The Morning Joe must-read opinion pages for Friday, May 31, 2013
THE PENTAGON PAPERS LAWYER JAMES GOODALE: IT’S TIME FOR ERIC HOLDER TO RESIGN
JAMES GOODALE
THE DAILY BEAST
The government has criminalized the news-gathering process. … Asking courts to treat journalists as criminals under the Espionage Act has only been asserted once before Holder started using it. President Richard M. Nixon used it against New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan, who obtained the Vietnam archives from Daniel Ellsberg. … The difference between Nixon and Holder is that Nixon failed in his effort to treat Sheehan as a co-conspirator. Nixon therefore could not create the precedent that reporters could be treated as criminals. Holder has. He should resign.
A DOUBLE-TROUBLE SCANDAL FOR OBAMA
KIMBERLY STRASSEL
WALL STREET JOURNAL
This is a scandal that can’t be ignored or dismissed as a Republican witch hunt. Moreover, it is a scandal that has, for once, outraged two groups that Mr. Obama deeply depends on for his political success: the press and liberal activists… The left and the press have always been with Mr. Obama when it really mattered, and that may well remain the case. The particular significance of Justice’s press scandal is that it has deprived Mr. Obama of support at a time when he is vulnerable on so much else. Who knows what will come of that?
NOONAN: AN ANTIDOTE TO CYNICISM POISONING
PEGGY NOONAN
WALL STREET JOURNAL
We’ve all heard the stories of the president who picked up the phone and said, “Look into this guy,” Richard Nixon most showily. He got clobbered for it. It was one of the articles of impeachment. But this scandal is different and distinctive. The abuse was systemic—from the sheer number of targets and the extent of each targeting we know many workers had to be involved, many higher-ups, multiple offices. It was ideological and partisan—only those presumed to be of one political view were targeted. It has a single unifying pattern: The most vivid abuses took place in the years leading up to the president’s 2012 re-election effort. … It wasn’t a one-off. It wasn’t a president losing his temper with some steel executives. There was no enemies list, unless you consider half the country to be your enemies.
OBAMA’S DOROTHY DOCTRINE
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
WASHINGTON POST
This is John Lennon, bumper-sticker foreign policy — Imagine World Peace. Obama pretends that the tide of war is receding. But it’s demonstrably not. It’s metastasizing to Mali, to the Algerian desert, to the North African states falling under the Muslim Brotherhood, to Yemen, … to Syria, now spilling over into Lebanon and destabilizing Jordan. … It’s not war that’s receding. It’s America. Under Obama. And it is precisely in the power vacuum left behind that war is rising.
Must-Read Op-Eds for May 30, 2013
Must-Read Op-Eds for May 29, 2013
ATHLETICS, ACADEMICS & ETHICS: WHY I’M FINALLY CUTTING TIES WITH RUTGERS
DAN LEVY
BLEACHER REPORT
[Athletic Director Tim Pernetti] and the entire department of athletics, was hung out to dry by the university and I was sickened by the brazenly dismissive way the school and Barchi tried to excuse any culpability from their side of campus. Things have only gotten worse since that embarrassment of a press conference from Barchi and the board, and I fully expect that trend to continue… anyone with any specter of impropriety on his or her record needed to be immediately eliminated from consideration for the position….How can Rutgers try to sell a hard-line stance on bullying and hire a woman who was accused of exactly the same things the school fired the basketball coach for in the first place?
THE GOP IS TOO JUVENILE TO GOVERN
EUGENE ROBINSON
WASHINGTON POST
Far-right conservatives including Ted Cruz… Marco Rubio… Mike Lee… and Rand Paul… are refusing to allow the Senate to appoint its representatives to the conference. Yes, having demanded this budget for four years, Republicans are now refusing to let it go forward. … What Republicans ought to do is… move on to the battle to have their priorities reflected in the budget — a promising fight, since the conferees appointed by the GOP-controlled House are hardly going to be flaming liberals. Instead, the party seeks not consensus but crisis. This is no way for a 2-year-old to act, much less the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest deliberative body.”
