The House is voting on, and will likely pass, H. Res 895 (PDF), a bill designed to condemn the New York Times for publishing a story that disclosed government spying on private banking transactions. The program is just another effort on the part of the Bush administration to further erode civil liberties in pursuit of their agenda of fear.

Never mind that the story disclosed nothing that wasn’t already publicly available (as Glenn Greenwald expertly illustrates), or that the Wall Street Journal and the L.A. Times also ran the story, or that, while this leak outrages the administration, they have no problem leaking the identity of covert CIA operatives in order to punish their critics.

This bill is about one thing only: Intimidating the press into silence. Ironically, it is directed at a press that is already silent most of the time on the important matters that face our nation and world. This is just a continuation of a policy to manage the media through fear. Earlier this month, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) called for the criminal prosecution of the editors of the Times just because they finally started to do their job. Bill O’Reilly has been castigating the Times and asking his viewers if they would rather side with government or the press. Thomas Jefferson already answered that question saying:

“…were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

The media is already a doddering institution that, more often than not, fails to satisfy its mission. But this sort of legislative assault on the first amendment can only make things worse.