NY, LA Times should be charged

(Yeah, I wrote about this already, briefly, but I can't leave it alone.)

I don't know exactly what the charges should be -- treason sounds like a good start. They can share a cell with the [expletives deleted]s who leaked the info in the first place. And we shouldn't have to wait until the POTUS and the administration decide it's a good idea to take them down. After all, they went against the expressed requests from not only the White House but the joint members of Congress, including Jack Murtha (God help us!), and published classified information concerning intel operations which had already bagged a mass murdering terrorist. So, in other words, they've rendered another very effective, totally legal defense weapon useless, and they went against both the executive and legislative branches of our elected government to do so.

And their editor, Bill Keller, is just dandy with destroying our nation in the process of trying to bring down an administration which will be out of here in two years, anyway. As several people have put it, "who died and elected him God, anyway?" Sheesh.

Why not just hand over to alQ the keys and the gun and all the jewels and our daughters right now, Mr. Keller? After all, every time you publish another one of our defense secrets, it's as though you're issuing an invitation. Hey, there, fellas, I'm not wearing a burqa... wink wink.

Interestingly, Keller's excuse (before he conveniently went incommunicado on vacation) was

"We remain convinced that the administration’s extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

"[P]ublic interest." Mr. Keller, you keep saying that phrase, but I do not think it means what you think it means.

Mr. Keller -- and the entire editorial staff at the NYT and the LAT -- needs to learn that there is a difference between the curiosity that members of the public may or may not have in a topic and the best interest of the nation, or the best interest of free people worldwide. In this case, especially, the public interest would have best been served by keeping the information under his hat, as the members of Congress and the administration all asked him to do.

If Bush does nothing, certainly Congress* should get off its collective hindquarters and act as if they genuinely care about our collective hindquarters. We will not be facing a Constitutional crisis if a rogue set of "journalists" is prosecuted for betraying the nation's trust, as Rick Moran at Right Wing Nut House believes (he's right about everything else, there, though). We will be facing it if nobody does anything to stop them.


There's a lineup of bloggers at The Truth Laid Bear's special site devoted to just this topic, if you want to read lots and lots on it.


*not that I actually expect any results from them, let alone would I know precisely how Congress could exact punishment from the Timeses' editors, et al. I'd just like to see our elected government actually do something constructive to protect my rather oversized haunches.