I guess now is as good a time as ever to reignite the Plame debate donnybrook in the comments section:
New York Times reporter Judith Miller, locked up for refusing to reveal who told her a covert CIA operative’s name in a probe that may be nearing a conclusion, works part time at the jail laundry helping clean fellow inmates’ green jumpsuits and dirty linens.
Between shifts at the laundry, Miller works at the library on a card catalog of the jail’s books, said attorney Floyd Abrams, offering new details about Miller’s life behind bars after meeting with her on Wednesday.
Abrams, who represents The New York Times, said Miller was “safe” but that conditions in jail were “grim.”
This week Miller marked two months — 65 days as of Thursday — at the Alexandria Detention Center just outside Washington for refusing to testify to a grand jury trying to determine who in the Bush administration leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.
Abrams said Miller remained “resolute” and would not reveal her confidential source to a grand jury in the case, which could shake up an administration already reeling from criticism over its response to Hurricane Katrina. The probe has ensnarled President George W. Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove.
But lawyers close to the investigation say there are signs that the 20-month-long inquiry could be wrapped up within weeks in a final flurry of negotiations and legal maneuvering.
Asked if talks were under way with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, a Justice Department prosecutor, to secure Miller’s testimony and release, Abrams said: “If there are any discussions, they would be private.”
I read on usenet that Mike Brown was actually the leaker.
Steve
I’m sorry that jail is grim. I hear Martha has a new book out titled “How to redecorate your jail cell for only two cartons of cigs”.
Well, it’s good that Miller is in jail. She broke a cardinal rule of journalism. She got too close to her sources and started caring about them more than the country as a whole.
John Boucher
New Pew Research Poll puts George the Inept’s Approval # at 40%. 67% believe the Giggling Incompetent could have done more to relieve the suffering in New Orleans.
Yep, you’re 100% right. This would be a perfect time for the Plame indictments to arrive. Bring ’em on!
http://people-press.org/files/Sept05Katrina.pdf
Bruce from Missouri
Who gives a crap about Judith Miller. Let her rot.
jg
Mike Brown. LOL Can you believe his last job was determining if a horse breeder had done lyposuction on a horse’s ass.
rilkefan
Some speculation that the Floyd quote means she’s cutting a deal.
jobiuspublius
That has to irrevocably alter ones people watching experiences.
ppGaz
The Plame story is a navel-gazer, a crossword puzzle, something to do on a slow news day. Nobody cares right now. There’s a calamity going on.
In time, something important will happen in this story, like indictments. Then it will gain traction.
stickler
Mr. PpGaz:
In time, something important will happen in this story, like indictments. Then it will gain traction.
You’re right, in the main. But the Plame thing was primarily interesting because it was a running sore on the Presidency. Just a nasty sunburn? An infected scrape? Or melanoma?
The implications were, and are, enormous; potentially someone could be charged under that God-forsaken Wilsonian travesty of a law, the 1917 Espionage Act. Which carries the death penalty.
But now it comes during the Katrina crisis. And let’s not forget that it is a national crisis which will dwarf everything since 1945. We have at least 200,000 displaced persons, probably more; we have tens of thousands of dead; and we’ve lost not just a city but the largest port in the country. And the displaced ain’t going home for a long, long, time: at least a year, if FDR’s corpse is reanimated and proclaimed Grand Administrator of the Rebuilding. If a predictable Bush crony is put in charge, the timeline stretches out there a bit. All the while, hundreds of thousands of people live in gymnasiums? Quietly?
The Plame thing is just one more running sore. What’s under that scab?
DougJ
Nothing will happen when Rove gets indicted. Bush will tell him “Turd blossom, you’re doing a heck of a job.” They’ll start going after Fitzgerald, saying how he wasted two years on something he could have found in Who’s Who. They’ll say “This is no time for the Plame game.”
Then Bush will pardon Rove. John Cole will go after MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, and Kanye West for suggesting that Karl Rove should stand trial, that their reaction to his pardon is irrational Bush-bashing. Stormy will tell some story about how much she liked Karl Rove when she met him in Oklahoma. And so on and so on.
Boronx
I read on usenet that Mike Brown was actually the leaker.
If you trace back that post, you’ll find it’s Brown himself, padding his resume.
ppGaz
Today’s most unpleasant metaphor, so far.
I think when the indictments are seen, the metaphor will be more akin to respiratory failure. The public is in no mood to find out that its government either broke the law or abetted criminal behavior, in order to discredit criticism of itself.
