Shame on the New York Times

The New York Times, which broke the spying story, witheld the story for a year.

Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

Anyone wanna bet that they had the story around, say, late October 2004, and were asked to withhold it? Totally not because of any major electoral event occurring around that time, but because of 'national security' concerns? Similar to how Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation was stymied in 2004 due to uncooperative reporters, but by mid-2005 the reporters were coming out of the woodwork with testimony and mea culpas like they were going out of style. Surely a coincidence, don't lose any sleep over it, God bless America.

Since when does the New York Times, let alone any journalist, take orders from the White House?

If only Richard Nixon had known that all he had to do was call up Bob Woodward and say "Hey stop publishing your stories, it's a, ummm, national security issue. [expletive deleted] Thanks."... Actually today's Bob Woodward probably would have agreed, but that's a separate issue.

The Times had evidence of criminal behavior on the part of the White House and they agreed to keep it hidden for over a year? Why? Because Bush's approval numbers were still high enough last year that everyone was still afraid of him? They figured it could wait until his numbers were in the toilet before revealing this? I hope they will be asked to explain this further. After the Judy Miller/Plamegate debacle, they cannot afford a further eroding of their integrity.

Shame on the New York Times. Their responsibility is to the public, not the White House.