Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / The WaPo Risks A Victory Lap

The WaPo Risks A Victory Lap

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Giving the Obama Administration due credit for its latest service to civil liberties:

In the Byzantine realm of government record-keeping, publication of a document in the country’s biggest newspapers, including this one, does not mean declassification. Despite the release of multiple versions of the Pentagon Papers, no complete, fully unredacted text has ever been publicly disclosed.
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On Monday, the National Archives and Records Administration will change that, as it officially declassifies the papers 40 years to the day after portions were first disclosed by the New York Times. In doing so, and in making the papers available online, the Archives could provide researchers with a more holistic way of understanding a remarkable chapter of U.S. history.
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It could also bring a small measure of solace to advocates of open government frustrated by what they see as the overzealous classification of important documents. They note that tens of thousands of the classified diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks also remain classified…

Hat tip to commentor Mike Kay (True Grit) for reminding me to check a certain prominent blogger on civil liberties for his opinion on the latest news in the Drake case:

… [T]he benefit of prosecuting whistleblowers endures even if the case crumbles because (as is true for the criminal investigation of WikiLeaks) it is legally frivolous: namely, it still serves as a thuggish deterrent to future would-be whistleblowers thinking about exposing government corruption, deceit and illegality.

Reader Interactions

47Comments

  1. 1.

    DiTurno

    Are you seriously suggesting that we’re supposed to be pleased that the Obama administration declassified the Pentagon Papers, or am I missing the ironic tone? Because if it’s the former, you’re setting the bar so low that it’s on the floor.

  2. 2.

    El Cid

    Also, apparently that study a few days ago saying that 30% of employers would drop health insurance for their employees because of the ACA?

    Yeah.

    It was bullshit. And when they’re demanded to show their methodology or how they arrived at that figure, they refuse, and basically say ‘This was not intended as a factual statement.’

    Greg Sargent via the Krugg-Man:

    The other day, the consulting company McKinsey released a startling study claiming that 30 percent of employers are planning to stop giving health insurance to their workers as a result of the Affordable Care Act.
    __
    The study received a good deal of press coverage and was widely bandied about by conservative politicians and media outlets as proof that conservative warnings about the law are coming to pass.
    __
    But as a number of critics were quick to point out, McKinsey’s finding is at odds with many other studies — and the company did not release key portions of the study’s methodology, making it impossible to evaluate the study’s validity.
    __
    There’s now been a new twist in this story.
    __
    I’m told that the White House, as well as top Democrats on key House and Senate committees, have privately contacted McKinsey to ask for details on the study’s methodology.
    __
    According to an Obama administration official and a source on the House Ways and Means Committee, the company refused.

    Then Brian Buetler adds:

    …[T]he article the firm published was not intended to give the subject matter the same authoritative treatment as more thorough studies on the same topic — particularly those conducted by numerous think tanks, and the Congressional Budget Office, which came to the opposite conclusion. And that’s created a clamor within the firm at high levels to set the record straight.
    __
    “This particular survey wasn’t designed in away that would allow it to be peer review published or cited academically,” said one source familiar with the controversy…
    __
    …McKinsey is unlikely to release the survey materials because “it would be damaging to them.”

    I’m sure this will get just as much emphasis as the WE TOLDJA SO OBAMACARE GONNA TAKRJBS version.

  3. 3.

    Steve

    Not sure if we ought to consider this guy a reliable source on the Pentagon Papers… but… Daniel Ellsberg:

    Until now, the public has been able to read only the small portions of the report that you leaked. What do you think the impact of releasing all 7,000 pages might be?
    ..
    The “declassification” of the Pentagon Papers–exactly forty years late–is basically a non-event. The notion that “only small portions” of the report were released forty years ago is pure hype by the Nixon Library. Nearly all of the study–except for the negotiations volumes, which were mostly declassified over twenty years ago– became available in 1971, between the redacted (censored) Government Printing Office edition and the Senator Gravel edition put out by Beacon Press.
    ..
    It would be helpful if the publishers indicated, by brackets or different type, what was withheld earlier. But that would be very embarrassing to the Library and the government; I’ll be surprised if they do it. Most of the omissions in the GPO edition “for security”–a ridiculous claim, since their substance was nearly all available to the world in the simultaneous Gravel/Beacon Press edition–will appear arbitrary and unjustified.
    ..
    I’d really like to see someone–a journalist or an anti-secrecy NGO– compare this version in detail with the redacted white space in the 1971 GPO edition, for a measure of what the government has regarded as necessarily classified for the last forty years. And then ask: just why was most of what was released by the GPO, covering 1945 to1968, kept secret as late as 1971? Hint: it wasn’t for “national security.”
    ..
    What that comparison would newly reveal is the blatant violation of the spirit and letter of the FOIA declassification process by successive administrations (including the present one), in rejecting frequent requests by historians and journalists for complete declassification of the Papers over the years.
    ..
    But if the hype around this belated release got a new generation to read the Pentagon Papers or at least the summaries to the various volumes (my highest hope, pretty unlikely), they’d get from them as good an understanding as they could find anywhere today of our war in Afghanistan.

