Chris At Home

Judges on the NY Times:

The Times has maintained that the reporters did nothing beyond routine reporting.

"We see no danger to a free press in so holding," Judge Winter writes of the decision to allow the government access to the records. "Learning of imminent law enforcement asset freezes/searches and informing targets of them is not an actively essential, or even common, to journalism."

The government is investigating whether NYT reporters tipped off 2 Muslim charities to upcoming raids and asset seizures.

The case entered the courts in 2004, when the Times learned that prosecutors from Chicago were seeking records of phone calls that Ms. Miller and Mr. Shenon had made during several weeks in 2001 — around the time they published stories on two Islamic charities with suspected ties to terrorists, the Holy Land Foundation and the Global Relief Foundation. Prosecutors, led by the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald have claimed that the two reporters had tipped off the groups about impending raids and of the government's decision to freeze their assets. The government has said the phone records are relevant to a grand jury investigation into who inside the government had originally tipped off the reporters.

Amazingly vile, if true.