Wired: Attacking the 4th Estate

[Sunder]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64680,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_6

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Attacking the Fourth Estate 

By Adam L. Penenberg  |   Also by this reporter Page 1 of 2 next 

02:00 AM Aug. 25, 2004 PT

John Ashcroft and the Department of Justice must be stopped.

There, I've said it. Of course, now I half expect federal agents to drag 
me off to prison for violating the No One Dare Question the Government 
While We Are Engaged in the War Against Terror Act. (Duration: perhaps 
forever.) 

Sure, you say, no such act exists. But Ashcroft himself once testified 
that bellyaching over what he called "phantoms of lost liberty" only 
serves to "aid terrorists" and "give ammunition to America's enemies." And 
recently FBI agents attempted to intimidate political activists by 
visiting them at their homes to warn about causing trouble at the upcoming 
Republican convention.

More to the point, under Justice Department guidelines, Ashcroft must 
approve any subpoena of a journalist, so how do you explain the rash of 
subpoenas that Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney 
from Chicago, has doled out to Time magazine, The New York Times, The 
Washington Post and NBC? Already one reporter -- Matthew Cooper from Time 
-- has been held in contempt by a federal judge for refusing to appear 
before the grand jury that Fitzgerald convened to investigate which Bush 
administration senior official(s) leaked a covert spy's identity to 
columnist Robert Novak. 

<SNIP>


----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we.  /|\
  \|/  :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\
<--*-->:and our people, and neither do we." -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/
  /|\  :                                                             \|/
 + v + :    War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President.
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