  4. 4.

    Corner Stone

    Hat tip to commentor Mike Kay (True Grit) for reminding me

    I didn’t know it was possible to translate random fart noises.

  5. 5.

    El Cid

    Speeding up declassification of historical documents is reversing the course of prior Republican Presidents, who despised the move to greater openness from the early 1970s.

    Credit where it’s due in Clinton’s moving to speed the release of the official archives of US foreign policy (mainly known as a series titled Foreign Relations of the United States).

    WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 — President Bill Clinton has done more than any other president to lift the veil of secrecy that shrouds much of the United States’ cold war history.
    __
    And this week’s release of some 16,000 documents detailing U.S. involvement in the later years of Augusto Pinochet’s military reign in Chile only adds to his legacy on this score.
    __
    But with his successor in doubt, so is the future of Clinton’s policy of national security sunshine. Primarily at stake are somewhere between 800 million and 1 billion documents from the bowels of Washington’s security establishment that are set to be released in Oct. 2001.
    __
    In 1995 Clinton issued an executive order requiring his intelligence agencies to allow for the de facto declassification of papers 25 years or older, so long as they did not compromise nuclear secrets, intelligence sources and methods and a host of other security concerns.
    __
    This was no small order for a military establishment that as recently as 1992 had protected a “secret” memo from 1917 outlining troop movements of European forces in World War I…
    __
    …Over the objections of the Central Intelligence Agency, which actually lobbied Congress in August to block the final release of the Chile papers, Clinton went through with his 1998 promise to open up U.S. books on black ops in Chile between 1973 and 1991.
    __
    And that step will have bold consequences in Washington and Santiago, with criminal investigations proceeding in both capitals on the crimes associated with Pinochet’s regime.
    __
    Clinton ordered the release of documents relating to the CIA’s support for unsavory military men in El Salvador. After revelations from Richard Nuccio, the State Department official that told then Rep. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., that a CIA asset in Guatemala was responsible for the murder of an U.S. citizen, Clinton released files relating to the agency’s Guatemala operations.
    __
    Clinton ordered the release of top secret memoranda from the early days of the National Reconnaissance Office — an agency so clandestine its very existence was a state secret until 1992 — that show America’s planning of the U2 spy plane missions over Russia.
    __
    “Bill Clinton will be known as the openness president when it comes to the declassification of history,” said Peter Kornbluh, the man who directed the campaign from the private National Security Archives to declassify the Pinochet papers.

    But, of course

    …[I]n the last two years [1997 when article was published] this executive order has been nibbled away by Republican-sponsored amendments tucked into the Defense Authorization bill. For example, a provision of that legislation from 1999 requires no documents may be released until a government official certifies that each one will not compromise nuclear secrets.

    Excellent historian of US foreign policy and its tie to the desires of business, David Gibbs, offers an introductory guide to finding and using declassified foreign policy records to get around a lot of the nonsense thrown out, particularly of the self-serving type.

  6. 6.

    burnspbesq

    Let’s understand the Drake thing for what it is: a garden-variety piece of bureaucratic infighting over a procurement decision. Drake was part of a faction that wanted his agency to implement Plan X. There was another faction in the agency that wanted to implement Plan Z. The proponents of Plan Z won.

    When you work for the Department of Agriculture, and you lose one of those battles, you can re-fight it in the media. When you work for the NSA, not so much.

  9. 9.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @El Cid: NPR’s Marketplace gave this story a good chunk of time last night, nothing that I heard tonight, though this may have broken too late.

  10. 10.

    Steve

    @burnspbesq: I wish you would link or provide some detail or something so that we had an option other than relying on your indisputable authority.

  11. 11.

    cat48

    Based on Ellsberg’s response; I knew that “more open Government” would never work for Obama, having worked briefly for the Feds as a Customer Service Rep. No matter what you release or when or don’t release or how; it’s ALWAYS A LOSS; criticized by everyone for different reasons. Everyone has hated the big, bad govt since St. Reagan villified it.

