Tuesday, May 21, 2013

RISEN V. ROSEN.

With all the talk about reporter James Rosen's persecution, particularly in rightblogger world, you might find yourself mixing the name up with that of reporter James Risen, also persecuted -- in fact his persecution stretches from the Bush through the Obama Administrations. You may be wondering why, while some liberal outfits have been trumpeting Risen's case, conservatives haven't been doing the same. The reason is simple: If they did, someone might look up what they were writing about Risen back in the day.

Here are some examples from National Review:
If you’re one of those who think that everyone in the Bush administration reflexively lies about everything, then James Risen is a patriot who has exposed the worst abuse of presidential power since Watergate. If you’re more inclined to give the President the benefit of the doubt when it comes to covert operations designed to prevent terrorist attacks, then James Risen’s reporting did an untold amount of damage to what was for all we know an effective way to monitor communications between terrorists abroad and their cells in the United States.

From the sound and fury of the last few days from politicians and pundits, you would think this is a development as scandalous as Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy’s authorization to wiretap Martin Luther King Jr. But the legality of the acts can be demonstrated with a look through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). For example, check out section 1802, “Electronic Surveillance Authorization Without Court Order.” It is most instructive. There you will learn that “Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year” (emphasis mine)...
James Risen has been part of several intelligence breaches that have hurt the security of the United States. He was the New York Times reporter who broke the story on the NSA’s eavesdropping program and its ability to track terrorist finances. Risen is now involved in the trial of ex-CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling... The Department of Justice is appealing an earlier ruling that Risen would not be forced to testify in depth regarding his sources; hopefully, the appeal will be successful...
That last one, by Stephen Spruill and headlined "The New York Times and Espionage (Again)," is from 2011.

If you want some extra fun, go read Andrew C. McCarthy from 2005: "So sure, let's talk until we're blue in the face about the abstruse legalities of warrantless wiretapping... But the exhaustion of these questions, in the self-conscious pomp of serious discussion, mustn't obscure what is really going on here. This, plain and simple, is a political game of 'Gotcha!' Played with our national security — played with the lives of the innocent..."

I don't like the White House spying on reporters, either, and I've known for quite some time that on civil liberties this White House is no good. But I am also aware that these guys are as full of shit on freedom of the press as they are on everything else, and during the current festival of fake outrage that strikes me as a useful piece of intelligence to keep in mind.

26 comments:

  1. the dangers of those post-9/11 paradigms were never that they would be limited to the bush administration, but that subsequent executive branches would gladly walk through the door they managed to open; it is fascinating - only in the same way that, say, watching kevin ware's leg fall apart was fascinating though - to watch a phenomena emerge which the brethren have no frames or language to explain to one another or the world at large.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's slightly harder to sympathize with Rosen when you read emails of him explicitly requesting that a NSA employee violate the Espionage act, not so that he can expose some sort of government malfeasance, but so that he can get a scoop solely for the purpose of getting a scoop. I don't think he should be prosecuted, and it looks like he won't be, but it seems pretty clear he broke the law, and for entirely venal reasons. What a dick.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AGoodQuestion1:06 AM

    I knew a decade ago: if basic freedoms are curtailed during time of war, and if the war is basically eternal (because you can't really have a final victory over terrorism) then the freedoms have come to an end, not a suspension. Pretty much the entire establishment has accepted this blithely. And as hopeless as they seem now, the GOP will eventually win again. Meaning they'll have no reason to even pretend dissent.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ok, fair enough -- except why does that last part strike you as a useful piece of intelligence to keep in mind? If someone says 2+2=5 yesterday, and 2+2=4 today, I don't conclude my thoughts on the subject of 2+2 with "they said 2+2=5 yesterday, that's useful intelligence."

    I do look around and blink at who's saying 2+2=5 *now*, including Sullivan, Shafer, and Josh Marshall (http://tinyurl.com/ns75sjz , title: Oh Come On, opening whine: "At the risk of drawing more obloquy...") whose points seem to amount to Rosen not being very good at covering his tracks.

