Posted on 10/29/2005 5:58:46 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
This will REALLY help the MSM get more interviews with members of the administration!
Do we need a national shield law for journalists?
I think NOT!
This is a really bad time for them to bring up a shield law.
Times' Miller pushes federal shield law
Reporter spent 85 days behind bars
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Excerpt
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Skeptical senators, concerned over Miller's jailing, grilled a Justice Department representative who testified Wednesday that government procedures for getting information from reporters had worked well for 33 years and didn't need to be changed.
"Here you have a reporter in jail for 85 days and millions of Americans wonder why? I'm one of those," Sen. Arlen Specter said.
The Pennsylvania Republican heads the Judiciary Committee, which called Miller and others to testify on a proposed bill that would allow reporters to keep the identity of their sources secret.
Miller's jailing for refusing to discuss her sources with federal prosecutors investigating the disclosure of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity "has had an obvious chilling effect on other reporters" around the country, Specter said.
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See link for the rest of the article.....
I think if I were the folks at the New York Times and Vanity Fair magazine I'd be really nervous because you know Libby's legal team will ask for records of contacts between Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame an the MSM entities I mentioned. If Wilson and Plame passed classified information to the the NYT and Vanity Fair, it could get very ugly very quickly.
I would agree, I think.
were I Scooter...I would hire Ollie North's att'ny, Brendan Sullivan, find whomever originated the mendacious lie about Valerie Plame being "undercover" , and sue the S*&%^ out of them......
The indictment charges that the initial disclosure to the press was to Miller by Libby. If that is the case, then didn't Miller lie in either her GJ testimony or in her article?
("Denny Crane: Gun Control? For Communists. She's a liberal. Can't hunt.")
While all indications are that Libby was very inciteful and a very good chief of staff for Cheney, it is also now apparent that he was the Media's WH "Source". A source the WH has been trying to find for some time now.
The trial will have one of two results. The reporters will all clam up and the prosecution will fall apart. Which will be a win for the WH because the leaker will be gone, but the media and dems will not have aconviction of a WH official to flog throughout the campaign of 06 & 08. Or they will talk and the result will be that "High ranking officials" will become afraid to talk to the press.
So the bottom line is the WH wins no matter what the outcome. Once again Bush/Cheney have given the Dems exactly what they wanted and are walking away laughing.
There is something I don't understand here, well actually quite a lot, but specifically: If a reporter hears something that is probably classified doesn't he have the responsibility get permission to print it? If someone gave me plans to the B2 or an atomic bomb or told me my neighbor was a NSA agent, wouldn't I have the responsibility to get it cleared before I published the information publicly. Or do I act like a complete doofus and just print it, not knowing if it's right or wrong, classified or unclassified, true or false?? Yesterday during the "prosecutor's press conference the phrase "passing gossip" was used, so does that mean that a reporter can pass classified info and claim it was gossip? And is everything said "on the record" even if it is idle gossip? My bottom line is I still find it extremely hard to believe that a person in Mr Libby's position would dish the dirt with reporters, in fact I find it unbelievable that he would talk with them about anything of substance at all. If this was a set up to out Plame and cause Wilson some sort of problem, (what problem, more press coverage?) it was beyond stupid. And I don't think people in Mr. Libby's position are stupid.
Your JMHO is exactly right.
Why am I reminded of Watergate and Richard Nixon?
Am I the only one thinking that Republicans shoot themselves in the foot on a regular basis?
Both parties are guilty, but the public seems more willing to forgive a Clintoon than a BushBot.
On his way out of office, President Bush should pull a Clintoon and grant "Scooter" a Presidential Pardon.
The danger for Libby is that the judge will be a Clinton appointee and the jurors all people who believe that Bush blew up the levees in New Orleans.
Great qoute. I have a tagline.
"what is different here is the transaction here is between a person and a reporter; they're the eyewitness to the crime."
REpeat after me....there WAS no crime...there WAS no crime...there WAS no crime.
Fitz had my head spinning as HE was trying to spin this indictment...if classifed info was not leaked...if a covert agent was not compromised..(no indictments on those issues)...then NO crime! How could journalists be an "eyewitness to a crime" when the crime only occurred DURING an investigation that should NOT have happened.
The creepy, lying, self-agrandizing duo of Mr. Wilson and his "CIA wife" brought about this whole mess. And I'm sure they're the types who have no problem sleeping well after a few drinks.
No one with his credentials could be called stupid. However, Republicans have always been and will always be very naive in thinking they can manipulate the press by establishing personal relationships with reporters from the NY Times or WP or Newsweek or whatever. People at the level of Rove or Libby should not even be talking to reporters, period. Or, at the very least, only to reporters from reliably right-wing publications. As for publishing classified information, while it is against the law for a government employee to provide it to unauthorized people, it is not against the law for the press to report it. Those arguments came up during the Ellsberg trial and many times since. Personally I think it's idiotic, but if it weren't for idiotic laws, there would hardly be any laws at all.
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