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New York Times sues Ashcroft

18:03 / 30.09.04

New York Times Sues Ashcroft

The New York Times sued Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday, seeking to block the Justice Department from obtaining records of telephone calls between two veteran journalists and their confidential sources.

The lawsuit said the Justice Department was "on the verge" of getting records as part of a probe aimed at learning the identity of government employees who may have provided information to the newspaper. It asked a judge to intervene.

The paper said the government intends to get the records, which reflect confidential communications between the journalists Philip Shenon and Judith Miller and their sources, from third parties unlikely to be interested in challenging its authority.

The lawsuit said the Justice Department has advised the Times that it plans to obtain records of all telephone calls by Shenon and Miller for 20 days in the months immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

This is frightening news (the probe, not the lawsuit). Thank heavens the Times is actually taking action against Ashcroft's insane agenda, instead of rolling over the way so much of media seems to do.

Once again, I can't understand why half the US population is okay with this administration and its aggressive methods. If we give up our civil rights and our free press in order to be safe from boogeymen, we'll be left completely defenseless against our own government, and that is NOT democracy.

Solitaire Rose as Tom Servo

03:21 / 04.10.04

The reason most of the people who support this sort of thing say so is that they believe that the news is controlled by Liberals/Democrats/Enemies, so it's OK to do anything to stop the enemy.

What I don't understand is that the Republicans control all three branches of government, most fo the TV news, and most of the radio...why are they still acting like victims? Is it the way they get their supporters to follow them into policies that actually work against them?

23:34 / 06.10.04

Right. I'm annoyed that I can't remember where I was just reading or hearing this, but to paraphrase [whatever], the fact that the Republicans, when they've got the President, control the Congress, have a majority of Justices, show about 50% of public opinion in any poll, et cetera, and can still somehow convincingly paint themselves as the underdogs shows a real evil genius. I don't know how they do it, honestly.

I see your point, and yet it's so crazy - "liberal" is an adjective describing an ideological bias, but "the Attorney General" is an executive government official! I don't care if Rush Limbaugh subpeonas the pants off the NYT or CBS or whomever he pleases, but that is not the role of government in a democracy.

In fact, recently in my (oh so futile) efforts to tell an uber-Republican friend of mine why the Bush Admin is so awful, I related this story about Ashcroft and NYT to him. His only and one response was, "And how many times have NYT journalists lied or made up stories?" I couldn't figure out how to show him that's not the point.

The government can strip away our civil rights and cut out social services and rig elections, but once we can no longer have a free press, it's over. American Democracy will be dead on that day.