Starr Emerges as Key Lawyer for N.Y. Times

[Rose Siding]

As the New York Times gears up for what it argues is a First Amendment fight to stop federal prosecutors from learning the identities of two reporters' confidential sources, the paper is enlisting a surprising ally.

The Times, which is suing Attorney General Ashcroft in federal court in Manhattan, has retained Kenneth Starr, the former special prosecutor who, in years past, was a darling of the right and felt the sting of the paper's editorials.

Mr. Starr is teamed up with the New York lawyer Floyd Abrams, a veteran First Amendment lawyer, to block a federal prosecutor at Chicago from obtaining phone records of reporters Philip Shenon and Judith Miller. The two reporters covered national-security issues following the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Prosecutors want the records for an investigation into alleged leaks - leaks that, they said, compromised investigations into financing of terrorism.

Unlike other recent cases in which prosecutors have subpoenaed reporters directly, this time they are planning to demand the records soon from the Times's phone company. In criminal investigations, phone companies typically grant law enforcement's requests for records without a fight, lawyers said.

http://www.nysun.com/article/2457

[progressivebydesign]

1. Why should I be surprised? The NYT has been whoring for the right..

.. Starr is about as low as you can go on the legal food chain. I'm not surprised a bit.

[blm]

7. The NYT let the Bushies have their own propaganda pusher Judith Miller.

This move is to protect the Bushies' mouthpiece and cover their tracks, not protect 1st Amendment rights.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

10. NYTimes NOT a Bushie mouthpiece

They have been all over shrub since the campaign began.

[blm]

13. Before the war they allowed Judith Miller free reign and SHE was pushing

Bush's Iraq war propaganda in the NYT.

They ARE culpable because they LET her do it.

[KittyWampus]

14. All Over Shrub? The NYTimes? Sorry, I Get It Every Day

Jodi Wilogren has been all over Kerry? Nagourney has been all over Kerry?

How prominent was the story about the Israeli spy in our Pentagon? How much follow up has there been.

Safire and Brooks and Friedman and Dowd (Hillary Clinton's "bridal registry" bullshit) leaving their brain droppings on a regular basis.

The NYTimes puts on a veneer of liberalness and they are much more clever then CNN.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

15. You see what you see.

apparently you don't read Krugman, Herbert, Kristoff, LTTE, and the editorials themselves. :shrug:

[KittyWampus]

18. Very True. We Both See Things In Individual Ways

:)

That the NYTimes would print crap from so many below standard reporters and editorialists... all of it ProJunior says something.

Crap is crap. Why print it?

The NYTimes is a Neo-Liberal, Corporate loving rag.

The few good writers doesn't make up for the plentitude of misleading, below-par crap.

{b}In my opinion, of course.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

21. Apparently, most readers of the NYT skip the editorial page...

...because most readers of the NYT thought that the NEWS was the most important feature of that paper. This has been especially true of the more conservative readers of the NYT, and has been true for quite some time.

What most readers of the NYT news section did not know or understand is that the NYT reporters were making up the news as they went along. Judith Miller is a prime example of a reporter getting fed information from the NeoCons on a regular basis.

Yes, Krugman is very good, but he one of the few rational voices crying out from the NYT wilderness.

[el_gato]

2. NYT has been in bed with scum like this for a long time

anybody who thinks the NYT is liberal is a fool

[Jacobin]

4. but but but they have David Brooks!!!

and and and Judith Miller!!!!

/sarcasm

[Jacobin]

3. OH MY GOD

RIP, New York Slimes.

She was once a great paper.

[Rose Siding]

5. I was thinking about Starr just yesterday

Safire's piece in the NYT was titled "The Runaway Prosecutor" and I laughed. I thought that it was ironic to see a GOP writer bemoaning ANY prosecutor after how they all supported this King Of Runaway.

[msanthrope]

6. It comes full-circle, doesn't it? n/t

[Supersedeas]

8. And the Right-Wing circles the wagons-as a pretext to constitution but who

are they REALLY protecting?

