Time Magazine's Massimo Calabresi Wins Our Media Putz Award for Insisting the Jihad Jane Case is an Argument for the Patriot Act

BUZZFLASH MEDIA PUTZ OF THE WEEK

Massimo Calabresi (Time Magazine)

For reporting that is an embarrassment to the profession of journalism, and for being beholden to corporate paymasters rather than the citizens of America.

Sigh. Another suspected terrorist captured, another discussion of how unimportant American civil liberties are.

Colleen LaRose, a.k.a. Jihad Jane, was captured last week and charged with trying to recruit militants online, plotting an attack and contacting suspects who were plotting to kill a Swedish cartoonist who had portrayed the Prophet Mohammad as a dog.

In Massimo Calabresi's piece for Time Magazine titled "Why the Jihad Jane Case Is a Win for the Patriot Act," he forgets to answer one question. That question is why exactly is the Jihad Jane case a win for the Patriot Act?

Hm. OK, maybe it's because the government needed all those expanded ways to peek into our personal lives to catch Jihad Jane, because she was such a sneaky and skilled terrorist. But Calabresi himself refutes that when he notes the following:

In fact, Justice Department terrorism experts are privately unimpressed by LaRose. Hers was not a particularly threatening plot, they say, and she was not using any of the more challenging counter-surveillance measures that more experienced jihadis, let alone foreign intelligence agents, use.

So, since she was such a dunce at the jihad game, clearly the Justice Department had to use these intelligence gathering techniques "enhanced" by the Patriot Act. But we need look no further than the very first sentence of Calabresi's piece to find out that the use of such investigative powers were imagined:

The Justice Department won't say whether provisions of the Patriot Act were used to investigate and charge Colleen LaRose.

OK, then. What gave Calabresi the notion that the Patriot Act had any effect on the case at all? Well, apparently:

...even if the law's provisions weren't directly used against her, the arrest of the woman who allegedly used the moniker "Jihad Jane" is a boost for the Patriot Act, Administration officials and Capitol Hill Democrats say. That's because revelations of her alleged plot may give credibility to calls for even greater investigative powers for the FBI and law enforcement, including Republican proposals to expand certain surveillance techniques that are currently limited to targeting foreigners.

What "greater investigative powers"? You mean like racial profiling? Yeah, that'd have been so useful in catching the blonde, blue-eyed woman from Pennsylvania.

There are several instances in which Calabresi insists that his thoughts are in line with what unnamed "Administration officials and Capitol Hill Democrats say." Of course, he never names them or even prints an anonymous quote.

So let's get this straight. Even though there's no evidence of Patriot Act provisions being used to find or capture Jihad Jane, the fact that we managed to capture her illustrates the need for more Patriot Act-like laws?

Please. Bush-era "logic" used to dictate that every time we got attacked a new civil liberty which we had previously enjoyed as Americans was to be taken away for our own safety. Now every time a terrorist is captured we have to give something up too? Sorry, no deal.

BUZZFLASH MEDIA PUTZ OF THE WEEK

You can see a list of all previous winners here.