Spotty awarded to Rochester resident!

Here's one you don't want to miss, boys and girls: The need to know: No questions, no dissent in our endless war. It was in the StarTribune on Sunday (yesterday), but Spot is linking to a Vox Verax republish of the piece because the Strib will take it down from its website in a few weeks.

In his op-ed piece, Paul Scott refers to a US House resolution that Spot frankly missed:

For those who have not been paying attention, please put down your iPods and read the following: Reps. John Kline, Gil Gutknecht, Colin Peterson, Mark Kennedy and Jim Ramstad all voted to declare that Congress "expects the cooperation of all news media organizations. ... "

Chances are tomorrow's historians will remember House Resolution 895, but they will not be able to criticize it. Chances are that when the policies set in motion under the deplorable presidency of George W. Bush have reached their fruition, the state-approved history of our time will have omitted the steady erosion of dissent first initiated on Fox News and ultimately embraced by the U.S. House of Representatives.

The scoundrels who make their living feeding the flames of right-wing outrage will tell you that a newspaper, the New York Times, committed the treasonous act of reporting the existence of a secret program to monitor banking transactions with terrorist ties. They will tell you that this reporting put American lives at risk and gave help to the enemy. They will tell you that it is time for the arrest and prosecution of journalists in America, and that no other action will help us win this "war."

They will not tell you that the president had repeatedly and publicly pledged to monitor banking transactions. They will not tell you that Congress publicly asked him to do so in the Patriot Act. They will not tell you, as recently reported in the Boston Globe, that the counterterrorism efforts of the consortium in question, SWIFT, was already a matter of public record in a U.N. document. They will not tell you, as recently reported in the Washington Post, that SWIFT makes clear on its very own website that it cooperates with state authorities tracking criminal activity.

Spot has commented on the SWIFT issue in a post called Jonah pisses himself, again. It is perhaps unnecessary for Spot to mention that Scott expressed himself much better than Spotty did!

Go and read the latest Spotty winner.

Tags: SWIFT freedom of the press