Via Kevin Drum, we have this telling little episode of a Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision that was posted to the web, pulled, then re-posted with a portion redacted. This post lays out the redacted portion which a) has no national security implications and b) just makes our government look bad. Why are they redacting this stuff?

Excerpt:

When asked to back up the White House accusation that a recent New York Times story put American lives at risk by disclosing vital secrets to terrorists, the best press secretary Tony Snow could do yesterday was this: “I am absolutely sure they didn’t know about SWIFT.”

SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is the international banking cooperative that quietly allowed the Treasury Department and the CIA to examine hundreds of thousands of private banking records from around the world.

But the existence of SWIFT itself has not exactly been a secret. Certainly not to anyone who had an Internet connection.

SWIFT has a Web site, at swift.com .

It gets better. Read on.