J.T. Alexander@JTAlexander_
re: New York Times v. Department of Defense/War
This decision hits all the hot points: ideas of infinite 'due process,' journalists as a superior class above normal citizens, and District Court Judges failing to even pretend the law is their primary concern.
In the very first paragraph, we are treated to the framing through which Judge Friedman views this issue. It is not a paragraph on the law, but a homiletic (and flawed) civics lesson for second graders.
The decision rests in large part on the proposition that access to the Pentagon is a property interest to which the New York Times cannot be deprived without some "due process."
If you are a normal citizen, you retain no right whatsoever to access to the Pentagon, the White House, or any similarly secure Federal facility. You may be invited under some contexts, but that invitation can be revoked at any time.
But, if you work for a big enough media corporation, and that media corporation has had a press pass at some point, you get a special privilege. You get a "liberty/property" interest in unescorted access. While a normal person has no right to sue for this access, a journalist is a Special, and Specials get to demand notice, opportunity to oppose, standing for lawsuits, injunctions, and all manner of protections.
How dare the Government treat those Specials like Normal Poo People like the rest of us? Everybody knows the purpose of the First Amendment was to create a special class of superior citizen so long as they held a pen.
The Opinion also rests very heavily on the existence of animosity between the Trump Administration and the Legacy Press as prima facie evidence that this change in policy is 'retaliation.'
Never mind the fact that classified leaks have fallen off a cliff since kicking these people out of the Pentagon.
The Judge also spends an inordinate amount of time pontificating about the "accuracy of reporting," which is not a valid legal or Constitutional consideration whatsoever, without even getting into the epistemological drama of dissecting The New York Times' troubled relationship with the truth.
Bottom Line: It is not only Friedman, but a disturbing number of our Judges that seem to genuinely believe employment as a journalist creates special rights and privileges that may not be infringed. None of these rights are actually written down anywhere in the Constitution, and these same Judges frequently infringe on the one part of the Constitution that explicitly uses the phrase "shall not be infringed."
These Judges are, without hyperbole, the single biggest threat to our continued civilization and any hope of saving this country without completely tossing the Constitutional framework entirely.
For all the focus on Mass Deportations—which I support and join in demanding—getting these Judges out of power and away from our judiciary is far more urgent.
While we can demand and wait for a solution from above, the solution within everyone's reach is to flood law schools and the legal industry with conservatives, reactionaries, and postliberal revolutionaries.
An Addendum: Not on the merits of this case in particular, but its notable that Judge Paul Friedman is a Senior Status Octogenarian who previously attained notoriety by freeing the man who shot Reagan. He also delivered a lecture in 2019 criticizing President Trump for "undermin[ing] faith in the rule of law itself."
The fact we let an 82-year old appointed by Bill Clinton come out of retirement just to interfere with this business does more to undermine faith in the judiciary than anything Trump has ever done, let alone the fact that this barely even registers on the scale of batshit insanity to come out of the District Courts over the past several years.
