READ MOREOvercriminalization, says professor Reynolds, deepens the dangers of “a dynamic in which those charged with crimes have a lot at risk, while those doing the charging have very little ‘skin in the game.’ ” With a vast menu of crimes from which to choose, prosecutors can “overcharge” a target, presenting him or her with the choice between capitulation-through-plea-bargain or a trial with a potentially severe sentence.Given the principle — which itself should be reconsidered — of prosecutorial immunity, we have a criminal justice system with too many opportunities for generating defendants, too few inhibitions on prosecutors and ongoing corrosion of the rule and morality of law. Congress, the ultimate cause of all this, has work to undo.
Yes, I know that in the way Washington works, this kind of routine disruption of normal government procedures doesn’t qualify as a Scandal! But it should. And while it’s quite proper for those concerned about good government to be outraged by the IRS story, this one is a much bigger deal, and the facts of it are plain for all to see — in fact, the people responsible are openly bragging about what they’re doing.Now that’s a scandal!
The agency said that it now has rules in place to make sure this sort of thing never happens again. How could such basic safeguards not have existed in the first place? And what are the new rules? In response to our questions, officials did not say.and the New York Times
Thankfully, it’s a safe bet that the decision on whether to answer such questions won’t rest solely with the agency for much longer.
The historical term for this kind of anxiety is “Brown Scare” — an inordinate fear of a vast far-right conspiracy, which resembles the anti-Communist panics of our past.UPDATE:
The New York Times obtained a 12-page timeline from the inspector general’s audit on Sunday. It suggests that the effort to single out Tea Party groups goes back to March 2010. . .READ MORE
The CIA’s armed drones and paramilitary forces have killed dozens of al-Qaeda leaders and thousands of its foot soldiers. But there is another mysterious organization that has killed even more of America’s enemies in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. CIA operatives have imprisoned and interrogated nearly 100 suspected terrorists in their former secret prisons around the world, but troops from this other secret organization have imprisoned and interrogated 10 times as many, holding them in jails that it alone controls in Iraq and Afghanistan.
HH: Now while that story unfolds, attention is going to be on a new book, and a new series in the Washington Post, Top Secret America: The Rise Of The New American Security State, by Dana Priest and a name I’m sure is familiar to you, William Arkin.
JB: Yeah.
HH: And it reveals operational secrets, General. What do you think of this? And what do you think of Arkin?
JB: Well, you know, I’ve had a lot of experience with Arkin. Arkin came after me, and Dana Priest has a record very similar to Arkin’s of exposing things that are very sensitive. Arkin, remember, he wrote the book Code Words. It exposed the code words of many, many very sensitive programs in our government, not just the Department of Defense. Arkin is not just anti-American, I mean anti-military, but he is very much anti-American. I think the guy is, frankly, I think he’s a hard-core Marxist. And if it was 1960, I think he’d be a leader in the Weather Underground. And Dana Priest has done similar kinds of things in exposing very sensitive programs. I can’t tell you what their agenda is other than they are very anti-American.
HH: Now I referred to Arkin earlier today as scum, because his record of attacking the military as mercenaries, and other attacks, not just on you, but I mean generally, he’s so anti-military and so anti-American, the Institute For Policy Studies, Greenpeace, he’s got this long lefty pedigree. What is the Washington Post doing, General, publishing this stuff. It’s not…there will be nutters and left wing extremists like Arkin out there. But why is the Washington Post aiding and abetting them?
JB: Well, I certainly can’t answer for the leadership of the Washington Post, but the Washington Post has a history of doing this, particularly with Dana Priest, who has been working with the Washington Post for a very long time. And I must tell you, I think this is an example of how the 1st Amendment was never intended to have an open press without some check and balance, without some accountability for what they do. And this is another example of how that can be very damaging to the nation.
HH: When a newspaper publishes the nicknames and the code names for some of the Special Operators, like Task Force Green, secret army in Northern Virginia, Task Force 11, Task Force 121, when they talk very specifically about where the new headquarters is, what the new operational command is, does that help the enemy?
JB: Of course it helps the enemy, and it also discourages the brave, young Americans that are playing by the rules, and taking some very high risks, and making a lot of sacrifices. It’s very discouraging to them, but it also encourages the enemy very much, because they see themselves being on the winning side, and they’re using our civil liberties against us. And it concerns me a great deal.
HH: Should we have released as much information as we did about the bin Laden mission?
JB: No, and it’s interesting. I was just talking to someone two days ago about that, and I will tell you that that was all a political ploy. You’re going to see a movie about it come out the 1st of October. The producers and so forth have been integrated into a number of things now with the administration. And I must tell you, this whole thing is political. It is trying to build the credibility of this president as the commander-in-chief, and as a substantial leader. And I think that it is disgraceful, because you never heard who got Saddam Hussein. You heard the 4th Infantry Division. Well, I happen to know that embedded in there, the people that really got him, was a Special Operations element. But nobody talked about who that was. There was no fanfare on that. But that wasn’t used for political purposes.
HH: I will be right back. One more segment with General, retired General William G. Jerry Boykin.
Three times the Palestinians have been offered exactly that formula, 1967 plus swaps — at Camp David 2000, Taba 2001, and the 2008 Olmert-Abbas negotiations. Every time, the Palestinians said no and walked away.Read the whole thing
And that remains their position today: The 1967 lines. Period.
Can mainstream news organizations provide fair and objective coverage of public policy when the laws in question put federal subsidies directly into their pockets? The Washington Post and CBS will have to answer that question after the Daily Caller reported today that both companies are receiving six-figure sums from ObamaCare.More conflicts of interest in ObamaCare?
Yes. Short answer. The leak to the Washington Post of the assessment by General McChrystal, the officer in charge of the war in Afghanistan, is quintessential Washington power politics and a major “go screw yourself Barack” by the person or persons who passed the paper to Bob Woodward. You do not get leaks when there is a policy consensus on an issue. There are several reasons classified or sensitive information is leaked–a policy disagreement, a desire to embarrass a principle official or a whistleblower.Will Obama Surrender Afghanistan to the Mullahs?
Here’s how Woodward started his story:
...what Obama is doing is paving a one-way street to a socialized medicine while expressly denying he is doing so -- and while accusing those who point out what he is doing of being untruthful. Some in the liberal press are helping Obama perpetrate this big lie. The coverage of his AMA speech provides a stunning example specifically related to Obama's declaration that single-payer health care systems have worked "pretty well."Read the whole thing
Alias Barack Obama: a lie is born: The greatest identity fraud in history Paperback – July 10, 2012
