#3 on this list in particular had me chuckling.
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On a completely different topic, here are various articles I thought worth reading on the topic of the Obama administration obtaining the AP News phone records.
From the Guardian: Justice Department's pursuit of AP's phone records is both extreme and dangerous. The claimed legal basis for these actions is unknown, but the threats they pose to a free press and the newsgathering process are clear
From Digby: Drones, leaks and loose lips: underneath the AP scandal
From Slate: Obama’s War on Journalists. His administration’s leak investigations are outrageous and unprecedented.
From Salon.com:Absolutely outrageous: Big Brother is watching
The Justice Department's abuse of AP phone records puts the media and truth-tellers on notice: We see everything
And a Tom Tomorrow cartoon from 2 years ago: The Slow Boil
And from the New Yorker:
“Leaks related to national security can put people at risk. They can put men and women in uniform whom I’ve sent into the battlefield at risk. They can put some of our intelligence officers… at risk,” Obama said. “U.S. national security is dependent on those folks being able to operate with confidence that folks back home have their backs. So they’re not just left high and dry.” Although he then referred to balancing all that with a “democratic” process that held him “accountable,” it may be that the central problem for Obama, when it comes to questions of secrecy, is not realizing that it is sometimes the press that has the backs, as he likes to put it, of our soldiers, especially when they are sent places they shouldn’t be, for reasons that make no sense.
And from the New Yorker:
“Leaks related to national security can put people at risk. They can put men and women in uniform whom I’ve sent into the battlefield at risk. They can put some of our intelligence officers… at risk,” Obama said. “U.S. national security is dependent on those folks being able to operate with confidence that folks back home have their backs. So they’re not just left high and dry.” Although he then referred to balancing all that with a “democratic” process that held him “accountable,” it may be that the central problem for Obama, when it comes to questions of secrecy, is not realizing that it is sometimes the press that has the backs, as he likes to put it, of our soldiers, especially when they are sent places they shouldn’t be, for reasons that make no sense.
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