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Justice Dept. Defends Seizure of AP Phone Records (NYT)
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Tuesday defended the Justice Department’s sweeping seizure of telephone records of Associated Press journalists, describing the article by the AP that prompted a criminal investigation as among “the top two or three most serious leaks that I’ve ever seen” in a 35-year career. “It put the American people at risk, and that is not hyperbole,” he said in an apparent reference to an article on May 7, 2012, that disclosed the foiling of a terrorist plot by Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen to bomb an airliner. The Washington Post / Opinions The usual reason for keeping a subpoena secret is that the target would otherwise try to destroy documents. In this case, the AP could not have done so even if it wanted to, since the relevant records were in the possession of its phone service providers. Without even giving AP a chance to weigh in, we don’t see how the department could intelligently weigh its prosecutorial needs against this broad subpoena’s chilling effect on reporters and their sources. HuffPost / The Backstory Associated Press Washington bureau chief Sally Buzbee was among the journalists targeted in the Justice Department’s sweeping seizure of phone records that has drawn widespread condemnation from members of the media and free speech advocates, an AP spokeswoman confirmed to The Huffington Post. FishbowlNY The Department of Justice is trying to brush off the secret accessing of AP editors’ and reporters’ phone records. The agency already sent one bland letter to the AP about the incident, and Tuesday, it sent another. According to AP CEO and president Gary Pruitt, both letters from the DOJ basically said “Meh,” and not much else about the scary over-extension of the government. B&C Society of Professional Journalists president Sonny Albarado has condemned the Justice Department’s alleged secret collection of AP reporter and editor phone records and said it highlights the need for a federal shield law. Politico / Dylan Byers on Media The Associated Press Media Editors Association has joined other journalists in condemning the Justice Department’s seizure of Associated Press phone records, calling it part of the Obama administration’s “continuing witch hunt for leaks and whistleblowers.” TVNewser Fox News host Bill O’Reilly said this may be the least of President Obama’s worries. “I don’t think that’s going to amount to much,” O’Reilly said of the phone taps. “It looks like they went through the warrant process and they had authorization to look at these records — the Justice Department did. But President Obama, he’s got some problems now. He better start to get control of the situation because there’s a lot of stuff going on.”

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(Alvin Glatkowski – circa 1960′s)

Eric Longabardi at The Enterprise Report, has a good one. Attorney General Eric Holder recently stated that the there hasn’t been an act of piracy against an American ship ‘in 100 years’.

Not so.

From Amazon:

“The Eagle Mutiny” is the very real life story of two merchant seaman, Clyde McKay, and Alvin Glatkowski. These two individuals are merchant seaman on the merchant ship, “S.S. Columbia Eagle” which sets sail for Vietnam with a hull full of napalm bombs under contract for the U.S. Air Force.

Glatkowski and McKay are both disenchanted with the Vietnam war effort and suddenly see themselves as self-ordained revolutionaries. They decide to mutiny, and subsequently hijack the ship making it’s captain change course to Cambodia. Their dreams of being paraded through Hanoi as “the peoples heroes” are soon deluged with hard core reality.

Written by Richard Linnett and Roberto Loiederman (who lives in the Valley we’re told). TEM came out in the summer of 2001. So…ahem…the hijacking story…just well…uh, yeah.

Ooh. Wonky fun. Good cocktail conversation. Nice catch, Eric!

UPDATE: It has been brought to our attention that piracy has to technically be a ‘nonstate actor’ so a merchant seaman would be a mutiny. Which makes Holder correct and us lacking a decent maritime education. The land-lubbers we be….

UPDATE FROM THE UPDATE: Longabardi sent us this:

A person who specifically plans (as the two columbia eagle guys did) .. to hijack a ship and goes on board for that purpose could be charged with piracy .. although these two were ‘crewmembers’ per se .. they planned the hijacking in advance and smuggled guns on board to do it.

We’re getting seasick…

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Agreeing with a statement made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi earlier this week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder now says that he’s open to adjusting antitrust laws to help newspapers survive.

From Reuters:

Some struggling newspapers in multiple-newspaper cities have limited antitrust immunity under the 1970 Newspaper Preservation Act, allowing them to combine business activities while maintaining separate news operations.

Pelosi, a Democrat whose California district is served by Hearst’s The San Francisco Chronicle, urged Holder to take a broad view of newspaper competitors under antitrust law and include “electronic and digital” outlets.

Will lifting antitrust laws help newspapers?
( polls)