When you’ve lost the editorial board of the NYT, you’re in deep, deep guano:
…the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.
Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.
The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it.
Hey, NYT editorial board, here’s a clue: It’s not just the executive branch, and it’s not just “this issue.”
But hey! Nice start!
Oh, and “overreach”? There’s that term again.
UPDATE: Aaaaand the NYT felt it necessary to soften the tone, apparently:
The New York Times edited its damning editorial condemning the Obama administration for collecting phone call data from Americans to make it less stinging shortly after the editorial was published online Thursday afternoon.
The editorial originally declared that the Obama “administration has lost all credibility” as a result of the recently revealed news that the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been secretly collecting call data from American users of Verizon under the authority of the Patriot Act.
But hours later the stinging sentence had been modified to read the Obama “administration has now lost all credibility on this issue.” [Emphasis added]
IOW: They got it right the first time. And no, they did not note that the piece had been altered.
Full disclosure: I’ve edited this piece twice now.