A Word on the NYT Scandal and Press Leaks

The freedom of the press is one of the most important freedoms in our country, and indeed in the idea of democracy. It is the most independent, unadulterated, and immediate of all the checks and balances - even though it is not technically classified as such. The freedom of the press creates an uncompromising accountability for elected officials to their constituency. Indeed it is the press whose job it is to work for the public's right to know. While the government is also supposed to work for the good of the public, it must at times keep secrets. It is this fact that creates a conundrum of non-transparency to the government’s bosses in a democracy - the people. The press should not be restricted by law from revealing any information it can come to poses and prove, unless there is a clear and present danger to people's lives. In the case of the NYT releasing information on the governments banking surveillance of terrorists that danger is not definitive. However, I do believe that it is the duty and the right of the government to investigate the source of information such as this. Furthermore, I do not believe that confidential sources should be legally protected by the freedom of the press, especially in cases such as this where said sources are in clear violation of confidentiality agreements. While it is legal for the press to print the information that they have obtained, it was not legal for the holder of the information to pass it to the press. Judith Miller deserved her time in jail for not cooperating with the government and revealing her sources. In fact I believe she should have spent more time in jail.

To penalize the NYT directly for printing the information they did would be unconstitutional. The question in this case is not was it legal for them to print the information - it was. The question here is whether the editors of the NYT exercised good ethical judgement - whether they weighed the good of the country over their own political beliefs and desires to aid their political agendas by attempting to generate public discord with the current administration. The golden age of the press is long gone. Gone, possibly forever, are the great newspapermen and women of the early half of the 1900s. The men and women who downplayed and overlooked the physical ailments of FDRs polio aftermath were the type of people who were true guardians of the publics right to know. In days such as these, issues of that ilk would be misused and taken advantage of instantly. There is no more ethics in mainstream media today, then there are in campaign finance and lobbying.
There is however, another "check and balance" that can be used to hold the press accountable. It generates from the independence of the press and their need to finance themselves. Stop buying their product. Stop reading the New York Times. Exercise your right as a consumer to punish the unethical or undesirable actions you perceive in their editorship. Some university libraries have already taken this action in protest, and they are to be commended for it. The single tenet of democracy and capitalism that truly makes it great is that everyone is accountable to someone else.

In Response to Pugwash...

Pugwash said:

Hi Dude.Has the needle on your gramaphone stuck?You appear to be repeating your concerns about illegals over and over again?Let’s face it ‘Matty the Dude’, we have been down this track before and engaged in a robust debate that seemed to go round, and round…and round the houses as we both appeared to beg to differ with our polarised perspectives.So, it has surprised me that you are still beating the same drum, and aligning yourself to the public domain's ‘mainstream’ panderings. Honestly, I thought you might have investigated your ‘position’ by becoming a little more ‘read’ on the subject matter. Now, I don’t mean reading the tabloids or watching CNN (or even the BBC). And if you are going to pontificate about ‘illegals’ then at least start to do so from a position that does not entail refering to generalisations, such as ‘the people’, ‘they’, ‘the average American’, etc.“People” and “they’s” are the realities of our world, and as such are tangible human beings. And as for “the average American” – who are you including in this social collective? Perhaps you are alluding to President Bush’s ‘average American’, if so then you must be planning on purchasing a more up-to-date bible, because he seems to go about his business as if he had the authority of a ‘supreme being’ [I won’t say God because I do not believe such a manifestation exists or ever existed].I will be back to comment in the near future, but before I leave you to enjoy the summer I would like to remind you about your origins: the USA is FUNDAMENTALLY a nation of immigrants.

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First I would like to address your final posits: I understand that we are a nation of immigrants. I embrace the fact that we are a nation of immigrants. If we did not allow people to immigrate to our country we would be defiling our very own foundations. The stuck needle, however, appears to be yours. The point that you cannot get past is the difference between legal and illegal immigration. The fact is that we no longer live between 1776 and 1950. We no longer need the massive influx of population we did then in order to keep our infrastructure running, to produce workers for the industrial revolution, to farm our fields, to build our cities, and railroads. As a nation the United States has the same right as any other to pass and enforce laws restricting immigration across its borders. That is - again I must point out - not ELIMINATE immigration, but rather control it, and supervise it. It is worth pointing out that the United States has some of the most lax immigration laws in the world - more lax than those of your home country. The people I speak ill of in my writing are ILLEGAL immigrants. Those who would ignore the laws of our country as their first act of arrival. Those who would break our laws and then demand to be allowed to operate freely in our country.

