Document of the Week: 2007 Freedom of Information Act, as Amended

A new feature of this blog, "Document of the Week." Each week, I'll take a look at an excerpt from a US Government document available on the internet, analyze it, and try to explain what it means. Today's document is the 2007 Freedom of Information Act, as amended by the US Congress.

Here's the text under discussion, a definition of a representative of the news media in section (4)(A)(ii):

In this clause, the term ‘a representative of the news media’ means any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience. In this clause, the term ‘news’ means information that is about current events or that would be of current interest to the public. Examples of news- media entities are television or radio stations broadcasting to the public at large and publishers of periodicals (but only if such entities qualify as disseminators of ‘news’) who make their products available for purchase by or subscription by or free distribution to the general public. These examples are not all-inclusive. Moreover, as methods of news delivery evolve (for example, the adoption of the electronic dissemination of newspapers through telecommunications services), such alternative media shall be considered to be news-media entities. A freelance journalist shall be regarded as working for a news-media entity if the journalist can demonstrate a solid basis for expecting publication through that entity, whether or not the journalist is actually employed by the entity. A publication contract would present a solid basis for such an expectation; the Government may also consider the past publication record of the requester in making such a determination.

What does this mean, from the point of view of this news disseminator? Let's walk through the language, line by line...

1.In this clause, the term ‘a representative of the news media’ means any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience.

IMHO, key concepts are:

"ANY person or entity" means even a robot, or electronic news aggregator, could qualify as a representative of the news media. In our age, machines might do a better job than people of notifying readers of stories. Less personal bias.

"...that gathers information of POTENTIAL interest to a SEGMENT of the public" means that the information does not have to have interest at the present time, only someday. Further, the audience need not be the entire world, only an interested sub-section. And the segment could be pretty small, I would think. If Bill Gates reads my blog's favorable review of some new blogging software, he might buy the company, as he did with PowerPoint. I'd argue a segment might be one person who could act on the information, after all...one can talk to another...and as we saw in the Helen Thomas YouTube case--millions.

"uses its editorial skills to turn the raw material into a distinct work" in my opinion would even include a clipping service, such as every government agency uses--because the selection of which items to include, and in which order to place them is the most basic of editorial skills, that is, knowing what to cut and what to publish, and arranging them in order of importance to catch the eye of the reader. For example, take a look at Reader's Digest or Vital Speeches or the Utne Reader. Even the US Postal Service Daily News Digest contains different articles from that of the US Department of Transportation. Indeed, articles are selected by different criteria, by different editors. So, the process of selection and arrangement for publication is all that is needed to turn something into a distinct work. This is also true in the fine arts, as with collage. It is what editors--as opposed to writers--do.

"...and distributes that work to an audience." Again, I would say an audience of one is an audience. You'd have to persuade me that there is any logic to any other requirement. Because, again, once one person knows--if, unlike the "Journolist" 400 they are not sworn to secrecy--the potential is there for everyone to know about it. As we found out, when one "Journolist" member leaked some emails about Matt Drudge written by David Weigel on the internet.

2. We'll skip the examples, because, as stated, they are "not all-inclusive." In fact, I'd say they are only the most obvious, and IMHO 20th Century rather than 21st Century. I'd say for example, that MATT DRUDGE is a news media entity, in that his website is a medium through which news is transmitted...often into the very newsrooms of those in the "not all-inclusive" list. Of course, so was BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. Which is pretty much what the next line means.

3. "...such alternative media shall be considered to be news-media entities." Indeed, the alternative media probably are better disseminators than the old-line media. Do you think you would have ever heard about Monica Lewinsky if it hadn't been for MATT DRUDGE?

4. The next line is close to my heart: "A freelance journalist shall be regarded as working for a news-media entity if the journalist can demonstrate a solid basis for expecting publication through that entity, whether or not the journalist is actually employed by the entity." This means, in my case, that although I am not paid and they are not responsible for the material on the site, I in a sense work for Google--because Blogger (my host) is owned by Google. I expect publication through Google. Most of my hits come from Google searches. And I can demonstrate this, with Google Analytics.

5. "A publication contract would present a solid basis for such an expectation..."In fact, a publication contract means little. All this shows is that the authors of the clause have an unreasonable deference for publishers. Today, anyone can be a publisher over the internet, through print-on-demand, or by using companies such as xLibris.

