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FROM AP: Quotations of the day
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
You would think that Eric Holder, the first African American Attorney General, and Barack Obama, the first African American President, would be vigilant that there was no racial discrimination in the Justice Department of their Administration. You would think.
This week's announcement that the Justice Department is going to drop its appeal against providing the morning-after birth control pill to anyone who needs it comes as such a welcome change that we feel the award is deserved.
The editors of the New York Times appear to have forgotten an important principle: The First Amendment is for all of us, and does not grant any special privileges to the institutional press.
Applying the FSA retroactively would not undermine public safety. Indeed, by passing the FSA, Congress made clear its view that shorter, fairer crack sentences are compatible with public safety.
The Administration played offense this week....the President, the Attorney General, and even the First Lady. Rice for National Security This past ...
The demand for the resignation of Attorney General Holder is a perfect example of how Republicans continue to unfairly target and intentionally hinder the Obama administration.
The original revelations about spying on the AP have been overshadowed by the recent confirmations of the NSA's long suspected and extensive domestic spying activities. The opinion of the public appears to be strongly in favor of improved privacy protections.
The path of a trailblazer always holds resistance. To pioneer meaningful change, one must be prepared to defend themself against the inevitable opposing force. One man who has come to know this all too well lately is U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
Government secrecy is presumptively illegitimate. But note the word "presumptively." Government secrecy is presumptively, but not absolutely, illegitimate. Despite the grave dangers of government secrecy, there are undoubtedly circumstances in which secrecy is essential.
The security policy of the U.S. government from Cheney to Obama has passed from secret surveillance of communications abroad to secret surveillance of all communications at home. In what stages did it happen? Some day the history will be written; for now, it is instructive to rehearse the facts. Five years ago, Barack Obama was a candidate for president who pledged to filibuster a congressional bill that offered amnesty to telecoms that illegally gave information on American customers to the government. When Obama backed down from that promise, he pledged, if elected, to have his attorney general investigate the surveillance of Americans and bring the laws of the land back within the limits of the fourth amendment. As it turned out, he made Eric Holder his attorney general, and the security policy of the Obama administration came to be defined by harsh prosecution of whistleblowers who revealed the facts of illegal searches and seizures.
No degree of moral propriety among public servants, or corporate leaders, can stop the explosion of spying and the propagation of false information that we will witness over the next decade.
I for one believe the bar should be very, very high -- that is two "very's" -- before any reporter should have to be subpoenaed to testify and required to reveal the source of a story.
Arianna called out Karl Rove on ABC's This Week. Discussing the Republican outrage over the DOJ's aggressive leaks investigations, Top Obama campaign...
Arianna appeared on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos to discuss the DOJ's aggressive leaks investigations. "We've called on Holder to re...
This week delivered more attempts by the White House and Eric Holder at damage control over revelations of search warrants involving the AP and a Fox News reporter. Though outrage over the administration's overly aggressive approach to leaks is certainly justified (indeed, HuffPost has called for Holder to step down), the indignation coming from Republicans is DC hypocrisy at its worst. If they're truly disturbed by eavesdropping on the press, where was their outrage when George Bush wanted the power to eavesdrop on everybody using the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program? If they're so outraged about the politicization of the Justice Department, where were they when the Bush White House was involved in the firing of nine U.S. attorneys? Or when Karl Rove's deputy was giving a PowerPoint presentation to Government Services Administration employees on ways to help GOP candidates? As Milan Kundera wrote, "The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
Lincoln Chaffee is our Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week award-winner. See, Republicans? Not only will you be welcomed, you'll actually get awards for making the trek across the aisle! Step right up, there's room for everyone!
