BADGES? I DON'T GOT TO SHOW YOU NO STINKIN' BADGES!

The above caption is the famous line, spoken by one of the banditos, from John Huston's Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

It epitomizes the so-called right of the public "to know."

To know what?

What it can find out about, that's what.

There's a private detective in Los Angeles, Anthony Pellicano, under federal indictment for breaking the laws against wiretapping on behalf of attorneys and businessmen who know the value of knowledge, such as what their adversaries plan to do next.

If we have a right to know, then why is Pellicano accused of a crime for providing the information?

There's lots we're not allowed to know about.  Government secrets, for instance.  Scooter Libby, Shotgun Dick Cheney's right hand man, is under indictment for allegedly leaking the identity of a secret government agent, Valerie Plame, to the media (or mainstream media, MSM for short) in order to discredit her husband, a former ambassador who made a liar out of Pres. Bush over a piece of cake.  Yellowcake, in this instance, a source of uranium for making atomic bombs.

We don't have a right to peep into each others medical records, do we.

We don't have a right to divulge embarrassing private details about each others lives.

Attorneys, doctors, and priests have no right to divulge secret information provided by clients, do they.

It looks like the public right to know is the exception rather than the rule.

Perhaps the press would sound less dopey if it proclaimed "The public's right to try to find out what's not illegal to find out."

That might be a more accurate statement of the law.

See John Tierney's NYT column, below, for his take on this grave problem of First Amendment law.  Then take a warm bath, dim the lights, and put on some soothing music while you try to relax.