self-serving hack, who willlingly let herself be used by the White House she now calims the First Amendment to protect, I’ll stand in front of the Supreme Court with a “Free the lying little nuts” sign. But for now, she can rot for all the hell I care, and I’d be delighted to see “Scooter” Libby in the same cell block.

[Moses]

Where is the media chorus when soldiers speak out?



@ssh*les In Command:
14 Year Veteran Gets Article 15 For Criticizing Bush
 
(Thanks to Vietnam Vet David H. for sending.)
 
31st August 2004 bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=3117
 
As a military family with a combined total of 57 years of active service in the U. S. Army, myself, son, and daughter-in-law have accumulated over 80 combat medals, one or more of us have served in Vietnam, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, El Salvador, Kosovo, Bosnia, and three of us served together during Desert Storm.
 
My son recently returned from the Iraq War, his third war, and, being fed up with Bush lies and back-to-back deployments, applied to be discharged from his "indefinite enlistment" status.
 
Six days later he was under investigation for making "disloyal comments" about George Bush...which amounted to saying in general conversation with other soldiers that "Bush should have never started the war" and "Bush is no military leader."
 
He was charged under Article-15 and was denied an attorney and could not cross-examine the case against him.  His 14 years of military service up to this point was flawless, he was an excellent soldier, and in spite of numerous superiors who testified in his favor, he was demoted and sentenced to 45 days of extra duty.
 
His crime involved nothing more than expressing his personal political opinion as guaranteed under the Bill of Rights, the very document that he had risked his life defending. 
 
Our government claims to be fighting for democracy; however those who risk their lives for democracy are being denied their basic rights of freedom of speech and opinion.  My friends, the Bill of Rights and democracy are dead under the Bush Administration.  This is only a sampling of what will happen if this administration is re-elected.
 
For generations we have been a loyal and faithful military family, however with this recent action taken against a member of our family, we will no longer encourage military service to our future generations.  In other words, we are going to do the same thing that Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and most members of congress do, WE AIN’T SERVING NO MORE!!
 
The Iraq War was based on lies and exaggerations, poor intelligence, a mass deception with no rhyme nor reason for invading Iraq.
 
For those who still have kids and loved ones in this illegal war, our blessings and best wishes go out to you. We pray for their safe return. It is refreshing to see an organization like Military Families Speak Out because our active service members are silenced by the system and need all the voices that can be mustered.
 
Charlie C. Carlson II
Command Sergeant-Major USA Ret.
 
Dot Diehl-Carlson
[Ex-Major USA Vietnam Vet]
 
(Name the officers responsible please, and where they can be found.)