Heckuva job. But now he’s a made man, which apparently is a requirement to be considered ’serious’.

but it’s way harsh to assume that just because you have a job in order to eat and keep a roof over your head you’re a tool because you’re not a hero. the real culprits are the ones who call the shots, but big guns. aim there, not at the little guys.

of course, some of those little guys are wanton, eager tools, and sure, they should be scorned. but there are numbers of working reporters, just as there are numbers of working soldiers and attorneys and agents and so on who really try not to go along to get along. it’s hard. if it were easy, the heroes wouldn’t be heroes.

i’ll bet scory could weigh in here with some very enlightening insights.

But I do wonder whether the process of sweeping up journalists’ phone records is just the first step in acquiring some very complacent journalists?
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J. Edgar Hoover wielded a lot of power by getting “the goods” on people in positions of power including the press. So, what the Bush administration did regarding the NSA is not novel, just much higher technology.

MSM is probably the biggest fucking problem in the country bar none. It has been the chief facilitator of all that’s been fucked up in the last 8 years.

If the blogs and the web hadn’t come into its own, God knoww where we would be.

The 4th estate is broken. MSM is owned by the same corps that support “the vast right wing conspiracy” That was my point – you need not defend the few non-tool reporters. They know who they are.

If we’re really going to win this country back, we’ve got to have some reform in media. But then we could get into a whole cultural discussion beginning with the NILF problem. But what would be the point?

Fix media, fix the country. Big job, I hope someone does it.

“William Ockham: I wonder if the Bush administration somehow managed to quietly smear Tice so that the major news orgs won’t touch the controversy.

The Bushies have already ‘put it out there’ that Tice has some psychiatric disorders. I think it’s in his personnel file as contributing to his dismissal from NSA service. Once that seed is planted, a false second sheet could be printed up on similar letterhead, but alleging shocking (and false) disorders.

Anyone could do it with a copier and some scotch tape. Why would Cheney trouble the agencies with the job, when he could piece it together after hours in his mailroom? A quick flight to NYC, drop in at the publisher’s office. Then wave it around in Punch Sulzberger’s office with the door closed. Nothing on the record, no evidence, not even a claim that it’s authentic. Almost the perfect crime.

For instance, falsely claiming that Tice told his therapist that he fantasizes about beastiality. Or that he was arrested as a Peeping Tom outside an exclusive Girls’ School years ago, case never pressed at the school’s request for privacy and so no records kept. This second sheet never has to see the light of day twice, but if the NYT ever thinks about covering Tice’s charges, they will think twice about publishing. No editor wants to be the next Dan Rather / CBS, embarrassed in front of the entire nation that they listened to anything Tice ever said. Almost the perfect crime.

I haven’t read that section of my bible recently, but didn’t someone mention ‘beating the goats to scare the sheep’? Dan Rather as the goat, NYT as sheep. Am I surprised that it works out this way? And that we’ll never know the truth?

Miranda argues that it was his legal right and moral obligation to spy on his Democratic colleagues. When asked if he broke the rules of common courtesy by reading other people’s mail, Miranda remains on the offensive. “My parents never taught me not to read other people’s mail. They always read my mail.”

Miranda’s coup de grace, however, was the “reverse filibuster.” In a stunning display of democracy, Miranda posited that if Republicans staged a 30-hour “debate” on the Senate floor their Democratic counterparts would have to stay up with them through the night. One senator from each party would man the floor while the others slept; if the Democrat on duty fell asleep, Republicans could then sneak through a vote on judicial nominees without the necessary 60 votes for cloture. In the end, the move did not produce a single judge and Miranda was personally embarrassed when it was leaked that the filibuster had been expressly coordinated with Fox News.

http://74.125.95.132/search?q=…..#038;gl=us

Report says staffer directed memo leak

Originally published 11:46 p.m., March 4, 2004, updated 12:00 a.m., March 5, 2004
The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday released its report on the investigation into how Democratic strategy memos on blocking judicial nominees were obtained by Republican staffers and ultimately printed in The Washington Times and other publications.

The report, prepared by the Senate sergeant-at-arms, details two Republican staffers’ 18-month snooping operation into notes and internal memos written by Democratic Judiciary Committee staffers and stored on the committee’s shared computer server.

Some 4,670 documents, mostly belonging to Democratic staff, were downloaded and stored on a low-level Republican staffer’s computer, the report said. About 100 of those documents belonged to Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican.

Kevin Mitnick
spent a lot of time in a federal prison for accessing computer systems without authorization. So should every republican involved in this crime.

http://www.democraticundergrou…..322#400328