The current edition of The Weekly Standard includes a piece headlined, “The Facilitating Leaks Act.”

Lede:

The title of the legislation is innocent enough: the Free Flow of Information Act. The motivation behind it is a seemingly worthy one. It would give anyone in the media a shield–special protection–against being forced to reveal the names of confidential sources of information. And the result would be more and more information flowing freely to the American people, satisfying their right to know.

But (there’s usually a but – in this case, a yet – with the Standardniks):

Yet despite the warm sentiments associated with it, the bill would do far more harm than good. Unless seriously cleaned up, it would have a distinctly negative effect on the federal government’s ability to protect sensitive national security information from being disclosed in the media. It would encourage leaks of classified information.

And then there’s this:

You may wonder why Congress is bothering to create a media privilege in federal cases at this time. It’s not as if critical, top secret information isn’t flowing to the media at a record pace. The New York Times, rather than being prosecuted, won a Pulitzer Prize for divulging highly classified information about the government’s use of electronic surveillance in the war on terrorism.

Not to get technical about it, but in that particular case, “the government’s use of electronic surveillance in the war on terrorism” was, well, ILLEGAL.

Not to get technical about it.