House GOP to New York Times: ‘We don’t like you’

June 30, 2006

I’m having a hard time understanding exactly what yesterday’s floor debate in the House hoped to accomplish, other than making congressional [tag]Republicans[/tag] feel better.

The [tag]House[/tag] of Representatives on Thursday condemned the recent disclosure of a [tag]classified[/tag] program to track [tag]financial[/tag] transactions and called on the media to cooperate in keeping such efforts secret.

Lawmakers expressed their sentiment through a resolution that was approved on a largely party-line 227-to-183 vote after days of harsh criticism by the Bush administration and Congressional Republicans aimed at The New York Times and other newspapers for publishing details of the program, which the government said was limited to following possible terrorist financial trails.

The vote followed a bitter debate in which Republicans said news accounts had jeopardized the effort, and [tag]Democrats[/tag] accused Republicans of trying to intimidate the press.

Republicans criticized news organizations, and The Times in particular, saying they had not considered the potential damage of revealing the program.

Never mind that the program wasn’t really secret, and never mind that the White House claims that terrorists couldn’t have known about the program are false, and never mind that administration officials themselves have spoken openly for years about monitoring international transactions as part of the war on terror … the House GOP wanted to bash the [tag]New York Times[/tag] for a few days. So, it did.

What did the House resolution do, exactly? It told the world that House Republicans aren’t happy about leaks. Well, some leaks. When House Dems unveiled a similar resolution that decried leaking the names of undercover CIA agents, the GOP balked. We’re in a time of war, and leaking [tag]classified[/tag] information is wrong, unless it serves a [tag]conservative[/tag] political goal.

As [tag]red meat[/tag] for the base goes, yesterday wasn’t even impressive. Conservatives a didn’t want non-binding resolution; they want actual punishment for journalists. Republican lawmakers aren’t willing to go that far, so we were left with several hours of meaningless bluster.

These guys are incapable of governing, but when it comes to spectacular wastes of time, these [tag]Republicans[/tag] are second to none.

Just another piece of Democratic campaign ammo for this fall:

President spends two days bashing the New York Times.
Congress devotes a full day to bashing the New York Times.
Is that what we sent them to DC to accomplish?

  • Have things changed so much or am I just experiencing a loss of what little innocence I have about politics? I don’t remember the government and congress being used as part of a congressional election campaign to this extent before in our history. All politics all the time. And no governing.

  • “Never mind that the program wasn’t really secret, and never mind that the White House claims that terrorists couldn’t have known about the program are false, and never mind that administration officials themselves have spoken openly for years about monitoring international transactions as part of the war on terror…” – CB

    What the Bushites mind is any news organization explaining to the American People how Boy George II is trampling on their rights on the road to get the terrorists. This threatens the Prez’s war plans not because al Qaeda will find out, but because the American People will start screaming “what the f**k is going on here?”.

    After all, al Qaeda hates our freedoms and you can only end a war on terrorism by wiping out all your enemies (practically impossible) or by giving the terrorists everything they want. Since they hate our freedoms, we have to give them up. That has to be Boy George II’s solution 😉

  • Hasn’t everything they have done lately been about makeing congressional republicans feel better?

    If they actually did their jobs (whether you agree with the outcome or not is irrelevant) they would have to work which would keep them away from the campaigning this year and possibly give the Democrats more ammunition (and nothing the have done has been good for the GOP). And they really, really need to campaign hard this year to overcome the Bush albatross and their own spectacular foolishness and they definitely don’t need the bad press that inevitably comes when they pass crappy legislation and the costs/results of said legislation become known.

  • The NYT could end this now by publishing a list of all Bush administration sources who have leaked to them.

  • For Republicans, “governing” means putting on dog-and-pony shows where they do handsprings and balance objects on their noses for the entertainment of their rabid base. I believe it was P.J. O’Rourke who wrote: “Republicans believe governmentt doesn’t work, and prove it as soon as they’re elected.”

  • So, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives doesn’t like the New York Times. Well, I got some old news for them: Most of America doesn’t like the “rubber-stamp” Republican Congress. And if it weren’t for gerrymandering, it would be guaranteed that the Republicans would lose control of the House this November.

  • I think part of the motivation for all of this is to lay the ground work for blame shifting. Should there be another terrorist attack against the US, BushCo and its Congressional subsidiary will push the blame on the media for hamstringing the administration’s effort to protect us.

  • RE: Comment #8 by rege: “blame shifting”

    A very astute observation (a dKos rating of 4 plus).

  • If BushCo and the Repubs REALLY cared about the SWIFT program, they wouldn’t be making such a big noisy public stink about it. They would ignore it completely and hope that no one they cared about happened to read the NYT that day.

    Instead, they’ve chosen to use the issue to try to score political points, and in the process they’ve raised public awareness of the SWIFT program an order of magnitude beyond what it would otherwise have been.

  • I’d like to see the Times run a series of surveys regarding the Republicans in the House. Maybe Times readers could start throwing this junk right back at the whiney little punt-dogs. 227 votes to condemn the Times? Let’s see a comma right after that “7,” followed by a few “0s,” condemning the Animal-Farm uberschweinen pretending to be an elected government….

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