The Day Senator Bunning Read the Newspaper

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So Kentucky’s Sen. Jim Bunning says he doesn’t read newspapers, but he did pick up a copy of the Times long enough to read the financial-surveillance story, and he knows treason when he sees it.

Bunning equated the Times’ story last week on the bank records to publishing the phone number of Osama bin Laden, saying the al-Qaida leader would be tipped and change his number immediately.

“In my opinion, that is giving aid and comfort to the enemy, therefore it is an act of treason,” Bunning said of the story, which detailed how the government is analyzing a massive database on international money transfers.

Let the record reflect that to suggest that terrorists would have had no way to suspect that their records might be surveiled–through an agency that out and out advertises its cooperation with law enforcement), you have to assume that they’re pretty damn obtuse. But no matter: Bunning’s point really is that, as Ari Fleischer would have it, “people need to watch what they say, watch what they do.”

“What you write in a war and what is legal to do for the federal government, or state government, whoever it is, is very important in the winning of the war on terror.”

Asked if that could be a recipe for government abuse of civil liberties, Bunning responded: “It could be.”

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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