Above the law?

Legal scholars and commentators are asking if the New York Times violated U.S. espionage laws | Hugh Hewitt

Presidents are not above the law, and the legal travails of Presidents Clinton and Nixon prove that on a bipartisan basis.

But are newspapers elevated above the ordinary duties of a citizen or corporation in the United States?

In an extraordinary series of statements, New York Times editor Bill Keller is implicitly making a public case for such an exalted position. Mr. Keller has repeatedly defended his paper's decision to publish late last year articles on the highly secret National Security Agency program to intercept communications from al-Qaeda abroad to its agents/contacts in the United States. The Bush administration urged the paper not to publish the leaked material, arguing that to do so would alert terrorists to the program's existence. The paper delayed but ultimately published the story.