Sound and fury

By Ed Lasky

The New York Times goes overboard in an editorial today. After noting that Attorney General Gonzales told the Senate in 2005 that, "there has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse", the paper notes that he, in fact had been sent by the FBI a report stating that "it had obtained personal information it should not have".

Did inadvertently receiving this personal information rise to the level of "civil liberties abuse"?

If anything, the Times should compliment the FBI and the DOJ for recognizing an error and dealing with the problem. There is no evidence that Gonzales actually read the report before he testified to the Senate. It may well have been in his "in-box" after just a few days of having been sent the report.

Further, the Times writes:

"Mr. Bush's claim of executive privilege is baseless (note that the Times does not accord the man the title of "President Bush"). Executive privilege, which is not mentioned in the Constitution, is a judge-made right of limited scope, intended to create a sphere of privacy around the president so that he can have honest discussions with his advisers.

Since when has status as a "judge-made right" stopped the Times from wholeheartedly supporting such rights (for example, the "right" to abortion")? I can har5dly wait for the paper to call that "baseless".