re: #228 NJDhockeyfan

There has been bipartisan agreement that leaks that affect national security should be investigated fully. Now, the GOP is going after the Administration for doing just that.

Ryan Lizza’s argument, and presumably Greenwald’s, is that the Patriot Act and other laws should be repealed as it relates to the investigation into the leaks, insulating them from the DOJ investigation into the leaks.

There are two competing issues at work here.

1) National security - there are indeed leaks that relate to national security, the operation of foreign policy, and could undermine US interests abroad.

2) the right of the public to know, via journalists doing research and digging up problems. Whistleblowers help, but so too do leakers of confidential materials.

My own preference is that the investigating and prosecution on former (1) should trump the latter (2).

The Patriot Act is current law, and as such needs to be enforced as written.

If there are problems, fix them. The GOP thinks that they can club the Administration for attempting to fix a problem brought about by the application of the Patriot Act and to deal with leaks. While they may side with the AP or Rosen for the moment, don’t think for one moment that they wouldn’t do exactly what this Administration has done if they were in charge. They would go after the leakers in the same fashion (well, assuming that they were serious about their earlier claims to see leakers prosecuted).

If they want to see journalists retain their freedom to publish these leaks, they’ll sign on to the media shield law proposals, but don’t expect that to happen either.

The GOP is simply hoping to have their cake and eat it too. They’ll kvetch and call kerfuffle after kerfuffle a scandal of Watergate perspective, ignoring that they simply have bureaucratic infighting and poor legal guidance courtesy of Congressional bumbling over the years.