Month: May 2013

Historic achievement

by digby

This is definitely Mt Rushmore material:

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday that President Obama’s policies have contributed to “the most rapid deficit reduction since World War II.”

How proud they must be to see the results of their great accomplishment:

Spectrum Generations, midcoast Maine’s non-profit Area Agency on Aging, says Meals On Wheels is taking a hit due to automatic spending cuts in the so-called “sequester” austerity budget. Meals On Wheels, which receives funding through the Older Americans Act, delivers meals to homebound seniors over 60 and disabled individuals. In Knox County, the program also has two on-site meals for seniors at the Methodist Conference Home in Rockland and the John Street Methodist Church in Camden. Lee Karker, executive director of the social service agency MCH, which administers the program, says that while funding for Meals On Wheels has been flat in recent years, the demand for the service has spiked.

“There are a lot of people out in the community who are eligible for this program, but because of pride or whatever don’t ask for it,” said Karker. “But with economic conditions that we’ve had, people have decided that they really do need it.”

I’m not saying they are solely responsible for the hideous consequences of the austerity push we’ve seen over the past three years. But they certainly seem eager to credit for it anyway so I’m going to guess they are proud of the results.

This deficit hysteria has led to massive casualties in the country and around the world — an entire generation has been delayed in even starting to seriously pursue its hopes and dreams, millions have lost their jobs and their homes and have had to start over and the rest of their lives are going to be financially insecure because of it. We have a huge group of long term unemployed who nobody cares about and who are probably never going to be employable again. We have more poverty even as the wealthiest are once again drowning in a sea of money, richer than they were before the financial crisis began. Austerity isn’t to blame for all of it, but there can be no doubt that the constant garment rending over deficits has made it impossible to even talk about doing what’s necessary to fix the real problems we’re facing.

This is a standard talking point for the White House, don’t forget. The following quote came from Jason Furman just last February:

The deficit this year is projected to be about 5 percent of GDP. It’s come down by nearly 5 percentage points in the last four years. That’s the most rapid pace of deficit reduction the United States has seen since the end of World War II. The reason we’re seeing this is in part due to the recovery of the economy, but also in part because the President has already signed into law $2.5 trillion of deficit reduction, including $1.4 trillion of spending cuts through the continuing resolutions and Budget Control Act, and another $600 billion of revenue from high-income households in the tax agreement and then the associated intrasavings.

But that wasn’t good enough then. back in the days before Reinhardt-Rogoff exploded the austerity assumptions, this was the second part of the talking points:

So that $2.5 trillion gets you more than halfway to the $4 trillion that you need to stabilize your debt over the long term, and it actually has been sufficient to be bringing your deficit down quite strongly over the short run.

What we do need, though, is a lot more medium- and long-term deficit reduction.

This was the argument against the sequester, of course. “Yes we must have much more deficit reduction, but we need to drag it out over the medium and the long term so we can keep cutting the budget for decades to come!” (Yes, I know that wasn’t the stated logic, but it might as well have been.)

I don’t know at what moment the Democratic party became the proudest lil’ deficit hawks on Washington but I’m going to guess it was somewhere around the time that George W. Bush started giving away lavish tax cuts to the wealthy. It’s nice to see them once again strutting proudly and proclaiming that “the era of big government is over” so that when the Republicans take over ( as a consequence of “austerity fatigue” dontcha know)they can offer up big tax cuts and increase military spending again. But hey, at least the Democrats can all go to bed at night secure in the knowledge that history will record they were the grown-ups in the room.

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“This is how the 1% does Disney”

by digby

Our betters are so pressed for time:

Some wealthy Manhattan moms have figured out a way to cut the long lines at Disney World — by hiring disabled people to pose as family members so they and their kids can jump to the front, The Post has learned.

The “black-market Disney guides” run $130 an hour, or $1,040 for an eight-hour day.

