Through the past 4+ years, outside of Fox and some others, Obama has largely been a media darling. Netanyahu joked about an "incestuous relationship" between Obama and the media during Barry O's trip to Israel. But with this AP scandal (amongst others), I'm getting the feeling, especially after seeing Carney pelted with tough questions 30 min ago, that the overall media is opening their eyes a bit.... Thoughts?
I am a liberal, but I am outraged that the white house would secure the phone records, including private phone records of reporters. That is nixonian. Basically the reporters phone records were hacked because the reporters were writing a national security-related story about Yemen that the Obama administration did not want them to write.
If you want to stop leaks, fine, you are kind of violating your promise of more transparency but fine stop the leaks. Examining the phone records of reporters could be argued as intimidation of the press. National security excuse some actions, but freedom of the press should be a red line. This is something you would expect from dick cheney not obama.
I am a liberal, but I am outraged that the white house would secure the phone records, including private phone records of reporters. That is nixonian. Basically the reporters phone records were hacked because the reporters were writing a national security-related story about Yemen that the Obama administration did not want them to write.
If you want to stop leaks, fine, you are kind of violating your promise of more transparency but fine stop the leaks. Examining the phone records of reporters could be argued as intimidation of the press. National security excuse some actions, but freedom of the press should be a red line. This is something you would expect from dick cheney not obama.
Two points:
How does transparency apply in this case? If we had an asset who was working as double-agent with a terrorist group, it's illegal to give that information to the press or to give out information that could reveal we had an asset working as a double agent. It's information that could lead to his death. And that seems to be pretty close happened in this case, the AP story said that the CIA intercepted an underwear bomb before it got on the plane. Thus tipping off AQAP that someone was on to them, someone very close. In this case, I believe it was a man who volunteered to be a suicide bomber but was really working with Saudi intelligence. It exposed him which could put his life in risk. This is information that should remain secret and was never the type of that was discussed when talked about the administration begin more transparent. You can make several other arguments about transparency, but this ain't one of them.
You're using terms like Nixonian and hacked. However, you haven't established anything illegal has occurred. The FBI got a subpoena for these records. Unless they used a national security letter (and if they did they wouldn't have to inform the AP at all), they used a regular subpoena, which I believe has to be approved by a judge. They don't seem to have hacked anyone. They seem to have subpoenaed the phone company for certain records, similar to how they would in other criminal cases. Then they informed the affected party that they had served a subpoena. That is hardly Nixonian. This is Nixonian.
Quote:
President Nixon wanted to be rid of his longtime nemesis, columnist Jack Anderson. After all, in just the first three months of 1972, the reporter had exposed many of the administration's most embarrassing scandals: his secret receipt of cash from billionaire Howard Hughes; his fixing of a corporate donor's antitrust case; his clandestine tilt toward Pakistan in its war with India; and his sabotage of Chile's leftist leader, Salvador Allende. But to date, none of the president's efforts to stop Anderson had been successful. Not threats to file criminal charges. Not surveillance or wiretapping. Not even the president's order to smear Anderson as a homosexual. Instead, the muckraker only seemed to grow bolder and more dangerous with his every revelation.
The White House decided to launch a formal campaign against its journalistic bęte noire. “To take us off the defensive,” presidential counsel John Dean declared in a memo, the administration must start “impeaching Jack Anderson.” It was not enough just to react to each of his stories one at a time, after the fact, by “discrediting the allegations in his column,” White House Plumber E. Howard Hunt realized; rather, Nixon's men had to become proactive by portraying Anderson as unreliable before his next attack. The goal, Hunt said, was to “diminish his reputation . . . personally and professionally.”
To do so, the White House once again began trying to dig up dirt on the newsman. An informant promised “considerable derogatory information concerning Anderson,” but it proved to be a disappointment—merely pages copied from a five-year-old book. Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman dispatched investigator Jack Caulfield to interview Anderson's family and friends “under a subterfuge,” but the results were equally meager. “Neighbors of the Anderson's [ sic] advised that family was of good repute,” Caulfield wrote in a memo. Another White House private eye, Tony Ulasewicz, began “asking questions about some scam” in which Anderson's troublesome brother Gordon was supposedly involved, but once again, Nixon's men came up empty-handed.
“We examined all of the alternatives and very quickly came to the conclusion [that] the only way you're going to be able to stop him is to kill him.”
Quote:
The book relies in part on newly unearthed tapes from the National Archives that document how Nixon’s aides plotted to destroy Anderson by planting forged evidence with him and spreading false rumors about his sex life and that of one of his associates.
