« Rock History, Part II: The Early 60s | Main | Calling London »
July 06, 2005
Pay No Attention To The Criminal Behind The Curtain
Sorry about skipping the music entry tonight, work's kicking my ass right now and I'm just not up for doing a long post tonight. But I did want to point this out...
New York Times reporter Judith Miller is going to jail for not revealing her sources on a story about the leaking of the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame. She never wrote a story or published Plame's name, mind you... but she's going to jail. Time reporter Matthew Cooper was also threatened with the same fate, but his source today freed him from his promise of confidentiality.
Meanwhile, Robert Novak, the conservative columnist who actually leaked Plame's name, hasn't even been called to testify. And while journalists are being prosecuted, no one in the Bush administration -- which leaded Plame's name for partisan gain, putting an American agent's life in danger simply out of a fit of pique to extract revenge of Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson (who opposed and exposed Bush's war) -- is facing any sort of jail time or even questioning.
Of course, Miller and Cooper wrote for perceived "liberal" publications, while Novak is a conservative columnist and the regime members are all obviously conservatives. But I'm sure there's no selective prosecution going on here... nah.
So to sum up, in George W. Bush's America, if you are conservative, you can leak a covert agent's name to the press and never, never face independent prosecution for it; if you are a conservative writer, you can publish leaked names at will. But if you work for an organization that is even perceived as left wing, and you simply just investigate a source but don't ever write anything... well, you go to jail. That's the way it is in George W. Bush's America.
And don't forget something... even if Miller won't reveal her souce... she has a source. She has someone inside the Bush administration, someone who knows who he/she is the source, who knows themself to be guilty. And yet this oh-so-courageous conservative is remaining quiet even as Judith Miller goes to jail for protecting him. Yeah, that's guts for you. That's courage. This administration is sending other people to jail for doing its own political bidding.
Yeah, that's gutsy.
