HOLDER’S ODD DEFENSE EDITORIAL WALL STREET JOURNAL The current guidelines already require prosecutors to investigate journalists only as a last resort, inform the media organization of the request to see if a compromise can be worked out, and then narrowly tailor any request in order to limit damage to the First Amendment. … So we are now supposed to believe that the same man who ignored these current rules in pursuing Mr. Rosen is going to write new rules that he and his minions will suddenly follow. Aren't Attorneys General supposed to obey the law from the start?
WHO NEEDS REPORTERS? FRANK BRUNI NEW YORK TIMES Politicians answer to all of us… So we must see them in environments that aren’t necessarily tailored to their advantage. We must be able to poke and meddle. It may not be a pretty sight, and we journalists may not be doing it in a pretty way, but eliminate that and you wind up with something even less pretty: Bachmann, robotically composed, telling you that she’s quitting for purely high-minded reasons, with the vigor of the republic foremost in her heart. That’s a whole lot further from the truth than anything we wretched scribes put out.
SECRETS AND LEAKS BILL KELLER NEW YORK TIMES I think the Justice Department had ample reason to find these particular leaks troubling. … The question is whether the leaks justified such an extensive invasion of journalists’ activities, with no advance notice and no independent oversight… Before compelling a journalist to testify or surrender records, the government would be obliged to meet the journalist’s lawyers in front of a judge. The prosecutors would have to make a good case that they had no other way to find the leak, that they would not cast their net so widely as to intrude on other reporting operations, and that identifying the leak was more important than the public value of the story.
PROTESTS IN TURKEY EDITORIAL NEW YORK TIMES After winning three elections, Mr. Erdogan does not seem likely to lose his grip on power, but the Arab Spring revolutions have shown how quickly political fortunes can change in today’s combustible Middle East. As this perilous moment, Mr. Erdogan and his party have to show their commitment to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, and to meeting the needs of a diverse population.
TURKISH PROTESTS EXPOSE OBAMA’S HYPOCRISY JONATHAN TOBIN COMMENTARY By continuing to support the Turkish ruling party, as it now becomes the subject of anger from its citizens, the administration is showing its true colors. If Obama is not prepared to criticize his friend who heads up the government in Ankara the way he has done other regimes that came under fire, then it shows that the talk about democracy was just so much hot air and that when push comes to shove, the president would rather befriend an Islamist ruler than embrace the pleas of the Turkish people for change.
THE GEEZERS ARE ALL RIGHT PAUL KRUGMAN NEW YORK TIMES To be fair, the reports of the Social Security and Medicare trustees released Friday do suggest that America’s retirement system needs some significant work... But the numbers aren’t nearly as overwhelming as you might have imagined, given the usual rhetoric. And if you look under the hood, the data suggest that we can, if we choose, maintain social insurance as we know it with only modest adjustments… It’s time to stop obsessing about how we’ll pay benefits to retirees in 2035 and focus instead on how we’re going to provide jobs to unemployed Americans in the here and now.