Congressman: Try the NY Times for treason

Updated below:

Peter King (R-NY), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee wants the NY Times, its publisher, its editors, and its reporters tried for treason:

King, R-N.Y., said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the nation's chief law enforcer "begin an investigation and prosecution of The New York Times — the reporters, the editors and the publisher."

"We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," King told The Associated Press.

I hope he doesn't have a safe seat.

If the government does elect to try the press for treason, it's probably time for a revolution.

Update:

Matt Yglesias makes a very important point in relation to the right's obsesiveness with secrecy:

I've gone through this all before, but the underlying view that liberal democracy is a source of weakness is, I think, deeply, deeply misguided. There's this line about how those who sacrifice liberty to gain security deserve neither, but even that, I think, actually tilts considerations more against liberty than I think needs to be conceded. It's just not the case historically that adopting more authoritarian forms of rule, with more all-pervasive surveillance and less morale-destroying media reports is a great strategy for national success.

I watched Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantanamo last night and what strikes you about it beyond the tragedy and immorality of it all is the sheer pointlessness and wastage of time and resources involved.

Which, when you think about it, is exactly what you would expect to happen in circumstances without public scrutiny or legal oversight. Mistakes happen in life, especially when people need to make decisions quickly, get pressed into unusual tasks, and are acting under extreme emotional pressure. Secrecy just leads mistakes to be covered up rather than corrected -- it breeds complacency and corruption. This is, at least roughly, why democracies keep surviving and outcompeting their rivals -- why more-and-more countries wind up adopting democratic institutions and gaining greater security and prosperity for it.