Press that shield back

The criminal leaking of classified information is a subject that John and I have addressed here and in columns such as “Exposure” and “Leaking at all costs.” On Tuesday, as the San Francisco Chronicle reports, the House approved a media shield bill to immunize reporters from having to disclose their sources in such cases. Gabriel Schoenfeld comments on the bill for the Standard in “A license to leak,” as do Seth Leibsohn and Andrew McCarthy for NRO in “Press that shield back.”
The leaking of certain kinds of classified information is a felony under the espionage statutes passed by Congress. Wouldn’t it be more logical for Congress to repeal them than to allow faceless bureaucrats to violate them in order to further their own private agendas through their friends in the media? It would be far more logical, but it would require defending the proposition that we should have no secrets from our enemies, rather than mouthing the customary platitudes about freedom of the press that are a substitute for thought or analysis.