Yadda yadda

NY Times editor Bill Keller and LA Times editor Dean Baquet have published a joint defense of their publication of secret national security information. It's cliché-ridden and shallow. I'll spare you the tedium--you can go read it yourself if you like, but here's the coda:

We understand that honorable people may disagree with any of these choices — to publish or not to publish. But making those decisions is the responsibility that falls to editors, a corollary to the great gift of our independence. It is not a responsibility we take lightly. And it is not one we can surrender to the government.

In short, we're wiser than the professionals our elected leaders have chosen.

If you commit a crime, though, like publishing classified information, the government plus a jury of your peers may get to second-guess you. And in a free country we get to fisk both Timeses, and with talk radio and the blogosphere we have the media to do it.

How about a special prosecutor here? Seems a lot more important than Valerie Plame and her creepy husband.