June, 2013 archive

The Tampa socialite who unwittingly triggered an investigation that ended the careers of CIA director David Petraeus and former Central Command leader Gen. John Allen asserted Monday in a lawsuit that the federal government violated her privacy.

The suit is likely a non-starter, as Petraeus was CIA director and national security and all that.

But it promises two things: providing lots of comic relief and not ending well.

The other certainty is that it’s more of what Dick Destiny calls the “culture of lickspittle.”

Llewellyn King has qualms about the proposal for a “shield law” to enable reporters to protect their sources.

No, he’s not concerned that such a shield law would protect the guilty, but, rather, that it would jeopardize the innocent. A snippet (emphasis added):

That is why, although I begin like any old war horse by kicking at my stall when the government goes after reporters, I would urge those now supporting a federal shield law, known as the Free Flow of Information Act of 2013, to think carefully. I don’t think it will work, and I think it will create large loopholes around the sensitive issue of national security. That is what sets a federal law apart from those on the books in the states.

Once there is a law, common decency, societal values and tradition are abandoned. Clever prosecutors see laws not as barriers but opportunities. One fears that the law rather than supporting the broad protections of the First Amendment could, in fact, detract from them.

The basic tenet of the proposed law is to require judicial review before the mastiffs of government begin their sniffing. Their (sic. from context, the mastiffs of government–ed.) goal is always to root out the source of the reporter’s information and to punish, and possibly destroy, that person.

I don’t know whether I agree with him, but my years of observing political news leads me to agree wholeheartedly with the last sentence–the one in bold.

When the government expresses “national security concerns” as regards news, it’s frequently newspeak for “personal and political embarrassment concerns.”

Melissa Harris Perry rounds up the stupid.

Michael Smerconish, himself a representative of shrinking tribe, that of sane conservatives, thinks that Michelle Bachmann is more than a representative.

He thinks she’s a representative representative. A nugget:

Bachmann epitomizes what the Congress has become: polarized, pugilistic, and pernicious. She leaves with no legislative accomplishments, unless one considers obstructionism an achievement.

The Richmonder.

Jon Tevlin will miss Michelle Bachmann. He laments the triumph of her opponent.

A nugget (emphasis added):

It’s not that Bachmann hasn’t tried. Her Light Bulb Freedom of Choice Act, a plank of her short but dazzling presidential bid, fell victim to the same assassin as all of her grand schemes and big ideas: the pesky but persistent fact.

Facts have plagued Bachmann like a flesh-eating virus, nibbling away at her statements with reckless abandon, making short work of the skeleton of her ideas.