In fact, a number of self-published works have become classics--even best-sellers. Here's a list, from SimonTeaKettle's Famous Authors, of notable self-published books:

Remembrance of things Past, by Marcel Proust

Ulysses, by James Joyce

The Adventures of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter

A Time to Kill, by John Grisham

The Wealthy Barber, by David Chilton

The Bridges of Madison County

What Color is Your Parachute

In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters

The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield

The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. (and his student E. B. White)

When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple

Life’s Little Instruction Book

Robert’s Rules of Order

Self-published authors:

Deepak Chopra

Gertrude Stein

Zane Grey

Upton Sinclair

Carl Sandburg

Ezra Pound

Mark Twain

Edgar Rice Burroughs

Stephen Crane

Bernard Shaw

Anais Nin

Thomas Paine

Virginia Wolff

e.e. Cummings

Edgar Allen Poe

Rudyard Kipling

Henry David Thoreau

Benjamin Franklin

Walt Whitman

Alexandre Dumas

William E.B. DuBois

Beatrix Potter

And books rejected by publishers:

Pearl S. Buck - The Good Earth - 14 times

Norman Mailer - The Naked and the Dead - 12 times

Patrick Dennis- Auntie Mame - 15 times
George Orwell - Animal Farm

Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull - 20 times

Joseph Heller - Catch-22 - 22 times (!)

Mary Higgins Clark - first short story - 40 times

Alex Haley - before Roots - 200 rejections

Robert Persig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - 121 times

John Grisham - A Time to Kill - 15 publishers and 30 agents (he ended up publishing it himself)

Chicken Soup for the Soul - 33 times

Dr. Seuss - 24 times

Louis L'Amour - 200 rejections

Jack London - 600 before his first story

John Creasy - 774 rejections before selling his first story. He went on to write 564 books, using fourteen names.

Jerzy Kosinski - 13 agents and 14 publishers rejected his best-selling novel when he submitted it under a different name, including Random House, which had originally published it.
Diary of Anne Frank

I would add James Joyce's Dubliners to the list of books rejected by publishers...

All a publication contract tells you is what someone has been paid. I wouldn't submit one, when I made a FOIA request for the book I'm currently writing, because it's like submitting your pay stub--too personally embarrassing and none of their business! I affirmed I had a contract, that should have been enough. Which is why the second clause is important: "...the Government may also consider the past publication record of the requester in making such a determination." IMHO, this is better than nothing--but what if it your FIRST book? Or, your FIRST documentary film? Why should established writers have a preference under law that unknowns, who have incentives to seek scoops with more vigor, don't?

As Frank Rich pointed out in the Sunday New York Times, it is outsiders who have consistently been able to deliver the most powerful news stories:

"Politico theorized that Hastings had pulled off his impertinent coup because he was a freelance journalist rather than a beat reporter, and so could risk “burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal’s remarks.”

That sentence was edited out of the article — in a routine updating, said Politico — after the blogger Andrew Sullivan highlighted it as a devastating indictment of a Washington media elite too cozy with and protective of its sources to report the unvarnished news. In any event, Politico had the big picture right. It’s the Hastings-esque outsiders with no fear of burning bridges who have often uncovered the epochal stories missed by those with high-level access..."

Bottom Line: FOIA, as amended, expands the definition of the news media, but not far enough.

Hatch Opposes Kagan Nomination

He told the AP he'll vote against the Solicitor General.

Hmmmmmmmm....contra Kagan's published opinion in this regard, maybe Senate hearings make a difference, after all?

Ryan Crocker on Iraq

From The National Interest:

It is vital that this engagement continue. Iraq is not yesterday’s war.

Strategic patience is often in short supply in this country. It is not a new problem for us, and it is not limited to Iraq. My time in the Foreign Service, from Lebanon in the early 1980s to Iraq twenty-five years later, was in many respects service in a long war. Dates such as 4/18 and 10/23—the bombings of the U.S. embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut in 1983—were seared into my memory well before 9/11. I learned a few lessons along the way. One is we need to be careful about what we get into. It is a complex, volatile region with long experience in dealing with outside interventions—our adversaries often do not organize for the war until some point after we think we have already won it. But a second lesson is that we need to be even more careful about what we propose to get out of. Disengagement can have greater consequences than intervention.