“My daughter waited one minute to get on ‘It’s a Small World’ — the other kids had to wait 2 1/2 hours,” crowed one mom, who hired a disabled guide through Dream Tours Florida.

“You can’t go to Disney without a tour concierge,’’ she sniffed. “This is how the 1 percent does Disney.”

The woman said she hired a Dream Tours guide to escort her, her husband and their 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter through the park in a motorized scooter with a “handicapped” sign on it. The group was sent straight to an auxiliary entrance at the front of each attraction.

For some reason this story made me think of a wonderfully informative book I read recently called Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution. I wonder why?

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Please pass a new law that will prevent me from doing what I didn’t have to do but did anyway

by digby

Charlie Savage reports:

The Obama administration sought on Wednesday to revive legislation that would provide greater protections to reporters from penalties for refusing to identify confidential sources, and that would enable journalists to ask a federal judge to quash subpoenas for their phone records, a White House official said.

The official said that President Obama’s Senate liaison, Ed Pagano, called Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who is a chief proponent of a so-called media shield law, on Wednesday morning and asked him to reintroduce a bill that he had pushed in 2009. Called the Free Flow of Information Act, the bill was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee in a bipartisan 15-to-4 vote in December 2009. But while it was awaiting a floor vote, a furor over leaking arose after WikiLeaks began publishing archives of secret government documents, and the bill never received a vote.

Yeah well, it wasn’t much of a bill anyway.

And there’s a reason why:

White House Proposes Changes in Bill Protecting Reporters’ Confidentiality

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Published: September 30, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has told lawmakers that it opposes legislation that could protect reporters from being imprisoned if they refuse to disclose confidential sources who leak material about national security, according to several people involved with the negotiations.

The administration this week sent to Congress sweeping revisions to a “media shield” bill that would significantly weaken its protections against forcing reporters to testify.

The bill includes safeguards that would require prosecutors to exhaust other methods for finding the source of the information before subpoenaing a reporter, and would balance investigators’ interests with “the public interest in gathering news and maintaining the free flow of information.”

But under the administration’s proposal, such procedures would not apply to leaks of a matter deemed to cause “significant” harm to national security. Moreover, judges would be instructed to be deferential to executive branch assertions about whether a leak caused or was likely to cause such harm, according to officials familiar with the proposal.

The two Democratic senators who have been prime sponsors of the legislation, Charles E. Schumer of New York and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said on Wednesday that they were disappointed by the administration’s position.

Mr. Specter called the proposed changes “totally unacceptable,” saying they would gut meaningful judicial review. And in a statement, Mr. Schumer said: “The White House’s opposition to the fundamental essence of this bill is an unexpected and significant setback. It will make it hard to pass this legislation.”

But Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman, called the proposed changes appropriate and argued that the administration was making a significant concession by accepting some judicial review. He noted that the Bush administration had strongly opposed such a bill as an incursion into executive power.

So it was extremely watered down, at the behest of the administration, before it passed the committee. Still, it’s better than nothing. As Charlie Savage points out in the article it would have possibly prevented the Justice Department from doing an end run around the media companies to issue their subpoenas. On the other hand, the Justice Department could easily have acted as if the law the administration ostensibly wanted was in place. There was no law saying they had to do what they did.

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The Villagers will not be ignored

by digby

David does a nice job unpacking the dreadful Politico gossip item in his post below. But as a long time Village observer from afar, I thought I might add a little more context. The first observation is that apparently Sally Quinn has officially passed the baton to Vandehei and Allen. How do I know this? Well, take the first sentence:

The town is turning on President Obama — and this is very bad news for this White House.

Recall Quinn’s famous “village” article:

When Establishment Washingtonians of all persuasions gather to support their own, they are not unlike any other small community in the country.

