We saw the beginning of the trend after Watergate. Woodward and Bernstein became stars and the schools were filled with wanna-bes. Unfortunately, what they wanted to be was rich and famous not revealers of government corruption. They took the easy path. Sucking up to government officials in the Reagan Administration "On," as one author wrote, "bended knee." The media stars got famous, thus rich, and tied themselves ever more closely to the Republican elite who gave them tax cuts to keep their riches and turned on the Democrats who, like Bill Clinton, raised their taxes to balance the budget and keep programs like the earned income tax credit, minimum wage increases (obviously not a government program but a business bete noir), and education funded and/or enacted. That I think explains the pattern of lies told by the media about the Clinton's (Whitewater, etc.) and later Gore (Love Story, the Internet, etc.). Clinton and Gore clearly had populist tendencies and preferred to tax the rich to pay for working and middle class programs, and the newly important and rich media desperately wanted to keep those nice houses and cars and the Georgetown parties where they hobnobbed with the Republican political class who would, if properly stroked, feed them tips, the truth of which were irrelevant, which keep the reporters above the fold or the lead story and thus famous and therefore rich. It's always follow the money. What remains to be seen is how Obama fares now that he has promised to keep higher taxes on the wealthy. Will they take his praise of Reagan and the Republicans as the people/party of ideas as a wink wink, nod nod or will they see him as in the tradition of Clinton who taxed the rich when he was president and spoke against the Bush II tax cuts, saying "I have plenty of money; I don't need more."

Greenwald is pretty good at self-promotion. I would comment on one of his themes; Protection of journalists.

I support protection of journalist informants, 'if' and only if journalists can be sued when their stories are proven wrong with resulting damage to the targeted subjects.

If a journalist makes charges that hurt someone, then that someone should readily be able to recover damages including cost of lawsuit. The proof of evidence should be the same for either party... protected informants, protected evidence.

The totally imaginary *Bushlicker* incident, where the press failed to come out and say *We were totally manipulated by a bunch of lying creeps, and here's their names, was a dry run for these tactics:

*most journalists refuse to identify their sources under any circumstances at all, even when it's clear that those sources deliberately lied to them.*

As long as the press is too lazy and cowardly to live without *confidential government sources* we are all screwed.

Speaking of *secrets*, Glenn, will the Bush administration be allowed to hide its lies in his presidential *library* as W hid his Texas Governor's papers in his dad's presidential library?

Can you envision a point where the government would get a warrant to retrieve papers that belong to the American people from a Bush library?

Thanks, that's the story I read yesterday. (NYT is the source of your link.)

You said:

"I am a Republican. I favor passage of FISA, in that I do not believe it represents any endangerment to our Freedoms.

My observation here?

Liberal Democrats have become so accustomed to lying to the general public, that they now comfortably lie to each other. This is a bad sign for an Obama Presidency."

Even Republicans aren't admitting their Republicans these days, dude, even your own candidate for president. Do they pay you to do this?

I wouldn't attach too much significance to Ivin's hospitalization (which was voluntary at the urging of his lawyer). The reason for his anger at Duley seems to be more clearly reflected in the message he left on her answering machine saying that he blamed her for having done it to him -- allowing the FBI to prosecute him for murders. He apparently thought they no longer had a therapeutic relationship, suggesting that at one point he thought they had. The betrayal of trust and the rupture of the therapeutic bond can be devastating -- which is an important reason why competent therapists work so hard to avoid betraying patients.

As to why Ivins was in individual or group therapy, no one seems to have a clue. Given the invasive surveillance to which he was being subjected, it wouldn't be surprising if he had sought counseling for support in dealing with the stress. If so, he sure seems to have picked the wrong person.

As Susan Sunflower notes, it will be interesting to note just how "exclusive" Ivins' control over the cultures in question was. What I find interesting about the paper referenced is that one of the authors (instead of someone who merely gets an acknowledgment) lists a new address in Dugway. That's where I think the weaponized anthrax really comes from. I'm not trying to point the finger at that particular author, I'm just pointing out how ideas, material and personnel float among these facilities.

I just read this link to the NY Times Judith Miller story:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D04EED91031F935A15753C1A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2

Now I'm confused as hell. Did the anthrax powder sent to Daschle indeed "float" with only the help of tiny air currents in whatever building they were in? If it did, the anthrax was antistatic (at least, the article implies that dried anthrax spores alone would not be antistatic, and that the powder would stay in an opened envelope and not go airborne.) SO, if it was antistatic, how do you do that? Is bentonite the only way? OR, was someone lying about the airborne anthrax contamination as well?

If ABC coughs up the names of their four "high-level sources" and Bruce Ivins is one of them, then CASE CLOSED. It seems obvious from the information released by his therapist that the man was psychotic but brilliant. The easiest way to deflect suspicion from himself was to pick up a phone and tell ABC "Iraq did it." And it worked, for seven years. When it was no longer working, he killed himself rather than face the consequences.

Of course, on the other hand, if his "therapist" is lying......