... demanding that the actual leakers be tried for treason, put to the death, or locked in a steel cage with the families of slain soldiers?

Oh, wait. Because it might turn out that some of the dearly-loved on the right are guilty of leaking. (Karl Rove, anyone?) So rather than go after those who willfully violate their sworn oaths, we'll go after the editors who dare to make public what was said. And of course we'll go after that bastion of the left, the New York Times, but cleverly downplay any mention of the Wall Street Journal (darling of the right), which ran the same stories.

Forgive me. I had forgotten for a moment that smearing and hypocrisy are the order of the day from our dear rulers, er, leaders.

I have a feeling a majority of the American public would agree with this. That's the most frightening part of all. You know when the government begins an assault on the free press and has a phantom mouth piece (Fox News along with most of the other cable news stations) hammering away with its propoganda a very dangerous line has been crossed.

One day when we wake up and find ourselves in the Fourth Reich we need only to look in the mirror for who to blame. The American people opened the door and invited these devils in.

Does the rhetoric you hear recently from our government and from certain members of the media remind you at all of the former Soviet Union? If I understand correctly, in this great country with such a great constitution full of rights, people are suggesting locking up and/or killing people for writing news stories? Are our soldiers fighting to maintain our rights or merely protect our lives and precious flag? (And by "life", I mean a body with a beating heart.)

Perhaps next they'll suggest curfews. We're less likely to get killed if we're locked up in our houses. "What were you planning to do while you're scurrying around in the middle of the night anyway? And where are your PAPERS?!?!"

It seems the Republicans, who represent themselves as the great defenders of the constitution, are trying to remove its most important protections.

But I can't recall any right wing pundits ever calling for the head of Robert Novak on a platter. Isn't printing the name of a covert CIA operative as compromising to ongoing operations as exposing the existence of various (most-likely) illegal admisitration operations.

Why? Because they are perfect spokespeople for the rabid right wingers currently in control. People like Rove, Cheney, DeLay or Bush are far too polished to say anything quite so bold about the NY Times, Democrats, or 9/11 widows, although secretly they share their sentiments. But not Coulter or Morgan or their millions of like-minded followers. These nutjobs will readily proclaim that the Times editor should be gassed or that McVeigh should have bombed the Times building instead. Meanwhile, moderates and undecideds get to see the radical right expose its own intolerant, irrational, and hateful underbelly.

So keep blabbing, Annie and Melanie. Love ya both!

M. Morgan is a low rent radio hate show host for KSFO in San Francisco. She's well known for her hatefull, mostly insipid rantings. This is apparently her bid to get picked up and boosted onto a national stage to a berth at Fox news. She's an idiot, pure and simple. KSFO is full of people like her 24/7 -- failed weatherman and local news readers who are capitolizing on the nation's appetite for hate and right wing red meat.

Bill T

Watadoo

You know, I'm a basically happy person, and I will cop to a certain amount of naively optimistic thinking. Through the 9/11 war rationale, the WMD debacle, Plamegate, NSA wiretapping, "cut and run" rhetoric, and flag desecration nonsense...through all of this I was still thinking, it will turn out ok. We'll write our representatives and we'll vote in November, and vote again in couple of years. And this boat we're on, that's leaning heavily starboard, will make a course correction and right itself and maybe even lean to port for a while.

Because that's America. We've got a Consitution designed to handle the swells and even the storms. It's the ongoing conversation--the rolling back and forth and trusting that no one is really going overboard (even if we feel incredibly seasick) that makes this country different, right?

But this! "Congress expects the cooperation of all news media organizations"? What country is this? For some reason this is the last straw for me. I'm going to have to accept that this is not the country I grew up for the first 30 years of my life. How did America become so unAmerican?

Maybe this increasing tack to the right is a good thing. Because now I'm angry. And if I'm angry maybe some other people are angry. And if we're angry, maybe we'll do more.

Imagine how Melanie Morgan would feel if someone violated federal law and threatened national security by outing a CIA agent instead of reporting on what was already public information and what the terrorists have known for quite some time.

Melanie Morgan, a fixture on "Hardball" and Fox News, says it's high time for the government to bring treason charges against the New York Times for reporting on the financial-monitoring plan. "My advice to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at this point in time is chop-chop, hurry up, let's get these prosecutors fired up and get the subpoenas served, get the indictments going, and get these guys behind jail," Morgan says.

Notice that she omitted that pesky step "Give them a fair trial" as well as that thing that happens before one goes to jail, what's it called? Oh yeah, being convicted.

If the treason charge from Bushco went to trial, I cannot imagine any jury convicting the New York Times, especially if the trial were televised as it definitely should be. I'd love to see ANY trial that could require Bush, Cheney, and other members of this administration to testify under oath. It would take maybe five minutes on any subject whatsoever for them to perjure themselves in a court of law.