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Super Mega Monkey Ultra Extreme III Alright!!!!
The first rule of holes is when you're in one, stop digging. When you're in three, bring a lot of shovels.
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When the Snowden news first broke, Josh Marshall at TPM put out an honest if surprising post where he said that he personally didn't see Bradley Manning as a whistleblower and while he's a little more on the fence about Snowden, he basically feels the same way. But it's more than that. Snowden is doing more than triggering a debate. I think it's clear he's trying to upend, damage - choose your verb - the US intelligence apparatus and policieis he opposes. The fact that what he's doing is against the law speaks for itself. I don't think anyone doubts that narrow point. But he's not just opening the thing up for debate. He's taking it upon himself to make certain things no longer possible, or much harder to do. To me that's a betrayal. In response, Daniel Ellsberg, the guy that leaked the Pentagon Papers, said "I think what he said there is stupid and mistaken and does not do him credit." Readers here won't be surprised to learn that i side with Ellsberg over Marshall here, although i think the question of whether Snowden should be prosecuted is secondary to the matter of the program that Snowden is bringing newfound attention to, which i think needs to get shut down or at least greatly reduced in scope. Today, though, TPM has an unusual story. They tried to put out what was meant to be a routine educational piece where they explain how the Senate Intel Committee provides oversight on the NSA program. It was just meant to explain to readers how the procedures work; if you want to attribute motive considering Marshall's earlier declaration of loyalties, you could view it as a propaganda piece that says to people "It's ok; your elected officials are supervising this, so you technically have control through the democratic process". But the person they reached out to for info on the article, the former General Counsel for the Committee, wound up getting gagged by the Committee and was disallowed from going on record about anything, which is really suspicious. Very strange story and worth a full read. Here's Marshall's lead-in and here's the full article. One commentor speculates: 1. The committee has perhaps taken some things at face value, assuming they had a level of understanding of the information that in fact they did not have. Now that a whole bunch of people are saying "are you sure about that?" they have realized, that they are not, in fact, sure at all. They don't want to reveal details about the process because it could lead to questions like "at a briefing on date Z, you were told something classified about program X. Did you realize that your assent meant that consequence Y would become a certainty? Anyway, just wondering if all of this in any way affected Josh Marshall's confidence or opinions in any way. (By the way if you want to torture yourself, read the comments in any TPM article about the NSA or PRISM programs. The mind-numbing "debate" between the Obama loyalists and the civil liberties-minded liberals is absolutely cringe-worthy.) By fnord12 | June 18, 2013, 2:31 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (0) | Link Actually these are pictures of some new subway construction in New York.
By fnord12 | June 17, 2013, 4:47 PM | Ummm... Other?
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And all i want to know is how long before i can make a "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?" reference? That, and Obama agreed to arm the rebels in Syria because Bill Clinton called him a wuss? Seriously?
By fnord12 | June 17, 2013, 2:40 PM | Boooooks
& Liberal Outrage
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Be back in a week!
By fnord12 | June 6, 2013, 11:27 PM | Comics
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snood [snood] -n -v to bind or confine (the hair) with a snood.
By min | June 6, 2013, 3:03 PM | Good Words | Comments (0) | Link Penny Arcade's comic and write-up today makes the new Marvel MMO game seem like some sort of surreal nightmare.
By fnord12 | June 5, 2013, 7:17 PM | Comics
& Video Games
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You'd think with all the backissues i buy, i'd have more examples of defaced comics, but the truth is most comic fans know better, so this is really rare. Ok, Nighthawk's not an iconic character.
By fnord12 | June 5, 2013, 4:46 PM | Comics
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The internet probably reached maximum saturation on Hostess ads long ago, but i can't really get enough of Ralph G. Fake.
He destroys the bill of rights! And calls Spider-Man a "soft humanitarian" for complaining about it! But i've always wondered why Legal Eagle, the Monster Eagle, would be green? I guess it's because he's a Monster Eagle? But i suspect the colorist just said "i guess that's the Vulture". I've seen this ad more times than i can count and i always have to remind myself it's not the Vulture. But that's the colorist's fault. I do have to give the colorist credit for this scene where the Eagle's feathers just melt away after he turns back into Ralph G. Fake, though.
