This morning’s New York Times editorializes on the light treatment the Pakistani government has given to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the so-called Father of the Pakistani Atomic Bomb. They are as strident as they are disrespectful of the rule of law.

The Pakistani metallurgist deserved to be imprisoned for life. But he caught a scandalous break. As the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, he is a national hero.
[...]
So Mr. Khan was pardoned and put under house arrest. But Pakistan was unable to hold to even that mild punishment.
[...]
The United States has pressured the fragile government of President Asif Ali Zardari to maintain restraints and should continue to do so; last Wednesday, a two-member panel of the Lahore High Court reimposed the travel limits. But the rein on Mr. Khan is steadily eroding.

It is a telling piece. The New York Times, while demanding that the full force of the law be brought to bear on Dr. Khan, they applaud the U.S. government for pressuring President Asif Ali Zardari to do so. Never mind the separation of powers, never mind that the valid head of state is Yousef Gilani, not Asif Ali Zardari. That would be like some other country contacting the U.S. Office of the Vice President (Zardari’s role is supposed to be similarly vestigial) to put pressure on the Supreme Court, to reverse a ruling.

But the irony of what has happened is even richer than this. Barrister Javed Iqbal Jaffrey is in court in Pakistan sometimes multiple times per week. He petitions the court or litigates on two cases, always reported on together in the papers in Pakistan. The first case is to force the government to act on the Aafia Siddiqui case, the second to act on the A.Q. Khan case. So the rulings that the New York Times is upset about, that the New York Times believes the U.S. should continue to lean on some other branch of the government of the Pakistan to force in their favor, are always heard by the court in the same time frame as those of a woman who disappeared in 2003, whose children remain missing, who is the poster child for the 4000-5000 Pakistani disappeared, for whom the court is asked to rule forcing the Pakistani Foreign Minister to file against the United States in the International Court of Justice, fund defense for against the U.S. government’s charges, and launch a full and fair investigation into all those complicit, Pakistani and American, in her abduction, torture, the loss of her children, her shooting, and her continued incarceration and strip searches in American custody. Has the Times weighed in on the Pakistani prisoners in Guantanamo and what their sentences should be? Then why weigh in on A.Q.Khan’s sentence?

The New York Times is a big fan of prosecuting the hell out of anybody arrested as a "al Qaeda" terrorist without regard to any presumption of innocence, and has made that clear in its very limited coverage of the Aafia Siddiqui proceedings in the courtroom on Pearl Street in Manhattan. I guess they may have to wait for what they want for Abdul Qadeer Khan until they and the courts they cheerlead, are perceived as upholding the rule of law here in the United States. Until institutions in the U.S. like the Times begin to get their own house in order, their demands on the houses of others will fall on deaf ears.