Posted on 07/01/2005 5:03:49 AM PDT by OESY
...The truth... is that this is a debacle that some in the press corps have brought down upon themselves....
Liberal editorial pages were among the loudest in demanding that a special counsel be appointed to find the leaker. And only many months later, when Ms. Miller was in the dock, did New York Times editorials finally get around to admitting that the leak might not even be a crime. Their partisan loathing for Mr. Bush caused these editors to overlook the risks even to their own reporting self-interest.
They have also left the press more vulnerable than it was before. The First Amendment is nearly absolute in its protection of the right to publish, but it is far less categorical in protecting the news-gathering process. Courts have tried to balance media access to sources and information against other rights (say, to a fair trial) and government needs (such as grand jury probes). Yet the Times fought this current battle as if it were a replay of New York Times v. Sullivan, the famous libel case, only to lose in court. Especially by inviting a 3-0 defeat at the hands of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Times has probably left everyone in the media less able to protect sources against future prosecutorial raids. While 31 states have so-called "shield laws" protecting source disclosure, the federal government does not.
In explaining his decision to turn over Mr. Cooper's notes, Time Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine said, "Once the [Supreme] Court denied cert., I decided we aren't above the law." We admire Ms. Miller for her willingness to go to jail to honor a personal promise to a source. But a journalistic institution has a duty not to be cavalier about its reporter's freedom, much less the rule of law.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...
for later reading
Those petards have a way of getting you in the end.
Well, well, well... Guess we'll soon know who this Deeper Throat is, or should their nickname be Deep Doo Doo?
I love it when a plan comes together.
It makes my day just to watch the NY Times squirm.
"...Guess we'll son know who this Deeper Throat is,..."
I hope it was her husband.
I never thought of that, but they did bring it on themselves.
If they had let sleeping dogs lie they would have gotten away clean, But noooooo they had to keep pushing. Its kinda funny.
Now that would be just toooooo delicious! Thanks for putting a smile on my face this morning. I needed one!
This is acceptable. :-)
By now, the notes will have been edited themselves, so reflect the disclosure by a dead freeper...any one want to bet?
The presstitutes should have remembered to be careful what they wished for...
I just hope the name comes out in the near future.
Since the Lefties were particularly rabid about how Rove and Rumsfeld had engineered this supposed "outing" of Plame, it would be nice to see who really did it. And your conjecture is high on my list, too.
pe·tard
n.
1. A small bell-shaped bomb used to breach a gate or wall.
2. A loud firecracker.
[French pétard, from Old French, from peter, to break wind, from pet, a breaking of wind, from Latin p?ditum, from neuter past participle of p?dere, to break wind.]
WORD HISTORY The French used pétard, “a loud discharge of intestinal gas,” for a kind of infernal engine for blasting through the gates of a city. “To be hoist by one's own petard,” a now proverbial phrase apparently originating with Shakespeare's Hamlet (around 1604) not long after the word entered English (around 1598), means “to blow oneself up with one's own bomb, be undone by one's own devices.” The French noun pet, “fart,” developed regularly from the Latin noun p?ditum, from the Indo-European root *pezd–, “fart.”
Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor. :>)
How does Karl Rove do it???!!!
One could only hope.
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