The drumbeat for going easy on the two AIPAC lobbyists caught committing espionage on behalf of A Certain Country gets louder as the trial date—January 14—approaches. The latest: a piece in the War Street Journal that avers,  among other things,

“The AIPAC lobbyists are the victims of selective prosecution for behavior that has become commonplace. They did what journalists and lobbyists have been doing since the founding of the republic.”

“Commonplace”? Are we really supposed to believe that lobbyists of every sort routinely pass classified information not only to journalists and each other, but to foreign government officials? “Since the founding of the republic,” eh? That’s true only if we’re talking about Benedict Arnold.