Be careful what you ask for...

Because you just may get it. The NY Times sure did:

"There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business risk being branded traitors," said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. "I don't know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad."

It sounds nice, but it's a little too late for that kind of talk, isn't it? Keller's own newspaper led the fight for the Valerie Wilson CIA leak investigation, cheering the appointment of a special prosecutor with powers that exceeded even the old independent counsels. And what happened? That special prosecutor went to the White House and got government sources to waive confidentiality restrictions on their talks with journalists. Then he went to journalists and said, "See? I've got these waivers. You can testify or you can go to jail." And then he sent one of them to jail and threatened others. And so far, at least, he hasn't found enough evidence to charge anyone with a national-security crime.

Too late, the Times and its allies realized that a terrible precedent had been set. Now some of them try to argue that the Wilson leak was an act of retribution, while the NSA and secret prisons leaks were the work of good-government whistleblowers, so one should be vigorously prosecuted while the others are ignored. It won't work. Leaks are leaks, and the NSA and secret prisons leaks were, by any estimation, far more damaging to national security than the Wilson leak. (In that case, the special prosecutor said in court recently that he did not intend to show that any damage occurred from the leak.)

So now there are more investigations going on. The Times and its supporters wanted this kind of thing.