I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand you have the constitution which gives freedom of the press...but this went far and beyond this was war time treason....if I"m not mistaken and I could very well be. On the other hand you have this arrogant newspaper who thinks there untouable and can publish classified information however it was given to them by a senator/cogressmen. I hope no one dies because of it but maybe they should spend a few days in the pokey to learn a lesson of respect for the guy with the bigger stick.

No one, of course, OTHER than those idiot "Framers" of that pesky "Constitution". Stupid First Amendment! They couldn't have tucked it back to the 12th Amendment or something so people would have forgotten about it?

Assholes.

I didn't disagree with you I'm just saying its a quaqmire.

no, in a state of real, honest to god declared war, the government can censure whatever the hell they please. But for a police action, or whatever they are calling this, they can't do that.
The fascists in the GOP are just pissed that they can't keep these secrets from us.

Can Ann Coulter just DIE already? Get her malformed cock caught in a meat grinder or something?

-TM

I'm just waiting for her to pull a Karen Carpenter.

Quagmire my ass.

This bonehead wants to shut down the whole damn paper.

Maybe he should try running for office in Turkmenistan, Eritrea, or North Korea.

I wouldn't call this issue a "quagmire," as the Mucci does (he's a nice guy, but heaven help me if I ever agree with him on anything), but it does serve as yet another example of the titanic disconnect between conservatives and rational people over the question of what constitutes "treason" as opposed to "whistleblowing."

And this is a serious question, and, for that matter, a legitimate debate. Sure, outing Valerie Plame was just part of a political smear campaign that happened to be, almost incidentally, a violation of national security - but reporting, say, the American role in Operation Condor was arguably a moral duty, even if specifically American laws weren't broken by it (I'm not so familiar with Condor as to be able to say if it was illegal on our end at the time or not - though I suspect it wasn't).

I mean, it's obvious to me that this is a politically-motivated attempt to suppress the press, and that the right-wing definition of "freedom" rarely seems to include things like civil rights, freedom of the press, the right to vote, freedom of religion, and various other inconveniences guaranteed by the Constitution (I often wonder what they do mean when they say that word - I think it has something to do with money), but actually articulating the difference between the Plame Scandal and the NSA Leak isn't necessarily easy.

Ummm, this was a program written into the USA PATRIOT act, a publicly available bill (according to one of the members of the House). The only reason that I can see this having been classified would be because they were going outside the boundries of the original intention of the program.

"To demand the censors of public measures to be given up for punishment is to renew the demand of the wolves in the fable, that the sheep should give up their dogs as hostages of the peace and confidence established between them." - Jefferson.

I much prefer that a paper publish something like this rather than say, retyping the White House's press releases. The media is supposed to be shedding light on the government's actions and opening them to public opinion - definitely not keeping a secret when the government decides something else falls within its realm of power.

what part of the 1st amendment is confusing you? you took an oath. i would recommend you review that oath (it may not still apply but if you're still in the reserves then it does), review what it was you "swore to support and defend (specifically the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments, especially the 1st in this case), and then take another look at your post. if your reading comprehension is up to par it should be readily apparent that your post and the oath you swore are inherently incompatible with each other. it would also appear that you are laboring under a misperception that we are at war. no declaration of war was ever passed nor has any such declaration been passed since 1941.

go back and try again because it is obvious that you haven't learned how this republic of ours was set up or how it is supposed to work (all efforts by the current administration to destroy said republic aside).

"our liberty depends on freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost." - thomas jefferson

"they that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - benjamin franklin

what'd i'd like to see is this generation's edward r. murrow, though he would indubitably be called a terrorist by this paranoid government.

I wonder how much financial information which is being sifted through for "safety" reasons is being used for business reasons.

I don't care how wrong that comment was, I ♥ you.

-TM

Tsk. Leave poor Coulter alone, and stick to the issue at hand. I'm undecided, and not an NYT reader, but that's my neck of the woods. As it doesn't appear to be treason in the purely legal sense, let's talk journalism and ethics, or more to the point, responsibility. What benefit does revealing the information to everyone give us, versus a more thoughtful method of 'whistle-blowing'? It seems pretty clear that revealing it will harm attempts at tracking the financial elements of some terrorist organizations. Edify me on the pressing need for this program to be public knowledge.