Our withdrawal from Lebanon in 1984 was a victory for Syria and Iran who created and used Hezbollah against us with devastating consequences. They drew conclusions about our staying power, and when I stepped off the helicopter in Baghdad on a warm night in March 2007 as the new American ambassador, I had the eerie feeling that I was back in Lebanon a quarter of a century earlier. Iran and Syria had again combined efforts against us, this time supporting Jaish al-Mahdi and al-Qaeda instead of Hezbollah (in fact, Hezbollah trainers were working with Jaish al-Mahdi).

The surge confounded their expectations—we stepped forward instead of back. But they almost succeeded. When then–commander of U.S. forces in Iraq General David Petraeus and I testified before Congress in September 2007, the surge was starting to make a difference. But Americans, and much of Congress, were tired of the war. A major theme in our testimony was that we needed to consider that the costs of disengaging from Iraq could be far greater than those of continued involvement. Al-Qaeda would have had a base on Arab soil from which to plan operations throughout the region—and beyond. Iran and Syria would have won a major victory over the United States, fundamentally realigning the entire area with very grave consequences for the security of our allies, as well as our own. We continue to pay for our loss in Lebanon more than a quarter of a century ago. The costs of defeat in Iraq would have been exponentially higher.

Specter Denounces Kagan Nomination

According to the San Francsico Chronicle:

"So far it's been a winning hand, but it's not been good for the country, the court or the Constitution, and certainly not the Congress," said Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., who opposed Kagan's confirmation as solicitor general 16 months ago when he was the committee's ranking Republican.

Specter, who may again oppose Kagan, said Thursday that the nominee uttered "pure prepared pabulum that comes right out of the White House murder boards." He said he was particularly upset because, in a 1995 law review article, Kagan lambasted the confirmation process as "vapid" because of the lack of specificity in nominees' answers.

Veterans Testify Against Kagan Nomination

From Politics Daily:

Army Capt. Flagg Youngblood, USA (Ret.), a Yale graduate, voiced the strongest objections to Kagan's appointment, calling her oversight of the separate-but-equal access for recruiters at Harvard Law "a total disregard for the rule of law" and an "unlawful brand of segregation."

"Imagine Dean Kagan on the lunch counter," Youngblood told the senators, comparing military recruiters to African- Americans during the Civil Rights movement. "What she said to the military in effect was, 'You're welcome here, but would you be so kind as to use the back door by the garbage? You don't mind eating in the kitchen, do you?'"

Army Capt. Pete Hegseth, an Iraq War veteran who attends Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said Kagan treated the military "like second-class citizens" when she continued limiting recruiters' access to the career services office.

"Her actions undercut the military's ability to fight and win wars overseas," Hegseth said. He also lamented the fact that Kagan, whom he considers anti-military, is slated to replace Justice John Paul Stevens, the last remaining veteran on the high court.

Hegseth also said Kagan's supporters are wrong to point to Harvard Law's increased numbers in the military as a good reflection on Kagan's time as dean. "It increased in spite of Ms. Kagan, not because of her," he said.

Finally, Thomas Moe, an Air Force veteran and POW in Vietnam, said Kagan's disregard for the Solomon Amendment should disqualify her from consideration for the court. "As a citizen, I cannot support the nomination of a justice who can pick and choose the laws they wish to follow," he said.

NY Times: NRA Opposes Kagan Nomination

The New York Times reports that the NRA has come out against Kagan:

WASHINGTON — The National Rifle Association said on Thursday that it would oppose the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, and would publicize how senators vote on her nomination. The move could drive down support for her among senators from states where gun rights are at issue.

“Unfortunately, Ms. Kagan’s record on the Second Amendment gives us no confidence that if confirmed to the court, she will faithfully defend the fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms of law-abiding Americans,” the association’s leadership wrote on Thursday in a letter to the chairman and the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The so-called N.R.A. score — the group’s evaluation of candidates, often cited in political campaigns — rates politicians on their friendliness to the group’s agenda, and became an issue in the Supreme Court confirmation last year of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She was confirmed on a largely party-line vote of 68 to 31.

Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, who voted against Justice Sotomayor and who typically votes in line with the rifle association’s positions, said in an interview Wednesday that if the association decided to track votes on Ms. Kagan, it would not influence his vote.

