Posted on 06/27/2006 6:49:08 AM PDT by Mia T
IN A 'PINCH': RETHINKING THE FIRST AMENDMENT
This was bound to happen.
The premise behind the First Amendment as it applies to the press--that a vigilant watchdog is necessary, sufficient--indeed, possible--to protect against man's basest instincts--is tautologically flawed: The fox guarding the White House, if you will.
Walter Lippmann, the 20th-century American columnist, wrote, "A free press is not a privilege, but an organic necessity in a great society." True in theory. True even in Lippmann's quaint mid-20th-century America, perhaps. But patently false in this postmodern era of the bubbas and the Pinches.
When a free and great society is hijacked by a seditious bunch of dysfunctional, power-hungry malcontents and elitists, it will remain neither free nor great for long. When hijacked by them in the midst of asymmetric warfare, it will soon not remain at all.
If President George W. Bush is serious about winning the War on Terror, he will aggressively pursue the enemy in our midst.
Targeting and defeating the enemy in our midst is, by far, the more difficult task and will measure Bush's resolve and courage (and his independence from the MPRDC (mutual protection racket in DC)) more than any pretty speech, more even than 'staying the course.'
Thomas Jefferson (1743&endash;1826) PINCH SULZBERGER, PEARL HARBOR + TREASON
And it is independent of the legalities1. It must be independent of the legalities.
Prosecuting Sulzberger and the Times is both a moral and a survival imperative: If we don't prosecute them, if we declare Sulzberger and the Times untouchable by virtue of their press status, it follows that anyone intent on doing this country harm during wartime can simply call himself 'the press' and be able to commit treason with impunity.
Indeed, it appears some already have.2
(Which came first, the 'journalist' or the traitor?)
hen the founders granted 'The Press' special dispensation, they never considered the possibility that traitors in our midst would game the system. But that is precisely what is happening today. (Hate America? Support jihad? Become a 'journalist!')
Letter, September 9, 1792, to George Washington
WHY WE MUST PROSECUTE THE NEW YORK TIMES
hy must we prosecute Pinch Sulzberger and The New York Times? The answer is really quite simple.
Last December, in the face of a presidential warning that they would compromise ongoing investigations of al Qaeda, the Times revealed the existence of an ultrasecret terrorist surveillance program of the National Security Agency and provided details of how it operated. Now, once again in the face of a presidential warning, the Times has published a front-page article disclosing a highly classified U.S. intelligence program that successfully penetrated the international bank transactions of al Qaeda terrorists.
Although the editors of the Times act as if prosecution is not a possibility, not everyone concurs. One person who is still mulling the matter over is Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Asked in late May about the prospect of prosecuting the Times and others who publish classified information, he by no means ruled it out. "There are some statutes on the books," he said, "which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility."
Unsurprisingly, given what is at stake, even that tentative opinion elicited a fire and brimstone denunciation from the Times. An editorial on May 24 dismissed as "bizarre" the attorney general's "claim that a century-old espionage law could be used to muzzle the press." It has long been understood, added the newspaper, that the "overly broad and little used" Espionage Act of 1917 applies only to government officials and "not to journalists."
But this interpretation, even if it were accurate (which it is not), is entirely beside the point. The attorney general did not mention the 1917 Espionage Act or any other specific law. But if the editors of the paper were to take a look at the U.S. Criminal Code, they would find that they have run afoul not of the Espionage Act but of another law entirely: Section 798 of Title 18, the so-called Comint statute.
Unambiguously taking within its reach the publication of the NSA terrorist surveillance story (though arguably not the Times's more recent terrorist banking story), Section 798 reads, in part:
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 . . . concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States . . . shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both [emphasis added].
This law, passed by Congress in 1950 as it was considering ways to avert a second Pearl Harbor during the Cold War, has a history that is highly germane to the present conduct of the Times. According to the 1949 Senate report accompanying its passage, the publication in the early 1930s of a book offering a detailed account of U.S. successes in breaking Japanese diplomatic codes inflicted "irreparable harm" on our security.
