Prosecuting journalists won't work  In normal circumstances, you
would consider yesterday's comments by the Attorney General of
the United States to be mere cage-rattling. No way, you would
tell yourself, all things being equal, that the federal
government is going to start to prosecute journalists for
publishing classified information that they obtained legally.
There just isn't enough upside. The federal laws are terribly
vague and, even if they weren't, there is that amendment, the
first one, that ought to serve even among conservative judges,
as a bulwark against punishing free speech and a free press. In
short, the legal basis for going after journalists is almost as
bad as the political fallout that would ensue.  But these are
not normal circumstances and all things are not equal. The folks
who are now threatening to prosecute reporters are the very same
folks who have one high-profile terror law issue after another
since September 11, 2001. They are the folks who kept U.S.
citizens as "enemy combatants