By fnord12 | June 5, 2013, 4:20 PM | Comics
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It really is incredible how Congress can get motivated when it's about stuff that affects them personally. But it's even more amazing how talk of the free market goes right out the window, too. I kind of give the Democrats a pass on this (although i don't agree with them here). But the free market Republicans like Joe Barton that want to dictate where airline companies should fly their planes? Even if there's no ROI in having a direct flight to their home town? You gotta be kidding me. It's actually the same thing with the post office. I often bring up the fact that they legally have to overfund their pension when the issue of their solvency comes up. But there's also the fact that they have an obligation to keep post offices open, and deliver mail to, every tiny town in America. No business would do that. FedEx and UPS don't do that (they dump their stuff on the USPS). So they're criticized when they don't run their organization like a business, but they legally can't run their organization like a business. We should really be thinking about the USPS as a government service that we need to fund, not a business that has to stand on its own. The airlines, by contrast, are nominally businesses but they are stuck dealing with this nonsense. And to be fair, a lot of regulation really is required for the airline industry. Not that "fly to my hometown" is defensible. But if Congress wants to go down this path, maybe they ought to consider nationalizing the air transport industry.
By fnord12 | June 5, 2013, 2:30 PM | Liberal Outrage
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Was looking up how to spell Sienkiewicz and i found this.
By fnord12 | June 4, 2013, 8:41 PM | Comics
& TeeVee
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Uncanny X-Force #5 - Dexter Soy?! What are you doing here? But using him for the dreamscape sections works well enough. And this was good. I'm sure Storm deleting a portion of Bishop's memory will have some repercussions. And confirmation that we're dealing with the demon bear is cool, and i wouldn't even mind a better explanation for the demon bear, which is where it looks like this is going. I thought the Sienkiewicz inspired cover was a nice touch. Avenging Spider-Man #21 - From this issue it seems like OctoSpidey is collecting the Sinister Six villains because he feels responsible for them, but i'm still hoping it's to launch some sort of Sinister Six scheme. In any event, liking the writing from Octavius' perspective quite a bit. X-Men #1 - This was fantastic. Nice clear backstory (Hickman please take note), good characterization, nice scenes for everyone and fantastic art. Only hindrance is having just read a book with half these characters doing something else entirely, knowing Rogue is with the Uncanny Avengers, etc.. There's enough characters in the Marvel Universe that we shouldn't have to deal with so much overlap. Not this book's fault, of course, but it's still annoying. Indestructible Hulk #8 - This was also great in its own way. Good fun. I'd really like a more classic Hulk face - both here and Avenging Spider-Man and generally; i don't like the way he's been drawn lately. But this was a nice three-parter and i hope it's the start of seeing some more Walt Simonson at Marvel again.
By fnord12 | June 4, 2013, 8:33 PM | Comics
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By fnord12 | June 4, 2013, 9:27 AM | Comics & TeeVee & Whoodwin | Comments (1) | Link I've been meaning to blog this for weeks but i keep forgetting. We keep seeing a billboard like this on the Turnpike on our drive home on Friday nights. I didn't take the above picture; it's from this site. The first time i saw it i made a noise that made min slam on the brakes (sorry!). For anyone who doesn't know, Assata Shakur was a Black Panther that was convicted of shooting a state trooper. In the late 70s, she escaped from prison and and fled to Cuba, where she has been living for three+ decades. Shakur's story is difficult, and many people maintain that she was innocent or set up. When i saw that billboard i thought she had for some reason come back to the US and maybe even launched some new attack or something (she's 66 years old). But that's not the case. For some reason, the FBI has recently added her to the terrorist watchlist and now they are putting up billboards in New Jersey. I can't find any straight news organizations covering this. Here's the most comprehensive article i've found (note: a goddamn video will start playing as soon as you load the page). But it does seem to be an egregious and arbitrary decision to call her a terrorist and start putting up Wanted signs for her in May 2013.
