Airing
Gonzales' Dirty Laundry By Bill Boyarsky, Truthdig A look at one of the real reasons eight U.S.
attorneys were fired -- the Republican effort to stop voter registration
campaigns in poor neighborhoods.
Read more »
A free press is an inviolable American right.
Certainly a journalist might be prosecuted for espionage, but revealing that
our leaders are breaking the law, torturing people, committing murder,
wiretapping American citizens, exporting prisoners to be tortured, and lying
about intelligence to start wars... has nothing to do with espionage.
Letting the people know what crimes are being
committed is the right thing to do.
Do not get fooled again. tmf
George Bush's right-hand man at the Justice
Department,
Alberto Gonzales,
just resigned
But this resignation is not good enough. These lawbreakers must pay
for their crimes.
Our reputation, credibility, honor, and future... depend on it.
Ex-Aide Rejects Gonzales Stand Over DismissalsBy DAVID JOHNSTON and ERIC LIPTON
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales had been consulted regularly about
firing U.S. attorneys, his former chief of staff testified.
"I don’t think the
attorney general’s statement that he was not involved in any discussions
about U.S. attorney removals is accurate."
D. KYLE SAMPSON, former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R.
Gonzales.
A Sudden Taste for the Law
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's threat to prosecute The Times for
revealing President Bush's domestic spying program is bizarre for two
reasons.
“Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the
press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
government for a redress of grievances.”
Prosecuting journalists as spies for telling the
truth
is part of an effort to keep the public and Congress in the dark
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Americans weren't supposed to find out that the federal
government is monitoring their calls. The Bush administration's surveillance
programs, which may violate federal laws and basic Fourth Amendment rights,
were supposed to remain secret -- not just from the public, but also from
Congress and the courts.
The public found out anyway, because the press learned about
these programs and reported them. Now Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says
journalists could be criminally prosecuted for this kind of reporting.
Though journalists are the direct targets here, the real
victims in this campaign to intimidate the press are American citizens
themselves. With the press under siege and Congress stuck in the dark,
citizens will struggle to keep tabs on an increasingly secretive and
unaccountable executive branch.
In recent months, the press has published numerous accounts,
based on leaked information, of secret surveillance programs. For example,
The New York Times broke the news about the warrantless monitoring of
international calls. USA Today uncovered the federal government's massive
database of domestic telephone records.
This information seemed to surprise Congress, which is
supposed to be a check on the power of the executive branch. As Senate
Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., told the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette recently, "This committee gets a lot of its leads on what we
read about in the paper. There's a lot more oversight provided by the press
than there is by the Judiciary Committee."
The news accounts infuriated the Bush administration, which
rushed to hunt down the "leakers." Gonzales has signaled his willingness to
go after journalists who publish information that his boss would prefer to
keep secret. ...
There's no question the press should not publish material
that poses a clear and direct threat to national security. For example,
publishing unauthorized photographs of military installations could put
troops at risk.
But there's a reason why the right to a free press is
enshrined in the First Amendment: Citizens can't maintain a democracy if
they don't know what their government is doing -- whether it's monitoring
calls, operating secret prisons or worse.
Freedom of
the Press v. National
Security ”The very
notion that the United States would punish the press for
publishing government secrets seems incompatible with the most
fundamental tenets of public accountability.”
AXcess News
Not-so-free press Newsday, NY -12 hours ago
Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales has put journalists on ... for publishing
classified information, Gonzales said, "There ...
protected by the FirstAmendment right to ...
President George W. Bush and those around him have tapped
Americans' overseas phone calls and e-mail without warrants or
court oversight. They've apparently collected records of
millions of innocent Americans' domestic phone calls. They've
dumped people into off-the-books prisons around the world,
tortured the legal definition of torture to justify abusing
detainees, and even delivered prisoners into the hands of
jailers in countries known to savagely and routinely torture
those in their keeping.
What do all these unsavory actions have in common? They were all
done in secret. The public found out about them when they were
revealed by journalists. So now the administration wants to
prosecute journalists.
Freedom
of the Press Under Attack: Government Begins Tracking
...
