Perhaps the Pulitizer, already demeaned by the fact it has been given to so many unworthies, ought to be replaced by a new award, the Chutzpah Prize for the press organ which demonstrates the most outlandish gall.
 
Today's New York Times editorial is my nominee. It begins:

It's hard to think of a president and an administration more devoted to secrecy than President Bush and his team. Except, that is, when it suits Mr. Bush politically to give the public a glimpse of the secrets. And so, yesterday, he ordered the declassification of a fraction of a report by United States intelligence agencies on the global terrorist threat.

Where did the paper get the notion that it was okay to misrepresent classified information illegally leaked to it, but bad to declassify that information and expose the lie?

This absurd notion ——"good leaks, bad leaks"——coined by  Patrick Fitzgerald in the Plame matter seems to be gaining steam. Time to expose it for what it is: partisan foolishness designed to cripple the executive against baseless charges leveled at it by game players in what we  unaccountably still refer to as the intelligence community.
 
Clarice Feldman    9 27 06