SELLING OUT

Time magazine, playing the role of Bush administration lap dog, has decided it would sell out the First Amendment and its own reporter, Matt Cooper, and turn over notes about the CIA leak in which an undercover was identified by name — a felony.

In a statement, Time said it believes "the Supreme Court has limited press freedom in ways that will have a chilling effect on our work and that may damage the free flow of information that is so necessary in a democratic society."

But it also said that despite its concerns, it will turn over the records to the special counsel investigating the leak.

By contrast, Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter also subpoenaed (and one of the biggest suckers in parroting the Bush administration's shoddy claims that Iraq possessed WMD), had said she would sooner do time in federal prison than reveal her sources.

It's horrifying to think of how Time might have betrayed the trust of historically important whistleblowers, such as Daniel Ellsberg, Mark "Deep Throat" Felt or even Jeffrey Wigand, the tobacco executive who bravely revealed the industry's duplicity, as dramatized in "The Insider." (CBS's "60 Minutes" tucked tail at first, fearing a lawsuit.)

By Time magazine's standards of rolling over, reporters might have gone to jail for reporting about issues of real national importance, such as The Pentagon Papers, Watergate or even a story that challenged an industry with a powerful lobby like Big Tobacco.

Time magazine is dead wrong.

CANNON FODDER

Now it comes to light that the Pentagon has been teaming up with a marketing company to track students of recruiting age — in violation of the federal government's own Privacy Act.

The Defense Department began working yesterday with a private marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches. ...

Some information on high school students already is given to military recruiters in a separate program under provisions of the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act.

It's absolutely horrifying to think that instead of seeing and treating our youth as the future of the nation, the bearers of freedom for a more enlightened tomorrow, our government sees them as mere cannon fodder.

More than Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, this is the true obscenity that we face today.

BOEING BAILOUT

The horrifyingly blatant proposed $30 billion bailout of Boeing at the expense of lawmakers and government officials who may or may not have secured comfortable, cushy and lucrative jobs with the aerospace giant continues to reek.

The Washington Post writes in an editorial that "negotiations were rigged in Boeing's favor by an Air Force procurement official as a 'parting gift' just before she took a $250,000-a-year job at the company."

Lawrence Di Rita, that classy guy who serves as Defense Department spokesman, during a meeting that Donald Rumsfeld attended, actually said his comments "were brought to you by the Boeing Company," according to James Roche, secretary of the Air Force.

But there's enough underhandedness to go around.

Even as she was negotiating with the Air Force about whether the tanker lease was a good deal, Office of Management and Budget Associate Director Robin Cleveland asked Mr. Roche to intercede with former colleagues at Northrop Grumman to help Ms. Cleveland's brother get a job there. Within half an hour, Mr. Roche had passed the material on to the company, noting Ms. Cleveland's key position and endorsing her brother. Then he wrote back to Ms. Cleveland, "Be well. Smile. Give tankers now (Oops, did I say that? ...).

By any sane measure, the attempts at war profiteering at the cost of an obscene amount of taxpayer money appears simple financial malfeasance.