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When I use the term "average American" I allude to a hardworking, law abiding citizen. One who works in an office, or a landfill. One who loves our country and loves being a part of it, and contributing back to it. When I use words like "they" or "people" I do not intend to (nor after re-reading do I believe I do) make broad sweeping generalizations. These are literary tools that allow me to reference a group of people without repeating the same adjectives over and over to qualify my point.

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Please refrain in the future from unfounded paranoid and thinly veiled assertions of racism and prejudice, because that is projection on your part, and has no place here. Just because a man does not agree with your viewpoint, and in fact holds his own ideas that might not be in the best interest of an entitlement minded minority party does not make him a racisit - as I believe is quite evident through my points.

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I will again convey my main thesis on ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION:

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Immigrants who cross our borders in violation of our nations laws should rightfully be returned to the country they came from. Immigrants who follow our immigration laws, and are granted entrance to our country should be warmly welcomed to our society. Unfortuntately, there are too many illegal immigrants already residing in our country for returning them to be realistic possibility. This is why I am not entirely opposed to some form of amnesty, although I do not know enough on the subject to put forth an adequate suggestion at this time.

Still stuck on Illegal Immigration

The truth is we are already screwed as far as illegal immigration is concerned. It has been going on unchecked for FAR too long. Long before GWB, long before Bubba, even long before Pappa Bush. It has always been a steady stream and since rumors of amnesty started flying around years ago it has become a full bore flood. The fact that so many humans are already here illegally is precisely why the far right agenda of deportation is not plausible. The average American is having a hard time stomaching the war on terror, how do you think they are going to respond when we start seeing clips every night on the news of screaming women, elders, and children, as they are rounded up and returned to Central and Southern America? It simply WILL NOT fly. They are here, and we as a country simply won't be able to live with ourselves if we just up and kick them all out. Are they lawbreakers? Yes. Do they deserve to be rewarded with citizenship for breaking our laws? No. But righting this wrong is one dirty job that nobody is going to do. This is one of those times when reality is trumping politics, and we all have to realize that IDing the ones who are here, and forcing them to pay at least a part of their dues back to society, along with increased border control to reduce the flow of those who just haven't gotten here yet - is our ONLY way of handling this crisis. Bush is being a realist, and to be honest his is the most plausible solution I have heard on the topic.

Illegal Registration Boycott!

I think I have the perfect illegal alien comparison for you. It struck me the other day as I was going over old checks I had paid out. I came across a rather large one that was written out to the Motor Vehicle Administration in Maryland. I moved to Maryland a few years ago from Pennsylvania, and brought my car with me. My car, of course, had PA plates and registration. Now me, being the procrastinator that I am, decided that I would put off registering my vehicle in MD until it was convenient for me. I knew I would eventually have to do it, but it was a hassle and as I said, I am a lazy procrastinator. So the weeks turned into months and the months into a year. Finally one day I was pulled over. The cop, realizing that my car was not registered in the state I lived in issued me a steep fine for driving an unregistered vehicle, and forced me to have my car towed home. I was not allowed to operate the vehicle until it was registered in MD.

If I had known then what I know now I would have gone on protest! I would have decried the oppression I was experiencing at the hands of the US government and its restrictive laws. I just wanted to migrate from home to work every day! What would the country do without the productivity of the millions of Americans who rely on unregistered vehicles to get to work? What if we had a boycott day where everyone with an unregistered car and all those who support unregistered cars didn’t drive on the streets or buy gas or go to car washes? We should demand that all vehicles regardless of their registration be given the inalienable right to use our highways and byways, vehicle code be damned!

Now there is some difference between my situation and that of the illegal alien. I was eventually going to pay the registration fee, wait in line, fill out my papers, take my test, whatever I had to do to make my car legal. Do you really think the millions of illegal immigrants in this country eventually plan on making that trek to the naturalization office? What is wrong with forcing these people to go through a process of “registration” to become a citizen or at least a legal alien before they can take advantage of what this country has to offer? This country has laws, and if there is one thing the United States as a sovereign country has a right to do, it is to require those people who wish to live within its borders to follow its laws. That last statement is precisely what this is all about, everything else is spin.

