Armando, you ignorant slut. No privilege is absolute.
Privileges are exceptions to the law, they are strictly construed because they exclude relevant evidence that would assist the fact finder. A privilege exists to further an important policy. Be it open communications between an attorney and a client, so that doctors can furnish proper medical care, to protect the sanctity of marriage and so forth. Yes, a free press is an important principle. But cases are not decided on principle, they are decided on the facts before the court. It is the judges (not doctors, not attorneys, not spouses and not reporters) who ultimately decide whether the privilege should be applied in the case.
This breathtakingly broad privilege you seem to grant reporters is greater than any privilege found to date.
For example, attorneys can be made to reveal conversations in furtherance of a fraud, doctors can be made to testify about medical conversations and patient history. They don't decide whether the principle to be protected is more important in this case. But that is just what the "Queen of All Iraq" is doing here. She's flipping the bird to the judge and saying "I don't care what you think, bub - I'm right and I know better than you what's important.
Given her history, do you really want her making the final judgment on things like this - or would you prefer that the judge study the facts presented and weigh the public's need for her knowledge against the effect it will have on freedom of the press and reaching a decision on whether the privilege applies?
Quite simply, Miller is declaring herself above the law. See Steve Chapman
This is a terrible mistake for two reasons. In the first place, as the Supreme Court made clear, it is based on a legal privilege that exists only in the fertile imagination of journalists. In the second, it may serve to protect a serious felon from being brought to justice.
Miller insists that her subpoena, by compromising the confidentiality of news sources, threatens the public's right to know. But there are some things the public has no right to know--including the names of covert agents. If Plame's exposure had made her a terrorist target, that would be painfully obvious.
She's no hero, not by any stretch of the imagination. Let me pose this hypothetical and you can tell me if the intrepid reporter is a hero for going to jail. There is a traitor (we'll call him Sgt. Schultz) in the pentagon with access to key information about military positions in a war. Sgt. Schultz has been passing around information about military plans to a bunch of reporters for his own reasons. Most reporters, because they have ethics don't run the story because they know that it could put military lives at risk. Finally Sgt. Schultz gives the info to Al Jazeera who broadcast it that night and a bunch of soldiers are killed.
The public is outraged, how could this have happened, who gave sensitive information to Al Jazeera? An investigation is opened and they discover that a number of reporters know who the mole at the Pentagon is, because Sgt. Schultz told them the same information that Al Jazeera broadcast. But even after being ordered by a judge, and affirmed at the appellate level they go to jail rather than talk. Would you be standing around praising all those giving protection to Sgt. Schultz? What if he started shopping around some new info? Should they still keep quiet?
In the end, Judy Miller, like everyone else in the country must accept the ruling of the court. Otherwise she places herself above the law and that is something this country cannot tolerate. Remember, the same Constitution that protects the freedom of the press requires obedience to the final decisions of the courts.
I, for one, will never applaud someone who takes it upon themselves to claim that they know better than the whole legal system. Once the courts have ruled against you, and you have no appeals left, it is no longer protecting a principle, it is obstructing justice. Leave her there until she rots or talks I say.