As I’ve opined in several posts in the past, being a journalist carries with it certain responsibilities, such as fair, unbiased, accurate reporting, of which, along with any vestige of personal honor among journalists, there is a paucity in today’s mainstream media. They are, after all, the people from whom the public expects to receive an accurate picture of current events, not the left-biased, incomplete accounts provided in order to make President Bush and his administration appear incompetent, evil tools of Haliburton and the rest of “Corporate America.”

But such is life, the only ethics followed by liberals are those that help them achieve whatever “ends” they want to achieve. What Clinton was able to do with impunity is a heinous crime if Bush does anything like it.

Another responsibility of an American journalist, and indeed of his or her entire organization, is to use common sense when deciding upon whether to print or broadcast a news item whose impartation to the public might engender a threat to the security of the nation and the very lives of its citizens.

The New York Times’ decision to inform the world of Bush and the NSAs’ monitoring of telephone calls between known or suspected al-Qaida contacts in the U.S. and people outside the country was the result of just such a decision. As the President told the Times a year ago, such action would do significant damage to the fabric of our homeland security structure.

Yet, in the interests of starting a politically partisan fueled brouhaha aimed at Bush, they went ahead and published the story.

I don’t care how they spin their “the people have a right to know” BS{that sentiment doesn’t seem to appear in the Constitution anyplace, only in the minds of the media), the bottom line is that, along with their as yet undiscovered inside informants, they have committed treason. They are traitors.

The New York Times reporters who broke the Bush “Spygate” story, as well as the paper’s top executives who approved its publication, face the very real prospect of criminal indictment by the Bush Justice Department - a lawyer involved in the 1971 Pentagon Papers battle is warning.

With a full-blown Justice Department investigation now underway, Harvey Silvergate tells the Boston Phoenix: “A variety of federal statutes, from the Espionage Act on down, give Bush ample means to prosecute the Times reporters who got the scoop, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau.”

Only time will tell if this really comes to pass, but I’d be behind it one hundred percent if it did, as it’s time some lessons were learned and some memories refreshed about the value of patriotism and the importance of preserving the republic over that of scoring cheap internel political victories.