The Japanese responded to the book's revelations by investing heavily in the construction of more secure codes. Thanks to the ensuing Japanese progress, the report concludes, the United States was unable to "decode the important Japanese military communications in the days immediately leading up to Pearl Harbor." In other words, the aerial armada that devastated our Pacific Fleet had the skies in effect cleared for it by leaks of classified information.
Leaks of communications intelligence secrets pose an equivalent danger today....
Leaks and the Law The case for prosecuting the New York Times. by Gabriel Schoenfeld 07/03/2006, Volume 011, Issue 40
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The Times' 1996 endorsement of bill clinton1 was the problem. The endorsement, you may recall, was contingent on clinton getting a brain transplant--specifically of the character lobe.2 How could the Times square that shameful, irresponsible endorsement with this monstrous failure3?
Sulzberger quickly explained that the Times was able to endorse clinton by separating clinton's "policies" from "the man."4 (Did he actually buy into the clintons' 'compartmentalization' con5? Or was this apparent credulousness simply another cynical expedient for The New York Times?)
Probing questions by the host, Brian Lamb, followed, eliciting this damning historical parallel from Sulzberger: "The Times dropped ball during Holocaust by failing to connect the dots."
It appears that The New York Times doesn't learn from its mistakes.6 Will it take the Times another 50 years to understand/admit that by having endorsed for reelection a "documentably dysfunctional" president7 with "delusions" -- its own words -- it must bear sizeable blame for the 9/11 horror and its aftermath8?
Sulzberger's carefully worded rationalization of the clinton endorsements points to clinton "policies," not achievements; is this tacit acknowledgement that clinton "achievements" -- when legal -- were more illusory than real -- that the Times' Faustian bargain was not such a good deal after all?
If we assume that the clintons are the proximate cause of 9/11 --- a proposition not difficult to demonstrate --- it follows that The New York Times is culpable, too.
Elie Wiesel makes a distinction between "information" and "knowledge."6 Information is data; it is devoid of an ethical component; it is neutral. Knowledge is a higher form of information. Knowledge is information that had been internalized and given a moral dimension.
At a minimum, the Times' failure -- whether concerning clinton endorsements, or classified leaks or the Holocaust -- is a failure to make this distinction. More likely though, it is a failure not nearly so benign.
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The Democratic Party's Problem Transcends Its Anti-War Contingent2
Mia T, THE ALIENS, June 9, 1999
"Unless we convince Americans that Democrats are strong on national security," he warns his party, "Democrats will continue to lose elections."
Helloooo? That the Democrats have to be spoon-fed what should be axiomatic post-9/11 is, in and of itself, incontrovertible proof that From's advice is insufficient to solve their problem.
From's failure to fully lay out the nature of the Democrats' problem is not surprising: he is the guy who helped seal his party's fate. It was his Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) that institutionalized the proximate cause of the problem, clintonism, and legitimized its two eponymic provincial operators on the national stage. The "Third Way" and "triangulation" don't come from the same Latin root for no reason.
That "convince" is From's operative word underscores the Democrats' dilemma. Nine-eleven was transformative. It is no longer sufficient merely to convince. One must demonstrate, demonstrate convincingly, if you will
which means both in real time and historically.
When it comes to national security, Americans will no longer take any chances. Turning the turn of phrase back on itself, the era of the Placebo President is over. (Incidentally, the oft-quote out-of-context sentence fragment alluded to here transformed meaningless clinton triangulation into a meaningful if deceptive soundbite.)
Although From is loath to admit it -- the terror in his eyes belies his facile solution -- the Democratic party's problem transcends its anti-war contingent.
With a philosophy that relinquishes our national sovereignty -- and relinquishes it reflexively
and to the UN no less -- the Democratic party is, by definition, the party of national insecurity.
With policy ruled by pathologic self-interest -- witness the "Lieberman Paradigm," Kerry's "regime change" bon mot (gone bad), Edwards' and the clintons' brazen echoes thereof (or, alternatively, Pelosi's less strident wartime non-putdown putdown)
and, of course, the clincher -- eight years of the clintons' infantilism, grotesquerie and utter failure -- the Democratic party is, historically and in real time, the party of national insecurity.
