Those who forget history...

Lets talk about the New York Times today, because I heard something this morning that scared the Gerald Ford clean out of me.

To properly cover this, and to set precedent the same way that SCOTUS has, we start with Nixon. The Pentagon Papers. The New York times gets a hold of some leaked papers, saying that during Vietnam, at the height of the Cold War, the US deliberately expanded the war, countering LBJ's public policy. They begin to publish the government classified documents in '71, and Nixon gets pissed. "...people have gotta be put to the torch for this sort of thing..." and "let's get the son-of-a-bitch in jail."

After asking the Times to stop, even saying pretty-please, Nixon gets an injunction against the Times, and the case works its way through the court systems, eventually to SCOTUS on June 26th, where the Times case was merged with a case against the Washington Post.

Five days later, SCOTUS rules that the injunctions were bullshit, well, not using those words exactly, and that the government had not met the extreme burden of proof required for prior restraints. In their ruling, the justices made the following observations:

Black and Douglas-the free press is a need for a check on the government

Brennan-the documents did not qualify as any of the 3 exceptions from the freedom of expression case of Near v. Minnesota

Stewart and White-it is the executive's responsibility to ensure our nation's security by protecting its own information

Marshall-the term national security is too broad for prior restraint, and its not the court's job to create laws such as this--its Congress'

Burger, Harlan and Blackmun-the imperative of a free and unfettered press comes into collision with another imperative, the effective functioning of a complex modern government”, and the Times should have discussed the social effects of the publication of the documents.

I love my history. Its beautiful, because now, 35 years later almost to the day, the Times publishes a fairly meager story about the US monitoring financial goings-on for terrorist activity, acknowledges that the monitoring is legal, but informs the public about the secret program.

Now, I for one find no surprise at all in the secrecy behind the Bush Administrations policies towards rogue groups like Al Qaeda. And why would any republican be surprised that another secret policy leaks out? And who in this sinking ship would trust anyone with a secret policy, and not monitor him or her? They already are tapping all of our phones, so why aren't they watching their own people just as close?

Shouldn't they be listening and watching them even closer? Couldn't one of them be in with the terrorists, or willing to sell secrets to the enemy?

But they aren't, not at all. If they were going to be monitoring anyone, it should be our own people.

And instead, the Republicans in their infinite wisdom are blaming the Times, which has already been protected by the US Constitution and the Supreme Court.

Here's hoping all this ends just like Nixon did.