>Remind me where in the Constitution it says that "Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of journalists to keep their sources secret?"
Remind me where in his comment he said it was in the Constitution?
What he said was: "This administration is walking all over civil liberties and constitutionally protected freedoms".
"Civil liberties" and "constitutionally protected freedoms" being two different (if somewhat joined) sets.
Second, it can very convincingly be argued that the taking away of such a protection is bad, regarless of if it was in the Constitution or not. (Depending on your stance on the freedom of the press and it's ability to keep those in power in control, of course).
The heart of the issue is not if it was in the Constitution. That's a pedantic issue, irrelevant in a democracy. The items in the ammemndements weren't in the Constitution either. And if the right to own slaves had been in the Constitution, few would argue for it remaining there, some centuries years later.
The core of the issue is: do people WANT such a protection or not? And do people feel that they explicitly taking of the table is bad or not?
Second, it can very convincingly be argued that the taking away of such a protection is bad, regarless of if it was in the Constitution or not.
I don't think it's accurate to characterize it as "taking away of such protection", when such protection has never existed. Journalists being compelled to disclose their sources and testify in a criminal trial is not new, and they've been jailed in the past for refusing to do so. One of the more famous is probably Myron A. Faber, in 1978 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._A._Farber), because it led to extensive litigation, but there are many other cases both earlier and later. Another one got a lot of press in the early 1970s because it involved a reporter refusing to disclose who leaked him information from the Charles Manson grand jury: http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/06/obituaries/william-t-farr-...
Maybe such protection should be created, but that's a quite different question from the apparently common, but incorrect, belief that it existed (even as a de-facto practice) and has recently been abrogated.
> Maybe such protection should be created, but that's a quite different question from the apparently common, but incorrect, belief that it existed (even as a de-facto practice) and has recently been abrogated
I think we should have some sort of common law press privilege, like the client-attorney privilege. The tricky part is figuring out who should be entitled to it, especially in this day and age of blogs and whatnot.
"accreditation" is pretty easy, and grants some rights and responsibilities for journalists in other countries. For example, journalist photographers in England get protections for their images that other photographers don't get.
That's a pretty intriguing idea, as is a sibling's thoughts on accreditation.
Are you aware of any sources that deal with this particular idea, or is it a pet theory? I'd be pretty interested in reading on any legal scholars discussing the idea.
A number of states have media-shield laws that protect reporters (in some cases, and for some definitions of "reporter") from being compelled to testify about sources in state-court proceedings. I don't know as much about those as I'd like; a plus of looking at them is that there's some history illustrating how they actually work in practice. To take one facet of "who counts as media?" that varies between states, here's an investigation of which states' media-shield laws cover student newspapers and the like: http://www.splc.org/knowyourrights/legalresearch.asp?id=60
One issue that comes up for me is that the justifications seem a lot stronger in some cases than others. For example, leaking the Pentagon Papers has some kind of public-interest justification, while the reporter linked above who leaked confidential testimony from the Charles Manson grand jury seems more like he was just looking for something sensational that would sell newspapers. But if a kind of public-interest/whistleblower restriction were included in a shield law, that would add probably undesirable ambiguity.
The root comment said "This administration is walking all over civil liberties and constitutionally protected freedoms", and, later, that USG was "tossing away the constitutional protections we've grown far too accustomed to taking for granted". Rayiner's interpretation wasn't just fair but also the most obvious one.
Well, considering that my comment said nothing specifically about journalists or their being a constitutional right to protect one's sources, we must have different understandings of what a fair interpretation is, and what obvious means.
What strikes me as obvious, from the content of my comment and a political theoretic standpoint is what I stated—this administration is running afoul of what we've taken for granted, and the branches are not properly balancing each other's powers to protect the Constitution and the governed.
It's disingenuous to pretend that you weren't talking about journalists when your comment roots a thread on a story about journalists. What else would you have been talking about? I think, rather, that you see 'coldtea as supporting you, and are now in turn sticking up for him; you see yourselves now as a faction, which is unfortunate.
Are you kidding me? You're now, from the comfort of your detached position, attributing intent and making a ridiculous assertion of seeing myself and other complete strangers on the Internet as a faction? This is what's unfortunate—that you think you can even figure out the complexities of my thoughts based on your subjective experience as an outsider.
Care to explain just how exactly you can possibly determine from your vantage point the evidence that supports the claim that I am pretending? That's pretty much accusing me of behaving falsely, and you've got all that from a couple sentences? Who is coldtea to me but an Internet stranger? Why would I care to stick up for him? Moreover, why would I behave falsely and betray my original intent to support a stranger? I hadn't even read his comments before I replied to you (see how I replied to yours before rayiner's? I'm replying from email links in which all I have is the direct reply text, not surrounding context).
> What else would you have been talking about?
Would you like me to get a mathematical estimate of how many possible combinations exist for what else I might have been talking about? Please, don't make such a fool's mistake of thinking you can reliably determine what is happening inside my head and my motivations from a couple of sentences.
Your comments show a far greater potential for seeing yourself in some kind of a faction with rayiner. I usually appreciate many of your comments, but goddamn, you really like to defend the shit out of rayiner way overstepping interpretation and not bothering to verify he's on the correct trajectory.
In this context, Thomas's "let's agree to disagree" is clearly a euphemism for each of us is wasting his time trying to change the other's mind, so let's not bother any more.
> Two rational people cannot agree to disagree. One of them is doing something wrong.
Your first quoted sentence goes too far [0]. Rational people can and do agree to disagree over, for example, whether the universe has 10 dimensions, or 11, or 26 [1].
Your second sentence doesn't go far enough: Both (of the putatively rational people) could be doing something wrong.
[0] All categorical statements are bad --- including this one.
>The root comment said "This administration is walking all over civil liberties and constitutionally protected freedoms", and, later, that USG was "tossing away the constitutional protections we've grown far too accustomed to taking for granted". Rayiner's interpretation wasn't just fair but also the most obvious one.
It's only "the most obvious one", if one is blind to the discussion and intent, and mistakes the parent to mean:
"This administration is walking all over civil liberties and constitutionally protected freedoms -- and by these words I only mean the protection of the press sources and nothing else this administration has walked all over".
Which of course is a completely bogus interpretation.
Remind me where in his comment he said it was in the Constitution?
What he said was: "This administration is walking all over civil liberties and constitutionally protected freedoms".
"Civil liberties" and "constitutionally protected freedoms" being two different (if somewhat joined) sets.
Second, it can very convincingly be argued that the taking away of such a protection is bad, regarless of if it was in the Constitution or not. (Depending on your stance on the freedom of the press and it's ability to keep those in power in control, of course).
The heart of the issue is not if it was in the Constitution. That's a pedantic issue, irrelevant in a democracy. The items in the ammemndements weren't in the Constitution either. And if the right to own slaves had been in the Constitution, few would argue for it remaining there, some centuries years later.
The core of the issue is: do people WANT such a protection or not? And do people feel that they explicitly taking of the table is bad or not?