On this evening, the roster included Cabinet members Madeleine Albright and Donna Shalala, Republicans Sen. John McCain and Rep. Bob Livingston, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, PBS’s Jim Lehrer and New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, all behaving like the pals that they are. On display was a side of Washington that most people in this country never see. For all their apparent public differences, the people in the room that night were coming together with genuine affection and emotion to support their friends — the Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt and his wife, CNN’s Judy Woodruff, whose son Jeffrey has spina bifida.

But this particular community happens to be in the nation’s capital. And the people in it are the so-called Beltway Insiders — the high-level members of Congress, policymakers, lawyers, military brass, diplomats and journalists who have a proprietary interest in Washington and identify with it.

They call the capital city their “town.”

And their town has been turned upside down.

Their town:

“This is a community in all kinds of ways,” says ABC correspondent Cokie Roberts, whose parents both served in Congress. She is concerned that people outside Washington have a distorted view of those who live here. “The notion that we are some rarefied beings who breathe toxic air is ridiculous. . . . When something happens everybody gathers around. . . . It’s a community of good people involved in a worthwhile pursuit. We think being a worthwhile public servant or journalist matters.”

“This is our town,” says Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the first Democrat to forcefully condemn the president’s behavior. “We spend our lives involved in talking about, dealing with, working in government. It has reminded everybody what matters to them. You are embarrassed about what Bill Clinton’s behavior says about the White House, the presidency, the government in general.”

Muffie Cabot, who as Muffie Brandon served as social secretary to President and Nancy Reagan, regards the scene with despair. “This is a demoralized little village,” she says. “People have come from all over the country to serve a higher calling and look what happened. They’re so disillusioned. The emperor has no clothes. Watergate was pretty scary, but it wasn’t quite as sordid as this.”

NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell adds a touch of neighborly concern. “We all know people who have been terribly damaged personally by this,” she says. “Young White House aides who have been saddled by legal bills, longtime Clinton friends. . . . There is a small-town quality to the grief that is being felt, an overwhelming sadness at the waste of the nation’s time and attention, at the opportunities lost.”

Message: they care. About themselves.

There was one guy who got it right:

Lloyd Cutler, former White House counsel to Presidents Carter and Clinton and considered one of the few “wise men” left in Washington, gives yet another reason why people take the scandal more seriously here. “This is an excitement to us, a feeling of being in on it, and whichever part of the Washington milieu we come from, we want to play a part. That’s why we’re here.”

Yes. The president had made a grave mistake if he forgot that it’s not about the people and it’s not about the Party and it’s not even about his own legacy. It’s all about the Villagers:

Obama’s aloof mien and holier-than-thou rhetoric have left him with little reservoir of good will, even among Democrats. And the press, after years of being accused of being soft on Obama while being berated by West Wing aides on matters big and small, now has every incentive to be as ruthless as can be.

This White House’s instinctive petulance, arrogance and defensiveness have all worked to isolate Obama at a time when he most needs a support system.

Clearly, the president should have given them all frat-boy nicknames and insulted them in public. That’s what they crave.

VandeAllen is doing an excellent job of stepping up now that Quinn has semi-retired. The president — and the country — is on notice: the Village is upset. They feel they’ve been ignored. And they will not be ignored.

Are these bubbling scandals the consequence of official malfeasance or ineptitude? Are they threats to the constitutional order, the result of executive overreach or something that affects the balance of power in the government? You will never know. In the Village nothing like that is ever important. They are there to give us the inside information on how the Villagers are feeling and what has offended their sensibilities so we will understand how our government really works. We will not be able to tell the difference between a real scandal and a trumped piece of partisan nonsense because they cannot tell the difference and they don’t want to. And that works out very nicely for the permanent political establishment, doesn’t it?

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Politico once again proves itself a den of pitiful, middle-school vipers

by David Atkins

Politico is leading this morning with a Vandehei/Allen broadside on the latest Obama Administration “scandals.” Close readers of this blog know that neither Digby nor I are big fans of this President’s approach to many policy items, especially his austerity obsession and push for a Grand Bargain. That said, Vandehei and Allen show the two-bit pettiness and lack of perspective of much of the Beltway press.

