DOJ just submitted a filing asserting that a number of claims they made in filings last week were erroneous.They’re claiming that:

1) Their statement of facts supporting their claim asserting that no anthrax disappeared from USAMRIID and therefore Ivins must be the anthrax killer (but an unforeseen one) should have admitted that Ivins did have a lypholizer in his lab, but not in a way he could use.

2) Their statement that a scientist who had been vaccinated against anthrax could walk out of USAMRIID with anthrax injected into his body–as opposed to bloodstream–could get anthrax out of the lab.

3) Their statements quoting army regulations should match those army regulations.

4) The book on lab security was not written until 2007.

In other words, much of the filing is a bid to resubmit their homework. They look like idiots. But whatever.

Except for the central claim to the filing.

Most of their filing tries to reel in their admission that USAMRIID sent anthrax to both Battelle and BioPort labs–the latter is an anthrax vaccine manufacturer that was at risk of losing its contract in 2001. Points 2-7 all try to replace “BioPort and Battelle” with just Battelle.

Now, I’m not sure what their rationale for retracting the admission that they sent anthrax from Bruce Ivins’ anthrax flask to BioPort is. Ivins’ description of what he did with the flask in question appears to clearly show he sent 100 ml to BioPort on December 4, 2000 (indeed, one of Ivins’ colleagues testified that some anthrax was sent to BioPort). And BioPort would have precisely the same motive for sending out anthrax as the FBI attributed to Ivins: an financial interest in ensuring the government kept producing the anthrax vaccine. Update: This report (h/t Jim White) seems to confirm the Rabbit Challenge took place at USAMRIID.

In other words, it appears that USAMRIID actually did send anthrax to BioPort, a lab with a clear motive for creating fear about anthrax. And this filing appears to want to claim that USAMRIID didn’t send that anthrax–even though Bruce Ivins’ records, which the government has relied on to say Ivins had control over the anthrax, says they did.

And this head fake helps the government’s claim that Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer … how?

Update: A justice department spokesperson explains that BioPort never got any active anthrax spores. “The only RMR-1029 spores which Bioport received were irradiated/dead/non-viable/harmless.  Battelle is the only private research facility which received viable RMR-1029 spores.”

DOJ indicted 16 alleged hackers today, 14 of whom were purportedly involved in hacking PayPal after it refused to accept payments for WikiLeaks.

According to the San Jose indictment, in late November 2010, WikiLeaks released a large amount of classified U.S. State Department cables on its website. Citing violations of the PayPal terms of service, and in response to WikiLeaks’ release of the classified cables, PayPal suspended WikiLeaks’ accounts so that WikiLeaks could no longer receive donations via PayPal. WikiLeaks’ website declared that PayPal’s action “tried to economically strangle WikiLeaks.”

The San Jose indictment alleges that in retribution for PayPal’s termination of WikiLeaks’ donation account, a group calling itself Anonymous coordinated and executed distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against PayPal’s computer servers using an open source computer program the group makes available for free download on the Internet. DDoS attacks are attempts to render computers unavailable to users through a variety of means, including saturating the target computers or networks with external communications requests, thereby denying service to legitimate users. According to the indictment, Anonymous referred to the DDoS attacks on PayPal as “Operation Avenge Assange.”

Now, I’m not surprised DOJ indicted these folks. I’m not arguing that, if they did what DOJ alleged they did, they didn’t commit a crime.

But I can’t help but notice that DOJ has not yet indicted anyone for the DDoS attacks–the very same crime–committed against WikiLeaks 8 days earlier than the crime alleged in this indictment.

I’m guessing DOJ has a very good idea who committed that crime. But for some reason (heh), they haven’t indicted those perpetrators.

In fact, I’ll bet you that DOJ also has a better explanation for why PayPal started refusing WikiLeaks donations on December 4, 2010–two days before this alleged crime–than they describe here.

But we mere citizens are privy to none of that. As far as we know–because of choices about secrecy the government has made–a crime was committed against a media outlet on November 28, 2010. That crime remains unsolved. Indeed, DOJ has never made a peep about solving that crime. Meanwhile, today, 14 people were indicted for allegedly committing the very same crime the government–inexplicably, at least according to its public statements–has not pursued.

