[ Posted Wednesday, March 26th, 2014 – 17:14 UTC ]
Earlier this week, I wrote an extensive book review of former Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger's The Burglary (2014, Alfred A. Knopf). This book chronicles a break-in at the Media, Pennsylvania, branch office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1971, and the subsequent release to the public of files proving the F.B.I. was spending something like 40 percent of its time spying on and harassing political groups and individuals that J. Edgar Hoover didn't approve of. The burglars, who operated under the name "Citizens' Commission to Investigate the F.B.I.," were never caught, despite a five-year F.B.I. manhunt involving more than 200 agents. None of the burglars had ever even been publicly identified before Medsger's book was published.
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[ Posted Monday, March 24th, 2014 – 20:34 UTC ]
The Media files were made public in large part due to a few journalists (and a few brave editors) at the Washington Post who received them and reported on them. Attorney General John Mitchell personally called up the editors at the Post in a last-minute attempt to quash the story multiple times the day they arrived, but in the end the decision was made to go ahead and publish. Incredibly, at this time Mitchell didn't even know what was in the burgled files, and even though it was two weeks after the burglary, he had apparently just become aware of it. The event explored new territory in both journalism and in the legal world, because it was the first time secret documents had ever been provided to news organizations after having been stolen from the government. There simply were no precedents to follow.
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[ Posted Monday, March 24th, 2014 – 20:32 UTC ]
Forty-three years ago this month, an obscure branch office of the Federal Bureau of Investigations located in a Philadelphia suburb was burgled. All their files were stolen (being 1971, these files were all on paper) and whisked away to a secret hideout, then they were sorted and sent to the media. This criminal act set in motion the idea that our government should no longer operate in secret without any supervision. It was followed by the leak of the government's Vietnam War plans, a congressional investigation (the first ever of its kind) into the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., the resignation of a president brought about in no small part by leaks to the media, and eventually the modern-day document dumps of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. But while the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, and the Church Committee are at least somewhat well-known these days, few people (even few followers of politics, recent history, or the debates on the modern security state) recognize "the Media break-in" as where it all started.
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[ Posted Friday, March 14th, 2014 – 17:45 UTC ]
Today is 3/14, therefore a happy Pi Day to all! Next year will be even more fun, though, since it'll be 3/14/15....
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[ Posted Friday, March 7th, 2014 – 17:59 UTC ]
It's been a busy week in politics -- even without all the CPAC follies -- so let's get right to it.
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[ Posted Wednesday, February 26th, 2014 – 17:10 UTC ]
Our heroine, Libby R. Terryan, wakes up to a bright new beautiful world in which citizens and businesses are free to act without governmental restraint upon their deeply-held religious beliefs. Libby breathes in this sweet air of freedom as she gets ready for work. Because of all this intoxicating freedom, Libby finds herself running a bit late.
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[ Posted Friday, February 21st, 2014 – 18:29 UTC ]
We've got a lot to get to in our weekly roundup of politics this week, it seems.
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[ Posted Friday, February 14th, 2014 – 19:10 UTC ]
John Boehner has a song in his heart. That song is "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah," which he was heard quoting from as he was busy passing a clean debt ceiling bill in his House. He followed up with another lyric from the tune: "Plenty of sunshine coming my way." Mr. Boehner is, of course, being amusingly ironic. He does not, in fact, have a song in his heart, and he is not looking for beams of sunshine heading his way from his fellow Republicans.
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[ Posted Thursday, February 6th, 2014 – 18:03 UTC ]
Constitutional legal cases are, at times, ponderous and dense with seemingly-arcane hairsplitting to determine what the Constitution really means in the modern word, or when viewed with modern attitudes. Sometimes, however, constitutional cases are pretty easy to understand, because virtually everyone can relate to the circumstances which brought it to court in the first place. An injunction just issued by a federal judge falls into the second category, because it affirms the right to free speech -- specifically, the free speech of an automobilist flashing his headlights at oncoming traffic to warn of an impending speed trap. Obviously, this is something most who have driven cars can relate to on a very personal level.
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[ Posted Tuesday, January 28th, 2014 – 15:28 UTC ]
We would like to take the time to mark the passing of a great American, Pete Seeger.
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