The Times Fights Back

From the San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco talk show host Melanie Morgan believes that Times editor Bill Keller should be jailed for treason for approving the publication.
The maximum penalty for treason is death.
"If he were to be tried and convicted of treason, yes, I would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber," Morgan, whose show airs on KSFO-AM, told The Chronicle on Wednesday. "It is about revealing classified secrets in the time of war. And the media has got to take responsibility for revealing classified information that is putting American lives at risk."

Any one who has taken 10 minutes to have an independent thought on this must finally assume that the greatest threat to our democracy and other Americans is the rabid hatefilled "I'm a better American than you" right wing. This is just another issue to turn the sheeple on advocates of open and transparent government. 5 years into the so called "war on terror" we have yet to have a debate on the best methods and use of our resources and people in keeping us safe. No debate is allowed. It's the one way policy and it is failing. Terrorism and its influence around the world is increasing not decreasing. It's time to get serious and tell the radical right to settle down.

The New York Times defends it's self with the evident common sense today. Read the full piece here.

COUNTERTERRORISM has become a source of continuing domestic and international political controversy. Much of it, like the role of the Iraq war in inspiring new terrorists, deserves analysis and debate. Increasingly, however, many of the political issues surrounding counterterrorism are formulaic, knee-jerk, disingenuous and purely partisan. The current debate about United States monitoring of transfers over the Swift international financial system strikes us as a case of over-reaction by both the Bush administration and its critics.........The International Economic Emergency Powers Act, passed in 1977, provides the president with enormous authority over financial transactions by America's enemies. International initiatives against money laundering have been under way for a decade, and have been aimed not only at terrorists but also at drug cartels, corrupt foreign officials and a host of criminal organizations.
These initiatives, combined with treaties and international agreements, should leave no one with any presumption of privacy when moving money electronically between countries. Indeed, since 2001, banks have been obliged to report even transactions entirely within the United States if there is reason to believe illegal activity is involved. Thus we find the privacy and illegality arguments wildly overblown.
So, too, however, are the Bush administration's protests that the press revelations about the financial monitoring program may tip off the terrorists. Administration officials made the same kinds of complaints about news media accounts of electronic surveillance. They want the public to believe that it had not already occurred to every terrorist on the planet that his telephone was probably monitored and his international bank transfers subject to scrutiny. How gullible does the administration take the American citizenry to be? ..........There is, of course, another possible explanation for all the outraged bloviating. It is an election year. Karl Rove has already said that if it were up to the Democrats, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would still be alive. The attacks on the press are part of a political effort by administration officials to use terrorism to divide America, and to scare their supporters to the polls again this year.

The idea that any large number of Americans would want to see other Americans killed and would in anyway intentionally aid the terrorists is dictionary definite demagoguery. If someone wants to debate motives, fine. I would be happy to talk about what our best methods and tactics should be. How important our Constitution and transparent government is or why I want our American soldiers to come home. Unfortunately the apopleptic radical right can only condemn and confuse the issue. Quite likely on purpose. The American people should reject these people as truly radical and unhinged. Let's have a real debate about terrorism and our freedom and democracy.