Feldstein also has uncovered new evidence that documents one of the more outrageous schemes of the Nixon presidency: a plot to assassinate Anderson by either putting poison in his medicine cabinet or exposing him to a “massive dose” of LSD by smearing it on the steering wheel of his car. While the aborted scheme to murder Anderson has been reported — and disputed — before, Feldstein found new corroboration: A confession before his death by ex-White House “plumber” Howard Hunt.
As Feldstein writes, the plot was the culmination of a 40-year feud that dated back to the early 1950s, when Anderson uncovered a secret slush fund that wealthy backers had set up to financially support Nixon. That discovery led to Nixon’s nationally televised “Checkers” speech, in which he vowed to keep the new cocker spaniel he had bought for his daughters. The speech was widely credited with saving Nixon from being dumped as Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate in 1952.
.....
“It would be great if we could get him on a homosexual thing,” said Haldeman....
The campaign to destroy Anderson culminated that spring in the decision to call in the White House “plumbers” — Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy. The two gumshoes put Anderson under surveillance and staked out his home. That March, Feldstein wrote, they arranged a lunch at the Hays Adams Hotel with a recently retired CIA poison doctor in which they discussed ways they could eliminate Anderson once and for all, including planting a special poison in his medicine cabinet or by putting massive doses of LSD on his steering wheel “so that he would absorb it through his skin while driving and die in a hallucination-crazed auto crash,” wrote Feldstein
......
Feldstein got new corroboration of the plot in the form of a confession from Hunt, the former CIA agent, before his death three years ago. In an interview, Hunt told Feldstein that Colson had ordered them to “locate Anderson’s home and examine it from the outside for vulnerabilities,” according to a tape Feldstein provided to NBC.
“This was high on Chuck Colson’s list of things to do,” Hunt said. “… That was when the idea of putting a drug-laden pill in a bottle that Anderson was taking medicine from. Liddy had an idea that that by wiping poison on a man’s wrist that could kill him that way.”
Hunt added “the more that Colson knew about Anderson, the more resolved he was to put an end to it by whatever means. He regarded it as a protective function in terms of the president, get rid of this thorn in his side, one way or another, with hallucinogens or not.”
Liddy in the past has confirmed that he participated in discussions to assassinate Anderson, while Colson -- who now runs a Christian ministry – has denied it.
Even by the standards of the Nixon White House, the plan to blow up Washington's preeminent think tank seemed crazy, presidential counselor John W. Dean III recalled here Monday.
But there was White House aide John Ehrlichman on the phone one day in 1971, telling Dean that "Chuck Colson wants me to firebomb the Brookings [Institution]." Describing the incident Monday to several hundred presidential history junkies at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, Dean said he was dumbfounded.
"I said, 'John, this is absolute insanity,' " he remembered. " 'People could die. This is absurd.' "
.......
Dean said Colson floated the idea as a way to retrieve documents Nixon wanted that were housed in the research center not far from the White House. Colson suggested that while firefighters were trying to douse the damage caused by a bomb, White House operatives could rush in and seize the papers.
It seemed incredible, but now that he has listened to earlier tapes, Dean said he has heard Nixon "literally pounding on his desk, saying, 'I want that break-in at the Brookings [Institution].'
Two points:
How does transparency apply in this case? If we had an asset who was working as double-agent with a terrorist group, it's illegal to give that information to the press or to give out information that could reveal we had an asset working as a double agent. It's information that could lead to his death. And that seems to be pretty close happened in this case, the AP story said that the CIA intercepted an underwear bomb before it got on the plane. Thus tipping off AQAP that someone was on to them, someone very close. In this case, I believe it was a man who volunteered to be a suicide bomber but was really working with Saudi intelligence. It exposed him which could put his life in risk. This is information that should remain secret and was never the type of that was discussed when talked about the administration begin more transparent. You can make several other arguments about transparency, but this ain't one of them.
You're using terms like Nixonian and hacked. However, you haven't established anything illegal has occurred. The FBI got a subpoena for these records. Unless they used a national security letter (and if they did they wouldn't have to inform the AP at all), they used a regular subpoena, which I believe has to be approved by a judge. They don't seem to have hacked anyone. They seem to have subpoenaed the phone company for certain records, similar to how they would in other criminal cases. Then they informed the affected party that they had served a subpoena. That is hardly Nixonian.
