seem to us to have been acting as patriotic corporate citizens in a difficult and uncharted environment.

must be nice to have the ability to read other people's minds, as so many in the wp and nyt's organization seem to. how, exactly, did they come to this conclusion? beats me, they don't say. we're just supposed to accept it as an article of faith.

telecommunications companies that provided information to the government without court orders ... [...] ... seem to us to have been acting as patriotic corporate citizens in a difficult and uncharted environment. (a whole bunch elided)

What Hiatt overlooks isn't that the telcoms kinda sorta broke the law once, but that they did it massively, each time they broke their agreed upon Terms of Service with a customer.

As I mentioned previously here and elsewhere, this makes customers like me potentially liable for communications and works guaranteed to colleagues and clients to be secure (under our existing understanding of secure transmissions) should those electronically conveyed works and communications found to be altered in any way, cracked or illicitly copied.

And no, when I enter into a contract it's not perceived as rude or a shortcoming on anyone's part to exact explicit terms, including for mutual verifiability, and potential damages and worst case scenarios as a routine part of the bargaining process.

What freakin' world does Hiatt live in -- scratch that -- what freakin' world do we live in where the editor of a major newspaper can't envision the magnitude of these legal issues, and what he's asking not only of Congress, but of the voters who deserve responsible govt, and the millions of telcom customers who are being denied their promised secure service and guaranteed privacy?

Seriously, how low have we sunk to accept it as routine when Hiatt's uses his wide forum and level of influence to skid past yet another mountain of outsourced consequences because he's so inured to the rodeo clown fascism of the Bush / Cheney reign, he defaults to waving away serious outcomes with the magical vanishing star-dust required to accept this power drunk Executive run amok? (Of course, he could genuinely be as big a bubblehead as Britney Spears, which would explain a lot.)

So in the interest of being fair and balanced, I'm including the following as a painful illustration that my comparison of Hiatt's apparent intellectual level to Britney Spears's isn't hyperbole.

Also, in Spears' defense, I'd like to add that even in the midst of her current downward tailspin, she arguably has a better excuse for incompetence than Hiatt, as her bubbleheadedness is compounded by drugs and possibly other physical and mental ailments.

Thesis: Hiatt is even more of a credulous imbecile than Britney Spears. Let's go to the tape ...

CARLSON: Welcome back to a very special and very grave edition of CROSSFIRE. [Just when you thought after-school specials maxed out on stupid back when you were watching them ...]

[... skipping over Britney & Madonna smooching ...]

CARLSON: Well, with business out of the way, I went on to ask the pop music diva for her views on matters more pertinent to CROSSFIRE.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARLSON: A lot of entertainers have come out against the war in Iraq. Have you?

SPEARS: Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens.

CARLSON: Do you trust this president?

SPEARS: Yes, I do.

CARLSON: Excellent. Do you think he's going to win again?

SPEARS: I don't know. I don't know that.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARLSON: She's a Bush supporter, Paul. Can't argue with it.

BEGALA: She's pro-Bush. It was a brave, courageous interview, Tucker, one of the highlights of your journalistic career.

(LAUGHTER)

BEGALA: You're the envy of teenage boys -- and middle-aged men, I suppose -- everywhere. So congratulations.

CARLSON: You're making me nervous, Paul.