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Trump's targeting of a New York Times journalist, explained by experts
The Trump administration took its war with the media to the next level this week when federal authorities seized years of phone records from New York Times reporter Ali Watkins as part of a federal investigation into leaks of classified information.
Watkins, who previously worked for BuzzFeed News and Politico, had a three-year relationship with James Wolfe, a former Senate Intelligence Committee aide who was arrested on Thursday and charged with lying to federal agents investigating the classified leaks.
The seizure set off alarm bells about the relationship between the administration and the media. The Department of Justice under Obama took phone records from Associated Press reporters and editors, named a Fox News reporter an unindicted "co-conspirator" in a leak case, and prosecuted multiple cases involving whistleblowers and leakers. So is what Trump doing more of the same? Or is a president who routinely bashes the media and threatens to jail leakers finally turning his rhetoric into reality?
"It's deeply alarming that the Trump administration has decided to build off of the worst of the Obama legacy on leak investigations and reporter-source protection," said Alexandra Ellerbeck, the North America program coordinator for the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Also at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Emptywheel, and Fox News.
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
(Score: 1, Insightful) by jmorris on Friday June 15 2018, @09:37PM (19 children)
Bitch was trading sex for classified intel. She knew the information was classified, her superiors at the NYT knew it was classified and how she was obtaining it. If all of that isn't criminal you have redefined the word into meaninglessness. You can start with simple prostitution charges (exchanging sex for a thing of value is the textbook definition) for her and pimping for her boss then explore the national security implications and add to the list of charges. It would be fall on the floor funny to have the NYT shut down as an illegal escort service.
(Score: 3, Touché) by NewNic on Friday June 15 2018, @10:00PM (18 children)
OK, that's an interesting perspective. Isn't paying for sex usually illegal also? Now, what did Trump and Cohen do with Stormy Daniels and others?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Friday June 15 2018, @10:03PM (14 children)
Never quite understood that either. Porn stars are apparently exempt from prostitution charges by unspoken agreement or something. Otherwise the entire industry would have been subject to the mother of all RICO seizures decades ago.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Friday June 15 2018, @10:08PM (11 children)
Porn makers are artists, and their porn speech is protected.
Any other obvious first amendment ruling you're not up to date on ?
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday June 15 2018, @10:44PM (4 children)
It may be best, where jmorris is concerned, to just assume all of them. He's been totally alt-right vectored, he can only see free speech as a weapon, as he also sees the law itself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @06:54AM (3 children)
So, the right to keep and bear free speech shall not be abridged ?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday June 16 2018, @08:21AM (2 children)
Now, you see, this is exactly the problem. If we cannot actually understand what is being said, is it speech at all? When speech is construed as a weapon, then it really is not speech, it is a projectile, a semantic bomb, a tangle of incoherence designed to confuse and discombobulate the enemy. Which means, since no actual communication has taken place, that it is not, in the strictest sense, speech. So we can just shut up jmorris, since reducing noise is not restricting free speech. Of course, we all hope and pray that some day he recovers. But no evidence yet.
So the right to talk to bears, to bare arms, the right to arm bears to speak, all these are still on the table. jmorris, however, is under the table, engaged in nefarious activities.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday June 16 2018, @10:17AM (1 child)
Tell this to... ummm... let me see, who should I pick... Ok, suprematists [wikipedia.org] (not supremacists).
Or abstract expressionists (Pollock and the gang).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday June 16 2018, @11:03AM
Oh, my dear c0lo, you should have picked it up out of the ether! Hawking radiation, the only possible communication out of a black hole. He was interred today, and a message sent. Almost the same as abstract expressionism. Or cubism. Or Piss-christ. Deschamps urinal was destined to end up there, no?