According to the public story, at least, the rule of law died with this indictment today. The government has put itself–the hackers it likes, if not employs–above the law, while indicting 14 people for the very same crime committed just weeks before those 14 people allegedly committed their crime.

Of course, that’s probably not how the government views it. I presume they went to some judge–probably a FISA judge–in the days leading up to November 28 and told that judge they were pursuing a case of Espionage and couldn’t that judge please give the government permission to commit a crime against a media outlet.

Mind you, I’m not aware of the part of the PATRIOT Act (or other US Code) that permits the government to commit crimes against media outlets it claims are engaged in Espionage. But then I’m not aware of the part of the PATRIOT Act that permits the government to track geolocation of all of us in the name of hunting terrorists.

And we know they do that.

That’s one of the problems with secret law, you know. It’s never clear what basis the government has given a judge, in secret, for breaking the law.

Less perplexing than how the government explains why its hack of WikiLeaks is not a crime but the alleged hacking committed by these 14 people is a crime, is why PayPal and Visa and MasterCard all of a sudden, within days, decided to stop taking donations to WikiLeaks. Withdrawing funding for alleged terrorists and spies with no due process, at least, is at least provided for under the law.

Though, from the perspective of seeing that our government used it to persecute a media outlet, it doesn’t necessarily make it right.

The other interesting thing about how this secret law thing works is that around about the same time this uninvestigated hack against WikiLeaks occurred and around about the same time these alleged hackers hacked PayPal, the government anonymously leaked information about problems with the claim that WikiLeaks was, in fact, engaged in Espionage. Even at that point, the government admitted it didn’t have much of an Espionage case.

The Justice Department, in considering whether and how it might indict Julian Assange, is looking beyond the Espionage Act of 1917 to other possible offenses, including conspiracy or trafficking in stolen property, according to officials familiar with the investigation.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. acknowledged this week that there were problems with the Espionage Act, a World War I-era law that says the unauthorized possession and dissemination of information related to national defense is illegal. But he also hinted that prosecutors were looking at other statutes with regard to Mr. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

[snip]

A government official familiar with the investigation said that treating WikiLeaks different from newspapers might be facilitated if investigators found any evidence that Mr. Assange aided the leaker, who is believed to be a low-level Army intelligence analyst — for example, by directing him to look for certain things and providing technological assistance.

If Mr. Assange did collaborate in the original disclosure, then prosecutors could charge him with conspiracy in the underlying leak, skirting the question of whether the subsequent publication of the documents constituted a separate criminal offense. But while investigators have looked for such evidence, there is no public sign suggesting that they have found any.

Did they tell a judge WikiLeaks was engaged in Espionage even while they were telling Charlie Savage it wasn’t?

Particularly from the perspective of today–as it has become clear that Rupert Murdoch has been trafficking in stolen property without his media properties mysteriously getting hacked by people we believe to be aligned with the government–the 7 month period in which DOJ has failed to find any grounds to indict WikiLeaks itself really raises questions about the justification DOJ presumably gave to a judge all those months ago to engage in illegal prior restraint.

I assume DOJ claimed WikiLeaks engaged in Espionage. I assume the government used that claim to hack WikiLeaks and engage in prior restraint. I assume the government used the same claim to cut off US-based donations to WikiLeaks. And if the government admitted that publicly, likely just a few crazy civil libertarians like me would object to the government’s violation of the First Amendment.

We’re so quaint, those of us who believe in rule of law!

DOJ could fix the crisis in legitimacy this indictment will bring about by simply explaining some detail about why they’re not pursuing the hackers that brought down a media outlet last year, but they have pursued hackers that brought down an online payment service (never mind questions about why they’re not pursuing banksters). They could simply explain what law they used–or abused–to be able to incapacitate a media outlet without violating the First Amendment.

That might give their actions today–and back in November–the patina of legitimacy.

But instead, they have apparently chosen to persist in applying their secret laws, such that they can violate the First Amendment of the Constitution, even while prosecuting others for crimes the government has presumably committed itself.

And that, my friends, is how secret law kills democracy and the rule of law.

