So Team Chimpy gets caught with their grubby little hands in the cookie jar again. Time to pull out the spin and attack machine. Cheney says he was “offended” while Bush called it “disgraceful”. Not their actions, mind, you, but that the press dared to inform the public of yet another flagrant privacy violation by the swollen executive.

Right on cue, the talking heads are making the circuit with the political equivalent of 'I know you are but what am I?' calling for the NYT’s editors to be shackled, pelted with rotten fruit, flogged, drawn and quartered, and hung on a spike outside the White House lawn.

Peter King: Chris, I think the administration acted entirely appropriately. The 1976 U.S. Supreme Court case gives them, to me, the absolute right to do this. They’re in full compliance with all statutes. To me, the real question here is the conduct of the New York Times by disclosing this in time of war, they have compromised America’s anti-terrorist policies. This is a very effective policy. They have compromised it. This is the second time the New York Times has done this. And to me, no one elected the New York Times to do anything. And the New York Times is putting its own arrogant elitist left wing agenda before the interests of the American people, and I’m calling on the Attorney General to begin a criminal investigation and prosecution of the New York Times — its reporters, the editors who worked on this, and the publisher.

If King had his way, this is what the U.S. press would look like within a year.

Bill Keller, executive editor for the NYT issued a response today saying that “the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.”

Meanwhile, looks like those wacky leftists at the New York Times aren’t the only ones scratching their soft, liberal heads. Belgium has opened an investigation into the legality of the administrations actions. The bloggers are unified in their disgust (of course, they are all beholden to the Godfather, Don Markos) while some experts are making the case that the program is not only useless, but betrays an utter lack of understanding among the administration as to how terrorist financing works.