Although I must say that my car did NOT operate at a much better gas mileage while it was unregistered, so I wasn’t making a killing using underpriced illegal labor.

Why We Didn't Arrest Illegals at Protests

I am personally of the opinion that the decision to not arrest demonstrators at illegal immigration rallies (specifically illegal immigrants who were demonstrating) was in the long run a good idea. Simply charging in and arresting the relatively small percentage of illegal aliens (out of all our illegal aliens) is short sighted and plays into the liberal game plan.

If ICE agents in full riot gear go tearing into crowds of protestors the result is a few illegal immigrants deported with instant nonlethal martyrdom for each one of them. Images of the arrests will be seen in millions of homes and the US government looks like the big bad big brother looking to impose its will with force once again, while the illegals get to look like the poor downtrodden, oppressed, and persecuted minority which always gets the public support in the end.

Conversely what has happened is that these ridiculous demonstrations were allowed to get so big that the demonstrators have gotten over-confident. Their true colors and desires start to shine through as their egos and heads get bigger and bigger. American flags get burned, signs are waived telling legal citizens that they are in the wrong and should have to go back to Europe. Mexican flags are raised as state flags along with Old Glory are removed and/or defaced. These are the images getting into millions of homes now, and good legal citizens despise the demonstrators for it.

The truth of this situation really is that these people are trying to hold the U.S. hostage to demands they have no right to make. By standing idly by and allowing this farce to continue the US government is only giving the public a chance to see what these demonstrations really are. I think all this is evident by the obvious backlash against these demonstrations we are seeing both in action on in print (getting press coverage by God!).

Your average US conservative, who is still the majority in this country I might add, is infamously loathe to demonstrate. We prefer to quitely apply our views in vote or in dialogue, but not to flaunt and taunt and throw fits in the streets like our liberal counterparts. This tendency has definitely hurt us in relative recent history (and with ever increasing [liberal] media coverage ability), making the ear splittingly loud minority much more of a force than they should be. However, in this particular situation, by using a laissez faire approach the government allows the crybabies to be seen in their true light, and a fire has been lit under the common conservative. That fire manifests itself in voice, voice we are finally hearing.

Am I a Crazy Conspiracy Theorist?

How likely is it that the U.S. or the U.N or maybe even Isreal is/are responsible for these earthquakes in Iran? Could they actually be expolsions of underground uranium enrichment facilities or other WMD related targets eliminated by an attacking force?

I don't think it has ever been put so well.

The following actually aired on Al-Jazeera. It is by a woman named Wafa Sultan, a middle eastern athiest.



"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations. It is a clash between two opposites, between two eras. It is a clash between a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages and another mentality that belongs to the 21st century. It is a clash between civilization and backwardness, between the civilized and the primitive, between barbarity and rationality. It is a clash between freedom and oppression, between democracy and dictatorship. It is a clash between human rights, on the one hand, and the violation of these rights, on other hand. It is a clash between those who treat women like beasts, and those who treat them like human beings. What we see today is not a clash of civilizations. Civilizations do not clash, but compete.
...The Muslims are the ones who began the clash of civilizations. The Prophet of Islam said: "I was ordered to fight the people until they believe in Allah and His Messenger." When the Muslims divided the people into Muslims and non-Muslims, and called to fight the others until they believe in what they themselves believe, they started this clash, and began this war. In order to start this war, they must reexamine their Islamic books and curricula, which are full of calls for takfir and fighting the infidels.
My colleague has said that he never offends other people's beliefs. What civilization on the face of this earth allows him to call other people by names that they did not choose for themselves? Once, he calls them Ahl Al-Dhimma, another time he calls them the "People of the Book," and yet another time he compares them to apes and pigs, or he calls the Christians "those who incur Allah's wrath." Who told you that they are "People of the Book"? They are not the People of the Book, they are people of many books. All the useful scientific books that you have today are theirs, the fruit of their free and creative thinking. What gives you the right to call them "those who incur Allah's wrath," or "those who have gone astray," and then come here and say that your religion commands you to refrain from offending the beliefs of others?
...The Jews have came from the tragedy (of the Holocaust), and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror, with their work, not their crying and yelling.... 15 million people, scattered throughout the world, united and won their rights through work and knowledge. We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant...
...The Muslims have turned three Buddha statues into rubble. We have not seen a single Buddhist burn down a Mosque, kill a Muslim, or burn down an embassy. Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people, and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."



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