The First Step...

As the adherents of just about any twelve-step program will tell you, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

For the past half-decade, we've been among the voices trying to coax the modern Republican Party toward step one, multiple times - even before our current archive system existed. Unfortunately, to the detriment of both their own political party and the American people, the only steps the Republican party seems willing to take are off the edge of an ideological cliff.

When we read Greg Sargent's headline Tuesday - which echoed one we wrote two years ago this week - we realized parts of today's Republican Party have been on their current version of a political death march since before this century began.

With both GOP legend Bob Dole and recently retired Senator Olympia Snowe calling out the GOP as desperately in need of rethinking their priorities, we were once again reminded that the current Republican Party is in almost exactly the same position as the Democratic Party was in the mid-1980s - a comparison we've been making for years now.

Indeed, it's the same comparison Molly Ball outlined last week in The Atlantic. While the parallels between then and now are both eerie and startlingly sad, the differences remind us even more how far the GOP has fallen into their own madness.

It's not just that no progress can be made in Washington anymore, regardless of what President Obama does or says, as Steve Benen pointed out on Tuesday.

It's that even when President Obama goes so far as to put on a purely symbolic "charm offensive," the Republicans in Congress - led by the ideological extremists in the tea party wing - destroy any potential for actually governing. Greg Sargent made this point abundantly clear to anyone who may have still doubted - today's GOP is fundamentally unserious about governing.

If it weren't both a painful spectacle to behold and deeply damaging to the nation, we would almost be tempted to sit back and laugh as the Republican Party keeps on marching right over the edge, into political oblivion.

The problem is, like any other addict, when the GOP keeps falling down, they also drag down everyone else around them - and as with any other addict, until the majority of members of the Republican Party want to make things better themselves, we can keep pointing the way to the beginning of  a political recovery program but they have to take the first step themselves.

For now, we're just hoping they hit bottom sooner rather than later.

Light Over Heat: Credibility Matters

Today we hope you were able to return to work refreshed and recharged - though maybe a bit sunburned - from an extended Memorial Day weekend. We also hope you took a moment to remember the reason for the holiday, and honored America's fallen heroes, as President Obama did Monday at Arlington National Cemetery.

The world didn't stop though, even if you took an extra day off. Fighting in Syria heated up, even as matters regarding Syria became even more complicated. Sequestration cuts are really starting to bite, even as House Republicans ignore the sequester, and instead insist they're going to push forward on the IRS mess during Congress' break this week - even as it appears that IRS staffers were right to give a second look to many of the applications from politically oriented groups.

In fact, as many of our colleagues in media struggle back to work today, we're almost certain that a sub-section of our lazy cohorts will attempt to fire up the "scandal" machine instead of tackling a fresh new subject, or sharply recapping what readers may have missed over the weekend. We'd be willing to bet that many in the media will be covering the James Rosen/DOJ "scandal" again this week, just as many kept busy last week trying to shove Jesus off the cross so they could put Rosen in his place.

Sadly, many of those we respect in the media have blindly gone along with Rosen's cries of persecution.

Too many people running around with their head on fire also seem to have forgotten - even if the Justice Department's treatment of Rosen has been ugly and unethical, the DOJ’s actions appear to be legal. The same can’t yet be said about what Rosen may have done.

As the case stands now, the Department of Justice announced Saturday that it notified News Corp. more than two years ago about its seizure of Rosen's phone records. Sources at Fox News have since come forward saying they've known about the Justice Department investigation for least three years. Meanwhile, Fox's parent News Corp. is both denying they have any record of the DOJ's subpoena, while at the same time obliquely acknowledging that the Justice Department sent them a subpoena.

In the Washington Post, Walter Pincus clearly laid out a timeline of the known facts in the ongoing Rosen media scandal that anyone concerned with honest media should read. The DOJ could have acted unethically in this case - and we wouldn't be surprised if they did. But, as Pincus points out, "…the First Amendment covers the right to publish information, but it does not grant blanket immunity for how that information is gathered."

Meaning that Rosen, the reporter from Fox, may have easily broken the law in his hubris -which is what the Department of Justice is tasked with prosecuting.

