I'd just as soon jettison "national security." It's a misleading phrase (deliberately misleading, most of the time). Whose security are we talking about? The security of the lies we tell ourselves about our nation's "interests"?
Certainly not the security of the average American. We have all evidence we need and more about the breaches of our personal security -- privacy and safety -- by successive administrations and by corporate America. I think "national security" really means protection of those who benefit most from our system or -- to put it another way -- protection of a system that guards the interests of the top 10%. Surely the invasion of Iraq did nothing for the average American's security. On the contrary, it took the lives of many of their kids while acting as a goad to those who resented us already and who look for opportunities to plant a bomb here, start trouble there.
Leaked information about our government may be all we have left as a way of getting fragments of truth. You never know. Still, Representative Lamar Smith (a tidy little cocksucker who was once our district's representative here in gerrymandered TX), got after President Obama about leaks last year.
Smith’s letter was sent to President Obama in 2012. It complained about national security leaks that set off the very investigation which this week prompted fury over the Justice Department’s seizure of two months’ worth of telephone records from a group of Associated Press reporters.
Isn’t it odd that many Republicans who demanded a thorough investigation a year ago are now condemning the Justice Department for doing what they asked for? Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus even called on Attorney General Eric Holder to resign, saying he had “trampled on the First Amendment.”
It’s a funny thing about media leaks: They are either courageous or outrageous, depending on whether they help or hurt your political party.
Forgive me for feeling cynical and depressed about our nation’s political conversation. Scandalmania is distorting our discussion of three different issues, sweeping them into one big narrative — everything is a “narrative” these days — about the beleaguered second-term presidency of Barack Obama.
What’s being buried under a story line?
On leaks, I don’t believe that the media have unlimited immunity. But I am very pro-leak because such disclosures are often the only way citizens in a free society can find out things they need to know. ...EJDionne,WaPo
Well, exactly!
