Is the NY Times or President Bush the New Emperor?

The National Review is angry at the New York Times for revealing the story about the secret program that examines banking records of Americans and others in a vast international database. But it would seem KLo resorts to rehashing spin from Scrappleface :

A secret New York Times program for fighting ‘the war on the war on terror’ represents a “radical expansion of executive editor authority” according to a legal analyst who studied the parameters of the “intel sifting and sharing program” that the Times uses to disseminate U.S. national security information to international terror groups

I thought the debate was about President Bush’s claim that his authority includes covertly examining bank records with no judicial or Congressional oversight so I checked Scrappleface’s link.

Maybe I’m missing something about I saw no reference to a radical expansion of executive editor authority. I did see these references to the Administration:

A secret CIA-Treasury program to track financial records of millions of Americans is the latest installment in an expansion of executive authority in the name of fighting terrorism … Still, Bush’s war on terrorism is an open-ended one. Constitutional scholars suggest there are limits. “At some point, the Constitution can’t bear the kind of continued strains that are being imposed by the demands of the fight on terrorism,” said Harold J. Krent, dean and professor of law at Kent College of Law in Chicago., “What I am worried about is that there is a potential for amassing huge databases of individuals – linked by phone records, linked by financial records – that can be kept and used without any kind of real oversight. It’s frightening,” Krent said.

KLo once again finds some rightwinger who flat out lied – and she repeats the lie. Why am I not surprised?