Do your freaking job, dammit!

You know, I am just so damn sick of this crap. The Washington Post for December 10 says that

[t]he intelligence package that Congress approved this week includes a series of little-noticed measures that would broaden the government's power to conduct terrorism investigations, including provisions to loosen standards for FBI surveillance warrants and allow the Justice Department to more easily detain suspects without bail.

Other law-enforcement-related measures in the bill - expected to be signed by President Bush next week - include an expansion of the criteria that constitute "material support" to terrorist groups and the ability to share U.S. grand jury information with foreign governments in urgent terrorism cases.

Now just why were these provisions "little-noticed?" Who failed to cover them? Who failed to bring them up? Who failed to report on them? And who, now that the bill has passed, when it's too late, want to cover their flaming weasel asses by mentioning them as if they were new discoveries?

They weren't "little-noticed" by civil liberties groups or even by some members of Congress. I mean, I even had links to concerns about some of those provisions on November 27, at a time the bill was stalled and I had hopes it would stay that way for a fair time. And now the Washington Post, for pity's sake, wants to blink its eyes innocently and go "oh my, look what we just found?"

Bull. Utter bull. The fact is, these provisions are matters of public concern and most of the major media, the Post included, utterly failed to bring them to public attention. They utterly failed as journalists.

That is not surprising. But what really galls me is how they will try to cover up that failure by reporting on issues after the time when something could have been done about them. That is neither lazy nor even incompetent. It is just utterly deceitful.

Footnote: Other provisions in the bill included -

- one that allows suspects in terrorism investigations to be denied bail unless that can prove they are neither a danger nor a flight risk. Since proving a negative is nearly impossible, this opens the door to indefinite detention.

- others that "are direct responses to setbacks in the courts, where prosecutors have lost cases because of disputes over previous legislative language." In other words, courts found what you're doing to be illegal, but don't change your practices, change the law.