Melanie Kirkpatrick, The Wall Street Journal's associate editorial page editor, wrote a little ditty about "Memogate" for this Friday's Journal. It is a wonderfully reductivist argument suggesting that Republican staffers downloading private Democrat memos was a mere misdemeanor, a quaint little "All's Fair in Love and War" sort of thing. To quote, "The memos fell into his [Manuel Miranda's] hands as a result of Democratic negligence, he says--the computer-age equivalent of 'leaving sensitive materials on the table of the lunchroom used by both sides'." Now, I love a folksy, colloquilaism just as much as the next fellow, but something's rotten in this fresh net of tuna. You can pile the homespun wisdom a mile high but that will not change the fact that Mr. Miranda, in the least, acted unethically. It is not acceptable for any person to wander around checking for unlocked doors to see which homes they might be able to investigate. And, even though we might have a grand time arguing the more subtle nature of "private" property in the electronic realm and how much more difficult it is to know when one tresspasses, the Federal Government seems to have decided long ago that computer hard drives are private property. It is a crime to electronically access someone elses computer even if it is really, really, really easy.

If you are unclear on "Memogate", read this for a very unobjective review or search news.google.com.