Democracy Now, NY -May 16, 2006
ABC News reported on Monday that a senior federal law
enforcement had revealed that the government is now tracking
phone calls made by journalistsABC
News reported on Monday that a senior federal law enforcement
had revealed that the government is now tracking phone calls
made by journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post and
ABC News. We speak with Brian Ross, chief investigative reporter
at ABC News. [includes rush transcript]
On
Monday, ABC News reported the government is tracking the phone
numbers dialed from major news organizations in an effort to
root out confidential government sources that speak to
reporters. The media groups include the New York Times, the
Washington Post, and ABC News itself. Government leaks have led
to front-page stories detailing the Bush administration’s spy
program and the CIA’s network of secret prisons in Eastern
Europe. The leaks have greatly angered Bush
administration officials.
This
revelation comes on the heels of last week’s disclosure that
three of the country’s largest telecom companies handed over
millions of phone call records to help the National Security
Agency build the world’s largest database, comes a new
revelation.
Big
chill
NorthJersey.com, NJ -
8 hours ago
ATTORNEY GENERAL Alberto
Gonzales says the Bush administration respects freedom of
the press as guaranteed by the FirstAmendment.
...
ATTORNEY GENERAL Alberto Gonzales says the Bush administration
respects freedom of the press as guaranteed by the First
Amendment. But he also said some things last weekend that should
make all supporters of press freedom -- which ideally includes
all Americans -- nervous.
Mr. Gonzales said on ABC's "This Week" that he believes
journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified
information, such as the existence of the National Security
Agency's warrant-less wiretapping program.
The attorney general also said the government would track
reporters' telephone calls as part of a criminal leak
investigation.
His statements are disturbing for several reasons. First
Amendment experts say the nation's espionage laws were not
intended to pursue the press and have never been used that way.
They foresee a major chilling effect on journalistic
investigations if reporters face prosecution every time they
uncover government secrets.
Lucy Dalglish, head of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of
the Press, said prosecuting reporters would threaten "free
speech and the public's right to know what its government is up
to." As she points out, both are hallmarks of democracy.
Mr. Gonzales' statements also seem to pit national security
against press freedom. It's easy to frighten people into giving
up civil liberties if they believe they are in danger. The Bush
administration has consistently used the threat of terrorism
since 9/11 to chip away at liberties Americans should never take
for granted, such as the right to privacy.
Is it possible the White House has been embarrassed so many
times by journalistic investigations -- the secret prisons for
detained terror suspects, the NSA eavesdropping program and most
recently the massive collection of Americans' phone records --
that it feels the need to try to stem the flow of information by
making some threats?
Government Secrecy Is a Farce The Independent
Institute, CA -21
hours ago
Over the weekend, Attorney General
AlbertoGonzales made a ...Gonzales
is threatening to prosecute reporters under the 1917 ...
breech of the FirstAmendment right to ...
“In
a democracy, where the supposed rulers—the people—need the
maximum information possible to make good decisions, the amount
of information that is withheld from the public should be
minimal. And if the government cannot keep its data secret,
government officials, not journalists, should be the ones who
are prosecuted.”
Attorney General Gonzales
Voices More AntiFirst Amendment Nonsense
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales almost on a
daily basis continues to make a pretty good case
for himself why he is wholly unfit to serve as
U.S. Attorney General. Beginning with questions
coming into office about support for torture of
foreign detainees, continuing through almost
daily questions about screwball or misplaced
priorites or on the job incompetence, Gonzales
manages to value priorities that nearly no one
else does, or are politically based, or ignore
genuine public concern priorities. Gonzales is
yet another example of Bush cronyism gone
horriby wrong. Being a personal friend of Bush
is no good reason to assume that someone is
qualified enough to head a major agency such as
the U.S. Justice Department.
Gonzales is well known for a dire view of the
First Amendment and Bill Of Rights. Some might
even say he's never seen anything in the Bill Of
Rights that he even likes. Now Gonzales has
voiced a chilling new opinion that journalists
could be prosecuted for revealing information
that the government considers to be
"classified". He claims that somewhere in the
mountains and mountains of law books is some
language that allows journalists to be jailed
for printing information that could "endanger"
the "national security".
While there are clear laws that public officials
should not "out" CIA agents in a vendeta to get
even for voicing political opinions different
than that of the administration, which is the
crux of the CIA leak case that currently
embroils "Scooter" Libby and even touches Karl
Rove, it is far more questionable to hold
journalists responsible for commenting on or
presenting news to inform or to create a
national debate on vital issues.
Now
Gonzales has voiced a chilling new
opinion that journalists
could be prosecutedfor
revealing information that the
government considers to be
...
www.progressivevalues.blogspot.com/