Another nail, plank and two coats of lacquer on the coffin of this government’s ability to govern.
Just my opinion.
stickler
Mr. PpGaz,
Another nail, plank and two coats of lacquer on the coffin of this government’s ability to govern.
This statement presumes that they’ve been able to govern up to now. They have done no such thing. They’ve done something like administering, sort of like the lackeys around Louis XVI or Napoleon III did. They have good PR, when they have to, and they know a good photo op when they see it. They understand the theater of power. That’s all Rove has. The Plame affair strikes at the heart of the theater, because it might disable the impresario. The New Orleans / Gulf Coast catastrophe provides an enduring demonstration, daily, for months and months, of the Administration’s fatal cronyism and shortsightedness.
One quick example: what happens when the recipients of the $2000 debit cards blow the family’s wad on a bitchin’ waterbed or some such bauble? Does the family go away? No. They become a poignant illustration — along about Christmas time — of how badly-thought-out Bush policy usually is. And they’ll provide that illustration on Diane Sawyer’s stage.
Sorry, by the way, for the gruesome wound metaphor(s). I have the Black Death on my mind.
anon
DougJ,
I see you’ve come out of the closet!
Now you can blend in seamlessly with the dreary lefties that make up 90% of the commentari that spend their waking hours here.
You were more entertaining as as a dreary right-winger.
Your Jeff Gannon moment.
anon
That “as as” should read as “as”
My bad.
DougJ
Onan, I’m actually not a left-winger. I’m a Republican who is disgusted by Bush’s incompetence. I don’t really mind the religious crazies of the world, but I spend so much time around them, that I get tempted to make fun of them.
DougJ
Anyway, I couldn’t have my religious right guy be a jerk about the flood. You can’t betray your characters like that. And the fundies I know just aren’t like that.
anon
Fair enough.
anon
Hmm.. so what’s the word on the fundie street about fundie #1?
Mike
Tune up the band, Judy’s gonna sing!
Jimmy Jazz
Somwhere over the rainbow
Ahmed Chalabi waxed my ass
I was a whore for the INC
And now prison food gives me gas
If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh why can’t I?
Oh,Boy.Stupidity!
If you guys actually think Miller is protecting Rove…
Oh, wait, you’re lefties. Of course you think that.
Kimmitt
Heh, Miller’s still a co-conspirator hiding behind press status.
DougJ
Hey, Jimmy Jazz, what a relief, I feel like a soldier, I look like a thief. I assume you know these lyrics given your name.
DougJ
They don’t love him as much as you think. You mean Bush, right? Not Robertson or Dobson? Robertson, no one likes. They tend to like Dobson a lot. They have mixed feelings about the war, so they’re not as pro-Bush as you think. Check out the polls — hardly anybody gives him “strong approval”. Even among evangelicals, he’s probably only 35% strong approval at best.
Anyway, the fundies aren’t as bad as you think. A lot of them are very nice people.
Mike S
Rove had nothing to do with the Plame thing. He said so himself at the convention.
Mike S
You wanr endictments? I got you endictments right here.
Pb
Silly Mike S, rich people don’t have to pay taxes!
“you know what happens with this kind of tax the rich deal. That’s why they’ve got accountants and lawyers. So the rich figure out ways not to pay, and you get stuck with the tab.” — George W. Bush, 8/18/2004
p.lukasiak
Of course Miller is going to cut a deal….its either that, or criminal obstruction of justice charges.
Miller’s stance makes no sense when one realizes that her sources have already spoken to the prosecutor about their conversations will Miller. She thus becomes not a “reporter who is protecting the confidentiality of her sources”, but merely a witness who can confirm or deny the accuracy of the stories told by others.
The last thing Judith Miller wants is an examination of her relationship with her sources as part of a federal prosecution for obstruction of justice. I don’t think that it would be very difficult to demonstrate that Miller has often crossed the line between a merely “professional” relationship with her sources, and “friendship” or something more. And when that line is crossed, the whole “reporters confidentiality” argument is deflated…
Narvy
And which high-ranking administration official would that be?
caleb
Judy’s sources for plame are the same ones who lied to her in the run up to the war concerning WMDs.
This opens a bigger can of worms than people think.
Narvy
In a response to anon, DougJ writes
DougJ, was that a typo or do you win the title of Supreme Snarkmaster“?
Narvy
Well, that’s a good thing…
and that’s not.
This crowd appears to have adopted The Handmaid’s Tale as a blueprint for society, and I worry that they might succeed. My one hope is that they will be done in by their overreaching.