By fnord12 | June 3, 2013, 3:11 PM | Liberal Outrage
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While we were out this weekend, we saw a campaign ad by Chris Christie saying that he provided "the most education funding ever". That was a bit unexpected, so i looked it up when we got home, but i can't really figure it out. The NJ Star-Ledger and Politifact have a piece on this. Politifact rates the ad "Half true" but that's because of a separate claim on merit pay for teachers that i'm less interested in. Regarding the budget claim, the article says: Wollmer agreed that in terms of dollars, the ad's claim is correct, but points out that there's more to Christie's education funding story. "But what he doesn't mention is that he cut $1.3 billion from state aid in his first year - Withholding $475 million in aid in January, which was the amount that the state's nearly 600 districts had in total surpluses for unanticipated expenses (a new roof, a bus that needed replacing, an unanticipated special ed placement), and another $820 million in the FY11 budget (which began for schools in September of 2010)," Wollmer said. "Districts cut back dramatically, and 10,000 teachers and staff were laid off, programs were cut, and class sizes increased." The state Supreme Court in 2011 also ordered Christie to increase aid to the now-former Abbott districts by about $500 million. And then: Also, Christie may have a history of slashing education funding as a way to close budget holes, but the ad's claim about the most education funding, ever, is correct. Ok, what? Forget the $1.3 billion he cut from state aid in the first year; this claim is about FY 2014. So he increased aid by $1 billion, but aid to schools only increased by $97 million. What's the rest of it for? The article doesn't say. And all of Wollmer's paragraph seems to be about an earlier budget; is any of it relevant to this discussion? By the way, Wollmer is from the New Jersey Education Association, and they are pretty clearly anti-Christie. That's understandable, but this is supposed to be a fact-checking article. The point wasn't to balance Christie's claims with claims from someone on the opposite side of the issue. A fact checking article should just be checking the facts, not giving equal time to both sides. Couldn't they have found anyone who would just objectively say "Yes, this is a larger budget than ever" or "No, it's not."? I expected this article to be looking at inflation or other technical details. Instead i got a mishmosh of details that don't add up to anything. It comes down to "Christie says this, Wollmer says that, believe what you like." Compound that with another Ledger/Politifact article rating the AFL-CIO claim that Chris Christie cut education funding by $1.6B while giving out $2B in corporate tax breaks as "Mostly True", and only mostly because Christie's education cuts were $1billion, not $1.6 billion. But wait, that was in 2010. Sussing things out further, here's an article from a different site, saying: It's not easy to tell whether this is the most generous education budget in history or one of the most egregious, given the rhetoric coming from both sides in the debate. That seems to answer some questions. The overall education budget for NJ is catching up to its 2010 levels, but the contribution from the state government is the largest ever. Right? And maybe the remainder of the $1 billion - $97 million is going to grants for construction costs? It seems like someone can get the details if they really work at it, but that fact checker article doesn't do a bit of good. By fnord12 | June 3, 2013, 2:39 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (0) | Link Talking Points Memo surprisingly (for a site focused on politics) has some nice background for what's going on in Turkey.
By fnord12 | June 3, 2013, 2:37 PM | Liberal Outrage
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I can't believe Seanbaby never covered this one. Or that i never really noticed it before. It's brilliant! It's not every day that you see references to Soren Kierkegaard in your advertisements. And i love that the solution to depression is eating unhealthy snacks. Perfect!
By fnord12 | May 31, 2013, 2:21 PM | Comics
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I loved this recent cover for FF #7... ...but didn't realize until Tom Brevoort pointed it out that that it was a tribute to John Buscema's Fantastic Four #109. I do see now that it says "Loves Buscema" under All Red (you'll never see it in this scan, ofc). I kinda want to make it a t-shirt. It would be cool to try to line the two covers up side by side, but that red bar at the bottom kinda ruins that.