Our American Empire

Yesterday, I noted that Bob Baer predicts an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities this fall. Today, Reuters reports that Iran is adding more sophisticated centrifuges to its nuclear development program, presumably to repair some of the damage done by Stuxnet.

The rebels we’re about to give all of Qaddafi’s looted money to? They’re using kids–as young as 7–to fight their war against Qaddafi.

In Pakistan, we’re killing kids directly; the Bureau of Investigative Journalism counts 6 kids among the 45 civilians we’ve killed in drone strikes in the last year.

A group of Pakistani drone victims and their families are seeking to arrest former CIA general counsel John Rizzo for “conspiracy to wage war and commit murder and other crimes in violation of Pakistani law, and to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity in breach of international law.” Rizzo basically boasted to Newsweek for a February article, saying ““How many law professors have signed off on a death warrant?”

J.M Berger notes that some “homegrown” Islamic terrorists are increasingly ignoring al Qaeda doctrine. Not only does that lead them to strike at different targets than al Qaeda might choose, but it makes it a lot easier to catch them. (Some might say that that’s a testament to the way our counterterrorism strategy needs to create terrorists here to sustain the industry.)

If you haven’t already, read this Glenn Greenwald smackdown of the way the press has unquestionably repeated the government’s equation of al-Shabaab with al Qaeda. It’s not enough, I guess, for the press to get us into war; it also helps the government slowly redefine who we’re at war with so we can never declare victory and go home.

The National Surveillance State

Wall Street must have liked the Murdochs’ performance today in Parliament; News Corp stock is up over 6% on the day. Meanwhile, WYNC shows how it easy it is to carry out the hack News Corp used on its victims.

Iran has banned Google+ as a plot of US spy agencies, which at one level speaks badly of free speech. But I have to admit that I believe that Google+ will make it easier to conduct surveillance–probably on Iranians and Americans–as it offers a virtual one-stop shop spooks can use to map out social networks. And while he doesn’t address my paranoia, Julian Sanchez has a good reflection on Google+ and privacy.

No Rule of Law

The government continues its efforts to prosecute those who, well, didn’t crash the economy through financial fraud. Today, they’re going after Reddit co-founder online activist Aaron Swartz for “stealing” a bunch of academic journals. I can see how the liberation of knowledge is more dangerous to our government than the theft of average folks’ homes. (Corrected per Andrew)

And that theft is ongoing. Both the AP and Reuters had reports yesterday on ongoing robo signing.

The Great Recession

Borders is liquidating, and with it, it is liquidating over 10,000 jobs. Yet another MI company going under.

Food stamp use in the US continues to rise. In three states–OR, MS, and and NM, over 20% residents rely on foodstamps (MI is close, with 19.4% of residents using food stamps).

Obama is thinking creatively about ways to fund education now that we have to spend our education money bombing kids on the other side of the world: get private corporations to donate to schools. Apparently, Microsoft has ponied up $15 million in video games for classroom. I guess asking Microsoft to end the practice of sheltering its profits from taxes–and giving that money to schools instead–would make too much sense?

The Politics of Influence

DOJ has indicted two men for serving as unregistered agents for Pakistan. Basically, the ISI is laundering money through a Kashmir Center to lobby for Kashmir unification. I’ve got two questions about this. First, how does prosecution of what is basically an ISI effort tie to our troubled relationship with Pakistan? Also, if it’s okay for corporations to donate money, why didn’t the Kashmir Center just go into some business and launder the money that way?

Thankfully, the IRS is finally doing something about one way private entities dump money into elections: it denied non-profit status to three groups the sole purpose of which “is to provide education solely to individuals affiliated with a certain political party who want to enter politics.”

I’m livetweeting the Murdoch hearings–follow along @emptywheel.

The highlights thus far are:

MP Watson kept refusing to let James Murdoch answer questions for his father. At one point, Watson said, “Your father is responsible for corporate governance and it’s revealing how little he knows.” The only question Watson asked James–which he didn’t really answer–was “I’d like you to tell me whether you told your father” about one of the settlements.

In a key exchange, Watson asked Rupert, “Mr. Murdoch, at what point did you find out criminality was endemic at NotW?” Rupert answered, “Endemic is a very wide word.”