Asked if the group’s opposition would hurt Ms. Kagan more generally with Republicans, though, Mr. Hatch said, “It wouldn’t help.”

Curiously, in its own endorsement today, the New York Times damned Kagan with faint praise: "We hope Ms. Kagan was being candid. Frankly, we had expected somewhat more from her, considering her 1995 article disparaging the hearings process as a 'vapid and hollow charade.' "

SEC Settles with Fired Investigator

The Washington Post reports that the SEC has paid fired investigator Gary Aguirre $755,000 to end his wrongful termination lawsuit, stemming from his cancelled probe of Pequot Capital fraud allegations in 2006.

Aguirre accused the agency of botching a probe into the prominent hedge fund Pequot Capital Management, saying the SEC was overlooking clear signs he uncovered that the firm traded in shares of Microsoft based on insider information. Aguirre also accused the agency of firing him after he pushed, unsuccessfully, to interview Morgan Stanley's then chief executive, John Mack, as part of the Pequot probe. Aguirre argued that the agency didn't want to interview the Wall Street giant because of his "political clout."

The agency fired Aguirre for insubordination and closed the case on Pequot.

But Aguirre's protests led to two internal investigations by the SEC's inspector general into the handling of the Pequot matter and a scathing Senate report that found that the agency bungled the probe and improperly fired Aguirre. Internal documents show the agency's efforts to discredit Aguirre included discussion of a "basket case" strategy that made him seem like a longtime agency gadfly. The former enforcement lawyer, meanwhile, pursued a private legal claim for wrongful termination.

Recently, the agency changed its tune on two counts.

After new evidence came to light in the Pequot case, the SEC opened a new probe and last month settled insider-trading charges with the firm. Pequot and its chief executive, Arthur Samberg, agreed to pay $28 million to settle SEC charges that the firm traded shares of Microsoft based on insider information.

And Tuesday, the SEC agreed to a settlement, finalized by the Merit Systems Protection Board, to pay Aguirre four years and 10 months of salary and attorney's fees in exchange for Aguirre dismissing his claims.

"I think it's fair to the public that the SEC pays for my work over the past four years and ten months, since it generated $28 million to the U.S. Treasury," Aguirre said. "But it's a shame the team I worked with at the SEC did not get to complete the Pequot investigation. The filing of the case in 2005 or 2006, before the financial crisis, would have been exactly what Wall Street elite needed to hear at the perfect moment: The SEC goes after big fish, too."

Since Chris Cox was chairman of the SEC at this time, and the firing of an investigator must have created a hostile environment for those seeking to root out fraud, perhaps someone might take a closer look at Cox's role in Aguirre's firing, as well as his responsibility for the collapse of the US financial system in a climate of widespread fraud and abuse?

Andrew Breitbart on Journolist

Andrew Breitbart responds to Andrew Sullivan's ataack on his offer of $100,000 for the complete Journolist archive (ht Media Matters for America):

I was not invited to participate in that list for obvious reasons. I am not bound by those rules. Unless you are going to tell me that in the future, journalists are forever bound not to report information that others have agreed would remain private, you are holding me to a standard that no one else in the media would ever agree to. Such a standard would allow corporate, government and military malfeasance to flourish and would certainly prevent stories like the Risen and Lichtblau exposes in the New York Times from ever being published; even though the programs were top-secret, the Times was not bound by any privacy agreement.

Why was Mickey Kaus not excoriated for breaking the sacred JournoList bond when he posted a series of leaked emails that showed collusion against not-liberal-enough New Republic editor Marty Peretz for his crime of sticking up for Israel?

Kausfiles has obtained a copy of one JournoList discussion, focusing on New Republic editor-in-chief Martin Peretz (for whom I once worked.) This is not a parody! It’s the real thing. I don’t know whether or not it is representative. I’ve edited it only to remove potentially defamatory passages–those cuts are marked–and left out various boilerplate links and commands embedded in the thread, such as “Print” and “Report this message.” … I won’t add my own commentary, at least for now. Find your own lede! … Reminder to JournoList organizer E. Klein, who likes to take it private: All communications are on the record. …

Most information of value is held by people that don’t want it to be public. Not that anyone asked, but I would never divulge information discovered that was not pertinent to my stated mission, which is to point out the collusion between the political left and a journalist class that improbably claims there is no such thing as media bias and who dismiss those who accuse the media of having a left wing agenda as paranoid conspiracy theorists.

