Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From Reporter Over Identity of Source

[JDPriestly]

27. Oh yes. It does.

Subpoenas should only be issued if in compliance with the First Amendment.

The press, like religion, is sacrosanct. If the subpoena had to do with some financial misdeeds of a newspaper, that would be a different manner. But this subpoena is intended to interfere in a reporter's ability to acquire and print the news.

Think of the outcome if our executive branch could declare just about any embarrassing fact to be a secret and then issue subpoenas to obtain the names of sources for news stories about the embarrassing facts that have been declared to be secret?

We would have little left of our freedom or our representative government. And that is what is at stake in the Risen case.

I have little sympathy for Risen's revealing the particular secret that he revealed, but the First Amendment is more important to our nation than finding out who told Risen that secret.