The Democrats used to be able to wallpaper their national insecurity with dollars and demogoguery. But that was before 9/11.
2.
Alien Abductions, Flying Saucers + Other Weird Phenomena, c.1992-2000
l From is sounding the alarm.
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2006 |
um...so you don't like hillary huh?--Diavolos
This is not about animus against hillary clinton.
It's about hillary clinton's unfitness for office.
It's about informing the electorate about that unfitness.
And again, google rank suggests some success in that effort:
And as for the topic of this thread:
"What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."--James Madison
My complaint isn't with the First Amendment, per se. It's with one of its undergirding premises, that man can be his own watchdog. ("The fox guarding the White House, if you will.")
As for your ironic 'suggestions,' one or two actually make good sense to me. ;)
As the NY Times reconfirms daily, one substandard operation by a hack publisher / editor / journalist can do infinitely more mortal harm than, say, your average, run-of-the-mill medical malpractice. So why shouldn't being a 'journalist' require some minimal level of training/competence/character and a license?
... or as that fierce defender of a free press, H. L. Mencken, perhaps inadvertently put it, "It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place." |
Good post Mia, once again.
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"The aims of all governments, whatever their names or forms, are precisely the same, at all times and everywhere.
The first and foremost of them is simply to maintain the men constituting the government in their positions of power, that they may live gloriously at the expense of the people they govern, and enjoy all the honors and usufructs that go therewith.
There may be other purposes in them from time to time, but those purposes are transient, and most of them are insincere
The natural tendency of every government is to grow steadily worse -- that is, to grow more satisfactory to those who constitute it and less satisfactory to those who support it."
["What Constitutes a State?," American Mercury, August 1927]
"In any dispute between a citizen and the government, it is my instinct to side with the citizen.
I am against bureaucrats, policemen, wowsers, snouters, smellers, uplifters, lawyers, bishops and all other sworn enemies of the free man. I am against all efforts to make men virtuous by law.
I believe that the government, practically considered, is simply a camorra of incompetent and mainly dishonest men, transiently licensed to live by the labor of the rest of us.
I am thus in favor of limiting its powers as much as possible, even at the cost of considerable inconvenience, and of giving every citizen, wise or foolish, right or wrong, the right to criticize it freely, and to advocate changes in its constitution and personnel the very commonest of common men has certain inalienable rights."
["Autopsy," American Mercury, September 1927]
thanx :)
morning bttt
thanx, bmwcyle. :)
Rain slowing you down?
I am obviously not intelligent enough to appreciate her posts.
The visual alone gives me a headache. They remind me of the street lady that lives in Lafayette Park across from the White House who has those 5 foot high panels of rants and collages.
No thanks.
... or perhaps the FReepers there with their attention-grabbing garb and posters? I take it then you wouldn't reconsider if I posted a graphics-free 'print' version. ;)
Nonetheless, I thank you for your expression of confidence in my essential ladylike niceness. ;)
Fact is...you provide a wealth of information for all of us.
It would take days to actually follow all your links and my attention span is wanting. ;^)
I already know I hate Hillary Clinton, and the MSM...so I can save myself a lot of time.
Cheers!
Not to cut the jungle in the yard.
Thanx again, DCPatriot! :)
No riding, I guess....
I believe that the government, practically considered, is simply a camorra of incompetent and mainly dishonest men, transiently licensed to live by the labor of the rest of us.
I am thus in favor of limiting its powers as much as possible, even at the cost of considerable inconvenience, and of giving every citizen, wise or foolish, right or wrong, the right to criticize it freely, and to advocate changes in its constitution and personnel the very commonest of common men has certain inalienable rights."
["Autopsy," American Mercury, September 1927]
In this age of loose nukes, manufactured microbes and crazy terrorists not restrained by MAD, we can no longer afford a government, however 'limited,' that is 'a camorra of incompetent and mainly dishonest men.'
