“First he came for the whistleblowers and I didn’t speak up because I was a liberal….”
A conference called “Sources and Secrets” was held a few days ago at the Times Center in New York. The conference is described as “A conference on the press, government and national security.” It’s supported largely by left wing organizations and news outlets. At the meeting James Risen of the NY Times expressed an interesting opinion:
New York Times reporter James Risen, who is fighting an order that he testify in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA officer accused of leaking information to him, opened the conference earlier by saying the Obama administration is “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.” The administration wants to “narrow the field of national security reporting,” Risen said, to “create a path for accepted reporting.” Anyone journalist who exceeds those parameters, Risen said, “will be punished.”
And he went on to this:
The administration’s aggressive prosecutions have created “a de facto Official Secrets Act,” Risen said, and the media has been “too timid” in responding.
The media rolled over for Barack Obama long ago for two reasons. One, he is a democrat and two, because he is black. Obama has seized on that to abuse the power of his office.
What followed in the conference becomes amusing. Andrew Beaujon snarkily notes:
…Times Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak, who announced that if he weren’t a paragon of journalistic detachment, he’d say “the persecution of James Risen is a scandal.”
Attorney Laura Handman observed that
…the U.S. Department of Justice’s new guidelines for accessing journalists’ records carve out a big space for the government to decide what constitutes “ordinary newsgathering.”
No sh*t.
Then the far left wing Obama water carrier Jeffrey Toobin sprang into action to defend his idol. He suggested that certain reporters, like Fox News reporters (like James Rosen) ought to be prosecuted. Toobin made no mention of harassing the parents of reporters.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who has long wanted to crush those speaking freely of liberals, repeated her desire to limit who can be considered a journalist and without a doubt to destroy bloggers whose words displease her.
Liberals tend to dismiss inappropriate actions on the part of democrats right up until the monster comes for them. Now it has, but they can’t say they weren’t warned.
In 2011 Jane Mayer wrote:
When President Barack Obama took office, in 2009, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, whom he described as “often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government.” But the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks—more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined. The Drake case is one of two that Obama’s Justice Department has carried over from the Bush years.
It’s gotten so bad that even the far left is complaining:
That our current government has been willing to fight for more than seven years — maybe all the way to the Supreme Court — to weaken legal whistleblowing protections tells a tale of our times. That it seeks to silence whistleblowers at a moment when their disclosures are just beginning to reveal the scope of our unconstitutional national security state is cause for great concern. That the government demands whistleblowers work within the system and then seeks to modify that same system to thwart them goes beyond hypocrisy.
This is the very definition of post-Constitutional America where legality and illegality blur — and always in the government’s favor; where the founding principles of our nation only apply when, as, and if the executive sees fit. The devil is indeed in the details.
Yet this regime will not hesitate to leak confidential information for political reasons:
From leaks about Osama bin Laden to those detailing cyberattacks on Iran, a disturbing pattern of publicly disclosing classified material to give Barack Obama a political boost is emerging. Under this president, our enemies don’t need spies.
The fact that the Allies in World War II had the ability to intercept and decode German and Japanese military transmissions, leading to critical military victories at Midway and elsewhere, remained a secret until long after World War II was over, and it didn’t matter who knew it. “Loose lips sink ships” was then more than a clever wartime slogan.
The pattern of national security leaks under this administration and its political exploitation of what should be secret has even liberal media flagship CNN wondering if “President Barack Obama’s administration can keep a secret — or in some cases even wants to.”
With a collapsing economy, rampant joblessness and mushrooming debt, foreign policy seemingly is the only place Obama can boast of any accomplishments.
Yes, Osama bin Laden was killed on his watch. Yet even there, critics say with much merit that the world’s most wanted man was killed while Obama was president, not because he was president.
We’re all too familiar with Obama’s very public celebration after the bin Laden kill, to the point of giving tours of the Situation Room and granting special access to information and people to Hollywood filmmakers. A 17-minute campaign flick was even made.
After the Bin Laden raid Joe Biden outed SEAL Team 6 and a couple of months later SEAL Team 6 suffered its greatest single loss ever.
The obsequious left wing media created this monster and now it hunts them. Obama’s website once read:
Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process.
That’s gone now, of course. Remember DrJohn’s Law. Nothing Obama says can be accepted as truth.
Nothing.
I hope the words “I told you so” are able to penetrate prison walls.
H/T Daily Caller
image courtesy of thesleuthjournal.com
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 40 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 45 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter who is in the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
Certainly you can’t be talking about President Transparency.
Why, just the other day the beautiful and talented First Lady espoused the virtues of free speech in China.
Surely, you must be mistaken.
@Kraken: “Why, just the other day the beautiful and talented First Lady espoused the virtues of free speech in China.” She meant, free speech to say what the government wants them to say, which is just about as free as speech is in China.
Then she pointed to the Great Wall and told them “you did not build that”.
