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The fact that outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder has prosecuted more people under the Espionage Act than all previous attorneys general combined is an inescapable legacy of his time in office. All of those cases were brought against government workers or contractors accused of leaking classified information to the media, which led Trevor Timm, co-founder of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, to call Holder the worst Attorney General for the press in a generation.

Recently, Holder has seemed intent on escaping that title. Several weeks after announcing his plans to step down, he said during an interview at the Washington Ideas Forum that his biggest mistake in office was naming Fox News reporter James Rosen as a co-conspirator to commit espionage in one of the leak investigations.

And in the latter half of his time in office, Holder has expressed support for a media shield law and rewritten the Department of Justices guidelines to tighten rules for subpoenaing reporters during criminal investigations.

But the Obama administration has undoubtedly tilted the legal landscape against leakers and national security reporters. If Holder wants to change that, he will have to unpave a long road of specific policies laid down by the DOJ during his tenure, not simply express remorse and draw up broad new guidelines.

In 2010, Thomas Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, Chelsea Manning, Stephen Kim, and Jeffrey Sterling were all charged under the Espionage Act. Taken as a block, those prosecutions set the precedent that the government could use a law written in 1917 with double agents in mind as a weapon in the fight against modern leakers of national security information.

With the Espionage Act, Holder chose a tool that could potentially be very dangerous to journalists, because it is vague enough to criminalize all kinds of information dissemination. Writing specifically about Mannings disclosures to Wikileaks, Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of the Lawfare blog, notes that by its terms, it criminalizes not merely the disclosure of national defense information by organizations such as Wikileaks, but also the reporting on that information by countless news organizations.

That was not a problem in several of the early cases. Leibowitz quickly pled guilty and was sentenced to 20 months in prison. The charges against Drake fell apart in 2011, and he pled guilty to a misdemeanor. In 2012, John Kiriakou, a CIA officer, was charged under the Espionage Act but convicted under a different law and sentenced to 30 months in prison. The investigations into Sterling, Kim, and Manning, however, have dragged on much longer and carry implications for press freedoms beyond their membership in the group of Espionage Act cases.

The investigation of CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling is based on a chapter in a 2006 book by New York Times reporter James Risen, in which he writes about American attempts to undermine Irans nuclear program. Risen was first subpoenaed to testify against his source for the chapter, suspected to be Sterling, under the Bush administration, but he fought the order until it expired in 2009.

In 2010, however, Holders DOJ renewed the subpoena against Risen. Soon after, the government anticipated and began arguing against Risens attempt to quash the subpoena on the grounds of his reporters privilege. In an argument filed in May 2011, the DOJ wrote, there exists neither a First Amendment nor a common law reporters privilege that shields a reporter from his obligation to testify, even if the reporters testimony reveals confidential sources and information.

The government was still making that argument in the spring of 2013, when Holders pattern of involving journalists in leak investigations took center stage in the national media.

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Eric Holders lasting damage to press freedom

Attorney General Eric Holder takes his seat as he attends the ceremonies for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) more >

The Justice Departments civil rights investigation in Ferguson will be thorough, Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday, adding that law enforcement must work to restore trust and foster understanding.

Mr. Holders comments come the day after a grand jury decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the death of black teenager Michael Brown. The announcement set off a wave of protests around the country and rioting in Ferguson.

Mr. Holder said he was disappointed that some members of the community resorted to violence, and that the acts of violence threaten to drown out those that have legitimate voices.

The way weve made progress in this country is weve seen peaceful, nonviolent demonstrations, the attorney general said.

Problems of racial mistrust arent isolated to Ferguson, and Mr. Holder said the Justice Department is launching pilot programs in five cities to help build better relationships between the police forces and the communities they serve.

Department officials said they would announce the five cities within the coming days.

This isnt just about talking, Mr. Holder said of the program. We want to make sure concrete steps are taken.

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Eric Holder promises 'thorough' civil-rights probe in Ferguson

Washington Sen. Charles Schumer (D) of New York says his party made a mistake by pushing to pass Obamacare in 2010.

