First Amendment under fire

Earlier today I posted on the importance of monitoring our government, given the power it now has over nearly every aspect of our lives.

I missed a story that has been developing since Sunday when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appeared on ABC's "This Week." During his interview, Gonzales stated that some laws on the books would allow the government to prosecute journalists who reported on classified information.

DailyKos published part one (and now part two) of a two part piece on this attack on the First Amendment. Here are two powerful quotes, the first written by Supreme Court Hugo Black in his opinion in the Pentagon Papers case:

In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.

And the second from Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles E. Hughes, writing in 1937:

The greater the importance of safeguarding the community from incitements to the overthrow of our institutions by force and violence, the more imperative is the need to preserve inviolate the constitutional rights of free speech, free press and free assembly in order to maintain the opportunity for free political discussion, to the end that government may be responsive to the will of the people and that changes, if desired, may be obtained by peaceful means. Therein lies the security of the Republic, the very foundation of constitutional government.

It is easy to forget in these troubled times that the cause which so many men and women have valiantly fought and died for is not simply the safety of those back home. The American Revolution was not born out of fear and a yearning for security. The United States was created on the principle that the people, and not the government, are sovereign. Almost any form of government--monarchy, dictatorship, theocracy--can ensure the security of a nation. But only a government "of the people, by the people, for the people" can provide the liberty that George Bush asserts "is the right and hope of all humanity."

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.