Political explosion in t-5,4,3,2....

[Chairboy]

Originally posted by oboe
My gut wonders why a journalist would be willing to go to jail to protect Rove (or the real person who committed the federal offense of outing a CIA operative).

Common misunderstanding.  The journalist was not protecting Rove, he/she was protecting their first amendment rights, not to mention their future dealings with sources who don't want to be named.  Agree or disagree with the politics of your source, you don't want to be 'that guy' that flips the moment someone whispers subpoena.  

It kills your street credibility.

[Charon]

Charon,

How do you feel about McCain? I always held in in very high regard, and thought he had a great political future. I was really upset by the way the Rove and the Bush team destroyed him in the 2000 primaries.

That is why when he endorsed Bush in 2004, I lost quite a bit of respect for his judgement. Not sure I would vote for him now, because his behavior by falling in line behind someone who treated him like that is so incomprehensible to me.

I don't know. He talks a good game but he still plays politics as usual. Not just the endorsement, but talking about reforming the pork barrel, for example, then voting along with the rest of the crowd. He would be a return to the mediocre middle, which isn't looking too bad at the moment.

I almost think we need some sort of collapse/wake up call of major proportions to have real change. Not just a reformist president but enough like-minded people in Congress and the will of the people behind them to overhaul the system. You have to get the money out of the system, but it’s so ingrained at so many levels that I can’t see one reformer having any real chance of success. Four years of stonewalling by both parties then out, IMO.

Charon

[Raider179]

Originally posted by oboe
My gut wonders why a journalist would be willing to go to jail to protect Rove (or the real person who committed the federal offense of outing a CIA operative).

I also wonder why the journalist who wrote the original story naming Plame as an operative, Novak, is not in the same situation as Cooper and Miller.

I agree with you on these.  Somehow the journalists think that freedom of press trumps the CIA agents name being secret. I wonder if anyone she has "worked" with has disappeared yet?

I have to say that protecting secret agents names should take precedence over the right of freedom of the press. Now if she were involved in something illegal, the reporters might have a leg to stand on, but as it was done by spite or just to get a story that day, they should get locked up.

Now as for Robert Novak, The only thing that can be thought is that he must of have co-operated with the investigation.  Maybe he just had no hard evidence of the source and could only reveal who told him the name. As for Karl Rove being smarter than sending a email with the name in it, I agree. What emails they might have are inter-office emails from Time. The one's where the reporter or someone higher up discusses the source and how they "know" its true.

[Skuzzy]

OT: Cute, I came out on the edge of Centrist, dead center between liberal and conservative, in the Libertarian quad.

[Holden McGroin]

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- A federal judge on Wednesday ordered a New York Times reporter jailed after she refused to name her source to a grand jury probing the leak of an undercover CIA agent.
 
Separately, Time White House correspondent Matthew Cooper said he would testify, breaking two years of silence, after his source Wednesday morning, in a "very sudden development" consented.

I guess soon we will find out the name of the anonymous source at least according to Cooper.

[Manedew]

WASHINGTON, July 6 - A federal judge on Wednesday jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller for refusing to divulge her source to a grand jury investigating who in the Bush administration leaked an undercover CIA operative's name.

"There is still a realistic possibility that confinement might cause her to testify," U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan said of the showdown in a case that has seen both President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney interviewed by investigators.

Miller stood up, hugged her lawyer and was escorted from the courtroom.

Earlier, Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, in an about-face, told Hogan that he would cooperate with a federal prosecutor's investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. He said he would do so now because his source gave him specific authority to do so.

"Last night I hugged my son goodbye and told him it might be a long time before I see him again," Cooper said as he took the podium to address the court.

"I went to bed ready to accept the sanctions" for not testifying, Cooper said. But he told the judge that not long before his early afternoon appearance, he had received "in somewhat dramatic fashion" a direct personal communication from his source freeing him from his commitment to keep the source's identity secret.

As for Miller, unless she decides to talk, she will be held until the grand jury ends its work in October. The judge speculated that Miller's confinement might cause her source to give her a more specific waiver of confidentiality, as did Cooper's.

Cooper, talking to reporters afterward, called it "a sad time."

"My heart goes out to Judy. I told her as she left the court to stay strong," Cooper added. "I think this clearly points out the need for some kind of a national shield law. There is no federal shield law and that is why we find ourselves here today."

"Judy Miller made a commitment to her source and she's standing by it," New York Times executive editor Bill Keller told reporters.

Floyd Abrams, a prominent First Amendment lawyer who represented Miller, told reporters: "Judy is an honorable woman, adhering to the highest tradition of her profession and the highest tradition of humanity."

"Judy Miller has not been accused of a crime or convicted of a crime," Abrams said. "She has been held in civil contempt of court."

The prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald had responded in court to Miller's refusal to name her source by saying "we can't have 50,000 journalists" each making their own decision about whether to reveal sources.

"We cannot tolerate that," he said. "We are trying to get to the bottom of whether a crime was committed and by whom."

Another Miller attorney, Robert Bennett, said earlier that prosecutors traditionally have shown great respect for journalists and "have had the good judgment not to push these cases very often."

Hogan held the reporters in civil contempt of court in October, rejecting their argument that the First Amendment shielded them from revealing their sources. Last month the Supreme Court refused to intervene.

In court documents filed Tuesday, Fitzgerald urged Hogan to take the unusual step of jailing the reporters, saying that may be the only way to get them to talk.

"Journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality - no one in America is," Fitzgerald wrote.