Thats right: The third-ranking Democrat in the Senate says that expending legislative energy on President Obamas health-care bill was an unforced error. It used up too much time and distracted the White House and its legislative allies from continuing efforts to bolster the economy, which should have been their top priority, according to Senator Schumer.

Worse, the Affordable Care Act did not help that many people who actually vote, Schumer said. Only about a third of the uninsured at the time the bill passed were registered to vote, and only a fraction of that third actually voted, he said.

After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle class-oriented programs and built on the partial success of the stimulus, said Schumer in an appearance Tuesday at the National Press Club. But unfortunately, Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them."

Wow, is Schumer right in this instance? Hes said in the past that he would have picked a different time to push the Affordable Care Act, but to repeat the argument now seems to be a conscious break with Obama administration orthodoxy.

If nothing else, hes making Republicans gleeful. Theyre holding up Schumers comments as yet more evidence that Obamacare shouldnt have passed in the first place.

So the Democrat Party got Schumered today, tweeted Joe Pounder, president of America Rising, a GOP opposition research political-action committee.

Mr. Pounder linked to a video of Schumers speech and said, well be using this a lot. Presumably, he meant that theyd be using it a lot in attack ads aimed at Democrats in 2016.

At its heart, Schumers view of how Democrats need to alter their image to win in 2016 is relatively widely held in Washington. The party thinks it needs to win over the broad swath of middle- and lower-income voters whose pay has stagnated for years.

Republicans want to be that party, too. They just have different ideas as to how to proceed. They would not agree with Schumer that an embrace of strong and active government is the answer.

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Is Chuck Schumer cutting Republicans' attack ads for them?

A judge asked Monroe County to provide him with the records of a reporter's license plate.(Photo: Christina Nellemann, Getty Images/iStockphoto)

An attorney for the Democrat and Chronicle argued Tuesday in state Supreme Court that Monroe County officials erred in refusing to release records that could show how extensively police use high-speed license-plate cameras to log where and when law-abiding citizens are driving.

The county maintains a database of license-plate records collected by these cameras, which often are mounted on police cruisers, and had amassed about 3.8 million records as of last summer. In July, reporter Steve Orr asked to see any records on his own license plate, those of six colleagues and two used on a pair of government vehicles assigned to Mayor Lovely Warren and Deputy County Executive Dan DeLaus.

County officials denied Orr's request. The Democrat and Chronicle asked a judge this fall to step in and order the records released.

Attorney Christopher Thomas of Nixon Peabody LLP told Justice John J. Ark on Tuesday morning that other law enforcement agencies including the Greece Police Department have readily handed over such information to people who asked for records on their own plates.

Deputy County Attorney Matt Brown said the decisions of other government agencies are "wholly irrelevant" because there have been no other court cases to settle how to deal with this issue.

The county has argued that releasing the records would be an invasion of personal privacy or interfere with a law enforcement investigation two reasons that government agencies can withhold records under the state's open records law.

Thomas criticized the county's argument that the records could somehow compromise an investigation.

"What the county is saying is that we're all suspects until we're not suspects, and we can't see our own data because we might some day be a suspect," he said.

Thomas also said the county simply could have requested proof that the reporters and editors involved in the request consented for their records to be released. All have since signed letters saying as much.

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Judge hears Democrat and Chronicle plate reader suit

"The state cannot discriminate, and if it does so, that is an abuse of power": Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm. Photo: Peter Rae

Same-sex marriage is vital for three reasons: liberty, conscience and state power.

That's the argument of Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm who on Wednesday introduced a private senator's bill to allow same-sex marriage.

The bill would allow any Australian to marry regardless of "sex, sexual orientation and gender identity".

However, it also gives non-government religious and civil celebrants the right to refuse to marry same-sex couples.

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The libertarian doesn't believe government should interfere in individual choices and freedoms, and also supports the medical use of marijuana and assisted suicide.

Banning same-sex marriage diminishes people's ability to make life plans and marriage equality keeps state power in check, he says.

"The state is a wonderful servant but a terrible master," he says.

"The state cannot discriminate, and if it does so, that is an abuse of power."

Continued here:
Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm introduces same-sex marriage bill