Posted on by TheLaw.net Corporation in Constitutional Law, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Washington Post Columnist Marc Thiessen’s Frivolous Claim: “Greenwald’s crime is violating 18 USC § 798” By E. Pratt Whitney
As the video below demonstrates, Marc Thiessen’s column in today’s Washington Post — advancing a legal theory for how the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald (and even his own paper) could face Federal prosecution for daring to speak of NSA’s data mining operation — is not the first time he has publicly embarrassed himself.
To demonstrate how extreme and fringe and antithetical Thiessen’s views are when compared to First Amendment Doctrine, I usedmy own software to conduct a national search of the six millionish Federal and state judicial opinions. The following query…
“18 USC § 798” and “first amendment” and journalist
…retrieves one — and only one — criminal case:United States v. Rosen, 445 F.Supp.2d 602 (E.D. Va. 2006). The defendants in that litigation are lobbyists; not journalists. The defendants in that litigation are accused of transmitting information to persons within government who were not entitled to receive it.
In stark contrast, the First Amendment authorizes Greenwald to receive, write and report on the information Snowden disclosed. Moreover, when we wrote the First Amendment, we expressly reserved the right to receive such information when we stated:
Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press.
On Monday, March 4, 1793, President Washington expressly characterized such statements as “injunctions.”
Previous to the execution of any official act of the President the Constitution requires an oath of office. This oath I am now about to take, and in your presence: That if it shall be found during my administration of the Government I have in any instance violated willingly or knowingly the injunctions thereof, I may (besides incurring constitutional punishment) be subject to the upbraidings of all who are now witnesses of the present solemn ceremony.
Citizens — be they your so-called “representative” or your fellow journalist — who tacitly call for the revocation of the First Amendment, while simultaneously ignoring bald acts of official criminality, are worse than disingenuous: they are violently unserious.
Lawfare is an anti-civil liberties publication funded by Brookings. Regular contributors to this virtual organization are invariably well-educated, well-spoken, and well-oiled “national security experts” who get off on institutional authority, indefinite detention, and presidents arbitrarily shooting missiles up the ass of their fellow citizens and innocent, unknown foreign nationals who sport facial hair and wear funny hats.
Regular contributors to Lawfare excel at using political language to rationalize, sanitize, institutionalize, legalize, and normalize the unconstitutional; all for the benefit of their incestuous corporate funders in the Risk Management Industrial Complex.
Example? The Fifth Amendment states:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial.
The guys at Lawfare — who love tanks so much they think in one — read the foregoing simple command as provided by we the people and an awkward pause lingers until somebody farts something like:
If the accused enjoys the right to a public trial, what if we never accuse the poor bastard?
Then someone goes:
Then we could just kill him. Put that up on the board.
Next thing you know the Attorney General of the United States shows up at Chicago’s Northwestern University School of Law, as Eric Holder did in 2012:
Due process and judicial process are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.
No accusation. No judicial process. No lawyer. No trial. The only thing you’re due is a missile. Isn’t that clever?
All of which brings me to regular Lawfare contributor, Joel Brenner, who obtained his Juris Disingenuous at the once respected, Harvard Law, and, at various times since, has been affiliated with NSA, FBI, CIA and the rest of the alphabet. Brenner throws down herein:
Unless the disobedient citizen takes the legal consequences of his unlawful action – he’s nothing but a criminal or a rebel….You tell me, dear reader, how young Mr. Snowden measures up to Socrates, Thoreau, Ghandi, and King.
So, you have to be Jesus now to challenge the surveillance state?
We’ll get to Thoreau, right after we pause for this message from recent history — yesterday in fact — two quotes — one by the twice elected President and former editor of the Harvard Law Review, and the other from a 29 year old, former high school dropout with a G.E.D.
Can you guess who said what?
“I don’t have any problem with what the NSA has been doing.”
——————————–
“The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.”
The first is Obama in agreement with codependent journalist, Charlie Rose. The second is Edward Snowden live-chatting with independent journalist Glenn Greenwald and the world. Which of these two speakers do you suppose recently reviewed the Declaration of Independence?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Snowden knows he may eventually be branded a felon. His objective is to bring some deserving others down with him; people like the Director of National Intelligence turned perjurer, James Clapper; the individual who more than any other inspired Snowdento come forward. Last week, a third Harvard lawyer — Larry Lessig — had this to say about Snowden in an interview with Bill Moyers:
He came out publicly, he explains his reasons, doesn’t seem to be benefiting financially from this. He’s going to suffer enormous personal costs for doing what he did. Those are the things that traditionally have marked somebody as the right kind of civil disobedient. And let’s be clear. The penalties which he faces for what he has done are extraordinary. Today these guys face life imprisonment, maybe the death penalty. So when somebody comes forward and explains him or herself in a very clear way about what’s motivating it’s hard not to be moved by that.
The Joel Brenners of the world look around Washington D.C. and think they see the establishment. But in the United States, as Edward Snowden knows, the people are the establishment. Snowden writes in his chat:
Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to achieve that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we’ve been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.
Snowden is asking you to think, even if you don’t have a tank. One wonders whether, as a spy, Snowden was hiding in plain view at Barnard College in May 2012, when President Obama told graduates:
It’s up to you to hold the system accountable and sometimes upend it entirely.
So magnificently meritorious are the ideals that define Snowden’s understanding of what it means to be a citizen of the United States — ideals that have been under assault for more than a decade by the Democratic and Republican National Committees and their multi-national corporate masters — the best Joel Brenner can do is feebly attempt to distinguish Edward Snowden from the great Dr. Martin Luther King.
Is Snowden a traitor like Dick Cheney says, or is he a citizen who falls just short of being Martin Luther King?
I’m so confused!
Putting off for another day the question of whether Brenner also intended to imply that what Dr. King suffered at the hands of James Earl Ray were “legal consequences,” it is possible — perhaps even likely — that Snowden’s victimless actions may be proven to run afoul of some Federal law. It is precisely for that reason, that Thoreau — who wrote: “Any fool can make a rule and any fool will mind it” — would give up his bottom bunk to have Snowden as his cellmate.
As for the fascists represented by Joel Brenner, without so much as raising a fist, Edward Snowden has already made you his bitch.