Not to sound too alarmed or paranoid, but it's important to understand the government isn't immune to abusing its power while going relatively unchecked. What's "illegal" or "legal", in terms of what the government is carrying out, seems murky especially in the days of the Patriot Act and indefinite detention. I heard Carney use the word "balance" alot in explaining the subpoenas, and I think most everybody would agree confidentiality of sources and maintaining security (as you explain in your first paragraph) is important, for obvious reasons. Having said that, at what point is the government overreaching? why does Holder seemed so surprised by this whole AP event (doesn't he have to sign off on it?), and can we really trust his credibility after he let the controversial Fast and Furious go on under his nose? And, whether legal or not, does this have a damaging effect on the media's perception of the current administration?
Not to sound too alarmed or paranoid, but it's important to understand the government isn't immune to abusing its power while going relatively unchecked. What's "illegal" or "legal", in terms of what the government is carrying out, seems murky especially in the days of the Patriot Act and indefinite detention. I heard Carney use the word "balance" alot in explaining the subpoenas, and I think most everybody would agree confidentiality of sources and maintaining security (as you explain in your first paragraph) is important, for obvious reasons. Having said that, at what point is the government overreaching? why does Holder seemed so surprised by this whole AP event (doesn't he have to sign off on it?), and can we really trust his credibility after he let the controversial Fast and Furious go on under his nose? And, whether legal or not, does this have a damaging effect on the media's perception of the current administration?
Holder is claiming he recused himself
Quote:
Holder said he had removed himself from the matter because of congressional testimony he had given and his dealings with the news media. He has assigned Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole to handle the phone records case.
This could be
A. the right thing to do
B. the right thing to do to cover up the nefarious shit someone is going to do on your behalf.
C. the right thing to do to avoid the political shitstorm you smell coming.
At this moment I'm leaning towards C.
Charlie Pierce at Esquire who I like lot, thinks Holder must go for the political and constitutional reasons
Quote:
And you'd have to be a toddler or a fool to believe that Eric Holder could go off on his own and take as politically volatile a step as this. But, let us take the White House at its word. Eric Holder did this by himself. He should be gone. This moment. Not only is this constitutionally abhorrent, it is politically moronic. Nobody likes the press, I will grant you that, but the administration is soft if it thinks the public distrusts the press that much.
News headlines of the past week portray an administration engulfed in potential scandal, providing opponents of President Barack Obama with plenty of ammunition to try to derail his agenda in the early months of his second term.
In case it wasn't clear before, the inspector general's report on the IRS scandal, released this afternoon, reveals just shallow and lazy the Obama/Nixon comparison truly is. Here's the key paragraph:
Quote:
We asked the Acting Commissioner, Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division; the Director, EO; and Determinations Unit personnel if the criteria were influenced by any individual or organization outside the IRS. All of these officials stated that the criteria were not influenced by any individual or organization outside the IRS. Instead, the Determinations Unit developed and implemented inappropriate criteria in part due to insufficient oversight provided by management. Specifically, only first-line management approved references to the Tea Party in the BOLO [Be on the Look Out] listing criteria before it was implemented.
This was not a White House crusade against Obama's enemies. This was a fairly mundane, bureaucratic screw-up. The only similarities between this incident and Nixon's use of the IRS as a political weapon is that both happened to involve the IRS. If that's all it takes to invite a Nixon comparison these days, then we were all acting a little "Nixonian" when we filed our income taxes last month.
As I get older and get more experienced with large organizations, it doesn't surprise me at all when top management doesn't know what lower offices were doing.
This post on lawyers, guns and money says a subpoena does not require judicial approval and that the phone records were acquired legally. He then says that legality is not the whole issue.
Quote:
The First Amendment is a floor, not a ceiling — even assuming arguendo that the subpoena was legal, this doesn’t make it an appropriate exercise of executive power. There are good reasons to spy on the activities of journalists only in cases where the public interest in the investigation is very compelling, and in such cases the investigation should be conducted on the narrowest possible grounds. Going after whistleblowers who have provided valuable information to the press (and hence the public) does not strike me as a particularly compelling public purpose, and on its face the investigation in this case strikes me as, at a minimum, overbroad. This is an important story, and a probable abuse of executive power, even if the administration did nothing illegal.
Now that he's been elected twice. They can trash him to set up the next candidate. There is no two party system. Whatever the media tells you is a storyline to fit the next move on their agenda
American politics is like wrestling in the 80s. There's still alot of dummies that think its not fake
I can't believe Holder is still in office. The media does control the outcomes of the White House. Man should've been ousted years ago after Fast and Furious.
Since Mitt Romney's tax rate and massive tax breaks were legal, you're ok with that right KevinNYC?
So you missed the post with this "This is an important story, and a probable abuse of executive power, even if the administration did nothing illegal," right? I'm assuming you did.
Is the media now turning on the Obama admin?
