Thursday, December 30, 2010
A match made in heaven
Posted by Max Brantley on Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 11:22 AM
Judith Miller and Newsmax. They make Fox look middle-of-the-road.
Comments (9)
Showing 1-9 of 9
Julian Assange ought to be concerned about what happened to Judith Miller. She was locked up indefinitely for refusing to reveal her sources for her reports in the New York Times. That could happen to Assange too, assuming that he isn't sent to prison in Sweden for some unrelated crimes.
The Democrats could have passed a press shield law this year, but failed to do so. Now it's too late.
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rc-the issue is that Assange didn't steal the documents. That was done by an enlisted man with a clearance far too high for his job. Assange took what was available and spread it out. That is why the US is trying to figure out what to charge him for because it isn't stealing top secret stuff. Of course, we always have GITMO for those people we don't know what to do with.
A couple of things that the reports did show-
1. the US continues to "top secret" too many documents including anything that might be embarrassing.
2. while the failure of agencies to talk to each other was obviously real, maybe it ought to be people at the level and with the expertise to figure out stuff and not a soldier in the field with way too much time on his hands.
And what would we expect from Miller who basically took Cheney's lies and gave them the semblence of truth by making them front page stuff in the Times which Cheney would then say must be true because the Times published it.
cbb - I hope Assange didn't steal the documents, and so far, there is no convincing evidence that he engaged in espionage. But the prosecutors will be putting heavy pressure on Pfc. Bradley Manning to implicate Assange. If it turns out that Assange crossed the line by doing something like providing classified passwords to Manning, then he will be in serious trouble.
As for Miller, there is no evidence that she personally manufactured false information, or distorted information that she received from sources she trusted. She remains an acknowledged expert on Middle East and South Asian politics.
Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail for claiming reporter's privilege and refusing to reveal her sources in the CIA leak.
PFC. Bradley Manning has spent 200-plus days in solitary confinement without being convicted of anything.
"When everyone in this town is joined together calling for someone's head, it's a pretty sure sign that we need to slow down and take a look."
Rep John Conyers (D-MI)
Zatharus - Judith Miller was never formally charged with a crime while she was kept in prison indefinitely.
Bradley Manning was arrested and charged with willfully committing crimes that are far more serious. Given the nature of the charges, the restrictions imposed on him are arguably justifiable.
Seriously? The seriousness of the case is both debatable & political.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“In July 2005, Miller was jailed for contempt of court for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating a leak naming Valerie Plame as a CIA agent.”
“Bradley E. Manning …is a United States Army soldier who was charged in July 2010 with the unauthorized disclosure of U.S. classified information. He is being held in solitary confinement at the Marine Corps Brig, Quantico, Virginia, and is expected to face a court-martial in the spring of 2011.”
From Huffington Post
“The United Nations is probing a complaint that Bradley Manning, the detained Army private suspected of giving classified documents to WikiLeaks has been mistreated in custody.”
Miller played her part in betraying the CIA agent in charge of preventing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. We’ve not yet begun to understand the seriousness of this (Smoking Gun, Mushroom Cloud) & yet I’m hesitant to give the state further authority to jail w/o conviction.
Manning told the truth about a government intent on lying to cover-up multiple (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan & Pakistan) failed wars & a GWOT (remember the Global War On Terrorism?) that not only has failed to make America safer, but which is actually helping the terrorists’ recruitment. That America would torture not just our perceived enemies but now our own whistle-blowers beggars the imagination.
“Humor is the only test of gravity, and gravity of humor; for a subject which will not bear raillery is suspicious, and a jest which will not bear serious examination is false wit.”
Aristotle
Zatharus - So you would not support a shield law for journalists? If an Arkansas Times reporter got a hot scoop about a corrupt politician from a confidential source, and refused to reveal the source to investigators, the reporter should be locked up in prison indefinitely?
For the record, Valerie Plame blew her own cover before the Novak report by listing her phony CIA front company on her political contributions to Al Gore.
“So you would not support a shield law for journalists?”
I’m not sure that we have a working definition of “journalists”.
I will repeat myself as your inertial dampers may have a feed-back error.
I’m hesitant to give the state further authority to jail w/o conviction.
That would include “inky wretches”.
“INK, n. A villainous compound of tannogallate of iron, gum-arabic and water, chiefly used to facilitate the infection of idiocy and promote intellectual crime. The properties of ink are peculiar and contradictory: it may be used to make reputations and unmake them; to blacken them and to make them white; but it is most generally and acceptably employed as a mortar to bind together the stones of an edifice of fame, and as a whitewash to conceal afterward the rascal quality of the material. There are men called journalists who have established ink baths which some persons pay money to get into, others to get out of. Not infrequently it occurs that a person who has paid to get in pays twice as much to get out.”
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
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