Looks like there may be some regrowth of balls going on in the news media. Via AP:

The Bush administration and The New York Times are again at odds over national security, this time with new reports of a broad government effort to track global financial transfers.

The newspaper, which in December broke news of an effort by the National Security Agency to monitor Americans' telephone calls and e-mails, declined a White House request not to publish a story about the government's inspection of monies flowing in and out of the country.

The Los Angeles Times also reported on the issue Thursday night on its Web site, against the Bush administration's wishes. The Wall Street Journal said it received no request to hold its report of the surveillance.

That last line is particularly interesting, doncha think? Who is more likely to actually move money in and out of the country on a regular basis, readers of the NY or LA Times or the WSJ? And yet they were willing to let the folks most affected read about this while trying to keep it from the "common folk" who read the more mainstream press?

Hmmm. Anyway, good to see these guys finally starting maybe to grow a pair. Get ready for a new round of "MSM abuse" from the right, although probably over some different subject altogether so as to avoid attracting more attention to this latest abuse of privacy rights.

Oh, and apparently Lambert was over-optimistic yesterday (not words we use together very often here) in assuming that these were the one kind of records the government would get subpoenas for. They can, of course, in any legitimate criminal investigation. But since this isn't that, and because it wouldn't involve any breathtaking extension of "executive absolutism" (aka "tyranny" as defined by the Founding Fathers) they were careful not to do so here:

[Los Angeles Times' Washington bureau chief Doyle] McManus said the other factor that tipped the paper's decision to publish was the novel approach government was using to gather data in another realm without warrant or subpoena.

"Police agencies and prosecutors get warrants all the time to search suspects' houses, and we don't write stories about that," he said. "This is different. This is new. And this is a process that has been developed that does not involve getting a specific warrant. It's a new and unfamiliar process."

No shit, Doyle. Maybe people will get a little more pissed about this than they did about the government-tapping-all-your-phone-calls-and-Internet-activity-without-a-warrant. Somehow people think words are still just vapor which, once spoken, go off into the air and fade away. (They aren't, of course, as many associates of Jack Abramhoff are finding to their dismay these days.) But money? That's real, that's important, that's your shield against poverty, despair, disgrace and death. Or as that guy said one time, "Where thy money is, there will thy heart be also."