Is the Real Problem Obama's Sealed Indictments, Not His Leaks Prosecution?

This is the real question I end up with at this point, so enlighten me.

Today there's an article in the New York Times about a Fox News journalist subpoened over refusal to reveal a source about a leaked secret indictment.

This is like the story of James Risen of the New York Times.

The angle these stories always take is, "Oh, the horror, the Obama Administration is the most punitive to leakers, is Obama a horrible chill on press freedom."

I see it differently. I think the Community-Organizer-in-Chief's problem comes to this; those to the radical left of him - and he's no radical slouch since his DSA days -- have a weakened White House that they can essentially "hack moar".

He's created a sense of opportunism for the hard left to take advantage of him and guilt-trip in ways a Bush or a Reagan could have never been spooked.

The number of leaks and then his desire to prosecute them are therefore functions of weakness, not strength. He leaks more because not only is he weaker; he has encouraged anti-Israel pro-Iranian sentiment in certain US government factions, and anti-war-on-terror ideologues in general, and that has created trouble -- they leak because they feel impunity *from Obama* first of all.

Then there's this piece of it -- I don't think James Risen should endlessly get to report on things that degrade our ability to fight the Iranians or the Fox News guy should get to leak an operation against Somali based terrorists that affect our ability to fight Al Shabab.

Why do they feel a sense of entitlement to do this? Either they want to tip off terrorists or they want to nudge Obama into doing more against them, depending on their agenda.

I'd have to study these stories more carefully to see what's up and whether there is some "redeeming feature" that would warrant these stories being in the domain of "the public's right to know." That same public elected a government that it mandates to keep secrets of national security, too, you know.

But here's the thing. Is the problem really originating in the sealed indictments?

I could understand if you could make a compelling case that the indictments have to be sealed so that the suspects and their accomplices aren't tipped off.

But at what point are you encouraging ongoing crime and terrorism and espionage by doing that, and not deterring it with more public presidential declarations explaining the difference between right and wrong?

I want to have that discussion.

For example, I find it ABSOLUTELY APPALLING that we have no public indictments of WikiLeaks operatives from Assange on down to Snowden for his epic NSA hack.

Why?

I can't imagine what the interest is there that would be about not tipping off suspects. Subpoenas already tipped them off. National security letters already tipped them off.

Now we need to be let in on the secret and be part of creating a civic deterrent to espionage and undermining national security. Seriously.

I can't trust the New York Times to tell this story.