So, just screw the press, generally?

There is a law stating that we don't harass and intimidate the press. You've probably heard of it.

There's no indication the AP leaker had "an agenda." The story was simply that we had captured a terrorist underwear bomb.

The AP is not "a bunch of people running around pretending to be journalists." Whether or not they get it right all the time is beside the point. If anyone are journalists, the AP are.

The press is not one thing. The tired notion that journalism is worthless and never to be trusted is a rightwing invention, forged for the express purpose of discrediting factual information that too often contradicts the worldview they'd like to put forward.

Way to hop on the Fox News bandwagon, folks.

And things sure as hell aren't going to get any better if we get behind government attacks on the press where it's reported something the government did not want known. Things the government does not want known tend to be the things we need to know most.

This whole schtick smacks of the general attitude on the right that everything we've worked for -- civil rights, labor rights, environmentalism, government transparency, etc., somehow came to be all on its own, and now we don't need the mechanisms that got us there anymore. Who needs reporters or labor unions or pollution regs -- everything will surely just sail along fine on its own, right?

How did we get rid of Nixon? Through the efforts of partisan noisemakers? How did we find out about Iran / Contra?

How do we find out ANYTHING that goes wrong in government, that needs to be addressed?

And what's the alternative, by the way, if "journalism" can be safely fed to the dogs? Press releases and partisan PR? What's left, when the reporters are all cowed or in prison?

This is a specious argument. If you want information, you need to support the press. AP did nothing wrong here. It reported a fact, to which the government itself added other information, that after a deductive process, could have endangered a source.

That doesn't warrant spying on their entire news gathering mechanism, for months, with no hearing, no negotiation, no warning.

If you want to ensure that the press continues to be often untrustworthy or compromised by sources with agendas, getting behind secret government spying is a great way to go about it. You can be sure the AP won't be bringing you any information government sources don't want released for a good long time to come.

Won't that be peachy when the next Republican sits in the White House?