Did the AP Rip Off CQ?

To paraphrase Gus Haynes, you never really want to call another reporter a rip-off artist. At a wire service, it can be hard to credit someone who broke a story if that story isn’t all over TV or the big papers. But it seems like the AP may owe Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein an apology.

On Friday, Stein, CQ’s crack national-security reporter — you probably remember him from such triumphs as Silvestre Reyes Plays Himself — wrote about how the White House is blocking families of the victims of Libyan terrorism from getting their due compensation. He reported a letter that the Bush administration sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) asking Congress to exempt the families from a bill allowing victims of terrorism to sue their aggressors: