However, where you really fall down is logic 3. The Times has said that no law was broken, has noted that carefully crafted protections were put in place for this program and has stated that the program was effective. Any positions based on arguments that these facts are not true or are trivial, is only sniping around the edges. In the final analysis, this program is a net GOOD. Therefore, getting rid of it will be a net BAD. The Times concluded that this net bad was offset by the “public interest” without elaborating how the public interest would be served by disclosure or how they balanced out the competing interests. By failing to so elaborate, their rationale can be viewed as a mere excuse. If they cannot make a convincing argument on their “public interest” position, people naturally assume some other factor was at play, and you nicely outline what those might be.

Finally, it is disingenuous (and in fact dangerous, as no one at the Times is elected) to say you put your faith in the public interest assessments of the Times over the administration. This is because the program was a product of our enitre system of government, not some lone act by Bush. The program begun with legally issued subpoenas (which SWIFT could have challenged in the judiciary if it desired) and the program had effective oversight and was disclosed to the legislative branch, so it was not some wanton disregard of the laws. On the other hand, the disclosure by the leakers was a violation of law and the publication by the Times could be a violation of law. The laws at issue were enacted, and the program was put in place, by legislators and the executive, both duly elected by voters. Thus, the will of the people (to use a cliche) is that this program could be engaged in and kept secret. What you are really saying is that our system of laws is not to be respected when you (or the Times editors) do not agree with the outcome. This can only lead to anarchy.

“The Supreme Court rules President Bush overstepped his authority with military war crimes trials for foreigners held at Guantanamo Bay in a case involving a former driver for Osama bin Laden.”

I think they’re generally liars who care far more about the success of their own pretensions to dictatorship than they do about stopping terrorists. I would also submit that I have an enormous amount of evidence to back me up on this one.

Yeah, like the fact that you’ve just been arrested for saying that. Right? Oh wait, you can’t answer because you’re in a political prison.

Bush Ignores Laws He Inks, Vexing Congress
By Laurie Kellman
Associated Press Writer

June 27 , 2006

CBN.com – WASHINGTON (AP) — A bill becomes the rule of the land when Congress passes it and the president signs it into law, right?

Not necessarily, according to the White House. A law is not binding when a president issues a separate statement saying he reserves the right to revise, interpret or disregard it on national security and constitutional grounds.

That’s the argument a Bush administration official is expected to make Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who has demanded a hearing on a practice he considers an example of the administration’s abuse of power.

“It’s a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution,” Specter said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I’m interested to hear from the administration just what research they’ve done to lead them to the conclusion that they can cherry-pick.”

Apparently, enough to challenge many more statutes passed by Congress than any other president, Specter’s committee says. The White House does not dispute that, but notes that Bush is hardly the first chief executive to issue them.

“Signing statements have long been issued by presidents, dating back to Andrew Jackson all the way through President Clinton,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Monday.

Specter’s hearing is about more than the statements. He’s been compiling a list of White House practices he bluntly says could amount to abuse of executive power – from warrantless domestic wiretapping program to sending officials to hearings who refuse to answer lawmakers’ questions.

But the session also concerns countering any influence Bush’s signing statements may have on court decisions regarding the new laws. Courts can be expected to look to the legislature for intent, not the executive, said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas., a former state judge.

“There’s less here than meets the eye,” Cornyn said. “The president is entitled to express his opinion. It’s the courts that determine what the law is.”

But Specter and his allies maintain that Bush is doing an end-run around the veto process. In his presidency’s sixth year, Bush has yet to issue a single veto that could be overridden with a two-thirds majority in each house.

Instead, he has issued hundreds of signing statements invoking his right to interpret or ignore laws on everything from whistleblower protections to how Congress oversees the Patriot Act.

“It means that the administration does not feel bound to enforce many new laws which Congress has passed,” said David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues. “This raises profound rule of law concerns. Do we have a functioning code of federal laws?”

Signing statements don’t carry the force of law, and other presidents have issued them for administrative reasons, such as instructing an agency how to put a certain law into effect. They usually are inserted quietly into the federal record.

Bush’s signing statement in March on Congress’s renewal of the Patriot Act riled Specter and others who labored for months to craft a compromise between Senate and House versions, and what the White House wanted. Reluctantly, the administration relented on its objections to new congressional oversight of the way the FBI searches for terrorists.

Bush signed the bill with much flag-waving fanfare. Then he issued a signing statement asserting his right to bypass the oversight provisions in certain circumstances.

Specter isn’t sure how much Congress can do to check the practice. “We may figure out a way to tie it to the confirmation process or budgetary matters,” he said.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

First off, I think Jeff is right to take Keller to task for his hoary invocation of the rights and privileges of the institutional press (“It’s an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press…” etc etc.) As a blogger talking to blog readers, I don’t think I need to belabor this point here (I would say, however, that while the mainstream press may not possess any fundamental legal privileges relating to the first amendment, they do possess vestigial structural advantages over bloggers, i.e., that leakers wanting to leak still call the Times, not Eschaton. This advantage may be fading but its still out there, and it’s worth keeping in mind. This is also something of a tangent, so I’ll move on.)

Second, I think Jeff is right on to criticize the argument that there was no “judgment” involved in the NYTimes decision to publish the SWIFT story “(It’s not our job to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective”) This is obviously nonsense. People — and institutions — don’t act on the basis of non-judgment. They do just the opposite. So the question becomes: on what type of “judging logic” was the judgment to publish this story made?

