RAGGED THOTS

In the coming months it is all but certain that more reporters will once again be called by Justice Department investigators to give up their anonymous sources. This time, instead of the case of secret agent turned cause celebre Valerie Plame, the new investigation will focus on who told the New York Times about a top-secret program to eavesdrop on calls between America and terrorists abroad.

Conservatives in particular would do themselves a favor by resisting the urge to champion this all but inevitable prosecution. It is true that the disclosure of electronic surveillance meant to detect potential sleeper cells is a graver matter than the outing of a CIA officer turned analyst whose identity was confirmed by the CIA to the reporter who broke the story. But a greater principle is at stake. If the Bush administration succeeds in making journalists a party to anti-leaking cases, then the necessary emergency conditions enacted after September 11 will become permanent and almost impossible to dismantle. Worse still, the public will not get a second and third opinion on the vital questions of whether the government still needs the extraordinary powers it now uses to defend us.

...... (interesting historical material on how the leaking law was recently expanded)....

While nearly everyone can agree that it's important that some things remain secret for the proper operation of statecraft - the nuclear launch codes, for example - the question starts to get interesting when we ask how many secrets are really necessary? Last year, the federal government made more than 15 million separate decisions to classify material. The effect of all of this secret information is to create a new class of people with proper clearances empowered by that fact alone to make more informed decisions on national security. The over-classification of information neuters not only the public's right to know about its government's foreign policy and war strategy, but its ability to even fully participate in that discussion. To support the anti-leaking prosecutions of this administration is to essentially support the notion that the government alone should be the sole arbiter of what classified information the public can know.

....(interesting defense of The Times and criticism of conservatives calling for the paper's prosecution)...

The worry of the NSA program is not that it represents an unconstitutional power grab or that it will lead inevitably to excesses of J. Edgar Hoover's domestic spying of the last century. Rather, if left unchecked by the public, the NSA and other agencies will never voluntarily relinquish its new powers and declare America to be free of sleeper cells. The incentive to warn of lurking threats is ingrained in every budget justification the intelligence community submits.

Since September 11, 2001, the president has rewarded an intelligence bureaucracy that failed America before September 11 with unprecedented authorities, and also by allotting another $14 billion to the community's $30 billion annual budget. The funding and powers of the secret bureaucracies are necessary for the prosecution of the war. But we cannot expect those prosecuting the war today to let us know when we no longer need them. For that we need a press unfettered by the threats of federal prosecutors.

# posted by Robert A. George @ 12:15 AM

There's a lot of talk among Republicans that since the Abramoff scandal involves politicians and staff on both sides of the aisle, the public will not punish the Republicans. This assertion is countered by the argument that while the public will likely see the story as one of government corruption, Congress and the White House are run by Republicans, so Republicans will pay the price. I think this is true, but I think it misses a larger point: In some rough way the public expects the party that loves big government to be pretty good at finagling government, playing with it, using it for its own ends. That's kind of what they do. They love the steamroller, of course they love the grease that makes it run. But the anti-big-government party isn't supposed to be so good at it, so enmeshed in it. The antigovernment party isn't supposed to be so good at oiling the steamroller's parts and pushing its levers. And so happy doing the oiling and pushing.

Until the mid-1990s, the K Street corridor, where Washington's top law firms and trade associations are located, was a largely Democratic domain. But the 1994 GOP takeover of the House changed that, especially after Republicans began suggesting - often not so subtly - that the big lobby shops and trade associations start hiring more Republicans or risk disappointments on Capitol Hill.
"Ninety percent of the new top hires are going to Republicans; it should be 100 percent," says Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, an antitax group. "It would be suicidal of them to go to a Democrat."

What's notable so far about this scandal is the wretchedness of the excess on display, as well as the fact that it involves self-styled "conservatives," who claimed to want to clean up Washington instead of cleaning up themselves. That some Republicans are just as corruptible as some Democrats won't surprise students of human nature. But it is an insult to the conservative voters who elected this class of Republicans and expected better.
.....

When we first wrote about Mr. DeLay's travails last March ("Smells Like Beltway"), some of our friends said we were unfair. But Republicans would be far better off now had they taken our advice to do more to distance themselves from the Abramoff taint. The prospect that Mr. DeLay might still return as leader has contributed to the GOP's recent dysfunction; he and they should move on separately.
More broadly, however, the Abramoff scandal wouldn't resonate nearly as much with the public if it didn't fit a GOP pattern of becoming cozy with Beltway mores. The party that swept to power on term limits, spending restraint and reform has become the party of incumbency, 6,371 highway-bill "earmarks," and K Street. And it's no defense to say that Democrats would do the same. Of course Democrats would, but then they've always claimed to be the party of government. If that's what voters want, they'll choose the real thing.

# posted by Robert A. George @ 7:30 AM