NY Times - Treason?

NY Times is being branded a traitor.

The Bush administration's attempt to demonize the New York Times -- a newspaper that gave the administration plenty of aid and comfort when the White House was spinning lies about WMDs in Iraq -- will be remembered as one of the ugliest chapters in the history of press freedom in the United States.
The question that will ultimately be asked is not whether the Times did the right thing in revealing to the American people the details of Bush-authorized spying programs--by any measure, the newspaper was right to do what it did and history will provide more than enough vindication.

Nichols is correct in that the Times gave a lot of leeway to this regime. They held off - at the regime's request - the release of spying information. So happy they are bringing to light the abuses of power and rights.

I think Kucinich says it best:

This Administration is angry that the media leaked the story about it snooping into the bank records of millions of Americans. It supporters in Congress want to formally condemn the New York Times. What a bunch of baloney.
"It is about time the media did its job of protecting the public interest. If the media and this Congress had shown some independence from the party line of this Administration, the claims of WMDs would have been dismissed, and fact there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11 would have been well established and we would not have gone to war against Iraq.
"A few years ago, a movie, Wag the Dog, told of how a US administration misused its communications power to create phony stories to put the nation into an international conflict. This Administration not only wagged the dog in Iraq, but, with the help of its fabricators at the Rendon and Lincoln groups, it has wagging a whole kennel.
"In a free society the media cannot be a lap dog of any Administration. The First Amendment states, 'Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech', except of course, under this Administration."