The way I see it, there are three possible logics that can be used to decide whether or not to publish a story like this. The first is the “logic of the market,” and sees newspapers as economic actors attempting to make a profit. This one is pretty simple: “will publishing this story get us readers, maximize our profit margins, etc?” It’s a cost-benefit calculation. The second logic sees the Times and the rest of the media as partisan actors, operating under a “political logic”: will publishing this story advance our (my) political cause?” The third logic is the “logic of the public”: “will publishing this story serve the public interest?” Its the logic that most media outlets have historically used to justify what they do, and it often fudges easily into the “we weren’t making any judgments al all” argument, as I think it does in Keller’s letter

For those who argue that the Times was operating under logic #1 (market) or #2 (political), I don’t have much to say to you, other than that I disagree. Of course, there were certainly some of those motives going on here. No one makes decisions like this in real life, just in thought experiments. Nevertheless, I’m most interested in exploring the implications of logic #3, and I think Jeff is as well: what  does the logic of the public interest tell us the Times should do in these circumstances?

Here’s where we disagree– because what we’re dealing with are two fundamentally conflicting public interests. One is the governmental interest in protecting the United States. The other is the public’s right to know. Based on the experience of this country over the past six years, I trust the Times judgement of the public interest far more than I do the current occupants of the White House. And I can’t understand why anyone else would either.

As for the leaks, there would have to be plenty of career bureaucrats who hated Bush enough from day one to leak this stuff; it wouldn’t require any kind of “flip” or betrayal. Bush didn’t perform any kind of savage gutting of national government infrastructure, despite the left’s wild, paranoid imagination.

…Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.

Not even the court-appointed psychologist?

For an insiders take on this story read this blog entry by Larry Johnson:

The inside of what, a rubber room? No thanks.

In short what was already known:

1. That we were monitoring banking transactions looking for terrorist activity
2. That we had cooperation of numerous banking institutions across the world.

What the hell is new about all this?

A bank robber knows the cops are looking for him. So what’s the harm if the newspaper tells him where not to hide?

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left
to speak up for me.

First of all, thedude shall not be considered sane:

They allowed an election to be stolen, they didn’t cover the obvious mistakes before 911 by the Gov.”

Oh, those are howlers. Keep on plugging with those moonbat conspiracy theories. That sure was a good strategy in 2004.

Now, as far as the “Everyone knew all about this anyway” meme – according to the co-chair of the 9/11 commission, they sure as hell did not:

Why SWIFT Mattered

Nevermind that even IF the terrorists weren’t paying attention, Belgium and some in London will make it their life’s mission to put a stop to the program altogether.

Congratulations to the NY Times. And congratulations to you idiot lefties for putting the final nail in the coffin that was any semblance of your sanity. Question your patriotism ? Why would I when you clearly demonstrate that you don’t know what the word means.

“Simon Davies, director of Privacy International, said the organization filed the complaints with the data protection authorities with the aim of halting what it called “illegal transfers” of private information to the United States by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications, or Swift.

The complaints were filed in the 25 EU countries, Australia, Canada, Iceland, Lichtenstein, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and the Chinese territory of Hong Kong.”

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=21266#c0242

Terrorist acts were thwarted because of this program’s existence. There are no doubt people walking around today going about their lives – that would have been killed by terrorist acts, were it not for this program.

Who and how many will die in the future because of Bill Keller’s arrogance, if this program is done for?

How can the acts of Bill Keller and the NYT not be treated as treasonous?

” there is no suggestion that the program is illegal or has been abused. And the assertion, made by the Times and other newspapers after discussions with the administration and national security experts, that exposure will not harm the program betrays a breathtaking arrogance. How do they know?”

(The last is particularly disturbing)

“We really were catching terrorists and solidly prosecuting them with this program. Therefore, plenty of them didn’t know we knew. ”

“”NYT voted for America’s law enforcement before they voted against it.”

“It’s time to boycott all thing associated with the NYT. Advertisers, web sites, newspapers that run their hit pieces etc. ”

“We spent $2,000,000,000,000 on defense in the 10 years before 9/11 and couldn’t prevent it that way. This isn’t armies in the field attacking each other.

This war relies on intelligence. Spies. Tracking the communications of the enemy to find where they are and what they are doing.

By revealing our workings, it’s comparable to announcing troop movements in a traditional war. ”

“The administration really needs to investigate how deeply the media, and the Times, has been infiltrated by enemy agents. I don’t mean just sympathizers…we know it is full of those. I mean honest to goodness agents with connections in the middle east. ”

” if taken to court the New York Times will fight disclosing its sources on the basis that ITS secrets are Important to keep, unlike the country’s secrets which are only of the type of national security and classified. ”

“the NYT was happy to ignore the ‘Eschelon’ intel gathering system during the early years of the Clinton adminstration, and ‘Carnivore’ (authorized and developed in the last years of the Clinton admin, rolled out in the first three months of the Bush admin) and other similar data-gathering programs during the Clinton administration – and particularly the Clinton’s abuse of FBI data for personal vendettas.”

(Below is an excerpt from a comment section at LGF)

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=21261_Amazing_NYT_Hypocrisy

Three days after 9/11, the New York Times published an editorial demanding financial tracking to fight terrorism, and Sweetness & Light dug it up to throw it in their lying faces:

“Organizing the hijacking of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon took significant sums of money. The cost of these plots suggests that putting Osama bin Laden and other international terrorists out of business will require more than diplomatic coalitions and military action. Washington and its allies must also disable the financial networks used by terrorists.

The Bush administration is preparing new laws to help track terrorists through their money-laundering activity and is readying an executive order freezing the assets of known terrorists. Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities. There must also must be closer coordination among America’s law enforcement, national security and financial regulatory agencies”

http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=EDSECRETPROGRAM-06-28-06

———
That’s what I was trying to get across before my 2nd cup of coffee. Apologies for being less than clear.
-j

the nytimes and administration are having a pissing match. that’s about it. and we are all taking sides in spin war.