The professional pol has to go; he needs to be replaced by the citizen politician in government and the citizen-journalist in the press.
fyi
fyi
June 10, 2003, 9:30 a.m. By Mark Goldblatt Truman Capote, who had a stake in saying so, once famously declared, "All literature is gossip." He was wrong, of course, but it's the kind of declaration that bamboozles literary types by its very implausibility; something so obviously false must be profound, so it gets repeated at cocktail parties and invoked in book reviews (like this one) until it becomes an inside-out cliché, a false truism, a knowing nod towards nothing whatsoever. Still, an interesting question emerges if you reverse Capote's dictum and ask whether all gossip is literature. It's a question that surrounds the most gossipy novel in recent years, The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger, and percolates within the critical jihad the book ignited at the New York Times. The fact that the paper twice reviewed a literary debut by a previously unknown author would be noteworthy in itself; what's unprecedented is the fact that its reviewers twice ripped the book to shreds -- arguing not simply that it fails as literature, but that it should never have been published in the first place. Why all the fuss? Weisberger, it seems, once worked as a personal assistant to Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and the novel is thinly veiled account of her nightmarish experiences at the magazine. That this should matter to reviewers at the Times is slightly bizarre -- even if, unlike me, you care about Anna Wintour, or you think Vogue has made a significant contribution to Western Civilization. It's not as though Weisberger is sailing into morally uncharted waters. Saul Bellow's latest work, Ravelstein, is a thinly veiled account of his friendship with the critic Allan Bloom, and arguably Bellow's greatest work, Humboldt's Gift, is a thinly veiled account of his friendship with the poet Delmore Schwartz. Both of Bellow's books are warts-and-all portraits, and the same can be said, in spades, for Weisberger's portrait of Wintour. The fact that Wintour is still alive, whereas Bloom and Schwartz were deceased when Bellow immortalized them, cuts both ways. Wintour may be psychically injured by the appearance of her fictional counterpart, Miranda Priestly, but at least she has the chance to distance herself from the ogre Weisberger gives us. With a nod to Capote, then, if at least some gossip is literature, why should Weisberger be pilloried for engaging in it? None of which is to suggest that The Devil Wear Prada is great art. It is, rather, a wildly uneven book, by turns clumsily self-righteous and wickedly funny. The wafer-thin plot recounts the struggles of the narrator, Andrea Sachs, to maintain both her integrity and her sanity after she lands a "dream job" as personal assistant to Miranda Priestly at Runway. The detail that Andrea's real ambition is to write for The New Yorker would be a perfect ironic touch -- she must endure the slickness of fashion in order to achieve fashionable slickness -- except that the author seems to regard this as a altogether commendable goal. She is reminded to keep her eyes on the prize by her devoted boyfriend, Alex, who (gag me) teaches underprivileged children; also keeping Andrea grounded is her roommate Lily, whose hard drinking and promiscuity derive from the fact that "she loved anyone and anything that didn't love her back, so long as it made her feel alive." The chapters with Alex and Lily are at times almost unbearable. Fortunately, they are offset by chapters in which Miranda Priestly takes center stage. Miranda is one of the great comic monsters of recent literature; Cruella de Ville is an obvious antecedent, but Miranda more closely resembles a Hermes-scarf wearing Ahab in pursuit of the great white whale of immediate, absolute indulgence. In Miranda's universe, two pre-publication copies of the latest Harry Potter book must be flown by private jet to Paris so that her twin daughters can read them before their friends; it's up to Andrea to make the arrangements on a moment's notice. Tough, but do-able. More finesse is required when Miranda asks Andrea to hunt down the address of "that antique store in the seventies, the one where I saw the vintage dresser." Of course, Andrea wasn't with Miranda when she saw the dresser, so she winds up trekking to every antique store -- and, just to be safe, every furniture store -- between 70th and 80th Street in Manhattan, grilling clerks to find out whether the famous Miranda Priestly had stopped by recently. Three days later, Andrea admits defeat . . . only to have Miranda inform her, impatiently, that she's just located the store's business card, the one she thought she'd lost. The address is on East 68th Street. Miranda requires up to five breakfasts