Every passing week, it becomes more apparent that disgruntled leftists in the intelligence community and antiwar crusaders in the mainstream media, annealed in their disdain for the Bush administration, are undermining our ability to win the War on Terror. Their latest body blow to the war effort is the exposure, principally by the New York Times, of the Treasury Department’s top-secret program to monitor terror funding.

President Bush, who said on Monday morning that the exposure “does great harm to the United States of America,” must demand that the New York Times pay a price for its costly, arrogant defiance. The administration should withdraw the newspaper’s White House press credentials because this privilege has been so egregiously abused, and an aggressive investigation should be undertaken to identify and prosecute, at a minimum, the government officials who have leaked national-defense information.

Why do they hate us? No, I'm not talking about Islamofascist terrorists. We know why they hate us: because we have freedom of speech and freedom of religion, because we refuse to treat women as second-class citizens, because we do not kill homosexuals, because we are a free society.

No, the "they" I'm referring to are the editors of The New York Times. And do they hate us? Well, that may be stretching it. But at the least they have gotten into the habit of acting in reckless disregard of our safety.

Why do they hate us? Why does the Times print stories that put America more at risk of attack? They say that these surveillance programs are subject to abuse, but give no reason to believe that this concern is anything but theoretical. We have a press that is at war with an administration, while our country is at war against merciless enemies. The Times is acting like an adolescent kicking the shins of its parents, hoping to make them hurt while confident of remaining safe under their roof. But how safe will we remain when our protection depends on the Times?

LC & IB Ace, for reasons unknown to anybody but himself, has had enough of the “hate speech crap”:

No more veiled or not so velied threats of violence against reporters, liberals, etc.

His blog, his rules.

As to myself, I’m sorry if I can’t find it in myself to claim the moral “high” ground here. You see, when journaljizzmers decide, deliberately and after having thought about it for a while, to place the lives of myself and, more importantly, my wife and children in greater danger than they were before, I’m having a hard time not taking it personally.

No, I don’t give a flying fuck about their motives. I couldn’t give less of a shit about their pissing and bleating about “public interest” if I spent 12 years at Indifference University getting a doctorate in caring less, all I care about is the fact that their treasonous actions placed the lives of myself and my loved ones in greater jeopardy.

If you’re a journaljizzmer working for one of those rags, just keep it a secret if you’re around me, m’kay?

Because if I find out that you are, I’m going to jam my fist so far down your throats that I can pull your livers out.

And I will.

It has become increasingly clear that multiple members, if not most, of the leftist mainstream media no longer care about either the fate of the American people at the hands of terrorists or the survival of the United States. The latest example is that of the New York Times publishing yet another article that stabs our country and its people in the back, by publishing classified information regarding the tracking of radical Islamic terrorists’ international banking activities.

Q We’re told the Vice President is going to make similar comments at his appearance today. With the President and the Vice President, in essence, going after The New York Times today, are they trying to create a chilling effect on media outlets that might cover stories of this nature?

MR. SNOW: I don’t think so, no. No, I don’t think so. It’s a very good question. No, if The New York Times decides that it is going to try to assume responsibility for determining which classified secrets remain classified and which don’t, it ought to accept some of the obligations of that responsibility; it ought to be able to take the heat, as well. So the administration certainly is going to lay out its concerns and what it may mean for the safety of the American people and the integrity of the process of developing intelligence that can permit us to track down terrorists and prevent them from killing again.

That’s what this is all about. It’s about what we can do in a time of war. Traditionally in this country in a time of war, members of the press have acknowledged that the Commander-in-Chief, in the exercise of his powers, sometimes has to do things secretly in order to protect the public. This is a highly unusual departure. It’s interesting, The Times, talking about this being a—this program having been a departure from previous banking efforts. This is also a departure from long-standing traditions here in the United States.

So it is—it’s not designed to have a chilling effect. I think what it’s—if The New York Times wants a spirited debate about it, it’s got it. But, certainly, nobody is going to deny First Amendment rights. But The New York Times and other news organizations ought to think long and hard about whether a public’s right to know, in some cases, might overwrite somebody’s right to live, and whether, in fact, the publications of these could place in jeopardy the safety of fellow Americans.