But Barr says he won’t be bullied, so he’s just fine for the job!
/s seems important today
I would expect whoever leaked plans that led to an ambush to be limping home AT BEST.
Unfortunately, you are describing how things are supposed to work. Unfortunately, when the government sets the bar for prosecution at something so amorphous as “hurt the country” then they are abandoning the rule of law, because the unspoken part of that is “hurt the country (in my personal opinion)”
Again, that has been a relatively common opinion among AGs for all of American history. What is new here is the pairing between that view and the idea that unfavorable, factual reporting is “fake news”
Also, as to your example of a reported saying we were going to make an amphibious assault… Well we did let that information leak to the Germans. I don’t remember if reporters were in on the campaign of misinformation or not, but you have to expect SOME competency by the government…at least in the army and Navy.
Maybe not the airforce though.
Anyways, if a reporter discovered that, because trump isn’t getting a wall, we were going to invade Mexico (again) and slaughter the people trying to cross the border (again), should he report those plans? Clearly we have an “emergency”, and clearly reporting those plans would both hurt the country and cause ambushes to happen.
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I’m amazed by how the media, including the comrades, treat a prepared statement at a rubber stamp confirmation hearing as something binding on the nominee.
But this prosecuting reporters thing, that I can believe. And really, when you think about it, it should go without saying those kind of general terms. As always, though, it’s the specifics that matter.
Pressed for further comment, he said, “Yeah, like, if they get uppity and shit…”
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This was my reaction too. I was like, “Well of course you can conceive of such a situation.” But I had to pull myself back from the edge there. Senate hearings aren’t really the time for making up wild theories. You should say, “No, I would never prosecute a journalist for doing their job,” confident that if a crazy enough situation came up that you had to, almost everyone would agree with you, and people (including the person who asked the question) would find the idea of throwing this back in your face to be absurd. You could say, “When I said I would never prosecute a journalist for doing their job, I don’t think a single reasonable person was imagining a situation like this,” and have even people on this board nod along.
I was also going to say Alex Jones isn’t a journalist. But you are right. The Supreme Court uses a pretty wide definition and I guess rightly so.
Like Geraldo drawing a map in the sand of where troops were and where they were headed? I think that’s an example of something where I can say I think it falls under the broad definition of a journalist doing their job and that I could imagine a non-draconian law it would break (I don’t know if such a law exists, but I wouldn’t necessarily object to all laws that would prohibit that).
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I don’t remember the Geraldo instance, but that sounds like an inadvertent slip. It is unfortunate, but those things happen. They always have. Even back before everyone had access to email and skype in the combat area. Opsec is a constant concern.
That is why, in my initial remarks, I used the phrase “a journalist who deliberately compromises a military operation”.
I don’t think they do. They comment on the news, they don’t actually go out and gather facts to distill into news. I don’t think either actually do real journalism, where they go out, gather facts and information and write up a report that gives the facts. Jones said as much during his divorce proceedings (that he’s entertainer) and Bannon has never done more than write ill-concieved and ignorant position papers on behalf of his stupid, racist world view.
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Which probably means he’ll be hired. 
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That’s some old school manipulation right there. It’s not the criminal activity of our political class and the bureaucracies they control that harms the nation. It’s telling people that our political class and the bureaucracies they control are engaging in criminal activity that hurts us.
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BTW:
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More on that story:
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