per morning so that whenever she arrives at the office, a hot meal will be waiting; reheating isn't an option. The other four must be thrown out because her assistants aren't permitted to eat in her presence. Nor are they permitted to hang their coats next to hers. Nor to request clarifications if her demands are indecipherable: "Cassidy wants one of those nylon bags all the little girls are carrying. Order her one in the medium size and a color she'd like." There's a kind of grotesque heroism in this, an obliviousness to the feelings of others that is larger than life -- and thus mesmerizing. When Weisberger's novel succeeds, it succeeds on these terms. No one who reads the book will forget Miranda Priestly. Towards the end of The Devil Wears Prada, Andrea's novelist friend informs her, "What you don't seem to realize is that the writing world is a small one. Whether you write mysteries or feature stories or newspaper articles, everyone knows everyone." Indeed, it's hard for an outsider to grasp just how incestuous, how inbred, the New York publishing scene is nowadays. The odds of finding a non-conflicted reviewer for a gossipy roman a clef about the scene itself are therefore remote. In theory, this isn't a problem -- as long as the reviewer approaches the task in good faith. (In good faith, for example, I should note that Weisberger's former writing teacher is a close friend and co-author of mine; on the other hand, her editor at Doubleday once turned down a book I wrote . . . and keep in mind that I'm really an academic, so I'm kind of bivouacked on the outskirts of the milieu Weisberger describes.) To say that the Times lacked good faith in reviewing The Devil Wears Prada understates the utterly unconscionable, and downright vindictive, way the paper went after the thing. The onslaught began with a full-page review in its Sunday edition by former Harper's Bazaar editor Kate Betts. Betts herself was once Anna Wintour's protégé, a point Betts mentions in her final paragraph -- not as a disclaimer but rather as an excuse to lecture Weisberger on the ethics of having written her novel: "I have to say Weisberger could have learned a few things in the year she sold her soul to the devil of fashion for $32,500. She had a ringside seat at one of the great editorial franchises in a business that exerts an enormous influence over women, but she seems to have understood almost nothing about the isolation and pressure of the job her boss was doing...." This may or may not be true, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with what's between the covers of Weisberger's book. That, however, is the least of Bett's concerns in a review which alternates between sniping at the author and sucking up to former Vogue cronies. "Nobody would be interested in this book," Betts declares, "if Weisberger were spilling the beans about life under the tyrant of the New Yorker." (Tell that to Brendan Gill whose memoir Here at the New Yorker was a bestseller in 1975.) Betts refers to one of Weisberger's characters as "a pale imitation of the incomparable André Leon Talley" (For the record, I know more than a few people in the fashion industry, and they're all remarkably comparable.) and to another as "a cheap shot at the food writer Jeffrey Steingarten, whom she [Weisberger] should have been studying for lessons in how to write." This is nasty stuff. And it's of a piece with the rest of Betts's review -- which displays all the emotional maturity and intellectual balance of Leo Gorcey in the old Bowery Boys films. Betts is not critiquing a work of fiction; she's putting up her dukes to defend her home turf. You'd think Betts's outburst would suffice, from the Times's point of view, would stand as an awkward lapse in editorial judgment but nothing more. You'd be wrong. The newspaper, it turns out, was not through with Weisberger by a long shot. One day later, Janet Maslin weighed in for the daily edition -- and matched Betts's spitefulness point by point. Maslin's review begins: "If Cinderella were alive today, she would not be waiting patiently for Prince Charming. She would be writing a tell-all book about her ugly stepsisters and wicked stepmother . . . dishing the dirt, wreaking vengeance and complaining all the way. Cinderella may have been too nice for that, but Lauren Weisberger is not." Again, what's actually between the covers of The Devil Wears Prada is mere background noise; first and foremost, Maslin is reviewing not the novel itself but the idea of the novel. She refers to it as "a mean-spirited 'Gotcha!' of a book, one that offers little indication that the author could interestingly sustain a gossip-free narrative." With an indignant nod towards Weisberger's recent publicity tour, Maslin speculates that the author "can devote a second career to insisting that [the novel] is not exactly, precisely, entirely