It's a mistake because targeting a journalist's family member is quite likely to piss the average journalist the fuck off. The Washington Press corps can make Obama's life fucking miserable if they so choose, and absolutely drown his agenda in press about Snowden, Greenwald, how and when the White House communicated with the UK about this, and a million other things.
They can make an oxygen-sucking scandal out of nothing. This could devour the rest of Obama's second term if it gets out of hand (and the Republicans decide there's more mileage in beating him up about it rather than supporting the security state).
The public does not have to care for this to be a huge negative for the gov't. The only people who need to care are precisely the ones most likely to--folks rather like Greenwald.
You realise that such speculation is more immoral than the acts carried out so far right? You're ostensibly describing trying to blackmail the most powerful man in the world.
Stop licking the boots of power for a second and think about what you've said: literally, that imagining questions one might ask of misbehaving public servants is worse than the original misbehavior of those public servants. What color is the sky in your world?
The actions cited: investigating the behavior of government, and questioning public servants about that behavior. Which is basically the role of the fourth branch; read any founding father. But you describe this, with a vindictive imagination zealous enough to do any federal prosecutor proud, as "blackmail". Journalists, doing their jobs. What. The. Fuck.
If it were up to those in power to define what is and is not "an oxygen-sucking scandal out of nothing", nothing would get investigated by journalists, ever. That's why, at least until recently, it has been journalists who have decided the proper focus of their work. The First Amendment is not vague on this point: Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press...
I know you're trolling me here, but fuck it there probably are some halfwits out there nodding along with these power-worshiping redefinitions of old, well-understood law. From 18 U.S.C. § 873, blackmail: "Whoever, under a threat of informing, or as a consideration for not informing, against any violation of any law of the United States, demands or receives any money or other valuable thing, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned..." There's no money here. What is the "other valuable thing"? The safety of journalists' innocent loved ones? That's monstrous, and that isn't a proper interpretation of law.
> There's no money here. What is the "other valuable thing"? The safety of journalists' innocent loved ones? That's monstrous, and that isn't a proper interpretation of law
No, the 'other valuable thing' in this case is immunity from search or seizure.
No, the actions being speculated were about the possibility of retaliation if the government pisses off the wrong journalists too much. For there to be blackmail, someone would need to make a threat in advance.
Retaliation for a perceived offence can be blackmail. I'm not suggesting the poster was actually blackmailing anyone, but it's hardly the most moral position to take.
No, I think that's a rediculous assertion. Journalists have choices about what the direct their attention to. Various things help them make those choices, and misuse of state power against somebody they can personally identify with is the sort of thing that will draw their attention.
They can make an oxygen-sucking scandal out of nothing. This could devour the rest of Obama's second term if it gets out of hand (and the Republicans decide there's more mileage in beating him up about it rather than supporting the security state).
The public does not have to care for this to be a huge negative for the gov't. The only people who need to care are precisely the ones most likely to--folks rather like Greenwald.