MSM: Enforce the Intelligence Identities Protection Act Unless It's One of our Leak Sources or Reporters

Michael Barone exposes the huge holes in the WaPo editorial "Official Secretes over at USNews. Barone leads by summarizing the WaPo argument:

"The administration is seeking to convert a moribund World War I-era espionage law into an American version of Britain's Official Secrets Act. Mr. Gonzales is correct that the law, which bans the transmission of national defense information to anyone not cleared to receive it, would – if read literally – make criminals out of journalists who publish such material. For that matter, it would also permit the jailing of whistle-blowers, academics who write about leaked information, members of Congress who disclose secrets, and, theoretically, even readers of newspapers who discuss the stories. Precisely because of the law's unthinkable scope, the First Amendment has long been understood to limit its application. Government has gone after officials who promise to protect the nation's secrets and then fail to do so – but generally not against citizens who receive those secrets."......................

Then Barone points out why the MSM is most guilty for the current sorry state of affairs regarding this entire matter:

"It is a dangerous road." I agree. But of course it was the press, led by the editorialists of the New York Times, that bayed loudly for investigation and prosecution of government officials who disclosed the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, even though it was far from clear that there was any violation of the statute in question, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. The press, or large parts of it, is all for prosecution—even if it leads, as it did, to the jailing of then New York Times reporter Judith Miller—if such a prosecution will hurt the Bush administration. On that one, it was the press that was hurtling down "a dangerous road." The Times and Post reporters and editors who published the stories I referenced above are at the very least in the same legal position as Judith Miller; that is, they are witnesses to acts that are in violation of statute and may be jailed for contempt if they refuse to testify against those who illegally disclosed classified information. At worst, they stand in the same legal position as the two former AIPAC officials, who received the information and passed it along to others—and perhaps are in a worse position, since those two defendants argue, quite possibly plausibly, that they did not know that the information they received was classified, while the Times and Post editors clearly did have such knowledge. There's a strong argument against prosecuting the press on these grounds, that doing so is going down "a dangerous road." But the press, which after all has knowledge of the Franklin and former AIPAC officials' prosecutions and the fact that Congress has not repealed the statutes responsible for them, has been going down "a dangerous road," too.................

Surely the left of center MSM must understand how inconsistent and ridiculous they have become.....................Absolute cartoon caricatures.......