Ubiquitous
2006-09-21 11:26:58 UTC
From a column by Mike Lupica in New York's Daily News:
Ours is a government that is much better at
wars against the press and the First Amendment
than it is with a war like the one in Iraq.
Ours is a government that now thinks it can
convene a grand jury to get anything it wants
out of reporters, starting with their confidential
sources. But then if you ran a country the way
the current administration does, turning this
into an America in which the government's
version of things is the only one that is
supposed to matter, you'd want to shut down
investigative reporting and scare off
whistleblowers, too. . . .
No, it is just Bush's America, where the
people in charge think that if they tell a
lie often enough it eventually becomes the
truth. And in Bush's America, there is no
longer any balancing test of any kind, no
determination that if some information is
leaked, even out of a grand jury, it might
be more valuable than punishing the person
who leaked it. It is a disgrace.
The same Republican yahoos, the ones who want
us to believe they are so vigilant about
individual rights, the ones constantly screaming
about states' rights, now let the feds trample
California's shield law for reporters . . .
Uh, excuse me, but isn't Lupica supposed to be a sportsranter?
--
Those who cheered Bush back then as he described the enormous task ahead,
only to turn into (or back into) bitter critics with no strategic
alternatives to offer, have to be judged fundamentally unserious about
America's national security.
Ours is a government that is much better at
wars against the press and the First Amendment
than it is with a war like the one in Iraq.
Ours is a government that now thinks it can
convene a grand jury to get anything it wants
out of reporters, starting with their confidential
sources. But then if you ran a country the way
the current administration does, turning this
into an America in which the government's
version of things is the only one that is
supposed to matter, you'd want to shut down
investigative reporting and scare off
whistleblowers, too. . . .
No, it is just Bush's America, where the
people in charge think that if they tell a
lie often enough it eventually becomes the
truth. And in Bush's America, there is no
longer any balancing test of any kind, no
determination that if some information is
leaked, even out of a grand jury, it might
be more valuable than punishing the person
who leaked it. It is a disgrace.
The same Republican yahoos, the ones who want
us to believe they are so vigilant about
individual rights, the ones constantly screaming
about states' rights, now let the feds trample
California's shield law for reporters . . .
Uh, excuse me, but isn't Lupica supposed to be a sportsranter?
--
Those who cheered Bush back then as he described the enormous task ahead,
only to turn into (or back into) bitter critics with no strategic
alternatives to offer, have to be judged fundamentally unserious about
America's national security.