  14. 14.

    burnspbesq

    @Steve:

    Did you read Jane Mayer’s New Yorker article?

    P.S. My authority is only indisputable when I am speaking ex cathedra.

  15. 15.

    handy

    @El Cid:

    Don’t worry. I’m sure Bobo or some other Serious Villager will continue to trot out the McKinsey report when HCR slides back into view.

  16. 16.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Steve:

    Nope. I’d trust John Erlichmann and H.R. Haldemann, not to mention G. Gordon Liddy, before I believe a word of that Ellsburg guy.

  17. 17.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Hat tip to commentor Mike Kay (True Grit) for reminding me to check a certain prominent blogger on civil liberties for his opinion on the latest news in the Drake case:

    lolz

  18. 18.

    srv

    Ellsberg sat on his secret for years, the vast majority of KIA’s were before this date 40 years ago.

  19. 19.

    El Cid

    @srv: That’s part of his story, how he went from being a loyal and dutiful analyst and military man to understanding what his real responsibilities were.

  22. 22.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @El Cid:

    Indeed. Ellsberg was your typical “inside man” DoD bureaucrat, and his position evolved as he saw how his reports were being ignored, by the Johnson Administration, for political reasons, of the electoral, partisan, and vanilla flavors.

    In Nixonland, we learn that Nixon didn’t think The Pentagon Papers were that important, as it was a damnation of those Democrats. Then the National Security guys clued him in on the full implications, and he changed his tune in a hurry.

  23. 23.

    Dennis SGMM

    @burnspbesq:
    Is the fact that Drake’s system cost far less and that it would redact the names of people who weren’t suspect trivial to you?

  27. 27.

    MikeJ

    @srv: How long will it take from the statement that it might be dangerous in certain circumstances until idiots start yelling “OBAMA BANS PACKING PEANUTS! GLASSWARE INDUSTRY IN A PANIC!”

    I remember a year or two ago the during a flu epidemic, the French government suggested top people that they might want to minimize casual contact that could spread the disease and the BBC hed was “France bans kissing.” And that’s the BBC, generally considered by americans to be better at the whole journamalism thing.

  31. 31.

    MikeJ

    @Villago Delenda Est: Yes it is, but the government never banned it. Nobody was ever in danger of swat teams sweeping down on them and whisking them away to the bastille because of a kiss on the cheek.

    There’s a difference between “be careful about this” and “we’ll send you to prison if you do this.”

  32. 32.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @MikeJ:

    Well, you know, that’s the old Brit take on France, leftover bad vibes from Boney’s day. :P

  34. 34.

    UncertaintyVicePrincipal

    @MikeJ:

    swat teams sweeping down on them and whisking them away to the bastille

    Good thing too because otherwise they’d be locked up in either a salsa club or possibly a techno festival, these days, and no one should be subjected to that. Involuntarily at least.

  35. 35.

    UncertaintyVicePrincipal

    @Svensker:

    How do you feel about Kipling?

    If it’s trout it’s okay, doing it to a herring is kind of smelly.

  39. 39.

    Stillwater

    @DiTurno: if it’s the former, you’re setting the bar so low that it’s on the floor.

    but, dude, it’s a really thick, fat bar.

  41. 41.

    Calouste

    @El Cid:

    TPM reported that “multiple sources both within and outside the firm tell TPM the survey was not conducted using McKinsey’s typical, meticulous methodology.”

    I guess for the internal sources that means that they were upset that the survey was published before the checks had cleared.

  42. 42.

    Bobbo

    I think Glenn is wrong here. The fact that the Obama Administration has been publicly humiliated for the utter failure of its case will serve as a deterrent to any Administration’s appetite for cases that have no grounding in fact or law. And I think the word “thuggish” is just hyperbolic – you can’t make their conduct worse than it is by the strategic deployment of adjectives

  43. 43.

    Comrade Kevin

    @Bobbo: Greenwald doesn’t care about being “right” here. He’s pushing a meme, the kind of thing that, if repeated often, and loudly, enough, becomes “true”, or “truthy”, as it were.

  44. 44.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Bobbo: If the case held up, it would be dire, and if the case collapsed, it would be still be dire. Consequently, by extension, everything is always dire, and it’s never not right to be disappointed. Such is the Tao Of The Civil Libertarian.

  46. 46.

    Steeplejack

    @Svensker:

    How do you feel about Kipling?

    I don’t know–I’ve never Kippled.

    Okay, so this makes us a vaudeville team circa 1920 1910. Now what?

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