I would never divulge an individual’s sexual secrets. I did not learn that rule in journalism school, I learned that from my conscience. Something that I have come to realize is lacking in those journalists who claim out of one side of their mouth that they are objective reporters, but then seek the privacy of clubs, cliques and listservs, etc., to fight back against those that would challenge their false “objective order.”

When the talking points of the press match up with each other to the degree that they have in recent years,when the lexicon is virtually identical, when major stories are collectively ignored and the minor ones are collectively inflated, everyone notices.

IMHO, after reading the published excerpts, what went on on Journolist sounds suspiciously like "Two Minutes Hate" in Orwell's novel 1984. In Kaus's case study, Marty Peretz became a new Emmanuel Goldstein...In Weigel's instance, it was Drudge.

TPM: Right-Wing Rallies Against Kagan

According to Talking Points Memo.

Washington Times: Kagan Fails Ethics Test for Supreme Court

From The Washington Times:

Elena Kagan has failed the ethical standards necessary for service on the Supreme Court. She also has shown herself to be an apologist not just for legalized abortion, but for legalized partial-birth abortion - a gruesome form of infanticide opposed by up to 75 percent of the American public. In yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, Ms. Kagan utterly failed in her attempts to explain away her unethical actions on behalf of an immoral policy. After these revelations, no senator claiming to be a moderate should be able to support Ms. Kagan.

Sen. Sessions: Kagan Not Qualified for Supreme Court

He told National Review Online that she was not honest in her testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Washington, D.C. — After wrapping up the third day of Elena Kagan’s confirmation hearings, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, tells National Review Online that he has “growing concerns” with President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. “This nominee needs to address several very serious questions about the accuracy of her testimony, about whether she lets her personal agendas drive what she does,” Sessions says.

“She does not have the rigor or clarity of mind that you look for in a justice on the Supreme Court,” Sessions says. “She is personable, people-oriented, and conciliatory, yet she lacks a strict, legal approach. You want a mind on the court. She’s charming, delightful, and personable, but I don’t see that there.”

Sessions points to Kagan’s handling of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” law while solicitor general as a major problem area. He wonders why she did not take action on two cases in which “don’t ask, don’t tell” was challenged. Kagan, for her part, defended her decisions, saying she acted “consistently with the responsibility” to “vigorously defend all statutes.”

Sessions is not convinced. “I have become more troubled after today,” he says. “On really tough matters, she becomes very political and acts less in a principled, lawful manner and more in a manipulative, political manner. That’s not what you need on the Supreme Court.” (More about this exchange from Ed Whelan here.)

Sessions adds that Kagan’s responses about her association with a controversial partial-birth-abortion memo (which Shannen W. Coffin wrote about here) “are another example” of the “nominee’s troubles.”

“That document seems to indicate pretty clearly that she got panic stricken when the president got ready to sign the partial-birth-abortion bill,” Sessions says. “She went into high-speed action to talk him out of it.”

Ann Althouse: Kagan Being Given A "Pass"

From Ann Althouse's blog:

I think it's more likely, in fact, that Kagan is being given a pass, and that the Senators from both parties have their reasons for giving her a pass. It's related to the unavailability of a transcript, I'm guessing.

Why Would Someone Spy on Alan Patricof?

Politico says he may be the politically-connected financier mentioned in alleged Russian agent case (ht Huffington Post).

Ann Althouse Can't Find Kagan Hearing Transcripts Online...

Althouse complains she's having trouble finding Kagan transcripts on the Web:

Why am I having such a hard time finding a transcript of the Kagan hearings on line?

I want to catch up with what I missed of the hearings, without slogging through all the video — the video is very nicely presented on line at C-Span — and in a form I can cut and paste for blogging purposes. But I can't find a transcript!

Could someone point me to a transcript of the first and second day hearings so before my thoughts come to rest on the theory that the media don't want us to be able to comb through the text?

The text! The text is important when we're talking about the Constitution!

So, what's going on here? Why hasn't the Senate Judiciary Committee--or a news organization, or a Beltway NGO--posted the transcripts prominently, yet?

Charles Crawford on Russian Sleepers in Suburbia

From Charles Crawford's Blogoir:

This site always praises good technique.

So let's hear it for the FBI, who have done a most impressive number on cracking open a sophisticated Russian spy ring.

