Reporters Can Be Prosecuted

If you blow the whistle on illegal acts --- YOU could be arrested and the lawbreaker could keep on breaking the law with impunity.

That's the Bush Administration take on things, if the whistle-blower is a reporter and the law-breaker is a government official. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told ABC's "This Week:"

"We have an obligation to ensure that our national security is protected."

The Administration has been caught lying in several cases regarding illegal wiretaps and all-out survellance of phone and internet communications. Gonzales repeated these same lies, although the Government has been caught red-handed. Gonzales said:

... he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security.

He also said:

... the government will not hesitate to track telephone calls made by reporters as part of a criminal leak investigation, but officials would not do so routinely and randomly. ... He also denied that authorities would randomly check journalists' records on domestic-to-domestic phone calls in an effort to find journalists' confidential sources. "We don't engage in domestic-to-domestic surveillance without a court order," Gonzales said, under a "probable cause" legal standard.

President Bush has stated publicly that there is such a thing as too much free speech. And now he's shown that he's a man of action -- at least in curtailing civil liberties.