In other exchanges, Rupert was stumped. On at least two occasions, he took more than 10 seconds to answer a question.

Another MP made a big deal about Rupert going through the back door of the Prime Minister’s residence. Rupert explained, “I was asked. I just did what I was told.” At one point, James tried to interrupt to explain the special politics of Murdoch going through the back door. Then finally, Rupert said (this is not quite a direct quote), I went through Mr. Brown’s back door many times.

Then he asked the big question:

Mr. Murdoch: Do you accept that ultimately you are responsible for this whole fiasco? Rupert: No.

As a number of you have noted, ProPublica is out with a story on yet more evidence why Bruce Ivins was probably not the anthrax killer. Here’s the deposition they cite in their story; his former colleague Patricia Worsham described how USAMRIID didn’t have the facilities to dry the anthrax used in the attack, and certainly not the quantities that were used in the attack.

I think I summarized it before to a certain extent, in that I don’t believe that we had facilities at USAMRIID to make that kind of preparation. It would have taken a great deal of time; it would have taken a huge number of cultures; it would have taken a lot of resources that would have been obvious to other people within containment when they wanted to use those resources.

We did not have anything in containment suitable for drying down anything, much less a quantity of spores. The lyophilizer that was part of our division was in noncontainment. If someone had used that to dry down that preparation, I would have expected that area to be very, very contaminated, and we had nonimmunized personnel in that the area, and I might have expected some of them to become ill.

Just as interesting is the argument the lawyers for Maureen Stevens–Bob Stevens’ wife–made when withdrawing their earlier stipulation that Bruce Ivins was the killer. They cite two former supervisors of Ivins, William Russell Byrne and Gerard Andrews, explaining why they thought Ivins couldn’t have made the anthrax used in the attacks.

Byrne argued that, had Ivins used the lypholizer to dry the anthrax, it would have left evidence.

He reiterated that if the laboratory’s equipment (lypholizer) had been used to lypholize that powder, you would have been able to find evidence of it pretty easily (76/23). The powder would have gotten everywhere insider the lypholizer.

And Andrews explained that the volume the equipment in Ivins’ lab was insufficient to make the amount of spores used in the attack.

Dr. Andrews stated: “No, I don’t believe he had the equipment, in my opinion.” He said that the equipment in BSL3 had limitations in that the lypholizer was a low-volume lypholizer that could handle maybe up to 50 mils at a time in separate small tubes. He opined “where would he do it without creating any sort of contamination is beyond me, but it has been speculated that the lypholizer may have been moved into a Class 2 Biological Safety Cabinet to prevent spores from flying everywhere. I would think the physical size of the lypholizer would be difficult to get the entire, or the speed vac to get the entire apparatus under the hood. It might be possible to get the apparatus under the hood; however, there would be contamination of it inside the hood if that was the case.

Byrne and Andrews also address Ivins’ training–that is, lack of training on weaponizing anthrax.

Right now, to try to salvage this suit, the government is arguing that the plaintiffs have no evidence of anyone else making the anthrax, but that since Ivins’ supervisors didn’t think he had the capability to make the anthrax, the government can’t be held liable for the anthrax that killed Bob Stevens.

But along the way, evidence like this–as well as further evidence that Ivins didn’t have sole control of the anthrax–is making it more and more clear that the government hasn’t solved this case.

I just got off a conference call with Elizabeth Warren. And while she said her plans extend no further than taking her grandkids to LegoLand, it’s pretty clear she’s going to be spending her time beating up on Republicans. Rather than respond to questions about why she didn’t get the job as Director of CFPB, she said she was “saving all the rocks in my pocket for the Republicans.” She also said, in the context of fighting for the CFPB, that

Having a nominee frees us up to have a big political fight. … Republicans want to embrace the system that failed. My view is we can now have that fight. … Republicans are counting on the word [that they’re opposing the CFPB] not getting back to their constituents at home.

This is the kind of fight we haven’t heard from Warren for the entire year she’s been cooped up at the White House. And it’s the kind of fight that, when she is allowed to make it, she generally wins.

