And the award for idiocy goes to…

The Dread Pundit Bluto, who bestows an "award for treason" to:

…the New York Times and writers James Risen and Eric Lichtblau for their efforts to cripple national security and get more Americans killed. Risen and Lichtblau are the pair who exposed the classified NSA program of intercepting emails and international calls between known and suspected terrorists and people in the United States.

To believe that Risen and Lightblau exposed a ‘secret’ program, you have to believe that terrorists don’t read the news… where they would have seen George W. Bush, President of the United States, repeatedly disclose that the US was routinely wiretapping international phone calls. Glenn Greenwald has listed several of these disclosures made by Bush, as has Brendan Nyhan.

What Risen and Lichtblau actually revealed was that the NSA wiretaps were being conducted in violation of Federal law. But, of course, to be a far-right-wing blogger is to have the ability to selectively ignore the bits of reality that don’t match the fantasy world in your head — you know, Bluto, the one where Dubya has the absolute authority to do whatever he wants, laws be damned. In reality, the President is bound by the same laws that mere bloggers are expected to obey.

It’s easy to blame the messenger for revealing the President’s illegal actions. It’s much harder to look carefully at what the law actually says, what the President did, and what the ultimate consequences to the US may be of having a Chief Executive who considers himself bound by no laws. Bluto, predictably, takes the easy way out.