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Saturday, September 23, 2006

Okay, Charlie, I Can Forgive You For The "Encarnacion" Thing

Bravo:
Lance Williams: Well, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will be asked to intervene. It starts with a three judge panel. I don’t think that they will take it up before the first of the year, so I’ll... I’m just trying to. You know, trying to compartmentalize this and get back to doing stories. And, uh. And, uh. Hope for the best that the appeals court level. The other thing going on, you know, Congress is considering a shield law. There were hearings in the Senate just the other day that would under some circumstances let reporters protect their confidential sources. I mean the situation we’re in now. The government is said that the state of the law is that they can make a reporter into a witness whenever they want and their going to exercise that right. So, we do have a rash of subpoenas around the country to lots of reports. You know for us to have an independent press, we got to sort this out. Perhaps Congress will intervene and help other reporters in the future. I don’t know if it would help us or not. We are so eager for this to occur just because... Shucks, this is costing First Corporation a fortune and you just can’t go through this every time you do a story that the U.S. Attorneys Office decide is interesting. You know, what I mean?

Charley Steiner: Some of the most important stories of our time are as the result of leaks. Whether it’s the Pentagon Papers. Whether it was Watergate. You name it. This is the price of doing business it seems to me of living in what we are told is a democracy.

That right there makes up for all the "Juan Enkuh-nar-see-on" mispronounciations he's ever had on-mike.

Comments:
There's a difference between reporting information about a crime and witnessing a crime. Leaking GJ testimony is a crime, and these guys witnessed it. Not even priests and lawyers can avoid testifying about crimes they've witnessed. These guys deserve to sit in jail until they agree to testify.
 
In a world in which George W. Bush can torture people in secret dungeons in faraway countries, I don't even have to think about which side I'm taking.
 
Unlike Watergate and the Pentagon papers, we have employees of a giant media company protecting government employees who broke the law in leaking protected testimony.

The leaks were designed to strengthen an absurdly weak government case that carries longterm implication about what any citizen can do with their bodies.

But hey, nobody is a hundred percent libertarian, so I forgive you, Rob, yeah Bush is the devil as we happily let the nanny state replace him in two years.

The government assited adding to the bottom line of corporate America as it added to its appearance of omnipotence and power over how the citizenry conducts itself in private.
 
In a world in which George W. Bush can torture people in secret dungeons in faraway countries, I don't even have to think about which side I'm taking.

Umm, Rob, what the hell are you talking about? What does punishing reporters for refusing to testify about a crime they've witnessed have to do with the administration's position on torture? I'm not clear on what "sides" you see here.

This isn't government vs. reporters. Christ almight, it was most likely a government official that leaked the testimony to begin with.

This isn't whistle blowing. This isn't reporting leaked info to uncover a wrong. The fact that the grand jury was investigating was not a secret. There was no public benefit to the information becoming public, other than entertainment and rumor mongering. I don't find that particular justification very compelling.
 

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