Most of the lurid media reports this morning simply rehash what is in the US Justice Department published material. Check out the two PDFs at the link to read the originals.

One of the accused is one Vicky Pelaez, who appears to be a non-Russian (born in Peru) who married one of the 'illegals' ('Juan Lazaro') and was a prominent anti-imperialist New York journalist. Here she is in full neo-Marxist rant, on Honduras.

This pro-Castro site forlornly tries to froth up a conspiracy theory: because Pelaez was the only Spanish language journalist in New York worth a damn, something had to be done about her!

It will be. The detailed Justice Department accounts of her complicated manoeuvres to help 'Lazaro' contact the Russians and carry large amounts of cash too and fro are most instructive.

This one will run for a long time, revealing all sorts of fascinating details about the Russians' spycraft. It's worth recalling that the key problem with having spies is getting from them any useful information they may have picked up, and indeed communicating with them to set targets and follow progress. How to do that regularly without arousing suspicion?

Hence the mysterious world of Steganography, the art of hiding digital information in a publicly available image.

The FBI reveal many other hi-tech ruses used in this case.

Here is an earlier alleged British attempt to effect clever communication which was very smart - until it wasn't.

Here's a link to the Department of Justice website with PDF files mentioned by Crawford above.

OMB Watch: "Kagan Has Sided With Secrecy"

OMB Watch considers how Elena Kagan might treat FOIA cases on the Supreme Court (ht FOIABlog):

Kagan Has Sided with Secrecy

During her time as Solicitor General, Kagan has pursued five cases before the Supreme Court concerning application of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the country's most fundamental open government law. In four of the five cases, she has argued in favor of government secrecy. Each time, the Court sided in favor of the government. The Court has not yet taken up the fifth FOIA case.

The most notable of the cases was Department of Defense v. American Civil Liberties Union, in which Kagan fought the release of photographs depicting the abuse of detainees while in U.S. custody. In her argument to the Supreme Court, Kagan stated, "In the judgment of the president and the nation's highest-ranking military officers, disclosure of the photographs at issue here would pose a substantial risk to the lives and physical safety of United States and allied military and civilian personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan." Kagan made this assertion despite the fact that the administration had already released Justice Department memoranda that detailed the policy and actions of U.S. personnel in torturing detainees because "the existence of that approach to interrogation was already widely known." In that case, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision to release the photographs.

In a different case, Kagan argued that it would violate physicians' privacy to release Medicare data on claims paid. Kagan's argument in Consumers' Checkbook v. Dept. of Health and Human Services was that the information could be combined with other publicly available Medicare fee information to figure out how much a physician earned each year. Consumers' Checkbook had argued that physicians' privacy did not outweigh the public interest in using the data to measure physician experience, quality, and efficiency. The Supreme Court refused to overturn a ruling from the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, which sided with the government and allowed the records to be withheld. The Court of Appeals decision had reversed the original ruling of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, which found in favor of Consumers’ Checkbook and ordered the agency to release the records.

In two other FOIA cases, Kagan argued against disclosure of records sought by the public. Loving v. Department of Defense concerned a request for documents relating to the president's review of a military death sentence, and Berger v. Internal Revenue Service involved a request for an IRS officer's time sheets. In both of these cases, the Supreme Court chose not to review the cases, essentially siding with Kagan by default and letting the lower courts' rulings to withhold the information stand.

Alleged Russian Agent Had LinkedIn Site

And here's a link that worked this morning (ht Guardian UK): http://www.linkedin.com/in/chapmananna. The Guardian, which has profiled her, also posted a link to her Facebook page. The Guardian Blog calls Anna Chapman the "The Russian Spy Loved by the Media."

CBS News posted this link to her YouTube videos, including this interview in Russian:


http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=anna+chapman&aq=f.

James Taranto on Journolist

From The Wall Street Journal (ht FutureofCapitalism.com)

Remember, Weigel's supposedly off-the-record audience consisted of hundreds of journalists, both left-wing and purportedly objective. What it appears he was doing was not merely expressing an opinion but engaging in partisan politics--i.e., advising other journalists on how they should tailor their coverage so as to avoid "doing more damage to the Democrats."