Their first claim is that the President has lost “establishment Democrats.” Now, in a sane world they would have written that story long ago concerning the frustrations of a large number of progressive Democrats over the President’s often-too-timid political instincts. But no. Vandehei and Allen’s important establishment Democrats are…Maureen Dowd and Chris Lehane. No, that’s not a joke. They really said that.

The dam of solid Democratic solidarity has collapsed, starting with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s weekend scolding of the White House over Benghazi, then gushing with the news the Justice Department had sucked up an absurdly broad swath of Associated Press phone records.

Democrats are privately befuddled by the White House’s flat-footed handling of this P.R. and legal mess, blaming a combination of bad timing, hubris and communications ineptitude. The most charitable defense offered up on background is that Obama staffers are scandal virgins, unaccustomed to dealing with a rabid press.

Chris Lehane, who spent so much time managing scandals in the 1990s that it inspired him to write a textbook on the subject, is among the contingent of Clinton-era scandal hands that thinks the Obama team has botched its second-term image. “One cannot get caught up with chasing news cycles in a crisis, as that is a prescription for putting out inaccurate information that does not withstand scrutiny or the test of time,” said Lehane, whose book is titled “Masters of Disaster.”

Meanwhile, Allen and Vandehei seem convinced that the backbiters in the cocktail circuit have some extraordinary power to damage the standing of Presidents. They don’t, actually, though they like to pretend they do.

This is a dangerous — albeit familiar — place for a second-term president. Once the dogs are released, they bark, they bite and it takes a very long time to calm them down. Bill Clinton got hit early and often, and George W. Bush never really recovered from it.

Bill Clinton survived his entire eight years with remarkably high approval ratings, including throughout the trumped up impeachment. There were a lot of progressive policy reasons to be unhappy with President Clinton, but that’s not why Beltway courtiers had a problem with him. The D.C. mosquitoes were upset that Clinton wasn’t one of them, and they made sure he knew about it. Not that it mattered. Bill Clinton, for all his personal and policy warts, brushed them off nearly effortlessly.

Nor was it the Beltway Press that harmed George W. Bush’s reputation. For the most part, the press treated Dubya with kid gloves if not fawning adulation well into his second term. What killed the Bush Administration was the weight of the horrifically immoral invasion of Iraq, the utterly botched effort in Afghanistan, the attempt to privatize Social Security, and an array of real criminal scandals that should by all rights have sent a number of Bush cabinet officials to prison, and others to the Hague. (Edit: also, of course, Katrina. How could I have forgotten?) Those things have a way of dragging down a President’s approval rating with or without the help of the Mean Girls of D.C.

But what insiderist drivel would be complete without a quote from King Hack himself, Ron Fournier?

“And it goes beyond even the story,” National Journal’s Ron Fournier, who covered the Clinton and Bush scandals and was once the AP Washington bureau chief, said on the show. “One common thing with Benghazi and the IRS scandal, is we’re being misled every day. We were lied to on Benghazi, on the talking points behind Benghazi, for months. We were lied to by the IRS for months and now they’re sending a clear message to our sources:

‘Don’t embarrass the administration or we’re coming after you.’”

Yeah, because Fournier has been such a friend of the Administration and of Democratic policies generally in the past, right?

Again, there are many very legitimate reasons to differ with the Obama Administration on public policy. Most of the time, the Obama Administration veers much too far to the right. On the supposed “scandals,” one of them (Benghazi) is ginned up Republican mirage; one (the IRS issue) is a matter of the tax evasion and cheating of a number of astroturf Tea Party groups, combined with overzealous and misguided enforcement at what appears to be low and middle levels of the IRS; and one (the AP issue) appears to be an honest-to-goodness medium-sized scandal, but nothing too out of keeping from the alarming secrecy, spying and erosion of civil liberties that has been the hallmark of both the previous administrations while barely eliciting a yawn from the traditional press.

