I work for a volunteer fire department and when the local weekly calls I know that I am not off the record.

Many moons ago I thought I would like to be an investigative journalist, but I would end up the type they kill because I was exposing too much. I understand the “dance”, but really- the press was mentioned by the Founding Fathers for a reason – they knew that undetected and unchallenged human nature was a bad thing.

Citizens cannot make informed decisions without the information. And that is exactly what the powers to be like to hide.

I guess if I were making $5 million a year and going to swanky parties and being one of the “in” crowd, I might do what was necessary to protect my position. NOT!

My parents brought me up better than to sell out and become a whore.

Evidently, if truth be told, “Big Russ” really was not very good at parenting.

It’s a wholly pernicious situation that’s gotten worse over time. Liberation, my ass. Kick in the ass is what they need.

A liberating kick-in-the-ass sounds good to me!

It seemed to me that Fitz was VERY interested in
1) Cheney’s role,
2) the procedure and discourse of the INSTA-Declassification of the NIE and cables and other documents

There was also several sections redacted…for example relating, it seems, to some discussion about IRANIAN Counterproliferation activities. Was this redacted because it might impinge on other, future, prosecutions? Can he do this? Or does the whole transcript of the testimony have to be presented minus materialds of National Security importance?

In addition Fitz provided Libby with a lot of individuals that “appear” to have conveyed to him (or had articles) that suggested that Libby (or others) may have told them about Plame (Sanger, Evans, Pincus) but who were not brought forward as witnesses in this case.

Does that mean that Fitz actually didn’t know that Libby wasn’t their source? Or perhaps it was merely a ruse to get Libby to talk further about information that these individuals knew? It seems odd to ask him questions about reporters if, in fact, those journalists hadn’t testified that he was a source?

Perhaps these journalists weren’t necessarily needed in this prosecution on these charges? Maybe Fitz is “holding his powder” for additional charges against Libby? Or maybe Fitz is going to call these in a future trial and doesn’t want to have their testimony revealed to those he’s going to charge?

I also note that Libby’s list of potential witnesses excludes many of these. Could it be that after being queried about them at the Grand Jury that Libby’s team is afraid of putting them on the stand…that they may actually BUILD ON Fitz’s case. Maybe Fitz is playing “chicken” here?

And maybe Team Libby padded their witness list with potential witnesses like Cheney in order to have Fitz’s more limited team to have to spend time preparing for potential examinations of Defense witnesses that they never intended to call?

I can’t begin to tell you how pissed I am at YouTube right now. In the meantime, if you regulary watch PoliticsTV videos, please call YouTube at 650-343-2960 and ask them to reinstate PoliticsTV’s YouTube account. You’ll probably get a woman’s voice telling you to visit YouTube.com or leave a message. Leave a firm message.

More information at their site.

The Press can’t save us. This is a fight to liberate the Press, not destroy it. – Mickey

Very interesting thought!

What the press really needs is not liberation–they’ve grown too lazy to want that. What they really need is a kick in the ass–and that’s what’s going on now. That kick in the ass is the kind of scrutiny of what they’re writing and why they’re writing it that an occasional letter to the editor in the past could never do.

The lazy reporters don’t like it. The news outlets’ owners see news as a cash cow, and don’t like criticism, either. They have to have the support of government and its FCC to increase their profits, so, of course, they’re going to be kind to the hand that feeds them, because increasing profits is more important than fulfilling their Constitutional mandate to inform the public. This is not just my view, it’s Walter Cronkite’s, too.

It’s a wholly pernicious situation that’s gotten worse over time. Liberation, my ass. Kick in the ass is what they need.

TheOtherWA @ 7

The guy’s a decent actor….

Umm, on that, I would quote some previous critic whose name I cannot recall: “… spans the emotional range from A to B.”

I’m probably late to the party, but that was actually from a film critic re one of Kathryn Hepburn’s first movies.

Should Russert have spoken with the FBI? In my view he was justified in doing so as long as he was pretty much only revealing what HE did/or didn’t tell Libby…i.e. his own knowledge. He could have probably have said something to the effect that he wouldn’t reveal any information that Libby gave him as a source…at least until it became clear that the “source” was using him in a manner that would target a critic or even involve him in a criminal act.

But when Libby tells the FBI that it is Russert that is his source for the classified information regarding Plame, Russert becomes embroiled in the case not merely as a journalist…but as a potential criminal. In every sense Russert would have been used as a patsy if he had sheilded Libby by firmly insisting on an unlimited journalist-source shield.

Essentially anyone who speaks with a journalist could assert that it was the journalist who told them some information (rather than someone else), or even assert that they had an alibi “meeting” with the journalist, or that the journalist had information about someone else involved…and that reporter would remain silent despite the lie.

Rather than building up trust and the reliability of the press, such acts would degrade it.

When the Media argues that having to reveal what sources say will impinge on their access to sources…they should realize that true whistleblowers like Daniel Ellsberg rarely are defending established agencies that have the ability to retaliate. To think that Libby, Rove or Cheney needed the shelter of the journalist-source confidentiality to protect them from ???? strains credulity.

The Press can’t save us. This is a fight to liberate the Press, not destroy it. – Mickey

Very interesting thought!