We surmise that this was not an isolated occurrence--that a lot of the discussion on Journolist consisted of this sort of blatantly partisan strategizing. We're certainly open to being proved wrong, if Journolist founder Ezra Klein--who still is at the Post--or any other member of the now-defunct list would like to supply us with a copy of its archives. We're willing to promise our source anonymity and even buy a round of drinks, though we're afraid we are not in a position to match Andrew Breitbart's offer of $100,000.

The Weigel kerfuffle has prompted a bit of confusion about journalistic ethics. Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic wrote last week: "I've been leaked postings from JournoList before--wonderfully charming things written about me, as you might have guessed--and I haven't had the opportunity to use them, but would be happy to if the need arose." This prompted a John Cole to denounce Goldberg (publicly, on his blog) for his willingness to use his "perch at the Atlantic to publish someone's private emails to viciously destroy their character and career."

But of course all Goldberg is threatening to do is commit journalism. The Journolist member or members who forwarded the emails in question to Goldberg might have violated a confidentiality agreement, but Goldberg was not a party to that agreement. Neither were the guys at the Daily Caller. In fact, Ezra Klein revealed last week on the Post's website that he had blackballed the Caller's editor, Tucker Carlson, on ideological grounds.

If a group of professionals in any other industry were conspiring to serve the interests of a political party in the way that Weigel's Coakley post suggests the Journolisters were, no journalist would deny that the public had a right to know. Why should that be any less true in this case--especially since in this case, such partisan activity would be a violation of professional ethics?

I wondered what Taranto meant by "professional ethics" and found this on the Sigma Delta Chi website for the SPJ Code of Ethics:

Act Independently

Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know.

Journalists should:

—Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
— Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
— Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.
— Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
— Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.
— Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
— Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; avoid bidding for news.

Courtland Milloy on Justice Clarence Thomas's Second Amendment Views

From today's Washington Post:

Thomas agreed with McDonald, concluding that owning a gun is a fundamental part of a package of hard-won rights guaranteed to black people under the 14th Amendment. And just because some hooligans in Chicago or D.C. misuse firearms is no reason to give it up.

"In my view, the record makes plain that the Framers of the Privileges or Immunities Clause and the ratifying-era public understood -- just as the Framers of the Second Amendment did -- that the right to keep and bear arms was essential to the preservation of liberty," Thomas wrote. "The record makes equally plain that they deemed this right necessary to include in the minimum baseline of federal rights that the Privileges or Immunities Clause established in the wake of the War over slavery."

Thomas made no mention of the black loss of life and liberty from handguns being wielded by other blacks. But he has made clear on other occasions that the problem is not that there are too many guns in the black community; the problem is too many criminals.

He dismissed the cogent gun-control arguments of his retiring colleague, John Paul Stevens, conjuring up the abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens instead: "When it was first proposed to free the slaves and arm the blacks, did not half the nation tremble?"

Let 'em quake, Thomas appears to be saying.

From Frederick Douglass, Thomas writes: " 'The black man has never had the right either to keep or bear arms,' and that, until he does, 'the work of the Abolitionists was not finished.' "

How Russian Spies Came to Suburbia

From The Guardian (UK):

The hip and friendly young man with the brunette girlfriend in the front seat as he whipped around Washington in a top-end Mercedes-Benz attracted more envy than suspicion.

A few hundred miles away, in a tree-lined, middle-class New Jersey suburb that is home to one of America's most famous comedians, residents equally saw little to worry about in the unremarkable couple with two young daughters, although they did register the cars cruising by taking pictures.

And the fiery Latin American newspaper columnist drew more amusement than scrutiny for her repeated praise of Fidel Castro.

So it was from Virginia to Boston, and from New York to Seattle: married couples with families, young get-ahead professionals, even noisy anti-government agitators – all seemingly unremarkable in the American mix. Even the accents did not raise eyebrows in a country of immigrants.

But the carefully-crafted American normality, sometimes built over a decade or more, has been shattered with the arrest of 11 people – including eight who claimed to be married couples – on charges of being part of a long-term, deep cover espionage ring run by the Russian intelligence service.

Some of the accused assumed false names and backgrounds – in one case stealing the identity of a dead Canadian. Others lived openly under their real names, but allegedly maintained a double life controlled by Moscow.

The FBI has so far failed to reveal just what kind of intelligence these alleged deep cover agents were passing on, and while the indictments carry a hint that they may not have been very successful spies, their neighbours were invariably astonished to hear the accusations...