Lawless law enforcement

It's not shocking that a journalist who specializes in infiltrating corrupt organizations in disguise would consult with its lawyers about how to avoid being prosecuted afterwards because someone dreams up a theory under which they were "lying to law enforcement."

It is shocking that law enforcement would gin up a thin excuse to raid the journalists' files, leak the raid to the NYT after instructing the target to keep quiet, then leak privileged attorney-client communications to the NYT while a judge was busy issuing an order to make them stop snooping until their First-Amendment-shredding witch-hunt could be properly supervised.

When you add the context that the pretext for the raid was concern over how someone got hold of a diary that the journalist declined to publish a year ago for lack of proof that it was genuine, which the journalist attempted to return to the purported author's counsel but was refused, and which the journalist then turned over to law enforcement, the story is even more alarming.  Did I mention that the purported author is the President's daughter?  Nothing to see here.

When progressives report dirt, the news is the dirt no matter what criminal behavior was involved in getting it, or in manufacturing and then spreading it through government channels.  When conservatives report dirt, the news is any wild-eyed theory someone can imagine about how the process by which they got it might have been improper.  With every passing year, the public reports a lower trust in the press, and they're not enchanted with the White House, either.

On Veterans Day, though, journalists reminded us that they are the real heroes.