Smash the presses

[question everything]

UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL
Smash the presses

Bush wages battle against New York Times

June 28, 2006

(snip)

The Times and other publications, including this one, were entirely correct that the public's right to know about the bank-tracking program – which raises important questions about individual privacy and the president's powers to act without judicial oversight – outweighed the Bush administration's claim of secrecy.

As in the case of the Pentagon Papers, the broad public interest has been served by the disclosure of information that the government sought to keep classified. The news media's adversarial relationship with the government – challenging its sweeping assertions of secrecy in the name of national security – provides a healthy check on government abuses perpetrated in the dark.

We certainly don't expect President Bush and Vice President Cheney to agree with our view of the public's right to know, but we are frankly disturbed by the virulence of their attacks on a free press informing the public truthfully about what its government is doing.

In coordinated assaults, Bush called the Times' disclosure of the bank-tracking initiative “disgraceful,” and Cheney declared it made “the job of defending against further terrorist attacks more difficult. ...” The vice president's claim is credible only if you believe terrorists had absolutely no inkling, until they read it in The New York Times, that their international financial transactions were subject to government monitoring. Adding to the administration's hysteria, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, fumed that the Times should be prosecuted for espionage.

The Constitution masterfully apportions power among three branches of government and, for good measure, guarantees a free press as the government's watchdog. George Bush and Dick Cheney long have displayed their disdain for such constitutional scrutiny, but our democracy is immeasurably stronger because of it.


Find this article at:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060628/news_lz1ed28bottom.html

[Erika]

1. Get real. This news was out there already

The NYT just compiled it.

[rawtribe]

2. Big fucking secret

http://www.swift.com/