And, not surprising that white supremacists should be coming out of, or more likely into, a black hole. An infinite sink of the negation of light and knowledge! But we were having a nice discussion of the ins and outs of treason as defined by the war crimes committed by Americans, because they were just following orders, or were jmorris. Poor jmorris, so sad to be so stupid.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday June 16 2018, @12:15AM (5 children)
So if I offer some chick $200 to do the wild thang and she says yes that is criminal for both of us. If offer her and some other dude $200 each to screw while I watch that is also criminal. If I make the same offer and film it to spank off to later, also criminal for all three of us. But if I say I am filming a porno everybody is ok? And I guess if I am lying and just want it to spank off to they are ok and I'm going to jail? Or what if I decide the performance just isn't up to commercial standards and it remains unreleased but I have released other pornos so am "officially" a porno producer? If I demand some "rehearsals" before the camera rolls is that OK? Is it only ok if I have released 'real' porno before and/or they are 'real' porn stars? Is there a union card requirement? Hiring professional stage hands? Being incorporated? What is the rule here? Is this really your final answer because I'm seeing some logical inconsistencies in it.
Basically we are back to my original assertion that we just kinda ignore the prostitution laws when it comes to porno because.... we like porno? there is too much money in it to criminalize? help a guy out here. It does not make sense and trying to hand wave it away on some bullshit 1st Amendment basis is a non-answer at best. An illegal act doesn't become legal just because someone films it with commercial and/or artistic intent. And again, lets be honest, the percentage of porno filmed with "artistic" intent is close enough to zero to safely round down to zero.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday June 16 2018, @12:28AM
I didn't say your stupid setup made sense.
The root of the incoherence is that prostitution is illegal, because reasons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @12:30AM (3 children)
The idea that the first amendment protects pornography is not baseless. It protects movies and videos in general, so of course it would also protect pornography.
The issue here is not that the first amendment protects pornography, but that our courts are inconsistent. If you pay someone to have sex with you, that's none of the government's business and under no circumstances should it be involved.
Speech does not need to be artistic.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday June 16 2018, @01:08AM (2 children)
So if I'm making a reality TV show I can rob a bank?
Think you miss the key difference. If I make a movie about robbing a bank, no actual bank is robbed in the process. It is just a movie, either done on a back lot somewhere or filmed at an actual bank with safeguards so everybody knows it is a movie shoot and nobody gets shot at for real, the real money is safely elsewhere and replaced with fake Hollywood play money. If I film myself actually robbing a bank a crime is being committed. And when was just "Showtime porn" it was the same thing, sorta dirty movie with some nudity and simulated sex it was the same rule. Just Hollywood movie magic fake sex so no prostitution worry.
Then hard core porn suddenly became a massive and pervasive thing and everybody kinda hand waved away the legal implications because there was so much money in it yet everybody kinda knew an outright legislative attempt to legalize it would fail.
When you make the argument that prostitution should be legal you have a logical basis to argue from, if sex for money is legal then saying that filming it is legal is an easy to argue position. No way that is passing a legislature in 90% of the country, but logically consistent. Your 1st Amendment argument is just bullcrap though.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @02:20AM
When you rob a bank, someone is harmed. When you have consensual sex with someone, whether they take money for it or not, no one is harmed.
As I said, the issue is that our courts are inconsistent. Both pornography and prostitution should be protected by the Constitution. That's how you really rectify the situation, not by prohibiting them both.
Nope. It's a form of expression, so it absolutely falls under the first amendment.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Saturday June 16 2018, @09:05PM
If you have an agreement with the bank to rob it and no one is hurt, yes, of course. Why would you doubt this?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday June 15 2018, @10:11PM (1 child)
Seems paying others to have sex in front of someone else is okay, provided none of the participants is paying any of the others.. Makes it hard to be a performer and a producer!
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1) by Aegis on Saturday June 16 2018, @12:10AM
It's just a weird edge case with how the law is written.
Considering our high population of programmers I don't understand why that's such an outrageous concept.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @02:47PM (2 children)
Trump didn't pay for sex. That was free. He paid for her to shut her mouth years after it was over. She took the money and ran her mouth anyway.
As Guilianni said her primary business (which is fucking for money) “entitles you to no degree of giving your credibility any weight.” Violating a contract for which she accepted payment tends to corroborate that conclusion.
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Saturday June 16 2018, @09:12PM (1 child)
Is it, really? What law requires those actions?
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday June 16 2018, @11:17PM
Cyber has many problems, nobody really knows what's going on. And your tweet came out as an answer to the wrong tweet. Not the tweet you were trying to answer.
But jmorris said it very well, it's not a law. He said it's called LOYALTY to your Country. That's very special. And loyalty to your President is even more special!!!