A media organization's credibility is a key factor that changes the organization from simply "media" to "news," in the same way a member of the media becomes a "journalist" in the eyes of his or her peers. Simply being first doesn't add credibility, if the individual or organization isn't right. Further, organizations that have proven records of violating the law to gather information - like News Corp., the parent of Fox - have less credibility because they've been proven both liars and lawbreakers in the past. Finally, as it stands in America right now, having the right to publish or broadcast doesn't mean one can violate the law to obtain their source material.

Which, of course, is Rosen's problem. He can set his head on fire screaming about his First Amendment rights - and we'll stand behind his right to do so, no question, even if those he works for and with are vile and lack credibility.

However, if Rosen broke the law and the DOJ did not, it's not just Rosen's credibility that will be up in smoke - it's the credibility of all those in the media who blindly supported Rosen, and attempted to paint him as a symbol for everyone in the media, before they had all the facts. To us, Rosen's mere association with a discreditied organization like Fox is reason enough to doubt his credibility. That Fox and News Corp. can't seem to get their story straight lends even more doubt to Rosen, in our minds.

The DOJ doesn't always have to be ethical about what they do.

To have credibility, journalists always do.

What Have We Learned?

As we put the final touches on today's work and get ready to enjoy three days off, we have three things on our minds: the school year is ending, this is Memorial Day weekend, and President Obama's speech on national security and the drone program on Thursday was a stunningly frank and necessary next step in America's path forward.

What Americans hopefully learned from the President on Thursday reminds us of some of the parting words of wisdom we've given or received at the end of school years past. Ed Kilgore of Washington Monthly may have been the first major member of the media to understand those words of wisdom that President Obama was imparting - wisdom many Americans have yet to truly grasp.

Whatever your personal political beliefs are, based on both the speech on Thursday and the series of actions the President has set in motion – drafting an official drone policy, admitting responsibility for killing innocents with our drones, publicly taking responsibility for initiating the end to Guantanamo – it should be obvious to anyone with a solid grasp of foreign policy that the era of "perpetual war" in America is finally coming to an end.

This era won't be ended by President Obama alone, though.

As Dave Weigel brusquely but accurately pointed out Thursday afternoon, President Obama called out Congress for their laziness, cowardice, and incompetence in mishandling their responsibilities for ending this era. Congress has known about these drone strikes - "every strike," as President Obama admitted on Thursday - yet has done almost nothing to increase their oversight over the program.

Congress has also done nothing to curtail the document that is at the root of this perpetual war state, the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force, the AUMF - until recently, when Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff stepped up. Instead, they've wasted their time attacking the President and playing politics, making our security situation weaker by gutting necessary security funding, while making it nearly impossible to settle already complex problems like Guantanamo.

As Greg Sargent and others have rightly noted, President Obama's speech and actions are a massive, yet ultimately imperfect, attempt to finally reconcile America's national security policies and actions with the values we claim to have. Yet it's an effort no one else on the national level has had the courage to seriously attempt since those policies and actions were split in 2001. Presient Obama's reconcilliation effort is being punctuated sharply by his plan to end this era not by increasing the powers of his office, but by actually LIMITING the powers of the office of the President, through actions like increased oversight of the drone program by Congress.

There's one other thing Americans learned from President Obama yesterday, with some help from anti-war protester Medea Benjamin.

Ms. Benjamin interrupted Mr. Obama three times during one of the most important policy delivery speeches this President has ever made. While he may have been a bit frustrated by her interruptions, he LISTENED to her, and even directly addressed some of her questions.

In addressing Ms. Benjamin's questions about civilians and the costs of the lives of those we've killed through drone strikes, President Obama said, "It is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in every war. And for the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me and those in my chain of command, those deaths will haunt us as long as we live…" That includes the death of the 16 year old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.

That the President of the United States would not only show respect to a common citizen who interrupted him during a major speech, but that he answered her questions with humility, honesty and humanity is a lesson that every one of us should never forget: We are NEVER too important, no matter who we are, to address the honest concerns of those for whom we are responsible.

The era of perpetual war is ending. This is not the same country it was thirteen years ago. Hopefully, we can all take what we've learned and make it better.