The Obama administration has sent mixed signals in the case and on the subject of press freedom in general. In its Supreme Court brief in the case, Risen v. United States, No. 13-1009, it told the justices that “reporters have no privilege to refuse to provide direct evidence of criminal wrongdoing by confidential sources.”
But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. hinted last week that the Justice Department might choose not to ask the trial judge to jail Mr. Risen for contempt should he refuse to testify.Oh goodie, look, I'll have some of that world famous Holder prosecutorial discretion.
6 comments:
Leaking information from the government is criminal wrongdoing. Good-bye to whistleblowers, good bye to government transparency and accountability, even in its current utterly debased state. Government is end-running the privilege.
It is the most secretive White House that I have ever been involved in covering...I dealt directly with the Bush White House when they had concerns that stories we were about to run put the national security under threat. But, you know, they were not pursuing criminal leak investigations. The Obama administration has had seven criminal leak investigations. That is more than twice the number of any previous administration in our history. It's on a scale never seen before. This is the most secretive White House that, at least as a journalist, I have ever dealt with.
~Jill Abramson
Leaking is only the tip of the "criminal wrongdoing" iceberg. Think of all the other allegations of "criminal wrongdoing" that could be deployed to force a reporter to reveal his sources.
If you assume the Choom Gang is against anybody's freedom but their own, you're probably ahead of the game.
The case against Mr. Sterling concerns Operation Merlin, a C.I.A. plan to sabotage Iranian nuclear research by having a Russian scientist sell flawed blueprints to Iran.
Oy Vey, counting on a Russian not to double-cross you. Talk about magical thinking.
Off topic.
This past weekend my little niece came to visit. She's almost 4 years old and 100% adorable.
She's got her eyes wide open all the time. Figuring out the world. Smart as a whip and she actually listens and pays complete attention to what people say.
So I was doing something or other, and suddenly she's there in the doorway, and she says, out of nowhere, "Uncle Eric, do you have muscles?"
I don't know what to say. I mean, if an adult says something along those lines I typically sidestep the matter by making some sort of self-deprecating joke. But that didn't seem to be an option.
So here's what I said: "That's right, Sweetie, your Uncle Eric has muscles, and so do you and everybody else, and we all have the same number of muscles."
I wish I could say she gave me a funny look but she didn't.
She took her answer for what it was worth and she ambled off, the way she does, cute as a button.
It's been two days now and it's still bugging me.
I feel like I did something wrong and I wish I knew what it was.
Post a Comment