[Cocoa]

9. Starr is the poster boy for abusing leaking

aside from his abusing the courts.

[Rose Siding]

20. Well, let the grand jury leaks begin!

I'm reading The Clinton Wars now. Starr has to look waaaaay back behind him to see any ethical lines.

[Minstrel Boy]

11. Starr drafted the CIA's "license to smuggle" drugs

This is from Daniel Hopsicker, a few years ago:

The Reagan administration (with ex-head of the CIA George Bush as Vice President) took special legal steps to prepare for drug smuggling by the Nicaraguan contras and other CIA clients. This evidence of premeditation is contained in a recently declassified letter exchange in early 1982 between CIA director William Casey and Attorney General William French Smith.

Out of a long list of crimes that the CIA was required to report, Casey and Smith agreed to remove drug trafficking by CIA operatives. That meant that the CIA was spared having to disclose that the contras and other CIA-backed groups were smuggling drugs into the United States. It is legal for the CIA to deny the "Dark Alliance" stories and to use their own MOCKINGBIRD assets in the media to do so.

The lawyer who worked as William Smith's aide on his "sanctioning" of CIA drug smuggling was Kenneth Starr. This explains the dichotomy between Starr's handling of the Foster murder and the Arkansas Horrors versus his handling of the Monica Lewinsky/ perjury issue. Starr isn't protecting Bill Clinton per se, he is protecting the CIA.

...

Starr is not afraid to press on the Monica Lewinsky issue because that scandal does not risk exposure of the CIA's Iran-Contra smuggling. Starr...is connected to the CIA drug cartel. He helped write their "license to smuggle". This is why Starr covered up Foster's murder, to protect that operation. This is not a Republican scandal. This is not a Democratic scandal. This is a CIA drug scandal. And both parties are dirty as hell.
http://www.madcowprod.com/1stissue/Rivero.htm

[Rose Siding]

12. He's an icon of pol-ideological hackery

The Times KNOWS that's so.

Let the leaks begin!

[nibbana]

16. Just another ploy to hold up the investigation of traitorous

Robert Novak and friends...

[DeepModem Mom]

17. Abrams and Starr have been unlikely legal bedfellows before --

....The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002, otherwise known as the McCain-Feingold bill that banned "soft money" political contributions, will be the subject of an unusually lengthy four hours of argument before the court. The case pits campaign finance reformers against free speech advocates.

Two of the lawyers who will argue against the law outlined their arguments Friday. Kenneth W. Starr, former solicitor general and Whitewater independent counsel, and Floyd Abrams, a noted First Amendment attorney, said the law runs afoul of the Constitution.

While Abrams will focus on the free speech concerns of the law, including restrictions on advertising, Starr plans to emphasize the law's impact on political parties, organized labor and businesses in elections. He said all those entities lose out at the expense of interest groups....

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=%5CPolitics%5Carchive%5C200309%5CPOL20030908b.html

[sattahipdeep]

19. Who's oiling who? n/t

[Democat]

22. Ken Starr & the NY Times - two parts of the damn liberal media

The White House is probably paying his salary like they do for half of the NY Times writers too.

[Catfight]

23. Everything changed after 9/11! Judith Miller needs some prison time

to think about her being an American traitor!

[Politicub]

24. Why Kenneth Starr?

Ehw ehw ehw! I support the Times in not turning over its phone records to Ashcroft, but Kenneth Starr??!? WTF?

I hoped that fuck would never be in the spotlight again. With his close ties to the right, why would the Times even attempt to think he will mount a vigorous defense against Ashcroft?

I don't get it.

:wtf:

[Rose Siding]

25. Starr ordered these same kinds of record hunts

He tried to get all of Blumenthal's media contact records as Independent Counsel. I still don't think he has any trial experience yet but he'd know all the backdoors of all the laws he broke and the ones he couldn't break.

[StevieM]

26. This is sad (eom)

x