I was kind of surprised that there wasn't a thread about this already when I checked Hatrack this morning, but I only just got time to create one myself a few minutes ago, so I thought that maybe everyone else was similarly busy.
Then I started looking for the story, and realized that maybe people simply hadn't heard about it. I heard coverage of it on NPR this morning, and discussion of it is featured prominently on many of the political commentary sites I frequent, but when I looked for an article about it on the BBC News site I didn't see it anywhere. That got me interested in seeing how the story was being covered by the major US news outlets.
CNN: Looking on CNN I eventually found the story, but it was buried in the politics page, where it didn't merit position as the leading headline.
FOX: Fox doesn't seem to be covering the story at all. I didn't see it on their homepage, their US page, or their politics page, so I did searches for "Department of Justice" memo memo torture John Yoo
Nothing. If they've got a story on it, it's buried pretty deeply.
MSNBC: Same as FOX.
USA Today: Has the story, but it's in the "On Deadline" section, not on the front page. A search of "'Department of Justice' memo" turned it up.
CBS News: Has the storyas its lead on their US News page, with a link to it available on their homepage.
ABC News: Has the story as the lead on its US News page, though I didn't see a link to it on their homepage.
Why isn't this being covered more prominently? This is a huge story.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
It's on the front page of the Washington Post.
Posted by Jake (Member # 206) on :
I'm glad to hear it. I just started checking sites as they occurred to me. Should have checked both the Washington Post and the New York Times.
Posted by Jake (Member # 206) on :
Looks like it's the second story on the New York Times' US News page.
I didn't see it on the Reuters site, but a searche turned up the story in a subsection called "Latest Crisis", which doesn't seem have a navigable page in and of itself.
I'll look on other sites in a bit, but right now work is calling.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I read about it this morning. I'll fire off the emails to the representatives, but I don't see the situation as changed all that much by this. We pretty much knew that this authorization existed. We knew that President Bush considers international treaties to not constain his actions.
Congress isn't going to do anything about it and, for me, this is something that I pretty much accepted as true already.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I'm not sure why this would be a huge story. We knew this was their 2003 policy back in 2003. Anyone left who'd consider this the first smoking gun hasn't been paying attention.
Posted by Jake (Member # 206) on :
Well, both of you have a point in that it isn't as though it wasn't apparent that this authorization existed, and Tom's certainly right that this isn't the first smoking gun, but it's still a smoking gun, and as such it seems important enough to me to warrant first page treatment.