So whether or not Warren intends to run for the Senate (she demurred when asked that question), it seems she’s prepared to, finally, make this a political fight, to make Republicans pay for their intransigence on this issue.

In the end, this won’t necessarily get us a CFPB Director, and therefore it won’t necessarily gets us a fully-functional CFPB. But it will finally brand Republicans for the anti-consumer policies they’ve embraced.

Let’s hope the White House doesn’t undercut Warren’s arguments by embracing the same kinds of policies.

Btw, DDay tells me I stole this idea from him. So I’m going to admit it fair and square that I did, indeed, take this idea partly from him.

Surveillance

The whistleblower who first tied Andy Coulson to the HackGate scandal, Sean Houre, was found dead in his home last night and the police are, for some reason, not treating the “unexplained” death as suspicious. I find that particularly curious given that Houre had just explained to the NYT and Guardian how News Corp journalists used cell phone data for geolocation, in much the same way our government secretly does under the PATRIOT Act.

Spencer has a really important article on TruePosition, one of the big players in geolocation. Of particular concern? It’s part of Liberty Media, one of the big players in media consolidation.

Chris Soghoian warns that the security problem that Murdoch’s minions used in HackGate may still exist on three US carriers–AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint. He reminds that when AT&T and T-Mobile got caught with an open back door to the kind of hacking Murdoch’s minions used in the UK, they only had to reveal that vulnerability, not fix it.

Rule of Law

Thomas Drake was sentenced to a year of probation last Friday. Both the NYT and the Government Accountability Project describe the new asshole Judge Richard Bennett ripped William Welch and the government more generally for the way they treated Drake.

Remember Tim DeChristopher, the UT man who walked into a BLM auction and bid on land in an effort to prevent it from being drilled? In March, he was convicted of two counts of fraud. Bill McKibben writes about his upcoming sentencing, wondering why DeChristopher will be punished but not the MOTUs who crashed our economy.

The head of Obama’s Financial Task Force is leaving after 17 months on the job. Quick! Can you think of any high profile crime he has prosecuted?

Secrecy

Steven Aftergood reviews two of the snowflakes released in the latest batch of RummyLeaks, both address Rummy’s view on secrecy. I’m particularly interested in the November 2, 2005 one where Rummy muses that the US government can’t keep a secret. As Aftergood notes, Rummy doesn’t say what secret he was worried about. But there are two that were about to break: news of the black sites (Dana Priest broke that story just days later and Carl Levin was looking into it), and the warrantless wiretap program.

Corporate Government

Last week, the Center for Media and Democracy rolled out an important new project, ALEC Exposed, chronicling the way that the American Legislative Exchange Council serves as a means for corporations to dictate legislative agenda at the state level. Here’s DemocracyNow on some of what CMD discovered. John Nichols looks at how ALEC has tried to curtail democracy.

One of the things the corporatists are trying to do is cut back access to justice. As part of this, Republicans in Congress are trying to cut over a quarter of legal aid’s funding. Adam Bonin has an update on what you can do to stop them.

The Empire and the Rest of the World

Josh Rogin reports on a letter a couple of Congresswomen sent to the PLO, warning that if they don’t drop a plan to ask for a UN vote giving Palestine statehood, they’ll lose US aid. This follows votes in both the House and Senate condemning the plan.

The perennial prediction of an impending Israeli attack on Iran continues, this time with a prediction from former spook Bob Baer. A big basis for recent claims of imminent attack–including this one–stems from warnings from former Mossad chief Meir Dagan. Needless to stay, if the Israelis decide to attack Iran, they’ll be doing it over the heads of Americans stationed in Iraq.

Via Steve Hynd, Nuri al-Maliki’s got a new solution to his dilemma of whether to ask US troops to stay: to ask for mercs–er, um, trainers defended by mercs. That way Maliki can bypass his parliament without forgoing our footprint (and/or inviting us to bigfoot in the name of Iranian containment). Of particular note? The last line of the article, which emphasizes Iraq will continue to have US intelligence cooperation.

Eating the World

Mark Bittman links to this Environmental Working Group site that shows you how much better the globe would be if you ate lentils instead of cow. Among other things, it tracks the carbon footprint of 4 oz portions of a variety of foods.

