Now Playing the Role of Spiro Agnew...

...Is Dick Cheney, the man who keeps acting like Darth Vader despite his daughter's protestations in her recent chat-show appearances that he's not nearly that bad a guy. The latest blood-pressure-raising incident for the veep is the New York Times' publication last Friday of yet another report on the tactics of the Bushies in fighting the war against terror -- namely that the administration is looking into banking transactions of Americans and foreigners in an attempt to ferret out the terrorists who are cashing checks at the local grocery store.

So now we're back to the sabre rattling by the press haters, who believe that any free and independent reporting of questionable government tactics in fighting an illegal and undeclared war is tantamount to treason. Ring 'em up on Espionage Act charges, or something similar, says Gabriel Schoenfeld in the new issue of the Weekly Standard, repeating a call for action he made earlier in the year when the Times also let the public know about the Bush administration's penchant for spying on U.S. citizens.

Cheney, for his part, put on the Agnew mask when he singled out the Times' reporting for criticism at a Republican fundraiser last Friday. "What I find most disturbing about these stories is the fact that some of the news media take it upon themselves to disclose vital national security programs, thereby making it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks against the American people," the veep said, to applause from the friendly crowd oblivious to various problems with Cheney's position:

"The news media take it upon themselves..." That's what a free press is supposed to do -- take it upon itself to tell us what the government doesn't want us to know.

"Vital national security programs..." According to the same folks who assured us of WMD?

"Thereby making it more difficult for us..." We don't know how much difficulty the government really has in tracking terrorists, real or imagined, or whether the programs taken on by the government have any substantive impact on that effort.

"Prevent future attacks on the American people..." If there's never another attack on American soil (unlikely but still to be hoped for) how can we know whether Bush policies kept them from happening or whether we were just lucky?

Times editor Bill Keller gamely stepped up to the press bashers today to respond to the usual flurry of calls for him and the rest of the Times staff to be fitted with prison jump suits. His response is worth quoting in a little detail:

It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy, and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.

So bring on the prosecutors. Let's see what that does for Bush's popularity.