UK targets New York Times

After a three-week delay on a topic the UK claims to have the gravest of implications, a senior unnamed official at the British embassy in Washington finally got in touch with the New York Times and asked the newspaper to destroy documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Release of the documents, both the UK and the U.S. have alleged, would harm national security and risk lives and ... well, you can fill in the well-worn blanks. It's all important enough so that British authorities put on a full-court legal press at The Guardian, which did comply and did destroy documents.

But when the Guardian informed those same authorities that the same data had made it to the New York Times and the investigative journalism group, ProPublica, it took three weeks to contact the Times and ProPublica has not yet been contacted, according to the Reuters story.

The most plausible excuse I can imagine for the delay in this deeply-important, life-threatening, and national-security-breaching matter is that ... well, it's summer time, dontcha know: Everyone's on vacation.

This whole situation is more full of shit than a Christmas goose. And what's more galling still is that you just know those bright-as-a-pin bureaucrats with the American-flag lapel pins and flip-open credential wallets are going to win in the end. Democracy may lose, but they'll win ... that's the nature of people who need lapel pins: Sellout patriots.