Some things just make you stop and blink

As reported in the February 28 new York Times, the federal government

has warned publishers they may face grave legal consequences for editing manuscripts from Iran and other disfavored nations, on the ground that such tinkering amounts to trading with the enemy.

Anyone who publishes material from a country under a trade embargo is forbidden to reorder paragraphs or sentences, correct syntax or grammar, or replace "inappropriate words," according to several advisory letters from the Treasury Department in recent months.

Adding illustrations is prohibited, too. ...

The Treasury letters concerned Iran. But the logic, experts said, would seem to extend to Cuba, Libya, North Korea and other nations with which most trade is banned without a government license. ...

In theory - almost certainly only in theory - correcting typographical errors and performing other routine editing could subject publishers to fines of $500,000 and 10 years in jail.

The transparent idiocy of it being legal to publish a manuscript but a major felony to edit it arises from the fact that Congress has tried to exempt information from trade embargoes, even barring the executive branch from interfering "directly or indirectly" with trade in information. "Critics said the Treasury Department had long interpreted the amendment narrowly and grudgingly," the Times says. What Treasury has done now is to argue, in effect, that while the information can't be restricted, actually doing anything to it to prepare it for publication can be. The net effect, of course, is to make it harder for literary or scientific works from embargoed nations to get published here, which would clearly seem to violate a prohibition on indirect interferences.

But the George Bush team isn't one to be concerned with such niceties as legalities, not when there's a nation to be protected! Their interpretation affords the White House greater control over the flow of information from real or perceived "enemies" - which I suspect is the actual idea. You never can be too careful with those people, you know. After all, "Satan himself [can be] transformed into an angel of light" (2 Corinthians 11:14) so you never know what sort of evil propaganda may be slipped into a Cuban paper on metallurgy or, worse yet, some Korean poetry.

Tara Bradshaw, a Treasury Department spokeswoman, confirmed the restrictions on manuscripts from Iran in a statement. Banned activities include, she wrote, "collaboration on and editing of the manuscripts, the selection of reviewers, and facilitation of a review resulting in substantive enhancements or alterations to the manuscripts."

She did not respond to a request seeking an explanation of the department's reasoning.

I'll just bet.