ButVandehei and Allen aren’t upset over real policy concerns that normal Americans actually care about. They’re annoyed that the President hasn’t sucked up enough to the petty leeches that make up the cozy cocktail circuit whose detestable middle-school cafeteria culture cannot be subject to enough righteous scorn. Too bad, kiddos. You should go back to worrying about Leibovich and leave the actual political stuff to the grownups.

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“We must not fail to comprehend its grave implications”

by digby

I’m sure this will be an excellent addition to the media landscape:

Atlantic Media Prez Justin Smith announced today that it’s launching Defense One, a new media brand for the national security community, later this summer. Defense One, according to a morning release, aims to deliver “high-quality news and analysis” to defense leaders and stakeholders navigating “the unprecedented” transformation of U.S. defense strategy and operations.

I’m sure it will be very informative.

Well, maybe not:

The launch, as stated in the release, will be underwritten by Northrop Grumman.

Don’t worry your pretty little heads about anything, I’m sure they will be completely hands-off.

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The scandal silver lining

by digby

When the political winds shifted yesterday, and the smell of scandal wafted over the media landscape, one thought came to my mind.  Mike Lux articulated it today in this comment to Greg Sargent:

“We don’t know what’s going to happen with this scandal talk,” Mike Lux, a leading progressive strategist who fought in the Clinton impeachment wars, tells me. “But one thing I do know from the Clinton years is that presidents need their bases completely fired up and fighting for them when the scandal stuff hits. Anything that President Obama does to alienate the base, like cutting Medicare and Social Security, would hurt him badly when he needs the base to the maximum. The scandal talk makes a Grand Bargain less likely.”

As Greg points out in his piece, the Monica Lewnsky scandal interrupted Clinton’s plan to “reform” Social Security. (And that really tells you just how determined the elites are to get this done — that was during a boom time, so the excuses for doing it were the exact opposite of what they are today. It doesn’t matter. In good times and bad, they just can’t leave it alone.)

Anyway, I hate this kind of scandal mongering. It’s exhausting and makes your head hurt. And we are, unfortunately, dealing with a package of administration scandals in which two are arguably partisan nonsense that are easy to man the barricades over — and one is actually very disturbing. So it’s not as clear cut as the administration might like.

Still, if this is what it takes to kill the Grand Bargain, I’m not going to complain. Scandals come and go — cuts to the safety net are forever.

*I should also add — don’t let your guard down.  Our leaders can do a lot of mischief when no one is looking …

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If you can’t work 70 hours a week, “you’re not competent to do the work”

by David Atkins

If anyone needed proof that corporate leaders shouldn’t be making public policy, this should seal the deal:

For many, work-life balance is seen as the ultimate goal. For others, that mindset is hogwash that’s holding you back in your career.

Taking time off for family or passions “can offer a nice life,” legendary GE CEO Jack Welch once told The Wall Street Journal. But he said that it lessens the chances for promotion or to reach the top of a career path.

Welch is not the only one who believes this.

Recently, Glencore Xstrata PC CEO Ivan Glasenberg argued that executives who start to focus on family and hobbies will find themselves undercut and replaced by ones who don’t.

It’s easy to dismiss these attitudes as outdated, macho, and unreasonable. But it’s possible that people seeking work-life balance are just avoiding finding a way to work extremely hard and be very happy about it.

Marty Nemko, a career coach, author, columnist, and radio host, argues that the most successful and contented people prefer a heavily work-centric life over work-life balance.

“The real winners of the world, the people that are the most productive, think that this notion of work-life balance is grossly overrated,” Nemko told Business Insider. “Most of the highly successful and not-burned out people I know work single-mindendly towards a goal they think is important, whether it’s developing a new piece of software, inventing something, or a cardiologist who’s seeing patients on nights and weekends instead of playing Monopoly with his kids on the weekend…”

He argues that many people who champion work-life balance aren’t overworked, but are using the term as a politically correct tool, a smokescreen for the desire to not do work.