    The point can't simply be that partisan hack bozos said the wrong thing 5 years ago. It's that the wrong thing keeps happening, and new partisan hack bozos arise to defend it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Who cares what his motives were? Getting a scoop "for the purpose of getting a scoop" is an ancient and venerable incentive for getting scoops, and we benefit from that. Rosen wanted a story, he got one, *and DoJ claimed that made him a criminal conspirator* when it didn't. It's actually pretty clear he *didn't* break the law, or you can bet your bottom dollar he *would* be getting prosecuted.

    ReplyDelete
  6. hellslittlestangel3:09 AM

    Yeah, welcome to Ignorantmotherfuckerland, formerly known as the United States. I have not only come to accept this, I don't even give a fuck any more. Collectively speaking, we are getting all the freedom we deserve.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous6:11 AM

    I used to be able to find good advice from your blog posts.


    Also visit my web page ... Louis Vuitton Outlet1

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anonymous7:47 AM

    I think what you posted made a bunch of sense. However, what about this?
    what if you composed a catchier post title?
    I am not suggesting your information is not good, but suppose you
    added a post title that grabbed folk's attention? I mean "RISEN V. ROSEN." is a little vanilla. You could look at Yahoo's
    home page and watch how they create news headlines to
    get viewers to click. You might try adding a video or a pic or two
    to grab people interested about what you've got to say. Just my opinion, it would bring your posts a little bit more interesting.

    Feel free to visit my blog post - klimatyzacja

    ReplyDelete
  9. redoubt8:25 AM

    I'm sure it's not original, but the word Fox-goring keeps coming to my head; maybe I should take something . . . .

    ReplyDelete
  10. satch8:40 AM

    This just goes to show how the law evolves organically. Yesterday's "abstruse legalities of warrantless wiretapping" have become today's "GREATEST SCANDAL EVAR!!11!!".

    ReplyDelete
  11. edroso9:21 AM

    For one thing, the bullshit record of vote-hustlers and propagandists is always good intel.

    Like I said, Thomas, the White House is wrong to spy on reporters. But it was also wrong to do so eight years ago, and it was also wrong to do so 22 years ago.

    The national security state is a longstanding problem. The current controversy was not generated to solve it, but to exploit it, by people who think at least as little of civil liberties as Obama.

    This is important to "keep in mind" because if you don't, you might get the impression that we're having a come-to-Jesus moment on press protections, and that if we can thwart the Obama menace the Republicans will give us a new Church Committee. Not bloody likely.

    ReplyDelete
  12. mortimer9:22 AM

    Here was Dean Esmay on Risen and Lichtblau after their NSA revelations:

    When I say "treason" I don't mean it in an insulting or hyperbolic way. I mean in a literal way: we need to find these 21st century Julius Rosenbergs, these modern day reincarnations of Alger Hiss, put them on trial before a jury of their peers, with defense counsel. When they are found guilty, we should then hang them by the neck until the are dead, dead, dead.

    No sympathy. No mercy. Am I angry? You bet I am. But not in an explosive way. Just in the same seething way I was angry on 9/11.

    These people have endangered American lives and American security. They need to be found, tried, and executed.

    Good times.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Halloween_Jack9:55 AM

    This is important to "keep in mind" because if you don't, you might get the impression that we're having a come-to-Jesus moment on press protections, and that if we can thwart the Obama menace the Republicans will give us a new Church Committee. Not bloody likely.


    QF-fucking-T.

    ReplyDelete
  14. It's actually pretty clear he *didn't* break the law, or you can bet your bottom dollar he *would* be getting prosecuted.

    Yup. Someone needs to remind the DOJ that they need to investigate people only after it's been determined that they broke the law and they're already being prosecuted for it.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Indeed. Why someone might remember that period between 2001 and 2009 when the GOP didn't care about government oversight, at all.


    For some reason.
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  16. susanoftexas11:20 AM

    You stopped too soon. Why do wrong things keep happening and how do we change our situation? When you read the right's excuses for civil rights abuses it becomes more difficult to make excuses for Obama. Maybe people will defend the laws instead of the leaders, and wrong things won't happen quite as often.

