Wow! Thanks for the link! Completely my impression of the current situation.
Me right now:
Ecuadexit?
Ecua-there’s-the-door, asshole.
I chuckled. Well done.
Well, this is encouraging:
I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the conservative think-tank future Justice manufacturing process has produced several generations of lawyers and judges who basically think that the President is and should be immune from the law. It goes back to Bork, who as Solicitor General was happy to fire Archibald Cox after two other men (the AG and deputy AG) quit rather than do Nixon’s bidding.
And it emerges from the extent to which conservatism attracts people with authoritarian leanings. The unitary executive; the idea that the President’s authority is only constrained by impeachment; the argument that if the President does it it can’t be illegal; the argument that a sitting President can’t be indicted because the enforcement arm is in the executive branch which is owned by the President; these ideas are all coming from conservatives and conservatism.
Greenwald – and Assange, I’m sure – are going to do their level best to portray Assange as a journalist/whistleblower here, and I’m not sure there’s going to be much purchase there in the bigger world. Assange chose to selectively disclose information obtained through illegal hacking, and to release that information selectively and asymmetrically with the obvious purpose of influencing a political process. I don’t think that makes you a whistleblower. I think that makes you an absolute asshole who should see a whole lot of prison time.
There are reasons Assange might go to prison, but publishing information obtained by someone else should not be one of them. See: Pentagon papers.
That position assumes the answer to the question is Assange a journalist?
It doesn’t matter. You and I have the same right to publish things as the New York Times. The courts have made clear many times that there is no special status afforded to professional “journalists”.
Fair enough. Knowingly receiving stolen goods and concealing the identity of the thieves is probably a different story.
Unless Assange was knowingly participating in an intel op of a foreign power to influence a US election, which from what we’ve seen, a reasonable case can be made.
This is yet another situation where discussions of “theft” does not translate well into discussions of electronic data. The crime of “receiving stolen goods” applies to physical property, not intellectual property.
Furthermore, there is no legal duty to report a crime or the identity of thieves.
Yes, of course if he was participating in the hack then it’s a different story. But merely disseminating information is not illegal, even at the behest of a foreign power to influence an election.
Hey Carter, you’re not helping.
Hello, money trail.
“So, when I said I had full faith in my intelligence agencies, what I meant was that I didn’t”
So can someone count how many positions Trump has taken in just the last week regarding Russian efforts to influence the 2016 elections? I’ve lost count.
This video creates serious deja vu for me.
This is pretty much exactly how my brother and I discuss these issues, and I expect him to repeat everything Caputo says here verbatim, without actually having seen this video himself. He’ll be latching onto this FISA stuff exactly the same way after he calls me later today.
I swear this segment is just a re-enactment of our phone calls.
Caputo is himself dirty. He was seriously spooked after talking to Mueller’s team.