Parts of Washington, D.C., are under water following record rainfall, but leaks into basements and government offices aren’t as big a problem as leaks coming out of some government agencies.

A recent leak to The New York Times and some other newspapers revealed a previously secret program by the Bush administration to examine foreign banking transactions in its pursuit of terrorists with ties to al-Qaida. The banking transactions mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas. This isn’t about examining our canceled checks for items that might embarrass us.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow came up with a sound bite most people will understand: “The New York Times and other news organizations ought to think long and hard about whether a public’s right to know in some cases might override somebody’s right to live.”

President Bush went further. He said disclosure of the program is “disgraceful,” and then he got to the real culprit: “For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America.”

Whatever the culpability of the Times and the other newspapers (more about that in a moment), the first harm was caused by the person, or persons, who leaked the secret information. It probably violated the oath that allowed them to have their jobs and draw their paychecks from our tax dollars. In other wars, such behavior might have resulted in the perpetrator being shot as a traitor. Today, anyone with a political ax to grind can leak classified information in order to undermine an administration with which the person does not agree. The decent thing to do would be to resign in protest, but today’s traitors keep their jobs and their paychecks and live to leak another day. They should be hunted down and prosecuted.

As for The New York Times, executive editor Bill Keller issued a condescending statement, possibly in response to an avalanche of critical mail. Keller wraps himself in the words of the Founding Fathers, who, he says, “rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the president at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.”

This isn’t about the privileges guaranteed by the First Amendment. It is about the agenda of the Times and some other newspapers and media outlets that clearly want the administration to fail in Iraq – and in everything else – so that Democrats will retake the reins of government. The Times’ editorial board fears what one more Republican term could do to the left’s judicially imposed cultural realignment and wants to blunt the Bush administration’s counteroffensive.

Their agenda was summed up by New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger in a commencement address at the State University of New York, New Paltz, on May 21. Sulzberger apologized to the students: “You weren’t supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren’t supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights, be it the rights of immigrants to start a new life, the rights of gays to marry, or the rights of women to choose.”

If a newspaper publisher regards a war as “misbegotten,” isn’t it likely he will do all he can to bring that war to an immediate end, even if it means publishing secret efforts to defeat the terrorist enemy, not only in Iraq but in the United States?

The conservative National Review magazine recommends the White House pull the credentials of New York Times correspondents. I have a better idea. Let the administration refuse to speak with Times reporters on grounds they cannot be trusted. For too long, the Bush administration has tried to play cozy with the media elites. It has gained them nothing. Times reporters should be publicly ridiculed and verbally flogged because they richly deserve it for giving aid and comfort to America’s terrorist enemies.