I just got this in an email from Nanman at The Influence Peddler. Congressman J. D. Hayworth is sending a letter to the Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert requesting that the New York Times' press credentials to the US Congress be revoked.
I've learned that Congressman JD Hayworth is preparing to send (or has sent) the following letter to Speaker Hastert, requesting that he rescind the Congressional press credentials of the New York Times, in response to the Times' revelation of classified details about US surveillance programs:
The Honorable J. Dennis Hastert
Speaker of the House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515Dear Mr. Speaker:
We are writing to ask you to use your authority to rescind the congressional press credentials of the New York Times. This request does not come lightly, but in response to the Times’ decision to repeatedly publish information detrimental to our national security.
Read the rest over at The Influence Peddler.
Well, wouldn’t that be just downright hilarious! I think the reporters and staff who know should be ordered by the AG to reveal their leak source. If they refuse, they sit in jail.
I’d be happy with “suspending” the NYT’s credentials to talk to anybody in any branch of the federal government until such time as they “voluntarily” pony up with the names of any and all leakers. I’d reinforce that with a strict Executive Order banning any Executive Branch official (all the way down to postal clerks) from talking to the NYT about anything (except postage, maybe). I’d then ask the GOP to call on every Republican party official to refuse to talk to the NYT.
That leaves Democrats as the sole source for the NYT to talk to–which results in news that looks and sounds just like what they put out today, only without the journalistic fig leaf that makes it LOOK as if they sought an opposing view.
(I’d also clobber their advertisers, but I’m working on that over at my place.)
I’m guessing that the extreme – and it really is – amount of screaming coming from the left indicates that even they know the Times went too far this time. The upshot may well be that a dependable left-leaning media will become a bit more circumspect. That would really hurt the left.