The Discerning Texan
All that is necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
-- Edmund Burke
Sunday, April 30, 2006
The roots of Sedition: Dana Priest's husband and his hard left connections
A not well publicized fact about Washington Post reporter Dana Priest--the reporter to whom the partisan CIA agent Mary McCarthy was fired for leaking critical national security information--is that Priest is married to one William Goodfellow. Of interest is Goodfellow's list of connections and causes: it reads like a "who's who" of the rabid, Marxist, hard left.
Sweetness and Light has a very telling illustration up of Goodfellow's ties to the "Chomskyite left" here. Check it out, then play connect the dots over at Discover the Networks.
And then try and explain how a high-placed person in the CIA (Mary McCarthy)--who gave tens of thousands of dollars to John Kerry and other Democratic causes (not always easy to pull off on a Government salary...)--would choose Goodfellow's wife Dana Priest to leak a story involving State secrets; and which badly damaged America's ability to conduct intelligence operations.
Reporters with leanings towards the enemies of the United States, who print leaks received from partisan-left operatives within the CIA in wartime are every bit as guilty of engaging in treason--by printing information they KNOW to be classified and illegally obtained--as are the leakers within the Agency. Both Priest AND McCarthy ought to be in prison for conspiring to undermine our country--and, in following through with this conspiracy, causing great damage to the US in a time of War.
American reporters who blame America first, and who then by their illegal actions render aid to America's enemies should not be allowed to walk the streets of this country in freedom. It is time that the Justice Department (or the President, by invoking Constitutional wartime powes) would set a stern example for any other reporters who even condidered taking advantage of the very freedoms they have in this country to wage their own private war against the US.
A few historical facts about past American prosecution for sedition in Wartime--just to put this all into perspective:
At some point, opposition must be considered disloyal. At some point, the American people must say "enough." At some point, Republicans in Congress must stop delicately tiptoeing with regard to sedition and must pass legislation to prosecute such sedition.
"Freedom of speech!" the American Civil Liberties Union will protest. Before we buy into the slogan, we must remember our history. President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and allowed governmental officials to arrest Rep. Clement Vallandigham after Vallandigham called the Civil War "cruel" and "wicked," shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers, and had members of the Maryland legislature placed in prison to prevent Maryland's secession. The Union won the Civil War.
Under the Espionage Act of 1917, opponents of World War I were routinely prosecuted, and the Supreme Court routinely upheld their convictions. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes rightly wrote, "When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right." The Allies won World War I.
During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans, as well as allowing the prosecution and/or deportation of those who opposed the war. The Allies won World War II.
[...]
This is not to argue that every measure taken by the government to prosecute opponents of American wars is just or right or Constitutional. Some restrictions, however, are just and right and Constitutional -- and necessary. No war can be won when members of a disloyal opposition are given free reign to undermine it.
Sweetness and Light has a very telling illustration up of Goodfellow's ties to the "Chomskyite left" here. Check it out, then play connect the dots over at Discover the Networks.
And then try and explain how a high-placed person in the CIA (Mary McCarthy)--who gave tens of thousands of dollars to John Kerry and other Democratic causes (not always easy to pull off on a Government salary...)--would choose Goodfellow's wife Dana Priest to leak a story involving State secrets; and which badly damaged America's ability to conduct intelligence operations.
Reporters with leanings towards the enemies of the United States, who print leaks received from partisan-left operatives within the CIA in wartime are every bit as guilty of engaging in treason--by printing information they KNOW to be classified and illegally obtained--as are the leakers within the Agency. Both Priest AND McCarthy ought to be in prison for conspiring to undermine our country--and, in following through with this conspiracy, causing great damage to the US in a time of War.
American reporters who blame America first, and who then by their illegal actions render aid to America's enemies should not be allowed to walk the streets of this country in freedom. It is time that the Justice Department (or the President, by invoking Constitutional wartime powes) would set a stern example for any other reporters who even condidered taking advantage of the very freedoms they have in this country to wage their own private war against the US.
A few historical facts about past American prosecution for sedition in Wartime--just to put this all into perspective:
At some point, opposition must be considered disloyal. At some point, the American people must say "enough." At some point, Republicans in Congress must stop delicately tiptoeing with regard to sedition and must pass legislation to prosecute such sedition.
"Freedom of speech!" the American Civil Liberties Union will protest. Before we buy into the slogan, we must remember our history. President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and allowed governmental officials to arrest Rep. Clement Vallandigham after Vallandigham called the Civil War "cruel" and "wicked," shut down hundreds of opposition newspapers, and had members of the Maryland legislature placed in prison to prevent Maryland's secession. The Union won the Civil War.
Under the Espionage Act of 1917, opponents of World War I were routinely prosecuted, and the Supreme Court routinely upheld their convictions. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes rightly wrote, "When a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right." The Allies won World War I.
During World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment of hundreds of thousands of Japanese-Americans, as well as allowing the prosecution and/or deportation of those who opposed the war. The Allies won World War II.
[...]
This is not to argue that every measure taken by the government to prosecute opponents of American wars is just or right or Constitutional. Some restrictions, however, are just and right and Constitutional -- and necessary. No war can be won when members of a disloyal opposition are given free reign to undermine it.
