Posted on 07/09/2006 8:12:49 PM PDT by BCrago66
With President Bush leading a charge against the "disgraceful" New York Times and a conservative talk-show host, Melanie Morgan, suggesting that maybe the Times' executive editor should be executed for treason, we face a fundamental dispute about the role of the press in America.
(Excerpt) Read more at omaha.com ...
Without even getting into the criminal activities of the principals of the NY Times in the various leak cases, it should be remembered that Mr. Kristof has some serious credibility issues himself. The 4th Circuit recently allowed a defamation suit to go forward against him and the NY Times; plaintiff Dr. Steven J. Hatfill alleges that Kristoff spread false information about him in connection with the still-unsolved investigation of the anthrax murders a few years back (See http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/NYT-reversal.pdf Warning: It's a PDF file.)
Kristoff is also one of the first recipiants of Joe Wilson's leaks, and he never corrected his column when it was susequently proven that Wilson was lying.
But in the culture of the NY Times, the truth is less important than holding the correct anti-Bush ideological position.
Kristoff is as brilliant as he is relevant.
Nicholas "I Hate Guns" Kristof does ANOTHER driveby...
Well, at least he'll cause a raise in the NY Times' liability insurance premiums. Which is not as satisfying to some as execution, but anyway...
;-)
Lets be medieval then! How about tearing out his tongue and cutting his fingers off.
Opinion from the NYT has no inherent credibility.
What these clowns don`t get is that, everyday, fewer AMERICANS BELIEVE THEM. Time after time after time, we see their bias. Pretty soon, a person stops listening to a liar.
The joke is that the far out, wacky left, doesn`t think much of them either. And the more they bad mouth Fox and the alternative media, the more I want to here the other side.
he is one of the walking dead of the Left...what was that movie? All the dead people who could only be seen by other walking dead....Thats the Left...they just don't realize that they are dead...we don't see them...ashbin of history...blahblahblah onandon The Left-closed minds, whiney voices...impotent walking dead
This is a huge positive step even if you don't realize it.
Yes, the New York Times has to address, in its own pages, that huge swaths of the American public finds them contemptable and lower than dirt.
They are forced to defend themselves people!
This is practically unheard of. Never before can I recall major outlets of the MSM responding to their critics as often as they are now.
Something has snapped within the Times organization. Someone has woken up and smelled the coffee. Was it circulation? Did they face 10's of thousands of cancellations over this issue? They'll never admit it but we'll know when the next ABC numbers come out how bad this episode kicked them in the groin.
Was it floods of email? Phone calls? Letters? All of the above?
I think this last episode has completely shocked them. No longer are their stories immediately embraced and run as gospel universally. Talk radio and the "blogosphere" took them to task and have raked them over the coals and deservedly so. Politicians are finally feeling the momentum change and felt free to call them on their actions from podiums around the country and in countless interviews.
Instead of being another "Pentagon Papers" too many have said, "enough". Not enough of the war, not enough of investigations into terrorists but enough of this anti-American crapola you're spewing.
People, we are winning. The promises of "landslide" and "power shifts" in Washington are no longer being talked to about in absolutes come November. This whole episode proves it.
The left is waist deep in their hatred of Bush even when he's doing the 100% right thing they can't help themselves. They must take the opposite stance. Whether its a politician or a media outlet they're so covered in their own feces the stink has reached the nostrils of even casual observers.
See the forest through the trees. They're sucking wind and they know it.
Trying a case of treason would bring up a defense of whether they really knew they were giving aid and comfort to the enemy. There's a lot of wiggle room there.
However, the fact that the New York Times violated 18 U.S.C. §798 is a slam dunk.
Penalty: Up to 10 years imprisonment.
18 U.S.C. §798. Disclosure of Classified Information. (a) Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information— (1) concerning the nature, preparation, or use of any code, cipher, or cryptographic system of the United States or any foreign government; or (2) concerning the design, construction, use, maintenance, or repair of any device, apparatus, or appliance used or prepared or planned for use by the United States or any foreign government for cryptographic or communication intelligence purposes; or (3) concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government; or (4) obtained by the processes of communication intelligence from the communications of any foreign government, knowing the same to have been obtained by such processes—Shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. (b) As used in this subsection (a) of this section— The term “classified information” means information which, at the time of a violation of this section, is, for reasons of national security, specifically designated by a United States Government Agency for limited or restricted dissemination or distribution; ......... The term “communication intelligence” means all procedures and methods used in the interception of communications and the obtaining of information from such communications by other than the intended recipients; The term “unauthorized person” means any person who, or agency which, is not authorized to receive information of the categories set forth in subsection (a) of this section, by the President, or by the head of a department or agency of the United States Government which is expressly designated by the President to engage in communication intelligence activities for the United States.
You are absolutely right. The NY Times has been running a defense of the SWIFT story seemingly every day since the story ran, each with different excuses and contradictory arguments. Their campaign has morphed from a basic PR crisis strategy to abject panic. I've never seen anything like it, especially by the breathtakingly arrogant "Newspaper of Record."
Don't you mean the broken record newspaper (Think Master's Tournament diatribes, day after day).
Pretty soon they can be flushed down the toilet like the Koran story they flogged.
I know I'm being a little pedantic, but I don't think "credibility" is in the original headline for the this editorial; it was added by the Omaha news paper. Kristoff is really charging hypocracy, not lack of credibility. For if a killer calls another killer a murderer, he is after all telling the truth.
But the hypocracy charge is a red herring. If - for the sake of argument - some of the people who charge the NY Times with criminal leaks have criminally leaked themselves, that doesn't get the NY Times off the hook. It doesn't lesson the damage that the NY Times did to national security. Kristoff is committng that species of Ad Hominem called Tu Quoque, or "You're another." It's a logical fallacy because even if the accuser is guilty of X, that doesn't mean that the accused isn't guilty of X. See http://www.fallacyfiles.org/tuquoque.html
That being said, even if Senator Pat Roberts - the one example cited - did make a mistake, that's nothing compared to the systematic, comprehensive and intentional criminality of the NY Times.
You know when editorial writers in these papers, (specifically the LA Times)..have to resort to bashing Bush about his BIRTHDAY, of all things, they are more than knee deep..
They are up to their rear ends in BDS.
The NYT is a joke.
It should COST customers for any business to be an advertiser in that goebles rag.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_D._Kristof @ Wikipedia
...[Kristof] later went on to become a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard College and Magdalen College, Oxford where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
What simply amazes me is that a guy can have all that education and still be unable to grasp the meaning of those few all-important sentences from two centuries ago:
We hold these truths to be self-evident...
Now, Kristof eagerly laps up the "self-evident truth" that Freedom of the Press is a Natural Right, but is clueless when it comes to the even more self-evident Truth that gun ownership is a Natural Right - probably the most important Natural Right.
He and his wife reported on the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, but I'll bet it never dawned on either of them that the Chinese students had a Right to commandeer those tanks and use them as tools to secure their other Natural Rights.
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