[Update #2: See my earlier post on 'News And Citizenship' to understand my take on the broader issues.]

Subject: Cancel Subscription

From: Marc Danziger

Date: 9:54 am

To: subscriptions@latimes.com

cc: dean.baquet@latimes.com, readers.rep@latimes.com

I've been a subscriber to the Los Angeles Times continuously since I moved back to Los Angeles in 1980.

With this email, I'm asking that you cancel my subscription, effective Monday, June 26, 2006.

Subscription details are:

[deleted]

I'm canceling my subscription because I am appalled that you would publish the details of a legal, effective government program - the financial transaction monitoring program.

The Times and its staff are not above the obligations of citizenship. Those obligations absolutely do extend to vigorously questioning the government about its actions and inactions and continuously challenging it to get better.

But it seems to me that there is a bright line between challenging government policies with an aim to ensuring that it is doing its job, and openly disclosing the mechanics of a program designed to identify those who murder innocent civilians and who have openly declared war on our nation, its people, and on the values that make us who we are.

I'm disappointed in the Times for doing this, and I cannot support you by funding you. I'll miss the paper.

Marc Danziger

Patterico did it, too.

If I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal or the NY Times, I'd cancel those, too.

[Update: Listen to Patt Morrison and Doyle McManus (Washington bureau chief for the LAT) discuss the decision to go to press here (look for 'To Publish Or Not?')