Loose Lips Win Pulitzers
That's the name of
Max Boot's latest LA Times op-ed
and it couldn't be more spot on.
You'd think that the major media would've learned from their falling numbers and their microscopic approval ratings but they haven't. Reporters like James Risen, Eric Lichtblau and Dana Priest are traitors. They've sold out our national security for a story. In Risen's case, he sold it out for a book that's jumping off the bookshelves by the dozens, if that.
People have questioned the legality of the NSA program but it's based on what they think the law should be, not on what the legal precedents say it is. Furthermore, they knew that this shouldn't be brought up because it's a constitutional issue. It can't be trumped with simple legislation. If it could, then FISA would be the controlling authority. We know from the testimony given at the Judiciary Committee hearing that it isn't. Here's proof:
That's obviously of little concern so long as they're recognized by their liberal peers as 'serving the greater good'. To the average person living in the heartland, though, this is just another bit of proof that the national media doesn't think about being a citizen first, reporter second.
Until they change that mindset, they'll be utterly reviled and ignored. And deservedly so.
Cross-posted at California Conservative
Posted Wednesday, April 26, 2006 9:49 AM
No comments.
ON JUNE 7, 1942, shortly after the Battle of Midway, the Chicago Tribune carried a scoop: "Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea." The story, written by a correspondent who had seen intelligence reports left in an officer's cabin, reported that the U.S. knew in advance the composition of the Japanese fleet. It didn't say where this information came from, but senior officers privy to the U.S. success in breaking Japanese codes were apoplectic at this security breach. The Justice Department convened a grand jury to consider whether to charge the Tribune and its flamboyant owner, editor and publisher, Col. Robert McCormick, with a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917.Today's press hasn't cared a lick about national security if it gets in the way of a good story. Frankly, the press corps can talk all it wants about whistleblowers revealing things that aren't what America is about or whatever. All that is is rationalizing committing crimes that needlessly put us all in harms' way. And that isn't acceptable.
No charges were brought, in part because military officials were unwilling to share classified information about intelligence gathering. But the Chicago Tribune was reviled by other journalists for betraying national security, and no other publication followed up its revelation.
Poor Col. McCormick. He was a man before his time. Today, he would have been hailed as a 1st Amendment hero, and his newspaper would have been showered with accolades. That, at least, is the only conclusion one can draw from this year's Pulitzer Prizes, which reflect a startling degree of animus toward the commander in chief in wartime.
You'd think that the major media would've learned from their falling numbers and their microscopic approval ratings but they haven't. Reporters like James Risen, Eric Lichtblau and Dana Priest are traitors. They've sold out our national security for a story. In Risen's case, he sold it out for a book that's jumping off the bookshelves by the dozens, if that.
People have questioned the legality of the NSA program but it's based on what they think the law should be, not on what the legal precedents say it is. Furthermore, they knew that this shouldn't be brought up because it's a constitutional issue. It can't be trumped with simple legislation. If it could, then FISA would be the controlling authority. We know from the testimony given at the Judiciary Committee hearing that it isn't. Here's proof:
A panel of former Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges yesterday told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that President Bush did not act illegally when he created by executive order a wiretapping program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).Dana Priest's prize-winning column not only reported on "black sites" where the CIA was allegedly interrogating the worst al Qaida terrorists. It put Eastern European countries at risk of terrorist attacks for aiding the war against the jihadists. Does anyone doubt that countries will be reluctant to help with that type of operation in the future?
The five judges testifying before the committee said they could not speak specifically to the NSA listening program without being briefed on it, but that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not override the president's constitutional authority to spy on suspected international agents under executive order.
"If a court refuses a FISA application and there is not sufficient time for the president to go to the court of review, the president can under executive order act unilaterally, which he is doing now," said Judge Allan Kornblum, magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida and an author of the 1978 FISA Act. "I think that the president would be remiss exercising his constitutional authority by giving all of that power over to a statute."
That's obviously of little concern so long as they're recognized by their liberal peers as 'serving the greater good'. To the average person living in the heartland, though, this is just another bit of proof that the national media doesn't think about being a citizen first, reporter second.
Until they change that mindset, they'll be utterly reviled and ignored. And deservedly so.
Cross-posted at California Conservative
Posted Wednesday, April 26, 2006 9:49 AM
No comments.
