Hmmmmm? Baring the Supreme Court jumping in it looks as if whoever it was in the Bush administration who thought fingering former CIA operative, Valeria Pule, and wife of Joseph Wilson. Wilson, fir those who may have been distratced by the election circus was a guy who was ent to Niger to bring home the good on Saddam trying to buy nuclear material. Problem was that Wilson found there was no factual basis and wrote an edictorial critical of Bush in his run up to war using the Niger/uranium story, which it was... a story...
But yesterday a 3-judge panel at the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously held that Judith Miller of the "New York Times" and Matthew Cooper of "Time" should be held to be in contemp of court for refusing to tell who ratting Ms. Plume out.
But, at least IMO, the story doesn't stop there. First of all, neither Miller or Cooper went to press with their stories. Robert Novak, a conservatibe Bushite columnist, did. Why isn't he being threatened with jail time?
Second, the Justice Department's Patrick Fitzjerald, who has headed up the investigation, according to the Washingtopn Post, knows who it was in the Bush administration who ratted out Ms. Plume. If so, why make a big deal about Miller and Cooper?
And a distant third, while this may seem a victory for those who oppose the secretive and mean-spirited Bushites, this ruling isn't exactly going to make the media, which is allready gun shy, more willing to ask the hard questions if they know they might go to jail for gettin' the answers...