Judith Miller, Matthew Cooper, and the other "journalists" who are protecting the White House leaker of Valerie Plame's name should rot in jail.
These people are hiding behind to the First Amendment to protect a powerful person who was trying to destroy a whistleblower.
If they were trying to protect the whistleblower, then everyone should go to the mat for them. The First Amendment was intended to protect the weak against the powerful, not to enable the powerful to manipulate the press to fend off whistleblowers.
If Miller, Cooper and the others were not just corrupt Washington insiders, they would have treated this White House leak as a news story in itself. "Corrupt White House Official Leaks Classified Information in Attempt to Smear Whistleblower"
Instead, they are using the First Amendment to protect this powerful person and burnish their own Washington insider cred.
The journalist's credo is supposed to be, "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." For too long, the Washington press corps has been practicing the opposite. "Afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable," and do it with a smug little insider sneer.
A lot of the Washington press corps is afraid of being frozen out by the Bush administration. Honest and courageous journalists would tell these people to go to Hell and get the information the old-fashioned way, through aggressive reporting.
Ron Suskind is doing it, and he is getting the story. We need more Suskinds and fewer Judith Millers.
Let her rot in jail. This will improve the New York Times by getting her corrupt insider keister off the front page, and maybe making room for some real journalism.