New Administration Scandal
Presented for your delectation by the Gentleman Farmer at 6:03 AM
"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."
--Archilochus
Glenn Reynolds:
"Heh."
Barack Obama:
"Impossible to transcend."
Albert A. Gore, Jr.:"An incontinent brute."
Rev. Jeremiah Wright:"God damn the Gentleman Farmer."
Friends of GF's Sons:"Is that really your dad?"
Kickball Girl:"Keeping 'em alive until 7:45."
Hired Hand:"I think . . . we forgot the pheasant."
Alcoholic Yeti
in the
TTLB Ecosystem
Comments on "New Administration Scandal"
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Anonymous said ... (6:09 PM) :
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Anonymous said ... (8:18 PM) :
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Anonymous said ... (9:40 PM) :
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Gentleman Farmer said ... (12:49 PM) :
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Anonymous said ... (3:02 PM) :
post a commentno way could the terrorists have figured out we were tracking their finances just because the president said we were. they were as shocked as the rest of us.
Was there a point somewhere in that welter of words?
Is someone suggesting that the NYT published as a front-page, above-the-fold story (which included the word "secret" 12 times) something that everyone already knew? Was the lede "As everyone knows . . . "?
Their own correspondent reported last November that there was no such program. So it was successfully concealed from him.
It's time to us Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution.
yes, there was a point. the point was this: the terrorists, unless they are astoundingly stupid, had a very good idea that their bank accounts and financial transactions were under close scrutiny from the united states government. moreover, they had a very good idea that the united states government was not doing this in a vacuum, but rather in collaboration with foreign governments and financial institutions. the united states government itself has publicly trumpeted this fact. the shocker in the times story wasn't that we were monitoring terrorists' money. everyone already knew that. except, perhaps, for a small group of conservatives who conveniently forgot they knew that over the course of the past few weeks. the shocker of the times story was that the US gov't was monitoring the financial transactions of innocent americans, too.
of course the larger picture here is that whenever the government (any government) decides to extraordinarily expand its own powers at the expense of the rights and liberties of its citizens--and, naturally, not to mention to those same citizens that it has done so--there is not just a right, but a duty of the free press as a watchdog for civil society to inform those citizens of that fact. i apologize if my prior post was at all unclear.
It's very comforting to know that G&S has readers who know all about what terrorists know, and therefore what would (and what wouldn't) be a good idea to print in the New York Times. Nonetheless, I think I'll opt to continue to rely upon the judgment of those Government officials whose job it is to make such decisions.
So I guess we'll have to disagree: You think the NYT had a moral and patriotic obligation to print the stories that it has. I think the editors should be tried for treason and executed.
fair enough. i suppose there's no reason we can't agree to disagree.