Friday, April 7th, 2006
It’s Friday father/son day today and I don’t have much time for blogging. So here is a great post from Digby for your reading pleasure:
The president pretended that he was disturbed by the leaks in the Plame case and said he wanted the perpetrator to come forward. Now we find out that he was personally authorizing the leak for political purposes. Scotty can call it “in the public interest” but everyone knows it was in the political interest of the president.The illegal NSA wiretapping program depends upon the nation placing their trust in this same president not to use this warrantless writetapping for political purposes. The fact that he authorized leaking of sensitive classified information for political purposes proves that we should not do this.
They are trying to muddy up the waters with all kinds of arguments about good leaks and bad leaks and what is and isn’t in the public interest. There are issues to be explored of whether or not the president was trying to set the record straight or lying further with the leaking of this NIE. And there are good arguments to be made about all of that. But it is this matter of trust that presents the biggest danger to them.
A reporter needs to ask the following question:
If the president was willing to authorize leaking of national security information to reporters for political purposes, why should we believe he won’t authorize warrantless wiretaps on Americans for political purposes?
