Pretty big news -- if long past surprising -- that Rosenberg co-conspirator Morton Sobell copped to the spy ring after maintaining his innocence for the past half-century.

And an excerpt as revealing of the Grey Lady as of Sobell:

In the interview, Mr. Sobell drew a distinction between atomic espionage and the details of radar and artillery devices that he said he stole for the Russians. “What I did was simply defensive, an aircraft gun,” he said. “This was defensive. You cannot plead that what you did was only defensive stuff, but there’s a big difference between giving that and stuff that could be used to attack our country.”

(One device mentioned specifically by Mr. Sobell, however, the SCR 584 radar, is believed by military experts to have been used against American aircraft in Korea and Vietnam.)

"However"? Is that the "offensive" use of firing against the planes that are bombing your country?

A must-read piece of investigative journalism for any nonprofit: Mother Jones' "There's Something About Mary: Unmasking a Gun Lobby Mole" -- which mole infiltrated gun control organizations for the best part of a decade, culling in the guise of volunteer activist turned board member "what the grassroots of the gun violence prevention movement intended; where our priorities are shifting; which legislation we would be promoting or fighting against and what sort of effort we would be putting into that; who our targeted legislators would be; what states and districts we deemed important enough to put an effort into; our messaging, what our messaging would be before we put it out there."

Shocked to learn that [Mary Sapone, aka Mary] McFate was a spy, gun control advocates have pondered the obvious questions: How did she manage to fool everyone for so long? How much money did she earn for being a mole? To whom in the gun lobby did she report? The NRA? The firearms manufacturing industry? Did her covert effort extend beyond mere intelligence gathering? Did she manage to shape the decisions and actions of anti-gun groups to the gun lobby's liking? And was she the only one?