Part VI: WHAT Freedom of Speech?

A White House staff member was responsible for asking three people to leave President Bush's town hall meeting in Denver a year ago, a U.S. Secret Service agent said during an internal investigation of the event….the three people were ousted from the Bush event last March because their car's bumper sticker criticized his foreign policy…staffers had identified them as "potential protesters."
--"Bush Staffers Ejected 3 at Speech," Howard Pankratz, Denver Post, March 20, 2006.

One of the things that makes me so mad about the systematic manner in which the Bush administration squelches dissent and stages events for the media with pre-screened, ticket-holding Republican canned audiences, is how they keep blabbing about how "our troops" are "fighting for our freedom."

WHAT FREEDOM?

If it was just a matter of the Secret Service throwing protesters out and encouraging local law enforcement to arrest them for public disturbances, which has happened dozens of times at Bush events, that would be bad enough.

But as with everything else this administration touches, it is far more sinister.

The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources…Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation.

"There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business risk being branded traitors," said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from the Washington Post. "Some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad.

"We do not want to inadvertently threaten human life or legitimately harm national security in our reporting," he said, "But it's important…in our constitutional system that these final decisions be made by newspaper editors and not the government."
--"White House Trains Efforts on Media Leaks," Dan Eggen, Washington Post, March 5, 2006.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who used to be Bush's private attorney, has threatened to prosecute newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post for reporting the governmental abuses of power that won them a total of seven Pulitzer Prizes between them last year alone.

It disturbs me greatly that when governmental rottenness is exposed by an American free press, as is their right according to the very first amendment to our Constitution laid forth by our founding fathers…that rather than attempt to correct the problems or stop the criminal behavior that has been revealed, this administration chooses instead to persecute and prosecute that free press for reporting it in the first place.

Have you ever noticed that when a dictator takes over a foreign government or, as in the case of Russia's Vladimir Putin, chooses to solidify their power--the VERY FIRST THING THEY DO IS SUPPRESS THE FREE PRESS. Any dissenting voices are shut down. This is what dictators do.

This is what dictators do.

And if we, as a people, sit back and allow this to happen, and by our very apathy, give our tacit permission, then we deserve to lose our freedoms.

Secret law-breaking has now been supplanted by brazen law-breaking. The difference is critical. If abuses of power are kept secret, there is still the possibility that, when exposed, they will be stopped. But if they are exposed and still permitted to continue, then every remedy has failed, and the abuse is permanently ratified. In that case, what will be ratified is a presidency that has risen above the law.
--"The Hidden State Steps Forward," Jonathan Schell, The Nation, January 9, 2006.