The news reports in the lead-up to this weekend’s announcement that Obama was ending the career of yet another prescient female bank regulator, this time even before it started, prepped the progressive community to champion an Elizabeth Warren run for Ted Kennedy’s MA Senate seat.

And so the usual suspects are out in force arguing that Warren would be better off running for Senate than she would be shaming Republicans for trying to kill off the CFPB.

Whoever is nominated to lead the CFPB is going to spend the next year of his life being filibustered by Republicans. The very best he can hope for is a recess appointment, in which case his tenure in the position would be relatively swift. So the question isn’t who you want leading the CFPB for the foreseeable future. It’s who you want spending his or her time being stopped from leading the CFPB for the foreseeable future. And it’s not clear that the answer to that question is “Elizabeth Warren.”

Warren, after all, has another option that she appears to be taking seriously: challenging Scott Brown in the 2012 election. For reasons I’ve outlined here and Bob Kuttner elaborates on here, there’s reason to think she would be a very effective candidate. But if she wants to do that, she can’t spend the next year being blocked from leading the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. She has to spend at least part of it preparing for her candidacy.

Now, I don’t think there’s any doubt that Warren would prefer to lead the agency she’s built than launch a Senate campaign that may or may not succeed. But launching a Senate campaign that may or may not succeed seems like a clearly more effective way to protect her agency and further her ideas than being blocked from leading the agency she’s built.

Not only does this view not even consider whether Warren–or a relatively unknown midwestern politician–would be more effective making the public case for the bureau.

But it also seems to confuse the value of running for Senate with actually serving in the Senate.

What the people hailing a possible Warren run are arguing, effectively, is that the consolation prize for the banks having beat her on CFPB should be junior membership in a body that–as Dick Durbin has told us–the banks own.

Even putting aside the power of the banking lobby in the Senate, under what model would Senator Warren be effective championing progressive values, or even just “protect[ing] the agency she’s built”? Even assuming the Democrats kept the same number of seats they currently have on the Senate Banking Committee, even assuming Democratic leadership has already promised her the seat that Herb Kohl’s retirement will open up, that will still make her one of just three progressives (the other two being Jeff Merkley and Sherrod Brown) on a committee that has long been actively working against her CFPB candidacy. Even assuming Democrats keep the Senate, how amenable is Chairman Tim Johnson–a bank-owned hack–going to be to Warren’s ideas? If Richard Shelby were Chair, it’d be even worse.

And what about Warren’s effectiveness in the Senate as a whole–that body, under Democratic leadership, where good ideas go to die? Name a progressive Senator who has been able to do much to champion progressive ideas there? Sanders? Franken? Whitehouse? Sherrod Brown? I love all those guys, and like Sanders and especially Franken, Warren would presumably be able to leverage her public support to push some ideas through. But are any of them more effective at championing progressive values than Warren was before her White House gig, when she regularly appeared on the media and excoriated the banks in terms that made sense to real people? Just as an example, Byron Dorgan used to be effective before his progressive, deficit-cutting ideas were killed by the leader of his party. Similarly, Ted Kaufman turned out to be a surprisingly effective check on the banks, but that was partly because he came in knowing he’d never run for election (and he also knew, coming in, the tricks a lifetime of service as a Senate aide teaches).

Don’t get me wrong. I understand why the Democratic Party would like to have Warren in the Senate. I even understand how Warren might consider a Senate seat to be similar to her earlier public position, with the added benefit of having one vote to push progressive issues. I don’t dismiss the likelihood that Elizabeth Warren might be able to prevent a sixth corporatist judge from getting a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court.

I don’t think a Senator Elizabeth Warren would be a bad thing–I just think folks are far overselling what good it would bring.

It really seems the push for a Warren Senate candidacy ignores what a Booby Prize membership in the Senate has become of late.

Most sane people are outraged by the WSJ’s hacktalicious editorial calling for calm on the hack scandal.

As well they should: the editorial discredits WSJ as a paper.

But I was particularly interested in this bit.

In braying for politicians to take down Mr. Murdoch and News Corp., our media colleagues might also stop to ask about possible precedents. The political mob has been quick to call for a criminal probe into whether News Corp. executives violated the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with payments to British security or government officials in return for information used in news stories. Attorney General Eric Holder quickly obliged last week, without so much as a fare-thee-well to the First Amendment.

