Jane Harmon is one of those Democrats I could vote for if she represented my district or my state. She is just a stand up person with lots of integrity. She should be the image of a Democrat leader. Congresswoman Harmon today agreed that the NY Times should be prosecuted for leaking the details of the NSA Terrorist Surveillance Program:

In a stunning break with her party, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday that the New York Times should be prosecuted for damaging national security by revealing the National Security Agency’s top secret terrorist surveillance program authorized by President Bush.

“If the press was part of the process of delivering classified information, there have to be some limits on press immunity,” Harmon told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Typically, the old media wanted to claim some sort of immunity due to a false whistleblower claim:

Moderator Tim Russert then pressed: “But if [the NSA leak] came from a whistleblower, should the New York Times reporter be prosecuted?”

Harmon countered: “Well, it’s not clear it was a whistleblower. You have to prove that first.”

Russert must be thinking more about his testimony problems with the Plame Game since it is pretty clear his group was discussing Plame and Wilson – but apparently did not know Plame was married to Wilson.

But Russert should have known by now that there is a process for whistelblowers in the NSA – which strangely enough does not incude blabbing to the NY Times. And even so, the NY Times was warned not to publish the story because it was classified. So ignorance is not going to work for an excuse.

The real problem is a FISA Judge and/0r a US Senator are not whistleblowers. They have plenty of inherint power to deal with any perceived wrong doing. It is just not the case that these people are going to find refuge in the whistleblower statutes.