6 ms·
Obama Takes a Hard Line Against Leaks to Press
- PinkSweater 16y agoI hope this jackass gets fucking ousted from office. Rediculous fucking tripe coming from the left these days. Liberalism is a fucking mental disease. Wake up people.
- Towle_ 16y ago"I think this administration, like every other administration, is driven to distraction by leaking,” Mr. Aftergood [the head of the FAS project on government secrecy] said. “And Congress wants a few scalps, too. On a bipartisan basis, they want these prosecutions to proceed." (my brackets and italics) Always beware bipartisan efforts when your nation's two parties distinguish between each other on the basis of identity politics, rather than ideological differences. The only efforts both parties could jointly support are either political platitudes or mutual self-preservation. Bring back the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans!
- tptacek 16y agoWhat's so hard to understand about this? Regardless of your intentions, classified information is classified information. Belief that a program is inefficient, no matter how well founded, probably does not outweigh that fact. The system simply doesn't work if everyone in it gets to exercise their own judgement about when to honor it. Sometimes, people are going to have to step outside the system. Many of those people are legitimate whistleblowers, and many of those people are patriots who are serving the good of the nation. That they're stepping outside the law and risking sanction increases the heroism of their actions. But that doesn't mean that the system itself should change.
- eli 16y agoBut embarrassing information that is plainly not a threat to national security is routinely classified and hidden. Isn't that a system that should change? I think overclassification is the real problem here. There would be both less reason to leak AND more respect for security classification if they were only used to protect things that are legitimately sensitive.
- tptacek 16y agoYes. There should be consequences for abusing the classification system. That's a real issue, but it's orthogonal.
- samd 16y agoIt's more important to be just than consistent. Edit: Are there many cases of misguided whistleblowers that caused significant unintended harm while doing what they thought was right? It seems that in most cases the whistleblower feels strongly that something unethical is happening before they come out. I think that shows there is a strong enough deterrent against whistleblowing to prevent it being done casually. The administration does not need to punish this man for doing what was obviously the right thing to do.
- amalcon 16y agoConsistency is the very cornerstone of justice. I don't see how it's even possible to be just without being consistent.
- samd 16y agoIt depends on what your ethical framework is. I'm a consequentialist, so whichever action produces better consequences I think is the right action regardless of the rules. You sound like a deontologist, to whom following the rules (not necessarily the law) is what it means to be ethical.
- 16y ago
- hugh3 16y agoHis administration has taken actions that might have provoked sharp political criticism for his predecessor, George W. Bush, who was often in public fights with the press. Now there's a sentence which could appear in a lot more articles...
- eli 16y agoProbably true, but if you're implying that the left is happy with Obama even though he has not quite lived up to their expectations then I think you're mistaken.
- sigzero 16y agoNo, in fact I have seen a lot more articles to the opposite. I do think that wikileaks is the wrong way to do it.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]