I’m not one to snipe – but sometimes its just too easy. I should’ve expted this much from Michele Malkin:

When is a “secret” not a secret?

When The New York Times decides, in the interest of saving its old gray hide, that it is not.

On June 22, the paper trumpeted its expose of “a secret Bush administration program” to track terror finances. The banking program, reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen made unmistakably clear, was a “closely held secret.” The front-page story referred to the secret nature of the program no less than eight times. A Times-produced Web video featuring Lichtblau promoted a brief interview in which he “reveal(ed) a secret Bush administration program to access financial records.”

But by July 2, smarting from the public backlash against its blabbermouth coverage, the Times crew was backpedaling faster than circus monkeys on barrels hurtling over Niagara Falls…

When is a “secret” really a secret?

When a bloated bureaucracy, bent on expanding the scope of its own power, willing to use any means necessary, throwing all scruples to the wind, says it is. The NYT is not trying to save its old gray hide – it’s simply demonstrating that the “secret” wasn’t that much of a “secret” to begin with. Why it had previously garnered no media attention is beyond me. Any ex post “backpedaling” is only to deflect the wholly unsubstantiated federal attention that rains down on anyone who questions our governments “wartime authority.” Ostensibly, the NYT was merely performing the civic duty required of a free press, and explicitly secured by the First amendment to the constitution.

So let’s save the presidential blow-jobs (verbal or otherwise) for the likes of Monica Lewinsky.