Prime Minister David Cameron cut short a state visit to Africa and bowed to demands for Parliament to delay its summer recess on Monday, as he confronted a growing scandal over his cozy ties with Rupert Murdoch’s top lieutenants in Britain and the opposition posed a fresh challenge to the survival of his year-old government. – Tabloid Scandal a Fresh Threat to Cameron’s Survival
At 9:15 a.m. EST, Rupert Murdoch appears before the British Parliament. Keith Olbermann will be doing live coverage on CurrentTV, testimony which I’ll be following along with the entire world.
It comes a day after the whistleblower is found dead, though nothing suspicious has been alleged.
The day after the Wall Street Journal embarrasses itself with the most self-indulgent editorial ever offered in the defense of the indefensible.
The last time the liberal press demanded a media prosecutor, it was to probe the late conservative columnist Robert Novak in pursuit of White House aide Scooter Libby. But the effort soon engulfed a reporter for the New York Times, which had led the posse to hang Novak and his sources. Do our media brethren really want to invite Congress and prosecutors to regulate how journalists gather the news?
That’s the best they’ve got? Invoking Scooter Libby and the late Bob Novak is hardly a laudatory defense for Rupert Murdoch’s alleged criminal gang that felt it wise to listen in on private phone calls to get a story, while possibly violating all sorts of criminal statutes in the process.
If the case regarding Jude Law turns out to be true Mr. Murdoch will have plenty of fresh hell for the WSJ to rant about in the near future.
But that pales in comparison to the trouble coming PM Cameron’s way if Murdoch’s Parliament performance isn’t pitch perfect.
Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour opposition, delivered a broadside against Mr. Cameron on Monday that sought to tap into the public outrage over the scandal by linking it to a series of crises in recent years — the role of the banks in the financial crisis that hit in 2008, the furor over lawmakers’ expense abuses in 2009 and now the tabloid scandal. Commentators said his goal was to weaken Mr. Cameron’s coalition government if the scandal continues to escalate, and to cast himself as a credible alternate prime minister should Mr. Cameron fall. …
[...] In Parliament there were cries from the opposition for Mr. Cameron to quit, with one left-wing gadfly, Dennis Skinner, shouting, “When is dodgy Dave going to do the decent thing and resign?” – John F. Burns
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