Pulitzers for freedom and democracy

I congratulate this year's Pulitzer Prize winners. But I also congratulate the Pulitzer board for singling out important stories pertaining to the abuse of power that now the defining characteristic of the White House and the Republican leadership in Washington: the NSA spying program, foreign CIA prisons, the Abramoff scandal, and the Duke Cunningham bribery case. As Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post put it: "Strikingly, the Pulitzer board honored two reports -- on the secret prisons and domestic surveillance -- that President Bush personally urged the editors not to publish."

I should note, too, that The Times-Picayune (New Orleans) won two Pulitzers for its incredible coverage of Hurricane Katrina. It was truly phenomenal journalism.

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Also see Glenn Greenwald's response to Bill Bennett and other conservatives who think that James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, who won a Pulitzer for their "disclosure of the President's illegal NSA eavesdropping program" in The New York Times, belong in jail. As usual, Greenwald's right on the mark.