By fnord12 | May 31, 2013, 1:35 PM | Comics
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I've been doing my best to ignore the "scandals" and politics generally but it's time to check in on what really matters. Compared to here and here, it looks like things are better, until you realize that where we are now is still worse than half of our post-WWII recessions, and that line is going up slowly, slowly, slowly. What's another two years for people to be out of work, right? It's not literally destroying the futures of an anyone who's graduated college in the past several years or creating a permanent class of the structurally unemployed. No need to do anything about. We'll just let it run its course and hope Europe doesn't implode.
By fnord12 | May 31, 2013, 11:15 AM | Liberal Outrage
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You gotta love this: The photo, released by McCain's office, shows McCain with a group of rebels. Among them are two men identified in the Lebanese press as Mohamed Nour and Abu Ibrahim, two of the kidnappers of the group from Lebanon. A McCain spokesman said that no one who met with McCain identified themselves by either of those names. I'm sure there's a way to work in a Madoff Schmitler joke into this but i'm having trouble. And i know it's all kind of a cheap shot. But really. Doddering old man wandering Syria, hooking up with terrorists and demanding we go to war. As Kevin Drum and Joe Klein (Klein via Drum, for me) point out, what a metaphor. By fnord12 | May 31, 2013, 11:01 AM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (0) | Link Sure, most people will just say Potemkin Village and move on, but what was that movie with Michael Keaton and Geena Davis where they bought a house near a small town except they didn't like the townees and the townees didn't like them so they convinced the townees to act like the old fashioned folks and then Keaton and Davis liked it so much they decided to stay there after all? My point is maybe the UK will decide that they actually like having nice towns and they'll drop austerity and commit some stimulus money to fixing their economy.
By fnord12 | May 31, 2013, 7:42 AM | Liberal Outrage
& Movies
& Ummm... Other?
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Really sad that this was even necessary.
By fnord12 | May 30, 2013, 2:37 PM | Ummm... Other?
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The latest Tom the Dancing Bug.
By fnord12 | May 30, 2013, 2:32 PM | Comics
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By min | May 30, 2013, 10:45 AM | Comics & Movies | Comments (0) | Link Really, that would have been my first choice over the Flintstones.
By min | May 29, 2013, 11:54 AM | Movies
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FF #7 - This book has obviously been crazy all along but with this issue, maybe because it's theoretically a more straightforward fight story, it really became apparent to me how loony it is. I love it, but it reads more like someone's crazy dream about a super-hero fight than an actual fight. I don't know if Fraction is trying to get across real themes - i know he keeps referencing Cassie Lang's death, and then there's the Wizard's ranting about a traditional family structure - but if so it's totally undermined by the surreal insanity. I love it, but it's clearly not for everyone. You can see a little debate in the comments here where someone refers to the art on this book as being "jokey hipster" and then Caleb from Every Day Is Like Wednesday jumps in to ask what the heck the guy is talking about because to Caleb's eyes this book is classic Silver Age style. I have a lot of sympathy for the "jokey hipster" guy, though. Sure, Allred is doing a Silver Age pastiche but there's an ironic twinge to it which Fraction also contributes to, and i think."jokey hipster" describes it fairly well (and i'd love a vegan cupcake, thank you). There's no way this book is meant to be taken straight. But i think it's a lot of fun, too. You have to love when the narration caption says "When suddenly--" and shows one thing which really isn't all that sudden and then a panel later "Until--" but it's not in any way something the guy in the previous panel was doing until this panel. Speaking of narration captions, though, my one complaint is still about those 4 logos they put in front of some of them. 4 Twenty Minutes Ago? Huh? Oh. Avengers: The Enemy Within #1 - I'm really annoyed by this crossover because the way Avengers Assemble has been reading, it's not even in continuity. So i dropped it to avoid giving myself a brain hemorrhage. But now we've got this crossover. My inclination would be to drop the CM book for the duration. But min wants to support Captain Marvel. So we're going to wind up getting parts 2,4,6 etc. of a storyline. Annoying. And we kinda dithered on whether or not