The Taming the Press, 2006

We need more news, not less.

As for what's happening in Iraq, Juan
Cole brings us this headline today: National Unity Government on Verge
of Collapse As Sunnis Threaten Pull-out.

Meanwhile, there is a new 2006 election campaign to make the press shut up about anything having to do with the serious incompetence and ineptitude of the president and the conservatives running Congress. It's dangerous.
We've been here before.

I cannot offer much of Frank Rich's column, because it's behind the pay wall, but here's a tiny bit.

The administration has a more insidious game plan instead: it has manufactured and milked this controversy to reboot its intimidation of the press, hoping journalists will pull punches in an election year. There are momentous stories far more worrisome to the White House than the less-than-shocking Swift program, whether in the chaos of Anbar Province or the ruins of New Orleans. If the press muzzles itself, its under-the-radar self-censorship will be far more valuable than a Nixonesque frontal assault that ends up as a 24/7 hurricane veering toward the Supreme Court. Will this plan work? It did after 9/11. The chilling words articulated at the get-go by Ari Fleischer (Americans must “watch what they say”) carried over to the run-up to the Iraq war, when the administration's W.M.D. claims went unchallenged by most news organizations. That this strategy may work again can be seen in the fascinating escalation in tactics by the Bush White House's most powerful not-so-secret agent in the press itself, the Wall Street Journal editorial page. The Journal is not Fox News or an idle blogger or radio bloviator. It's the establishment voice of the party in power. … All the News That's Fit to Bully, by Frank Rich (Times Select)

But the press isn't the only one being pushed to quiet down. Many progressive bloggers are getting slammed these days, especially for speaking our minds and mounting a serious opposition. If Joe Lieberman had done that from the start he wouldn't find himself where he is today. Because when a grown up is wrong he or she admits it, changes course and learns that willful wrongheadedness never got anyone anywhere, especially out of a war going wrong.