I’ve got one of a bunch of letters in the Sunday Washington Post objecting to their facile editorial on PATRIOT Act renewal, which weirdly asserted that a “reasonable balance” is struck by a bill that reauthorizes surveillance powers almost unaltered.
My original letter, incidentally, had somewhat more pointedly said that the Post “duly transcribed” the anonymous claims of administration officials about the utility of these powers, changed to “reported” in the course of editing. I tacitly consented to the change, since they ran their edit by me first, but not without a measure of bemusement.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Matthew Yglesias » Editorials as Counterindicators // Oct 19, 2009 at 10:44 am
[…] but when they follow them up with critical letters to the editor they force the letter writers to softpedal their criticism and moderate their rhetoric. So it’s not as if it’s impossible for the Post opinion […]
2 Random Precision // Oct 19, 2009 at 10:51 pm
The Post is a rag that various party insiders use to snipe at each other.
The Post can’t afford to challenge the National Secuity Collective (NSC) because the Post needs access to the NSC to be considered “serious”.
If it was a freedom of the press issue then those parasites at the Post might get scared enough to start a fight, but it would be out of character.
You’d be better off pointing out how data mining can generate all kinds of false positives like on reporters and anonymous sources …