Yesterday, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau won Pulitzer Prizes for their reporting on the president's illegal NSA eavedropping program (this report was delayed by a year). Now Bill Bennett, Alan Dershowitz and other conservatives are saying that these guys should be thrown in jail, not given awards. They claim that this example of free press is "capitulation to Islamists."

What do I think? I think Bennett and Dershowitz are examples of a dangerous and repressed press. They claim to be journalists but are no better than propagandists. Risen and Lichtblau deserve the awards and the administration should be questioned severely for their influence in delaying it.

Quoted: Hiding under the banner of free press advocates, right-wingers are calling for the heads of reporters who publish 'against the president's wishes.'

I read Molly Ivins pretty frequently but I think today's post is among her best...

Quoted: But as we can all attest, if you ignore reality, sooner or later it will bite you in the ass. I suspect the "tough- minded" (they pride themselves on being tough-minded) members of the Bush administration think they are not ignoring reality, but just persuading other people to ignore it long enough to allow them to change it. This is not an original thought. Many of the great thumb-suckers of D.C. have come to the same conclusion and pondered deeply on the "fatal hubris" of this administration. Fatal jackasses are what we have.