Some Call it Treason

Senator Jim Bunning (running for reelection, of course), following the leads of both President Bush and his minder, Vice President Cheney, has said that the New York Times is in violation of the espionage Act -- i.e., its editors are guilty of (shudder, shake) treason. Well if



is so guilty of treason over their publishing the facts surrounding our Government's money-movement data collection program, what about ...



or others? (The Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, to name two ... and countless others in the past three or four days.)

By the way, it's worth noting that the Wall Street Journal's article was published slightly ahead (only by minutes, but ahead nonetheless) of the New York Times ... but neither Cheney nor Bush have anything personal against the WSJ at this time.

And, oh yes, while we're at it, perhaps we ought to look into the State department's description of the program (released as early as 2002) for possible "acts of treason" while we're at it. Clearly, the Al-Qaida knew full well, the what, how, where and why of the entire program long before the New York Times published a "disclosure" ... that was really more of a reminder that we were still at it after more than four years.

I personally think that the program is both useful and worthwhile to continue, but I also see the New York Times being "set up" in much the same way that Dan Rather was "set up" last year over his reporting on material contained in mysteriously surfaced forged documents.

If this wasn't still dragging on three days after Independence Day, and nearly every right-wing talk show host weren't still trying to play it (typically, with Representative Peter King as a "guest") for all it's worth in this important mid-year election year, it wouldn't even be worthy of an anonymous blog (a.k.a. "a tree falling in the forest devoid of animal life," eh Richard?) somewhere buried on Blogspot's file server.