The foreign-bribery law has historically been enforced against companies attempting to obtain or retain government business. But U.S. officials have been attempting to extend their enforcement to include any payments that have nothing to do with foreign government procurement. This includes a case against a company that paid Haitian customs officials to let its goods pass through its notoriously inefficient docks, and the drug company Schering-Plough for contributions to a charitable foundation in Poland.

Applying this standard to British tabloids could turn payments made as part of traditional news-gathering into criminal acts. The Wall Street Journal doesn’t pay sources for information, but the practice is common elsewhere in the press, including in the U.S.

The last time the liberal press demanded a media prosecutor, it was to probe the late conservative columnist Robert Novak in pursuit of White House aide Scooter Libby. But the effort soon engulfed a reporter for the New York Times, which had led the posse to hang Novak and his sources. Do our media brethren really want to invite Congress and prosecutors to regulate how journalists gather the news?

This is structured as an appeal to other media outlets, warning them that if they pile on, it might well hurt them too (this structure continues to the rest of the editorial).

This argument ends with the Scooter Libby argument–the claim that the NYT, because it purportedly “led the posse to hang [Bob] Novak and his sources” (including, among others, Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby), ended up getting embroiled in the Libby case (in spite of the fact that NYT discredited itself by protecting Libby for a year after they had published his name as Judy’s source).

Fair enough. The NYT–and especially Judy Miller–was exposed to be as hackish as Novak was (and, as another outlet who published bogus leaks in the Joe Wilson pushback, the WSJ) when its laundering of government leaks was made clear.

So the WSJ is rightly reminding other media outlets that they are as hackish as it is. Perhaps they have specific incidents of hackishness in mind?  Maybe the rest of the press should worry that a focus on how corrupt our press has gotten will reflect badly on them too. It appears, for example, that the WaPo is worried about just such a thing.

Then, oddly (working backwards from the Judy Miller issue), the WSJ warns that if other media outlets pile on, it’ll criminalize payments made in the course of news-gathering–with a claim that such a horror would only matter for British tabloids. Only, that’s not exactly true, is it? And that’s before you consider the number of “consultants” TV stations pay for their “expertise.”

Then, in the first part of this passage, the WSJ rails against what is probably one of its biggest worries–it’ll be held liable in the US for the fairly well-established bribery it engaged in in the UK (even assuming no such bribery were discovered here in the US). It suggests that a poor helpless media company would never bribe a government for something real–like a contract. Putting aside the appearance that Murdoch’s minions bribed the cops.

Except at the heart of this scandal is Murdoch’s attempt to get full control of BSkyB. Not to mention Murdoch’s fairly well-established pattern of trading political support for Tony Blair, Hillary Clinton, and David Cameron in exchange for political favors.

This is bribery every bit as much as Halliburton’s bribery to get Nigerian contracts was bribery. A satellite concession is every bit as tangible a goal as is a contract. But it attempts to couch decades of Murdoch’s ruthless business practices in First Amendment hand-wringing. It suggests that whatever meager journalism Murdoch’s minions do, it should excuse his illegal business practices.

This WSJ editorial is a damning exhibit in outright hackery.

But I suspect its audience–other hackish media outlets–finds it a persuasive read.

Update: With this editorial in mind, I wanted to point to a few paragraphs of Alan Rusbridger’s description of how the Guardian broke this story. A key part of it, he describes, was in partnering with the NYT to break the omertà among British papers.

Big story? Not at all. Not a single paper other than The Guardian noted [a $1 million settlement against News of the World for bullying] in their news pages the next day. There seemed to be some omertà principle at work that meant that not a single other national newspaper thought this could possibly be worth an inch of newsprint.

Life was getting a bit lonely at The Guardian. Nick Davies had been alerted that Brooks had told colleagues that the story was going to end with “Alan Rusbridger on his knees, begging for mercy.” “They would have destroyed us,” Davies said on a Guardian podcast last week. “If they could have done, they would have shut down The Guardian.”

