UPDATE:

More on the NY Times leak by Ed Morrissey, who predicted like many of us the BY Times was pushed top publish by the debut of Risen’s Book

END UPDATE

The leftward side of the country is running for the edge of the cliff with the dream of impeaching Bush! Yesterday, the Altered Boy cam out with the prime example of the political focus for the left – and no it is not protecting us from terrorists, or expanding our successes in Iraq and Afghanistan, or keeping the economy going, or reducing our energy dependence, lowering our taxes, or shoring up the education system. It is the impeachment of George Bush.

Their dreams have come true with the NSA-FISA revelations (so they think) and they are running for their Holy Grail (no matter the consequences when the mirage clears away).

We begin with a Clinton era judge on the FISA court, charged with protecting the country and our civil liberties, who cuts and runs when the going gets tough:

U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, sent a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. late Monday notifying him of his resignation without providing an explanation.

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court’s work.

Got that? He is afraid something done by NSA has tainted his work at FISA. The FISA court was the second to the last safe guard between monitoring the terrorists and maintaining the civil rights of Americans and this guy left his post because he felt his image had been tarnished. This petulent political stunt will not improve FISA’s image one bit. Why would a judge cut and run from an important role like this simply because of a N Times hit piece meant to sell books?

Robertson, who was appointed to the federal bench in Washington by President Bill Clinton in 1994 and was later selected by then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist to serve on the FISA court, declined to comment when reached at his office late yesterday.

Dude, even if you have valid issues with the NSA program, your role at FISA was supposed to be the counter example. There was no need to cut and run, except you wanted a headline splash, a partisan gold rush, PR for the left! Well, if a little dust up in the press about something that doesn’t even implicate FISA is enough for you to quit and walk away from protecting Americans’ civil rights, you obviously were not the man for the job. Maybe it is best you went home to sulk.

And why is it the NY Times ran another hit piece on Bush, timed with another book release? The NY Observer thinks they know. But before we get to their theories, let’s test their motives:

On the afternoon of Dec. 15, New York Times executives put the paper’s preferred First Amendment lawyer, Floyd Abrams, on standby. In the pipeline for the next day’s paper was a story that President George W. Bush had specifically asked the paper not to run, revealing that the National Security Agency had been wiretapping Americans without using warrants.

I detect a liberal shading of the truth so as to make their case stronger than it is. The sentence I emphasized, if accurate, would say “…wiretapping Americans in contact with known or highly suspected terrorists outside the US without using warrants”. But that would undermine the liberal arguments to quickly. So they try and dupe their readers. Too bad for anyone who pays a dime for to someone so they can lie in their face.

A little more testing of their morals:

The President had made the request in person, nine days before, in an Oval Office meeting with publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., executive editor Bill Keller and Washington bureau chief Phil Taubman, according to Times sources familiar with the meeting.

That Dec. 6 session with Mr. Bush was the culmination of a 14-month struggle between The Times and the White House—and a parallel struggle behind the scenes at The Times—over the wiretapping story. In the end, Mr. Abrams’ services were not needed. The piece made it to press without further incident.

Again, this is a flat out lie. There was no incident for the NY Times, there was plenty of damage to the US and the methods we use to identify Al Qaeda supporters, enablers, sympathizers or members in the US, not to mention ways to determine their plans through where and when they make travel arrangements. But this is inconsequential to the press. They could care less that Al Qaeda contacts in the US, along with some indication of their planning, could be lost. They just want to run stories and get awards.

Given the fact the Observer (what an oxymoronic name!) failed the objectivity test so badly in the first three paragraphs, we cannot expect a reasonable theory out of them. But let’s just see:

In fact, multiple Times sources said that the story had come up more than a year ago—specifically, before the 2004 election. After The Times decided not to publish it at that time, Mr. Risen went away on book leave, and his piece was shelved and regarded as dead, according to a Times source.

So the NY Times had this story before the election…

Does anyone remember the other partisan hit piece from the NY Times which came out with a bang and became a huge dud right before the election: al Qa Qaa. The NY Times got handed its head in this false alarm, so is it any wonder it tabled the NSA surveillance story? To do one Rathergate was bad enough, but to try two would have been to obvious, even for the NY Times.

But with amazing candor (or is it brazen candor) the Times and Observer fess up to the whole conspiracy

Mr. Risen has had difficulties in the past getting traction with Times editors on a disputed topic. In fall 2003, he unsuccessfully pressed for more skeptical coverage of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, to counterbalance the work of Judith Miller.

Mr. Risen returned from his book leave in June of 2005. He soon began agitating to revive the wiretapping piece and get it into the paper, according to bureau sources.

According to multiple Times sources, the decision to move forward with the story was accelerated by the forthcoming publication of Mr. Risen’s book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.

Mr. Risen’s book is due out Jan. 16. The link between the timing of the book and the piece was reported by the Drudge Report the day the wiretap piece came out, with the implication that there was a promotional tie-in involved. On Dec. 20, the Los Angeles Times reported the connection and noted that the original story had predated last year’s election. That same morning, Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter wrote an online piece revealing The Times’ summit with the President.

There you have it folks – it was to support the timing of the book release. Now here comes the lame ‘the devil made me do it’ excuse: blaming the journalistic need to get the scoop – damn the consequences.

But Times sources said that Mr. Risen’s book does include the revelation about the secret N.S.A. surveillance program. That left Mr. Taubman and his superiors in the position of having to resolve The Times’ dispute with the administration before Mr. Risen could moot their legal and ethical concerns—and scoop his own paper.

See folks, it has nothing to do with responsibility, objectivity or factualness. It has to do with who gets it out first. Not best – just first.

And finally, Harry Reid is making Tom Daschle look like a genius. The guy claims he is only protecting the Patriotic Act by killing it through a filibuster, while he is caught gleefully announcing the Democrats killed it through a filibuster. Now there is some seriously twisted logic!

And now the ACLU is trying to stop the FBI from monitoring openly anti-US, anti-Iraq war organizations. Why? If they have nothing to hide who cares if the FBI listens into their rantings and ravings?

What we are seeing folks is the liberal lemmings running towards political oblivion. The idea Bush could finally get impeached has overwhelmed their common sense. Americans are not going to Impeach Bush for tracking known Al Qaeda terrorists outside the US communicating with individuals in the US.

Mac Ranger has more on this here. Michelle Malkin has a round up on the Cut & Run Judge. Don Surber shows how Clinton and Carter acted no different than Bush on these things.