The p-ssants in the press seem to sense something at their heels and its getting closer. The slimeballs are subtly warning their colleges to shift a bit as they perceive that the wind is changing
DrJ.,
The MSM is only just beginning to feel the effect of its own incompetence. It is now in a state of confusion as its members have become co-dependents of the object of their admiration. The narcissist and the minions, including Jarrett and Ploufe, created a cult of personality. MSM members are clueless as to how to unwind from the infatuation — at least those few who are waking up from their stupor.
As you know, those suffering from narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) are incapable of telling the truth, and totally incapable of caring for anyone outside themselves. They are particularly unable to care for the very people they’ve brainwashed into submission.
Surely the idolizing press is mistaken. Obama can’t be non-transparent to them, he’s promised them so much…
It is getting close to being terrifying, lately. And increasingly.
Hypothetical:
If a non-Ordained “Journalist” blogger tells the world wide web that, say, a Democrat administration was “leaking national security secrets” to, say, China, for campaign cash via, (say… heh) his VP, AlGore and a bunch of (sigh) Buddhist monks at a monastery,
Will our new Overlords then arrest said blogger/scab/phony for “leaking” THAT “national security secret”?
The answer is yes, if they get their way.
Anyone know where I can buy a good, cheap printing device for my future illicit career as a pamphleteer?
I’m guessing that soon, too soon, it will be seen as IMPERATIVE that every single one of us who has been taking part in this nascent (and probably short-lived) experiment with the concept of Online and Forums and actual Reporting of Truth do the following.
Every single one of your favorite bookmarks, you NEED to, WE THE PEOPLE need you to go to them, right click on the background, and select SAVE AS > and choose either WEBPAGE: COMPLETE, or HTML ONLY.
Do it with foresight. Collate it all well, in topically-named folders, with hierarchies.
Do ten a night, save everything you think you might want to know, or other people to know, in a foreseeable future where we have no more internet freedom.
Comment sections, too. The whole deal. Every great thread. I think we should have all been doing this for a DECADE, now. And the whole-page contents of the links presented. And every great picture you see. Every great cartoon. Every great infographic. Whole books on PDF, via Gutenberg project, or, for example, Islam Undressed or Prairie Fire.
Hard disk drives are enormous, now. And DVDs can store a good bit of bits, too.
THIS IS BIG enough that every single freaking one of us needs to begin the process, QUICKLY, of archiving that which can be saved. (This Christian sees the irony, or the lesson, in that statement.)
Soon, we’ll only be able to print, on real paper, and distribute, in real space.
Soon, folks. This instant access is not going to last long.
And hide your Bibles.
Greg? Larry? This one? Lib1? RJW? Heeellllooo?
Funny how our Leftarded trolls avoid certain subjects, ain’t it?
Give them time to get their orders from above. (Above not being divine guidance!) Soon, they will find the spin and then you will see their posts.
Do you mean that now even the uber rightwing is finally complaining about diminishing press freedom? Because under Bush I can’t recall that happening when the Times was threatened for publishing Abu Gharib. Et al
Now the right wants to protect whistle blowers exposing possible crimes ? Bradley Manning? Eric Snowden ?
Seems like we have a bit if flip flopping here, whatever happened to Cheney’s the power of th POTUS in time if war (and we are still at war aren’t we) is near unlimited.
Dr J might also rembering how muzzled the press was durring WW II One glaring exception was when the owner of the Chicago Tribune Col mcCormick Arabia conservative and political opponent of the liberal FDR shortly after the Midway Victory published the fact that the victory was due to code breaking. It was judged that prosecution would only make matters worse
@John: To begin with, what was the threat leveled at “the Times” for publishing the Abu Ghraib story? Further, after the Bush White House asked the NYT NOT to publish the story about the tracking of terrorist funds going overseas or phone calls to terrorists overseas, they went right ahead and exposed that valuable tool; what were the repercussions for that? Anyone’s parents get bugged or surveilled? No flipping or flopping, simply a leftist trying to explain away the lie of “the most transparent administration in history”. Well, actually, in a way they ARE the most transparent. I have certainly seen clear through them.
Considering that the Roosevelt White House was allowing as many as 500 people read about the code breaking and it was discussed openly on the floor of Congress, it is hardly appropriate to chastise any paper for publishing the story. Anyway, the Japanese didn’t seem to be paying attention.
@John:
Perhaps you would like to show where anyone on the “right” defended either Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden? And don’t confuse the reader by equating Libertarians with the “right.”
We are no longer at “war” in Iraq, and I am curious, do you think that the government has the right to spy on a reporter’s parents, as well as the reporter?
And you might make a note that that press was operating under Democrat presidents, not Republicans.
Retire05
WWII press control was not nearly as draconian as the censorship of that evil Republican Woodrow Wilson in the Great War. What? Another Democrat?
Never mind.
@John:
When did that happen? What is the source of this claim?
I had to laugh when Don Rumsfeld said ” a trained monkey could do better in foreign affairs “. Sure enough the MSM started lambasting Rumsfeld. You could see this coming, a mile away.
Do I believe this? My answer is: How well can you train that monkey?
The MSM will never leave the plantation.
@oil guy from Alberta:
I think the point was he doesn’t need much training to be better at it.
@Redteam: My point was its a given. Train that monkey well.