The Real News Network highlighted the following CNN interview, Glenn Greenwald Destroys CNN’s Jeff Toobin Over Bradley Manning and Snowden.

Without judging the guilt or innocence of either Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden, I must charge Jeff Toobin with overacting, and Glenn Greenwald with under destroying.

Jeff Toobin emphasized all the foreign service officers who collected this information expecting it to be kept secret. He felt that Manning had betrayed these people and their life’s work. Toobin acted as if none of those people had any qualms about what was being hidden. Toobin acted as if none of the people in the know wanted to disclose this information, but could not take the punishment that would go along with the disclosure.

Then Toobin kept emphasizing the number of documents that were disclosed. Since when do we measure the damage to national security by the number of documents instead of by the sum total of the information that was disclosed? A person could disclose a billion documents, and not do as much damage as the disclosure of one top secret document depending on what was in those documents.

If Toobin has to resort to this type of exaggeration to make his case, it would make me think he has a weak case based only on the facts. Fortunately, no judicial decisions are based on anything Toobin has to say. So the merits of both cases are still left to be argued by rational people. Rational people are those who can step back, catch their breath, and can get control of their emotions before making arguments or coming to a conclusion.

The New York Times has the story Weighing Pick for Fed Chief, Obama Defends Summers.

President Obama on Wednesday offered a strong defense of his potential choice of Lawrence H. Summers to head the Federal Reserve, though he said no final choice had been made.
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Mr. Obama did mention another prime candidate for the Fed job, Janet L. Yellen, and noted that he did not know whether there were major policy differences between the candidates. Mr. Summers and Ms. Yellen have become the subjects of an unusually open campaign by lawmakers and others to try to influence the president’s selection.
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The president also reassured Congressional Democrats on Wednesday that he would not “sell out” his party’s principles as his White House tries to negotiate a budget deal with Senate Republicans this fall.

I think the President has heard some of the push back from his own supporters on issues of the economy.  He seems to have taken the message to heart about negotiating budget deals.  I am not sure he really understands the issue of Larry Summers.  At least he has acknowledged that there is another candidate for the spot of Federal Reserve Chairman.

I think getting up in arms is a good thing for us supporters of the President to do. We can’t always be sure he is tuning up his tin ear on every issue.  So it is necessary to complain loudly when we suspect he is off in another world.  He does seem to respond if we shout loudly enough.

In a comment to my previous post, Obama Proposes Deal Over Taxes and Jobs, I asked readers to look at President Obama’s Bargain For The Middle Class to see if it would be safe for me to look at.

Reader MardyS took up the task.  He assured me that I would not be disappointed in what I saw.  The following video is one of the items from that web page:

This excerpt of the speech provided by the Obama administration does make the President’s proposal sound better than the impression I got from reading the news reports of his proposal.