Many on left Ass-backwards about Judith Miller [View All]

[cloudythescribbler]

On the left, many suggest that Miller should sing, or alternatively that she's tainted, and her case not worth championing. This is to help them remove their heads from their asses.

Judith Miller's refusal to expose sources is NOT about the specifics of this case. It is about the right of the press to protect their sources. Even if it were some hack from FOX, the issue would be the same essential one -- are we going to have the flow of information from 'unnamed' sources to the press or not.
Those who don't see this are either not authentically progressive or are authentically completely confused.

The issue is not who Miller is covering for. People are too quick to think of gangs and mafiosi taking the fall. It is unlikely she hasany information that is going to significantly change the facts on the ground. And frankly, they are ALL a bunch of worthless
bast***s, from W on down, so one more or less, replaced by another W Bush choice, won't do anything. What difference did it make when Erlichman resigned? Or Colson? It was still a corrupt
Administration, and even the VP that replaced Nixon then pardoned him.

The moral of the story is -- if the Administration is a pile of
excrement, rearranging the turds won't change things.

Now, as for Miller, the principle is not which brand of toilet paper
she is using. The issue is that the press not be compelled to
divulge sources. The particulars of this or just about any case are
less important than the fact that sources in general can be confident that they will remain anonymous, so that information about the system will be available to the public.

It's like an issue of legal precedent. The liberals on the court didn't vote through the precedent in the case that set the rule on incitement to violence as illegal speech very strictly because they LIKED the person involved (the KKK) but because the principle was important. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund didn't submit
an amicus brief in support of a plaintiff in a case against the U of Florida alleging "reverse discrimination against whites" on the issue of 11th Amendment immunity because they liked the plaintiff or even the substance of that case, but because the 11th Amendment issue (shielding state governments from 14th Amendment suits in FEDERAL court) was important, regardless of the specific context.

The Miller case is of that kind. ANY time you make a journalist reveal their sources, whether it is in the famous CBS case where the journalist in question said: "It is not that I won't comply -- I CAN'T comply", or even if it were Rush Limbaugh, that's not the issue. The issue is the state compelling the press to reveal their sources, striking in practice at the functional heart of freedom of the press in this country -- AND THAT IS A PIVOTAL ISSUE FOR THOSE OPPOSING IMPERIALISM. Don't let anyone fool you into thinking otherwise.

You can't defend democracy against imperialism nearly as effectivelywithout that freedom of the press. And that kind of a blow tofreedom of the press is an encroachment of the imperialist stateagainst citizens being able to hold them up to the light that we urgently need, and folks, things are NOT getting better in this area. In case you hadn't noticed, in the race betweeen imperialism and democracy in America AND IT IS A MULTIPLICATIVE Zero Sum Game, the imperialists are winning, and this is a crucial battle even though the NY Times, with its infatuation with globalization, may indeed themselves be wrong on many many issues.



And just as you don't have to be Jewish to like Levy's, you don't have to be a left progressive not to see the problem here. This is a basic conflict between the Tory philosophy of government (don't expose us, we'll expose you) and a Constitutionalist view (those in power need more scrutiny and accountability to the public, not less). If you are on the other side of that question, please COME OUT AND SCREAM IT.
But don't pretend that the Judith Miller case is non-progressive or not important TO progressives.