So rather than focusing on work-life balance, focus on being in the moment, on giving everything at work instead of imagining relaxing at home on the weekend. If you can’t bring yourself to work 70 hours occasionally or it feels like torture, then you’re probably at the wrong job.

Even startup founders, known for working incredible hours under a lot of stress, shouldn’t blame burnout on a lack of work-life balance.

“Don’t blame the hours,” Nemko says. “If somebody says they got burned out working 70 hours a week it’s because they weren’t competent enough to do the work, they hired the wrong people, or the product they were working on wasn’t good enough, and they were trying to make it work when they really shouldn’t have.”

These people are fundamentally broken as individuals. First of all, the pursuit of profit isn’t worth 70 hours a week. Most normal people would rather make a middle-class income in exchange for 40 hours per week, than be a millionaire at the expense of a 70-hour workweek. Only abnormal, socially stunted people make the latter choice, and those people shouldn’t be making public policy for the rest of us. People deserve basic human dignity. That includes a healthy respect for leisure time.

Nemko posits the entrepreneur-as-hero developing software, inventing products or saving lives as your average workaholic. But that’s not how most of the very wealthy make their money. It’s not how Jack Welch makes his money. Most of those 70-hour-a-week workaholics are extracting value (i.e., cutting jobs and wages while raising prices) from companies to boost wealthy shareholder returns, or extracting exorbitant rent-seeking charges from consumers. They’re far more likely to be Jamie Dimon or Carlos Slim than Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs.

Spending that amount of time living for a cause is another thing. I know many people who probably work a cumulative 70 hours a week among their paid and volunteer activities to make the world a better place. But even then it’s bit much for those with social and family obligations. Conservatives used to think those things were important. One wonders if they still do.

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Oh heck, let’s talk about the IRS mess too while we’re at it

by digby

I wrote about Benghazi this morning and about the AP subpoenas this afternoon, so I might as well round this day of scandal out with a post about the IRS. But let’s recap a little first, shall we?

First, I think Benghazi is a huge pile of nothingness designed to create an atmosphere of scandal which they hope will carry over to Hillary Clinton’s as yet nonexistent run in 2016. It will likely end up the same way most of these bogus Clinton scandals do. Second, the AP scandal is, on the other hand, very real and an extension of the executive overreach we saw during the Bush administration. I certainly don’t claim that Bush was better on these issues, but I did hope that the Obama administration would be more circumspect. This is a bipartisan executive, constitutional and national security problem.

So now we have this IRS scandal which, from watching Fox anyway, is the really sexy one for the wingnuts. Why?  Well, I think Josh Marshall nailed it:

Let’s assume for the moment that this plays out with some mix of poor judgment and perhaps bias at lower levels of the IRS but no direction from on high that would implicate the administration or top appointees themselves. The nature of this scandal – the government, particularly the IRS singling out and persecuting conservatives – appeals to the heart of the right-wing conspiracy-generating mindset.

If you wanted create a scandal to have maximal appeal to GOP base freakout, this is it. And it has the additional advantage of not creating the same sort of off-putting crazy as hitting other bugaboos beloved by base Republicans. It’s not about Obama’s ties to the Muslim brotherhood or his foreign birth. It’s about taxes, something everyone has an experience with and understands. And it’s at least rooted in something that’s true. Something really did happen. And it’s not good. It shouldn’t happen. It even has unexpected knock-on effects like the IRS’s supposed connection to the dreaded ‘Obamacare’.

That’s why you’re seeing Mitch McConnell go so full bore on this. He’s not particularly well-liked in his state and he’s not particularly well liked by Tea Parties or base Republicans. But now he can bang the drum on something that appeals deeply to these folks. He can now be with them cheek and jowl. And that is a very, very big deal. As can basically every other national Republican elected official. And again, all of this applies even if, as I assume, we learn that none of this stemmed from political hanky-panky from administration leaders.

