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Shield This

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Schumer and Feinstein are going to make sure that bad old Wikileaks isn’t covered by the shield law, which is just for journalists who play nice. Wikileaks is an internationally distributed, security-hardened network. It’s not Wikileaks that needs a shield law, it’s the MSM:

The Los Angeles Times’ editors urged Schumer, and other senators, to focus less on defining journalism than passing a shield law quickly. Otherwise, they argue, sources will increasingly provide documents to organizations that don’t require they provide their names and are more likely to publish the information unfiltered — like WikiLeaks did.

A shield law makes about as much sense as the DoD asking for its documents back.

Reader Interactions

13Comments

  1. 1.

    stuckinred

    When asked about Michael Hastings, Sebastian Junger just told Mornin Joe that the truth was always appropriate in journalism.

  2. 2.

    cleek

    so, wait… are you telling me that big business seeks to shape the law in ways which protect its business, and that Congress is agreeable to the idea ?

    i would have never imagined…

  3. 3.

    wilfred

    Tom Engelhardt has a wonderful essay up, too:

    On ABC News, for instance, in a typical “bloody hands” piece of reportage, the Secretary of Defense told interviewer Christiane Amanpour that, whatever Assange’s legal culpability might be, when it came to “moral culpability… that’s where I think the verdict is guilty on Wikileaks.” Moral culpability. From the Martian point of view, it might have been considered a curious phrase from the lips of the man responsible for the last three and a half years of two deeply destructive wars that have accomplished nothing and have been responsible for killing, wounding, or driving into exile millions of ordinary Iraqis and Afghans.

    Indeed.

    http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175282/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_out%2C_damned_spot!/

  4. 4.

    scav

    Ahhh, nostalgia. I’m remembering all the ardent cries for “Accountability!” and “Heads must roll!” and “What about the mortal danger this put all the poor, poor local contacts in!” from the Plame leak days when Novak and Libby feared for their very lives during the immediate bustle for administrative change and retribution . . . . .

    Pop Quiz: Is it Nostalgia or is it Hallucination? Only her Druggist knows for sure.

  6. 6.

    matoko_chan

    astaghfirullah i finally figured it out.
    Do you know why the “moral” pushback against wikileaks and the new focus on Evuul Islam like the Time cover of the noseless girl?
    This is why….we are going to forever war.
    That is how the GOP plans to beat the demographic timer….endless war.
    If that bill passes Netayahnu doesn’t have to wait for Palin and the neocon war pimps to get back into power…..he can put them there. As soon as we finally extricate ourselves from Af-Pak and Iraq ….Israel can launch on Iran and drag the US into WWIII.
    And the cudlips and ‘slines always vote republican in wartime.
    I couldn’t figure out why the conservative elite wasn’t working harder to shut Breitbart up like they did the birthers…..this is why….endless war on al-Islam.
    That is why Palin and Romney are burnishing their warmonger chops, and why Newt is raving about the Park51 Mosque.
    The clash of civilizations is all the conservatives have left.
    if the repubs pass that bill(which they will all vote for and demagogue the crap out of), get ready for endless war.
    The pure sane pragmatism of my beloved Magical Unity Pony looks like a pretty frail defense against the grouped aggregate of stupidity, tribalism and xenophobia that the GOP has been breeding towards for a half century.
    Allah have mercy on us all.
    :(

  7. 7.

    mbarnato

    And wasn’t the Washington Post the equivalent of “a drop box for leaked documents” back in the day of the Pentagon Papers? Deep Throat might well have given them to Wikileaks, but there was no intertubes…. Maybe we need to revise the definition of a news organization in the 21st century, particularly when newspapers are switching to digital content….

  9. 9.

    matoko_chan

    @wilfred: yeah that is in the Wikileaks too, that the Talibs have SAMs and MANPADs.
    The reason the war pimps want to suppress that is that is supposedly the major cause of sov butthurt leading to retreat….that the mujahideen were knocking down their choppers as fast as they put them up.
    note, please, this is american armament that the talibs are now using to fuck up the NATO forces.

  11. 11.

    THE

    Don’t get paranoid about war Matoko.
    The Chinese bankers and the bond vigilantes will not pay for any general expansion in militarism.

    Nothing would cause a run on the dollar faster than a serious rise in military spending at this stage.

    US policy is more constrained by hard financial facts than you think.

  12. 12.

    matoko_chan

    oh wow that is so reassuring……remind me how we got into that fucktard Bush’s little democracy implanting adventure again?
    we borrowed the fucking money from the fucking chinese.

  13. 13.

    THE

    Yes Matoko, but the ability to keep expanding is what I’m talking about.

    Since the 2008 crash the constraints are now much tighter.
    Deficits are blowing up. Sovereign debt is constrained.
    USA, Europe, UK, even Japan, face serious budgetary problems.
    Things nearly blew up in Europe this summer.
    It could still happen.

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