    ReplyDelete
  17. tigrismus11:33 AM

    But the legality of the acts can be demonstrated with a look through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). For example, check out section 1802, “Electronic Surveillance Authorization Without Court Order.” It is most instructive. There you will learn that “Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year”

    How did "acquiring foreign intelligence information" apply to either King or Risen?

    ReplyDelete
  18. Pretty much what I say about Reagan all of the time.

    ReplyDelete
  19. except why does that last part strike you as a useful piece of intelligence to keep in mind?

    Because the American Right are not uneasy temporary allies in protecting the First Amendment against continued executive encroachment. They are squealing shitmongers whose be-all and end-all is to politically weaken a Democratic administration by whatever means possible. Note that the current GOP legislative move to address the Obama administration's supposed politicization of the IRS is to attack the implementation of Obamacare. Interest in the original shield law hasn't exactly skyrocketed, and if it does, it will be rewrought into the Grounds for Impeaching the Current Administration While Still Treating Critical Reporting on a Republican Administration as Treason Act. (Or GICAWSTCRRATA; someone probably needs to punch up an alternative acronym that spells IOKIYAR.) You'd think there'd be a lesson learned after we were loudly told we needed to clasp Rand Paul to our bosoms because he grandstanded about an unmitigated bullshit hypothetical purely in order to burnish his anti-government nihilism cred with the black-helicopter Agenda 21 hysterical dumbfucks.

    And yes, it's entirely relevant to note that the AP, Fox News, etc, etc, all had an unquenchable eagerness for licking George W. Bush's asshole when it came to flagrant warmongering falsehoods, harassment of previous revealers of inconvenient truths (*cough* Joseph C. Wilson *cough*), or the administration's talking points about actually illegal warrantless wiretapping on a scale that could well have vacuumed up reporters' communications. It doesn't help fix anything when the media treat this long-term ongoing concern as "OMG! Unique Constitution-shredding scandal which we will once again lose all interest in five minutes after Ted Cruz is elected president." Because the abuses will continue as usual, but only one side of the political divide will ever be held to account by the noble Fourth Estate.

    ReplyDelete
  20. AGoodQuestion5:40 PM

    Ah Dean Esmay. I remember seeing him billed as a "classical liberal" back in the aughts. Not knowing what he meant by that, I followed his blog for a while, figuring he must have something interesting to say. And interesting it was, in a clinical sense.

    ReplyDelete
  21. DocAmazing11:14 PM

    Isn't "Esmay" Pig Latin for "mess"?

    ReplyDelete
  22. Howlin Wolfe3:07 PM

    Esyay.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Anonymous12:28 PM

    Great delivery. Great arguments. Keep up the great spirit.


    Have a look at my web site; golf gps best [http://169.244.31.38/groups/tes/wiki/31490/The_Stuff_All_New_Golfers_really_Should_Have.html]

    ReplyDelete
  24. Anonymous12:45 PM

    Hi there! I just wish to give you a huge thumbs up for the great
    information you have right here on this post. I will be returning to your website for more soon.


    Check out my homepage best iphone golf app - tv.goldmineradio.com -

    ReplyDelete
  25. Anonymous9:04 PM

    I gave her a good scolding when I first discovered what she
    had done and I was panicked at what they might do to her.
    The big highlight of the new Mount & Blade:
    Warband release is the ability to engage in a spot of multiplayer battle.
    s Top Grossing Charts has inspired tons of clones on i - OS,
    Android, and even back full circle to Facebook.


    Here is my web-site - throne rush hack - -

    ReplyDelete
  26. Anonymous8:42 PM

    All Monster wanted was to produce a "Fashionable Product" based on the idea of Fashion.
    Golden Palace casino was at it again when they won this auction. Kitchen Cabinet Monster offers number of tips and tricks to consider when attempting these difficult tasks in order to make them as easy and relaxing as possible.


    Feel free to visit my site: bulu monster hack android apk

    ReplyDelete