The bastards have done it again..

The NYT has, once again, decided to uncover a classified program used to fight terrorists, because they feel they are the real government of the United States, and know better than mere elected officials what should be done...

...The Bush administration has made no secret of its campaign to disrupt terrorist financing, and President Bush, Treasury officials and others have spoken publicly about those efforts. Administration officials, however, asked The New York Times not to publish this article, saying that disclosure of the Swift program could jeopardize its effectiveness. They also enlisted several current and former officials, both Democrat and Republican, to vouch for its value.

Bill Keller, the newspaper's executive editor, said: "We have listened closely to the administration's arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. 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."...

It just makes me want to cry, the passivity of the Bush Administration in the face of blatant treason.

And the "threat to civil liberties" argument the Times is making is utter crap. We hear it over and over again from leftists, but it is total BS.

In every major war this country has fought, there have been massive infringements of civil liberties. And every single time we have ended those restrictions as soon as the danger passed. Wilson shut down hundreds of newspapers. Did that become some sort of common thing? Obviously not! And tossed Conscientious Objectors into prison. Did that become a trend?

FDR flung a hundred thousand people into camps on vague suspicions. Did that become the norm? Obviously not. Now is a time when internment would actually be good policy (not of that many people, but certain terror-preaching imams for sure) but we can't even think of it due to our reaction from the first time.

And the argument that this war is different, because it could go on indefinitely, with no clear end, is also stupidity. The Cold War started with HUAC hearings, blacklists, and loyalty oaths. And even though it dragged on for another 40 years (and if leftists and realists had had their way would be going on still) those restrictions were soon dropped, because it became clear they were not needed. And the argument that we will be too stupid distinguish a fuzzy ending is especially stupid. That's what we have human beings for--you know, thinking, judging. That's what we do, that machines can't do.

And there is a process by which we make these corrections. The process is called "elections." The people running things today can be a bunch of outsiders after the next election. And the old critics and outsiders will now be running things. And our tradition, our American tradition, was for both parties to respect the needs of national security above their political interests. (The grand example of this was Governor Dewey's voluntarily giving up his plan to focus his presidential campaign on Pearl Harbor, when he was apprised that this might reveal our breaking of Japanese cyphers.)

The NYT'ers have no love for elections. Their views gelled back in the days when their party--Big Government Liberalism--was elected every time whether the candidates were Democrat or Republican. A time when a conservative such as Barry Goldwater was considered a joke, and had no chance of being president. And at a time when the NYT was consider the "flagship of Eastern Establishment liberalism." I remember those days, I was there. The NYT used to be a quasi-governmental institution, and it thinks it still is...

And while I'm furious that Bush has not clamped down on those filthy traitors, I do take satisfaction from the way he has made it obvious that he doesn't care what they think, and has not the slightest intention of currying their favor, or even reading their lefty rag.