GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

They arrested a leaker

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…for a very recent offense. I would expect a more arrests to come. But for now, and via Breitbart, this one leaker:

Reality Leigh Winner, a 25-year old contractor with Pluribus International Corporation, was charged in federal court Monday for allegedly leaking a National Security Agency (NSA) report on Russian Election hacking to left-wing news site The Intercept…

She was caught only when [The Intercept] asked the [NSA] to comment on the document last Tuesday. Upon realizing the document was, in fact, classified material, the agency quickly enlisted the FBI for an internal investigation that pointed to Reality Winner…

Each count of 18 U.S.C. §793, the crime with which Ms. Winner is charged, carries a penalty of up to ten years in federal prison.

By the way, The Intercept is into Fake News, such as fake hate crimes:

Intercept writer Juan Thompson was fired last year for fabricating stories about the racially-charged tragedy at South Carolina’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, apparently to play up stereotypes of racist white southerners and smear Donald Trump supporters. This March, Thompson was the first person arrested for calling in threats to Jewish community centers as part of a nationwide intimidation campaign that was also widely [ed: falsely] blamed by the media on Trump supporters.

Getting back to Reality Winner: Please let me know your thoughts in the comments. I have mixed feelings. I do think that leaks can be in the public interest. Example: the DNC and Podesta emails that came out in 2016, via WikiLeaks.

Another example: Edward Snowden, who has said that he would be willing to return to the U.S. and stand trial, provided that he will be allowed to mount a public-interest defense (which a jury could then accept or reject).

Should Reality Winner be tried on similar terms – that is, should she be allowed to mount a public-interest defense? Why? Or, lock her up and throw away the key? Again why?

UPDATE: I missed this last week, but it seems relevant. DOJ has gotten a FISA warrant to surveil journalists who have been receiving leaks.

The journalists are not the target…Instead, the Trump administration is looking for the leaker. Who could it be?

Some in the administration are focusing on a retired, high-ranking military officer who held important posts in the intelligence service, according to the source.

The possibly high-ranking leaker was getting some of his information from people inside the White House who were holdovers from the Obama administration, the source said.

Cernovich claims that the retired officer is former CIA Director Petraeus, passing along information from his alleged ally, current NSA McMaster. If true, that would be some messed-up stuff. Game of Thrones-level intrigue.

Should fake hate crimes really be called “hoaxes”?

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In my occasional posting on “hate crimes” that were faked by the victims (usually leftists), like many people I call such incidents “hoaxes”. But is that the right word?

hoax
hōks/
noun: hoax; plural noun: hoaxes

1. a humorous or malicious deception.

While faked hate crimes are malicious, in no way are they humorous. But I have a more serious objection. Calling these incidents “hoaxes” implies, not only that the incident was faked, but also that no real hate was involved. And I think that’s wrong.

We know that the Left is preoccupied with categorizing people by race, gender, orientation, etc. We know that emotions like envy, hatred, etc. are prevalent on the Left. We know that racism is a traditional province of the Left (such as the racism of Margaret Sanger the founder of Planned Parenthood; or that of the Democrats who bequeathed the KKK and Jim Crow to America; or that of the Nazis, who were, after all, pro-worker advocates of ‘mixed economy’ socialism). And we know that even modern-day leftists will say the most racist things to be heard anywhere, if they think no one is listening except their fellow leftists.

Why, then, should we assume that a hate crime faked by a political lefty is really all that fake? When a leftist fakes a hate crime, he or she has tried to mislead people as to the crime’s author. But how is he or she not still doing a deeply hateful act?

For at least some modern-day leftists, it must be agony to have to be officially so anti-racism, all the time. Would not hate crime “hoaxes” express the repressed hatreds of their own hearts?

This question matters, because the word “hoax” sets up a dynamic where the leftist hoaxer is morally off the hook. “Oh don’t be hard on them, they just got carried away by their zeal to start a ‘conversation’ about race.” Golly, ya think?

Might it be that, due to their own racial preoccupations and (repressed) hatreds, lefties enjoy ‘conversations about race’ rather too much? A successfully-faked hate crime is a two-fer for the leftie hoaxer: He got everyone discussing his favorite obsession, and in the process, he actually hurt the victim group’s feelings (thus indulging his unadmitted hatred).

In creating a dynamic where the leftie hoaxer is morally off the hook, the word “hoax” also creates a dynamic where conservatives are still to blame, even though the crime was faked and even though a leftie did it. Because another implication is that if a conservative-leaning person had done it, it wouldn’t be a hoax. The implication is that a hate crime by a conservative is real by definition, because conservatives are h8ers who do such crimes; while a hate crime by a leftist is “just a hoax” by definition, because lefties are against hate crimes and never do them without a noble reason.

And that is, of course, total baloney. So, what would be a better word, for these faked hate crimes?