String ’Em High, String ’Em Now

[[H U H ?]] * The White House’s propagandistic attacks on the people responsible for leaking information about George W. Bush’s illegal and warrantless domestic spying operations, and on The New York Times for reporting that such eavesdropping has been going on, seem finally to have unhinged certain right-wing pundits. The ostensibly “liberal” Dean’s World blog, for instance, puts to rest any notion that Bush supporters who accuse Americans of engaging in “treason” by exposing the prez’s latest perfidies are simply practicing the arts of overstatement. Under the inflammatory headline “High Treason and the New York Times,” this blogger opines:

These leakers have exposed a perfectly legal, perfectly sensible government operation that has undoubtedly helped round up hundreds of members of Al Qaeda and saved the lives of countless Americans. Exposing such a secret program is not whistle-blowing--it is high treason.

When I say “treason” I don’t mean it in an insulting or hyperbolic way. I mean [it] in a literal way: we need to find these 21st century Julius Rosenbergs, these modern day reincarnations of Alger Hiss, put them on trial before a jury of their peers, with defense counsel. When they are found guilty, we should then hang them by the neck until the are dead, dead, dead.

No sympathy. No mercy.

No doubt about it: The cult of Dubya has definitely gone off the deep end, and is trying to drag America right down with it.

READ MORE: “Hanging the Messenger,” by Glenn Greenwald (Unclaimed Territory).