we wanted to bookends so we ended up with this one by default. It looks like this story is a direct continuation of the plot from the CM book. The Avengers barely figured into it (well, except for Spider-Woman, but she's been a regular in the CM book anyway). Artwise, this was almost as "quirky" as De Andrade's but not nearly as good. Did not like. Storywise, i'm ambivalent. I've been enjoying this in CM. But as i've said, i'd much rather she was fighting the real Deathbird instead of an illusion or whatever. The dinosaur repeat was also a little disappointing. Anyway, i guess we'll (sort of) see where this goes, as best we can with only half the story. X-Factor #256 - Certainly an odd choice for an ending. Thunderbolts #9 - *This* ending, or cliffhanger or whatever, was a little ambiguous. But besides that i am still enjoying this and i think we're back to some decent character stuff - the focus on Flash, for example - in addition to a cool action story. Young Avengers #5 - Continues to be great great great. I was glad to see an explanation for Young Loki - i was feeling like the ending of Journey Into Mystery was being ignored but i was patient and Gillen did indeed address it. Daredevil #26 - A great reveal. Awesome sequences, great art. It's been a nice build up. It's a really good book. Iron Man #10 - Your enjoyment of this is going to be based on whether or not you accept the revisions/additions to Howard Stark's backstory. That pooch is already screwed thanks to Hickman's SHIELD series, so why not add an Ocean's Eleven heist story as well? I guess my biggest concern is showing that Jimmy Woo and Dum Dum Dugan had an adventure together since that wasn't really evident in the Steranko stories where Woo joined SHIELD. I also see that Gillen has built in some plausible deniability into this, so either it'll turn out to be a fake or at least you'll have the option to disregard it if you want to. Storywise, accepting that this is a pure flashback issue, i don't think Gillen really gave the various members of Stark's Seven enough to do after the build-up of introducing them, and it really relies on the Ocean's Eleven concept to sell it. But i still thought this was a fun issue.
By fnord12 | May 28, 2013, 11:24 AM | Comics
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By fnord12 | May 27, 2013, 9:35 PM | Comics
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So these scenes from Uncanny Avengers #6 caused a bit of a local uproar (including from me) about how catty and annoying the in-fighting was amongst the Avengers.
But it got me thinking about how inter-team disputes have been depicted in the past, and that while the above scenes are annoying, they are arguably more realistic than earlier scenes. Now, to prove my point i went through a not-at-all-comprehensive review of Avengers issues that i've covered so far in my project. And the older comics actually came out looking better than i expected. I recall the Avengers actually coming to blows a lot during their arguments, but i couldn't actually find a lot of examples of that (if this were about the Fantastic Four it'd be a different story). I've put the rest of this post below the fold to avoid a long string of images on the main page. (Also, breaking with tradition for the main blog, there's no alt text on these images.)
By fnord12 | May 24, 2013, 11:54 AM | Comics
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Full-sized X-Wing made of Legos now in Times Square.
By min | May 24, 2013, 11:29 AM | Star Wars
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By fnord12 | May 24, 2013, 9:15 AM | Ummm... Other?
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Cause there's been rioting for the last four days. I dunno why, but i find social unrest in a Nordic country to be quite odd. Mebbe cause they usually have really good social programs and a high standard of living. Mebbe cause in my imagination, it's too damn cold to want to do anything energetic. Media reports said a police station was set on fire in Stockholm's southern suburb of Rågsved, where several people were also detained. No one was hurt. What they need to do is take all these youths and enter them into a state-funded training program that prepares them for competing in the World's Strongest Man competitions (or "the Viking Show", as i like to call it). By min | May 23, 2013, 2:55 PM | Ummm... Other? | Comments (0) | Link The cicadas will be here in a few weeks, just like you always wanted. Steven Melendez, a data news developer for WNYC, said he has received reports of sightings from Flanders to Westfield, Short Hills and South Orange. WNYC partnered with RadioLab to create the Cicada Tracker map to record sightings on the East Coast. *shudder* I'm not leaving the house. By min | May 23, 2013, 2:38 PM | Science | Comments (0) | Link Previously identified Doom rhyming.
