"When Treason Rules the Land...." John Donne

Powerline's Scotty demonstrates why he will not win plaudits from the MSM as the more pliant Ed Morrissey has:

Following in the footsteps of the AP last year, New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau won the Pulitzer Prize today for their treasonous contribution to the undermining of the highly classified National Security Agency surveillance program of al Qaeda-related terrorists. As I argued in a column for the Standard, the Risen/Lichtblau reportage clearly violated relevant provisions of the Espionage Act -- a particularly serious crime insofar as it lends assistance to the enemy in a time of war.

Juxtapose the Times's award-winning reportage with the Times's highminded editorial condemnation of President Bush for allegedly failing to follow proper procedure in declassifying the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate key judgments. Today the Times instructs us: "Even a president cannot wave a wand and announce that an intelligence report is declassified."

Waving a wand is apparently a prerogative reserved to Times executive editor Bill Keller, who made the decision to "declassify" the NSA surveillance program in the pages of the Times. According to Keller, the publication of the NSA story did "not expose any technical intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on the public record." Thus Keller waved his wand, and the Times blew the NSA program. Smarter folks than I will have to reconcile the trains of thought at work among the editors of the New York Times.

What about the Pulitzer Prize committee? When Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for the Times in connection with his mendacious coverage of Stalin's Soviet Union, he performed valuable public relations work for a mass murderer. He nevertheless did no direct harm to the United States. Today's Pulitzer Prize award to the Times brings a new shame to the Pulitzer Prize committee that builds on its disgrace last year via the award to the AP.

The Pulitzer Committee has a long history of being Fellow-Travellers and Aiders/Abettors of whatever grave security threat to American Interests was on the horizon. Duranty finally had his prize taken away recently, but I'm sure several Stalinists on the Committee still wish the USSR were around. Selecting Kai Bird's book which praises Robert Oppenheimer's perfidy is just a pale reflection of the damage they would inflict on America's security had they the means to do so.

Legally, Risen and Lichtblau broke the law. Is Wobbly Junior going to continue to blink and go on reading the story about the goat?