Powerline's "The silence of the Times"

Don't miss today's Powerline post "The silence of the Times." It begins:

Last night at the end of his long post "Ahabs everywhere," John took a look at the New York Times article by Eric Lichtblau and Adam Liptak purporting to assess the Bush administration's argument for the legality of the NSA surveillance program.

John notes the article's failure to come to terms with the case law unanimously recognizing the president's inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless domestic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes, let alone the international surveillance at issue in the NSA program.(bold added)

Further on there's this:

Like John, I think that the administration's NSA surveillance program as described by the president, the vice president, the Attorney General, and General Hayden is legal. I don't think it's a close question, though I think reasonable people can disagree on that point.

What is clearly illegal, however, in my view and the view of everyone involved in the Times story disclosing the existence of the NSA surveillance program, are the leaks that led to the story. The illegality of the leaks is precisely why the "nearly a dozen current and former government officials" who leaked the story to James Risen and Eric Lichtblau in connection with the original December 16 story demanded and received anonymity from the Times.(bold added)

Powerline has much more to say.

I'll add this. It think the leakers should go to jail; and so should all those at The Times involved in the story. The Times Co. should be hit with a large fine. By large I mean in the hundreds of millions.

I don't care how smart you think you are or how much you hate our President or our government.You have no right to publish classified information that will help America's enemies attack us.

"Don't miss" is an overused term. But for this Powerline post it fits