No one seems to be writing opinion pieces quite the way I would, so I decided to do it myself.

The name? Taverns are places where one goes to discuss the interesting events and things in the world, so this is my tavern.

I will offer my views on politics, economics, and whatever else strikes my fancy.
I will occasionally publish the entire article from another journal for purposes of causing discussion.

 

Leaking Valerie Plame's Name may have violated the Patriot act.

Sam Dash wrote in the Newsday that the high White House officials who leaked Valerie Plame's name to Bob Novak may well have violated the Patriot Act. The Act describes an act of terrorism as follows:

Section 802 of the act defines, in part, domestic terrorism as "acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any state" that "appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population."

Clearly, disclosing the identity of a CIA undercover agent is an act dangerous to life - the lives of the agent and her contacts abroad whom terrorists groups can now trace - and a violation of the criminal laws of the United States.

And what about the intent of those White House officials in disclosing this classified information? Surely, this mean-spirited action on their part was for the purpose of intimidating the CIA agent's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had become a strong critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policies. And not just Wilson. By showing their willingness to make such a dangerous disclosure, the White House officials involved were sending a message to all critics of the administration to beware that they too can be destroyed if they persist. That apparent intention "to intimidate or coerce a civilian population" - in this case American citizens - also meets the Patriot Act definition of domestic terrorism.

So now what the Bush administration people simply intended to be a bit of hardball politics appears to also be legally an act of terrorism under the (overly broad?) definition that they themselves had enshrined into law to make fighting terrorism easier.

Newsday

Samuel Dash, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, was chief counsel of the Senate Watergate Committee in 1973-74.

My source for this is Calpundit and he references Talkleft

posted by Richard at 5:01 PM