one long swat at the editor of Vogue." And again: "The book's way of dropping names, labels and price tags while feigning disregard for these things is another of its unattractive qualities. It's fair to assume that nobody oblivious to names like Prada will be reading this story anyway." Curiously, Maslin neglects to mention the name Anna Wintour even once in her review. "That was very deliberate on my part," she later explained to the Daily News. "I think that when a tell-all author takes a cheap shot at a well-known person -- in a book that would have little reason to attract attention without that cheap shot -- then reviewers need not compound the insult (or help promote a mediocre book) by reiterating the identity of the target." Fair enough, but then why review the book in the first place? Given how many books are published each year, and how few the Times actually reviews, why would the paper twice in two days go out of its way to hammer a first novel by a hitherto unpublished writer? (Another point of disclosure: The Times did not review my first novel last year.) The answer cannot be that The Devil Wears Prada was heavily promoted . . . since even a cursory glance at its own bestseller lists will reveal many mega-hyped books the Times wouldn't touch with a ten-foot highlighter. Of course, the Times has bigger problems these days -- Jayson Blair's tendentious, fabricated reporting and subsequent resignation, Howell Raines's white-man's-burden agonizing and subsequent resignation, and Maureen Dowd's sneaky doctoring of a presidential quote -- than the integrity of its book-reviewing process. In another sense, however, the treatment of Weisberger's novel is consistent with, for lack of a better phrase, an absence of adult supervision on 43rd Street. Mark Goldblatt is the author of Africa Speaks, now available in paperback.
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IN A 'PINCH': RETHINKING THE FIRST AMENDMENT
This was bound to happen. The premise behind the First Amendment as it applies to the press--that a vigilant watchdog is necessary, sufficient--indeed, possible--to protect against man's basest instincts--is tautologically flawed: The fox guarding the White House, if you will. Walter Lippmann, the 20th-century American columnist, wrote, "A free press is not a privilege, but an organic necessity in a great society." True in theory. True even in Lippmann's quaint mid-20th-century America, perhaps. But patently false in this postmodern era of the bubbas and the Pinches. When a free and great society is hijacked by a seditious bunch of dysfunctional, power-hungry malcontents and elitists, it will remain neither free nor great for long. When hijacked by them in the midst of asymmetric warfare, it will soon not remain at all. If President George W. Bush is serious about winning the War on Terror, he will aggressively pursue the enemy in our midst. Targeting and defeating the enemy in our midst is, by far, the more difficult task and will measure Bush's resolve and courage (and his independence from the MPRDC (mutual protection racket in DC)) more than any pretty speech, more even than 'staying the course.'
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If a few thousand freepers did this simple action this week and a few thousand new freepers, friends and relatives each following week, we will have a terminal impact on the NY Slimes acts of sedition. Please send this how to your blogs, friends, relatives and email lists. This action will serve as a cannon shot across the bows fo the other Dinosaur Liberal Fish Wraps re sedition will not be tolerated any more.
Want to smash the NY Slimes?
How many of us own mutual funds which own NY Slimes stock and even worse have increased their NYT holdings this year. NYT investment by a mutual fund company is a terrible investment re the dollar loss in Stock value the last 2 years. Those investments are an attempt to keep the NY Slimes afloat with our mutual fund $'s. Now it is very evident that the NY Slimes is an agent and abettor of the al Qaeda Serial Killers. The Slimes is endangering the lives of our families, friends, innocent Americans and every warrior of ours. Go to this link to see if your mutual fund owns NYT. http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/ownership/ownership.asp When the MS Money stock home page comes up, enter NYT into the search area and hit enter and the following screen will show up re ownership of the NY Slimes stock: The New York Times Company: Ownership Information
Highlight the Mutual Fund Ownership and hit enter. If thousands of Freepers, whose mutual funds own shares of NY Slimes did the following:
We might have a lot more impact than trying to boycott companies which sell to the elite liberals of NYC and advertise in the NY Slimes. |
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