The Justice Department's subpoena of Associated Press reporters' phone records undoubtedly raises important First Amendment issues. But from the media's coverage of this incident, you would think that there were absolutely no countervailing interests, that the law was clearly on the media's side, and that what the Justice Department did was blatantly unethical and wrong. This just isn't the case.

Discussion of the Boston bombing case is now into full 20-20 hindsight mode trying to figure out why we did not prevent Tamerlan Tsarnaev from executing the attack when the government had been alerted to his potential radicalization two years ago. There are probably important policy lessons to be learned from this incident -- but it is far too easy for politicians and commentators to lay blame on keystone cops who shirked their responsibilities and bureaucrats who refused to share information with each other.

Some politicians and pundits are agitating for the captured Boston Marathon bomber to be declared an enemy combatant, sent to Guantanamo, and tried in a military commission. But the only legal, pragmatic, and effective way to handle this situation is to conduct a lengthy interrogation of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and then prosecute him in United States federal court.