Fitzgerald had disclosed Tuesday that a source of Cooper and Miller had waived confidentiality, giving the reporters permission to reveal where they got their information. The prosecutor did not identify the source, nor did he specify whether the source for each reporter was the same person.

Cooper said he had been told earlier that his source had signed a general waiver of confidentiality but that he did not trust such waivers because he thought they had been gained from executive branch employees under duress. He told the court that he needed not a general waiver but a specific waiver from his source, which he did not get until Wednesday.

"I received express personal consent" from the source, Cooper told the judge.

Hogan and Fitzgerald accepted Cooper's offer.

"That would purge you of contempt," Hogan said.

Prior to the hearing, Miller argued that it is imperative for reporters to honor their commitments to provide cover to sources who will only reveal important information if they are assured anonymity. Forcing reporters to renege on the pledge undercuts their ability to do their job, she said.

Last week, Time Inc., last week provided Fitzgerald with records, notes and e-mail traffic involving Cooper, who had argued that it was therefore no longer necessary for him to testify. Time also had been found in contempt and officials there said after losing appeals it had no choice but to turn over the information.

The case is seen as a key test of press freedom and many media groups have lined up behind the reporters. Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have shield laws protecting reporters from having to identify their confidential sources.

Fitzgerald is investigating who in the administration leaked Plame's identity. Her name was disclosed in a column by Robert Novak days after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, impugned part of President Bush's justification for invading Iraq.

Wilson was sent to Africa by the Bush administration to investigate an intelligence claim that Saddam Hussein may have purchased yellowcake uranium from Niger in the late 1990s for use in nuclear weapons. Wilson said he could not verify the claim and criticized the administration for manipulating the intelligence to "exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Novak, whose column cited as sources two unidentified senior Bush administration officials, has refused to say whether he has testified before the grand jury or been subpoenaed. Novak has said he "will reveal all" after the matter is resolved and that it is wrong for the government to jail journalists.

Disclosure of an undercover intelligence officer's identity can be a federal crime if prosecutors can show the leak was intentional and the person who released that information knew of the officer's secret status.

Cooper spoke to White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove after Wilson's public criticism of Bush and before Novak's column ran, according to Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, who denies that Rove leaked Plame's identity to anyone. Cooper's story mentioning Plame's name appeared after Novak's column. Miller did some reporting, but never wrote a story.

Among the witnesses Fitzgerald's investigators have questioned besides Bush and Cheney are Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby; and former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, who is now the attorney general.

Fitzgerald has said that his investigation is complete except for testimony from Cooper and Miller.

© 2005 AP

Kind of disturbes me what the Bushies do and get away with.
I hope these abuses of power don't go unpunished.



here's an editoral for you folks...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0706-20.htm

_____________________________ _____

http://www.commondreams.org/ <==== good progressive news site

[ASTAC]

Originally posted by oboe
I came out as a Centrist, but in the Libertarian/Liberal corner of the Centrist box.

I did some playing around with that test, and this may surprise you ASTAC, but on the Personal Issues scale, Libertarians are 100% Liberal in their beliefs (they favor the maximum amount of individual freedom - while traditional Conservatives favor maximum amount of government control over Personal Issues).
I always thought you hated Liberals and equated them with communists.

Actually if you do some research you'll find the Libertarians take the best aspects of both sides of the right/left stuff.

I have always been more toward the center than alything else. I do disagree with some of the L.P.'s positions. However, not as much as I disagree with the other two parties.

The "liberals" I can't stand are the typical "government programs can solve all our problems" types that want to spend so much money and resources on social programs in a land that is basically founded on "create your own destiny". I have no responsibility for others problems or for the problems of corperations.

The problems I have with both parties are

Democrats: Will turn  us into  a socialist country if they got their way.

Republicans: will turn us into a dictatorship faster than has happened to any representative government in history. And even though it will happen someday as it always has, I'm not ready for it to be in my lifetime.

I feel the Libertarian party just wants to preserve the original concept of the United States. Preserve the Bill of Rights and our way of life.

[Krusher]

Originally posted by oboe
My gut wonders why a journalist would be willing to go to jail to protect Rove (or the real person who committed the federal offense of outing a CIA operative).

It is looking more and more like there has been no federal crime committed. what they (the prosecuter) is looking for now is the crime of perjury.

[Shamus]

The Clintstone and Bush administrations should be driving home just why we need a free press in this country.

When I see the poll numbers on the large segment of the population that feels that the government should be able to run the media, I want to puke.

shamus

[T0J0]

DELETED - #5

[Lizard3]

See Rule #4

[oboe]

Do you know her personally or do you have a link for us?

[T0J0]

Originally posted by Manedew
Kind of disturbes me what the Bushies do and get away with.
I hope these abuses of power don't go unpunished.

here's an editoral for you folks...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0706-20.htm

_____________________________ _____

http://www.commondreams.org/ <==== good progressive news site

Kuttners editorial is great if you like zero fact conspiracy theories, but alot of it is just plain fiction, we should expect at least some fact checking if were going to take someone at his word. But for librul reporting it probably serves an interest where fact checking isnt really needed or required just administration bashing sells more copy even if it is pathetic reporting..

TJ

[JB73]

"quiz" put me with my red dot under the letter "h" in right.

conservative

[Yeager]

Whatever you think of Rove dont matter.  The guy is not an idiot and thats what he would have to be to have done this.  The fine is no greater that 50k and no more than 10 years in the pen.  Rove aint about that.

I suspect that he at least put one fall guy between himself and the dirty deed.  At a minimum.