I don’t doubt that, but do the nice fundies recognize the control freakery for what it is? Are they willing to negotiate social and political compromise? Are they willing to live and let live? I think the problem – well, one problem – is that people who are very nice as individuals can become very threatening when they coalesce into large groups.
demimondian
Damn it, Narvy, you’re supposed to keep that kind of joke to…errr…yourself.
Narvy
He ought to know. I bow to his expertise in this area.
Narvy
demimondian says:
Joke? JOKE?? C’mon, I’ve got to keep my eye on the competition. Snarking is serious business.
Narvy
demimondian: Pretty good comeback.
Boronx
I don’t doubt that, but do the nice fundies recognize the control freakery for what it is?
Not in my experience. Those that try to adhere to the teachings of Christ plainly chafe at the control freaks and socio-paths that predominate among the movement’s leadership.
Though the culture is so loving in the personal, there is none so reactionary and unthinking about broad issues. These leaders need only mouth the right code phrases and demonize the right fearsome strangers. Only the most heinous acts will lead to their ouster, and only if they are so blatant they cannot be ignored.
Even that’s not usually enough. Rush Limbaugh is adored by these otherwise kind-hearted people. He’s never shown one Christly characteristic. He spews nothing but hate, he lies without conpunction, if a smear is baseless, he’ll pass it along, and he’s a hypocritical, self-hating drug addict. But they can’t get enough of him.
Narvy
It’s like a jingle that invades one’s head and won’t go away:
His biography is a riches-to-riches story.
He started with millions and ran it into a fortune.
Once upon a time there was a boy named George who came from a very poor family. The mother was poor, the father was poor, the maid was poor, the butler was poor, the chauffeur was poor…
George and a business associate had lunch together, and the associate insisted on picking up the check. As they left the restaurant, they passed a Ferrari showroom and went inside. The associate pointed to a bright red model and said to the salesman “I’ll take that one.” George whipped out his checkbook. The associate said “George, I can’t let you pay for this.” George replied “Hey, it’s only fair. You paid for lunch.”
Okay, okay. I have to stop now, anyway. My brain just exploded.
.
Narvy
Thanks for your comment.
Do they not think that it’s possible to adhere to the teachings of Christ without being a professing, practicing Christian? That a person can live a moral and charitable and fellow-man-loving life without the religious belief system?
That’s what’s so threatening.
Narvy
Ah, yes, Rush Limbaugh. Isn’t his network the National Stonecasting Company? His slogan is “Excellence in broadcasting”, but I’ve yet to hear any from him.
I’ve read that he’s losing audience numbers, maybe there’s hope.
Narvy
Sorry, all you fans of Judith Miller. We seem to have drifted off topic. So here’s an opinion.
Reporters should protect their confidential sources.
Reporters should not withhold evidence of a crime.
Reporters should check the accuracy of information they are given by people in authority, and if they can’t do that, they should report on the quality of any supporting or contradictory evidence.
Reporters should remember that their job is to inform – with real information – and not to self-aggrandize.
At one time I took Miller seriously. I bought her book “God Has Ninety-Nine Names”. (As an aside, the book was a large-format paperback whose pages have not stood up well over time, much like their author.) Now I wonder if I might have made a better investment.
tBone
So are all of your “characters” retired now? Or are you just another guise in a tangled, unending web of deception?
Ah, screw it – keep the politicians-eating-babies jokes coming and all is forgiven.
DougJ
No, “onan” was not a typo.
Narvy
I figured.
DougJ
The Times has a piece up comparing the plight of Judy Miller to the plight of the eaten baby we were discussing earlier. It’s a must read.
donald
Folks, I got bad news for you, I am betting actual money with friends that Miller’s leaker is Joe Wilson and/or Valerie Plame themselves, and that’s why she won’t talk. And will not talk before the end of the grand jury’s empanelment. There is no way she would fail to attack the administration in this manner, unless she has nothing. She was in concert with them, to smear the Bush administration with faked reports and small minded petty politics…the only one’s many of you know. Let’s say I’m right, and I’m pretty sure I am, will each one of you pussies step up and admit your complete and utter failings as human beings and then finally shut the fuck up? If I’m wrong, guess, what as the facts are admitted by all parties involved, there is still nothing wrong done here. And please point out the law, including relevant facts that apply. You don’t have it. Sandy Berger however is on film shoving classified documents into his PANTS for god sakes, actual treason on tape, and not one of you has a comment on that. Would you like me to site the actual tenets of treason involved? Have a nice day, you people are pathetic.