It’s about taxes, the IRS and the Tea Party. We might as well put a white wig on Obama and call him King George. The excitement on the right over being “victimized” by Big Gummint this way is so palpable I’m afraid they’re going to burst a vessel.

Congress gave the IRS the nearly impossible task of deciding what constitutes “political activity”, which was ridiculous to begin with, the IRS crudely messed with the crazy Tea Party and now we’re all screwed.

Heckuva job.

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Top Secret America’s War on Whistleblowers

by digby

I just heard Judy Miller on Fox news say that the DOJ’s AP investigation doesn’t pass the smell test. And then I read this sanctimonious tale of poor John Solomon a veteran journalist who says he lost all his sources because the DOJ subpoenaed his phone records. These two are not the best reporters to be taking up the cause, I’m afraid. Solomon made his name pimping non-scandals about hair-dos and phony fundraising, almost exclusively against Democrats.  It’s not as if he’s ever blown the lid off of anything that wasn’t purely political in nature.  And Miller wasn’t exactly protecting whistleblowers in her battle with the government — she was protecting her powerful government sources who were using her to quell dissent. I’m not sure she understands the difference, but the rest of us should.

However, none of that means I am anything bit appalled by what appears to be a request for AP reporters’ phone records over a protracted period of time in what appears to be a wide-spread fishing expedition. No, it’s not the only example of this sort of thing happening over the past few years, but it may have been the most sweeping. It’s very, very ugly.

In my view, any DOJ that does this by going around the media company itself and using the telecom company is subverting the constitutional principles underlying both the first and the fourth amendment. Yes,  the courts have upheld these practices, but I don’t believe that makes it right to do so.  These first amendment issues are fundamental to our freedoms and need to be dealt with in the light of day.  If the DOJ wants to subpoena media companies it should serve them directly and then let the media companies take it through the courts if they object.

Moreover, there is a bigger issue here that is overdue for scrutiny by the American public — this War on Whistleblowers is very real. Brave New Films has documented this story in its new film by the same name.

You undoubtedly recognize Jane Mayer and Dana Priest in that trailer. Unlike John Solomon and Judith Miller they are not servants of the GOP.

Neither is this guy:

@PeteWilliamsNBC: “This administration has been more aggressive about going after leaks than any other administration.” #AMR

The press knows very well that what’s been happening is an unprecedented clampdown on whistleblowers. And in the process, they’re clamping down on the first amendment and freedom of the press. By looking at a bunch of different reporters’ phone records over the course of a two month period with no limit or boundaries  it’s not hard to imagine that they will come up with all sorts of information, political and otherwise, which compromises the freedom of the press.

This is a very dicey area and even those who believe that national security should be protected at all costs should probably be aware of the fact that we’ve “national securitized” vast swaths of government activities and created mountains of “classified” information over the past decade, most of it without any decent oversight.  We honestly have no idea about what they’re calling “national security” these days. If you follow out politics at all, you certainly have reason to be suspicious that the government has a fairly loose definition of what that might include.

If nothing else, watch this frontline documentary with Dana Priest called Top Secret America, which “traces journey from 9/11 to the Marathon bombings and investigates the secret history of the 12-year battle against terrorism.” Do we think it would be a good thing if Dana Priest had been unable to uncover the black torture sights around the globe under the Bush administration? There’s every chance that she would have been unable to do it under the Obama administration’s hardcore approach.

Here’s the first segment. You can see the rest, here:

Watch Top Secret America – 9/11 to the Boston Bombings on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Our government is now fetishizing secrecy and that is toxic to a free society. Once again, terrorism is a very real threat, but it’s not an existential threat and it does not require that we toss out all of our norms and rules in order to fight it. It’s counterproductive to say the least. We’re just doing their dirty work for them.

Update: This too, with identification of all the investigative journalists commenting in the War on Whistleblowers

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