US Pressing Its Crackdown Against Leaks 213
NotSanguine writes with this quote from a NY Times article:
"The Justice Department shows no sign of rethinking its campaign to punish unauthorized disclosures to the news media, with five criminal cases so far under President Obama, compared with three under all previous presidents combined. This week, a grand jury in Virginia heard testimony in a continuing investigation of WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy group, a rare effort to prosecute those who publish secrets, rather than those who leak them. The string of cases reflects a broad belief across two administrations and in both parties in Congress that leaks have gotten out of hand, endangering intelligence agents and exposing American spying methods."
Change you can believe in. (Score:5, Informative)
"Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency" - President Barack Obama
Re:Change you can believe in. (Score:5, Informative)
"Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency" - President Barack Obama
Exactly. He asked for this, and now he wants to lock people up and throw away the key for trying to help him stay true to his own words. Nice, real nice.
Re:Change you can believe in. (Score:3, Informative)
You are aware that the Republicans refuse to fund closing GITMO, right? The President has powers, but ending Iraq and GITMO in a responsible way aren't within his ability. Yes, he could just order the military out of Iraq and to hell with the consequences and he could just order the gates at GITMO opened, and for the personnel to look the other way. Nobody in their right mind thinks that's an acceptable solution to the problem.
As long as the GOP continues to obstruct government, there's little that the President can do. The VP however, as President of the Senate, could declare the Senate to not be a continuing body, which would cut through most of the means by which the GOP has been holding things up. I'm not sure why that hasn't happened. That used to be the case, and considering how abused the filibuster has been lately, it would be a step forward. It's not like the GOP is even acting in any sort of good faith.
Re:The U.S. government is EXTREMELY corrupt. (Score:5, Informative)
Citation needed.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm [wikipedia.org]–Leach–Bliley_Act
followed by
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program [wikipedia.org]
(The proof is in the pudding. The biggest white collar crime in the history of the world was bought and paid for. And damn, what a return...)
The US government is about as uncorrupted as you're going to get.
Really? Then why is the US ranked 22nd, just above Uruguay, in the Corruption Perceptions Index [wikipedia.org]? Why has the *perceived* corruption in the US been declining steadily since the Index was created?
Corruption has always been part of US politics, but kept in check at least for appearances' sake. But since the Iran/Contra scandal, it appears that the concern over appearances has eroded. Now you have a situation where the corrupted know that there will always be one-quarter to one-third of the US population who will oppose any criticism of the US, like this AC here, so all the kleptocrats have to do is wrap themselves in a flag and cheer "GO USA!" and they have an automatic voting block that will also faithfully defend them in public forums from Meet the Press to /b/.
Corruption is happening here because of the belief by so many that, "it can't happen here!"