If the majority of Fleet Street was going to turn a blind eye, I thought I’d better try elsewhere to stop the story from dying on its feet, except in the incremental stories that Nick was still remorselessly producing for our own pages. I called Bill Keller at The New York Times. Within a few days, three Times reporters were sitting in a rather charmless Guardian meeting room as Davies did his best to coach them in the basics of the story that had taken him years to tease out of numerous reporters, lawyers, and police officers.

The Times reporters took their time—months of exceptional and painstaking work that established the truth of everything Nick had written—and broke new territory of their own. They coaxed one or two sources to go on the record. The story led to another halfhearted police inquiry that went nowhere. But the fact and solidity of the Times investigation gave courage to others. Broadcasters began dipping their toes in the story. One of the two victims began lawsuits. Vanity Fair weighed in. The Financial Times and The Independent chipped away in the background. A wider group of people began to believe that maybe, just maybe, there was something in this after all. [my emphasis]

The big news of the morning may be the latest maneuvers of the Murdoch scandal.

But we’ve also got real sports news.

It looks like the assholes running American football will beat the assholes running America to crafting a deal. The key breakthrough came Friday with the settlement on a new rookie payment scheme that would basically limit how much teams have to pay their first round picks in their first five years.

The rookie wage system had been a key part of that complex work in recent weeks. Exact language of the rookie wage system is being worked out by both sides’ lawyers, sources told Mortensen, but a management negotiator agreed that the rookie system was “done.”

According to sources, the terms agreed to on the rookie wage system are, in part, as follows:

• Five-year contracts, with a team option for the fifth year.

• If the team option is exercised, in the fifth year the top 10 picks would receive a salary equal to the average of the top 10 player salaries at their respective positions. That money would be guaranteed if the option is exercised after the third year of the contract.

• If the team option is exercised, in the fifth year picks 11-32 would receive a salary equal to the average of the Nos. 3-25 salaries at their respective positions. That money would be guaranteed if the option is exercised after the third year of the contract.

It sort of feels a lot like concessions the UAW made in recent years to make sure older workers keep getting wages negotiated years ago, while screwing newer workers.

There are still a number of issues to be worked out: how to account for wages lost in the negotiating period, how to end the various legal challenges, what to do in the anticipated free-for-all free agency period immediately following a settlement, and some safety and workman’s compensation issues. But these will probably be resolved by Wednesday, in time for the NFLPA to vote on it and then–football!!

This is all proof, I guess, that Eric Cantor is a bigger dick than even Jerry Jones.

Which brings us to the other football, the beautiful game. At 2ET, the US takes on Japan in the Women’s World Cup championship game.

I, frankly, am unprepared to bet on who will win this. The Americans have been finding a way to win the key matches, most spectacularly with their victory on PKs last weekend. And Japan has never beaten the Americans. But Japan beat tournament favorite Germany and the exciting Swedish team by simply refusing to let them have the ball; it’s hard to beat that kind of ball control.The Japanese passing game is wonderful to watch.

Frankly, I will be thrilled with either team winning this game, so long as it is as exciting as the matches that got these teams here. The US believe they are destined. But Japan has been playing as inspiration to their country in the aftermath of this year’s earthquake and tsunami. A win for either one makes a great story.

The press is making this out to be a duel between US forward Abby Wambach–who has scored key goals in the last three games–and Japanese midfielder Homare Sawa–who is playing in her fifth world cup and, like Wambach, is the emotional leader of the team.

Just as much, it’ll be a duel between US keeper Hope Solo–whose stop in PKs last weekend made the difference in the win over Brazil, and Japan’s keeper, Ayumi Kaihori. On paper, Solo is the much better keeper. But Kaihori has not made any mistakes in the elimination games and her confidence appears to be growing.

Me, I think it’s going to come down to how well Lauren Cheney, Wambach, and Megan Rapinoe (who will probably come off the bench). Cheney’s been key throughout this tournament; Rapinoe has had a key role off the bench in the last few games, including the assist on Wambach’s header to tie the game against Brazil and put it into PKs. And of course Wambach seems to manage to find a way to win every time. If these women take enough clean shots on goal, they will win. But if Japan manages to dominate ball control as they have and limit those shots, they may well surprise the US.