Jeffrey Toobin: Yes, I am an asshole; why do you ask?

I used to not subscribe to the New Yorker because I couldn’t stand its snotty, Upper West Side Jacobinism. Now I don’t subscribe because of its snotty, Upper West Side neo-fascism. At least, that seems to be the case, thanks to NY staff writer Jeffrey Toobin’s new “theory” that journalism is a crime. Toobin, who somehow moonlights as a “legal commentator” on CNN, gave an enthusiastic thumb’s up to the British government’s decision to detain and harass David Miranda for nine hours, on the grounds of being the boyfriend of Glenn Greenwald, who had published secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden. Toobin has accused Snowden of being a “grandiose narcissist,” apparently for telling the truth about the massive, massively illegal, and massively unconstitutional spying of the National Security Agency, which has violated just about every rule in the book, even though it wrote the book itself.

Toobin doesn’t care about the government’s crimes, of course. Worrying about civil liberties is so last millennium. Because everything is about terrorism these days. And anything that makes our government mad, or embarrassed—well, that’s terrorism. Miranda was probably carrying information that Snowden had leaked, and if the terrorists knew all the laws the NSA was breaking, well, that would help them. And even if Miranda wasn’t carrying anything that had been leaked, he might have been, and this will teach him to hang out with people who talk to leakers. And, anyway, “he wasn’t sent to the gulag,” as Toobin pointed out. So I guess that we should all be grateful that we haven’t been sent to the gulag. And if aren’t, well, we will be, if Jeff has his way. If this be the New Yorker, give me the preening, pissy liberals of yesteryear!

Afterwords
New York magazine lays out Jeff’s incredible rap here. For the latest (for now) on the NSA’s unending series of lies and crimes, check out the Washington Post here.