By fnord12 | May 22, 2013, 5:32 PM | Comics
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It's like a tricorder. As simple as it sounds, to use the device you simply hold it against your forehead and wait. Results are synched from Scout to your smartphone, where you can track your health over time. On a basic level, you can see that your temperature or heart rate is elevated from the norm at any given time. On a larger level, you can also see potential problems headed your way by noticing abnormalities before they become physical issues. But would it have warned me months ahead of time that i was in danger of having a back spasm? Cause that's the sort of shit i need a diagnostic report for so that i know my muscles are shriveling up and can do something about it before the injury occurs. I don't need it to tell me my temperature. I need it to tell me what the hell is with those random sharp pains in my chest. By min | May 22, 2013, 8:55 AM | Science | Comments (0) | Link NASA is funding research into making a 3-D printer for food. That's awesome. But they're going to have to program them to make the container as well as the food else it'll be really difficult to request your "tea, Earl Grey, hot".
By min | May 21, 2013, 1:56 PM | Science
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In case you had any doubts or anything. Link With a more serious expression on his face, Francis placed both hands on the man's head for 15 seconds. Clearly Pope Francis is a badass cause all it took was 15 seconds to exorcise four demons. It took Damien Karras days just to exorcise one demon, and he ends up dead. By min | May 21, 2013, 1:32 PM | Ummm... Other? | Comments (0) | Link Matt Taibbi: The war on drugs doesn't apply to banks illegally working with drug cartels. Ta-Nehisi Coates: The black vote helped Obama win the election. "Perhaps they cannot practically receive targeted policy. But surely they have earned something more than targeted scorn." Paul Krugman: Latest CBO reports show that the deficit has been reduced. Where are the celebrations? The Taibbi article is from December, but Atrios re-linked to it today in the context of this story.
By fnord12 | May 21, 2013, 10:04 AM | Liberal Outrage
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Did you know the distribution of snow and rain and humidity actually causes the earth's geographic poles to shift? Mean either!! Cause that sounds crazy, picturing the earth as this wobbly ball that has to re-center itself occasionally. Now, thanks to climate change and Greenland melting, the poles have shifted at a much faster rate than before. Guess Santa better start packing.
By min | May 20, 2013, 3:09 PM | Science
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By fnord12 | May 20, 2013, 3:06 PM | Comics
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By fnord12 | May 20, 2013, 2:46 PM | My stupid life
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Glenn Greenwald has a post up about the media finally waking up to the danger the DOJ's targeting of Wikileaks poses to them. Duh. That same "solicitation" theory, as the New York Times reported back in 2011, is the one the Obama DOJ has been using to justify its ongoing criminal investigation of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange: that because Assange solicited or encouraged Manning to leak classified information, the US government can "charge [Assange] as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them." When that theory was first disclosed, I wrote that it would enable the criminalization of investigative journalism generally. Obviously, i don't like what the DOJ did in terms of getting the AP's phone records, but it's good that the media has finally woken up to the danger they are in. I wonder if it's too damn late, though. It's certainly too late for this poor guy: New revelations emerged yesterday in the Washington Post that are perhaps the most extreme yet when it comes to the DOJ's attacks on press freedoms. It involves the prosecution of State Department adviser Stephen Kim, a naturalized citizen from South Korea who was indicted in 2009 for allegedly telling Fox News' chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen, that US intelligence believed North Korea would respond to additional UN sanctions with more nuclear tests - something Rosen then reported. Kim did not obtain unauthorized access to classified information, nor steal documents, nor sell secrets, nor pass them to an enemy of the US. Instead, the DOJ alleges that he merely communicated this innocuous information to a journalist - something done every day in Washington - and, for that, this arms expert and long-time government employee faces more than a decade in prison for "espionage". By min | May 20, 2013, 12:25 PM | Liberal Outrage | Comments (0) | Link
No need to stop here. There's plenty more SuperMegaMonkey where that came from.
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