Judith Miller: Headed Back to Jail?

[dogday]

Maybe, but it depends on what happens in the intensifying perjury
and obstruction of justice case against Scooter Libby this week.

Inquiring minds want to know -- and so they should, by the end of this month, as complex pre-trial legal maneuvering in the perjury and obstruction of justice case against former White House official I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby comes to a head.

Miller, the ex-New York Times reporter at the center of the affair who famously spent eighty-five days in the slammer before revealing that Libby was in fact her once-anonymous source, declined to speak on the record about the possibility of further incarceration, saying that to do so would be like "waving a red flag at the judge." Miller's attorneys also declined comment, but lawyers close to the ongoing legal skirmish between Libby and Miller, three other reporters and three major news organizations say the question will be answered later this month, once U.S. District Court Judge Reggie B. Walton finishes sorting out the various motions, filings and arguments now being advanced by all sides in the case.

The latest significant filings came last week. On Friday, Judge Walton refused to give Libby access to a wide range of information from several government agencies, saying he would not allow the trial in the CIA leak case to become a debate over the war in Iraq.

"I don't see how that will help us determine whether Mr. Libby lied when he talked to the FBI and went before the grand jury," the judge told defense lawyers, although he did order Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to turn over evidence -- if he has any -- of when and how President Bush and Vice President Cheney decided to declassify part of a secret government intelligence report on Iraq so Libby could disclose it to Miller in an effort to discredit administration critics in 2003. The judge also appeared disposed to deny a defense request for documents Fitzgerald has related to the activities of White House adviser Karl Rove. Rove remains under investigation, and will be a defense witness if the prosecution doesn't call him to testify - or indict him - first.


http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/36001/

[0007]

1. déjà vu,?

The attorney believes the odds are "pretty low" that the judge will rule in Libby's favor, since like many observers, he views the subpoenas as "overly broad" by most legal standards. But there have been enough twists and turns in the affair thus far that he does not rule anything out - including the possibility that Judge Walton will compel Judy Miller to turn over everything the Libby defense team is demanding. Should that happen, Miller will once again have to decide whether to give the judge want he wants, or instead to stand on principle, invoke the First Amendment... and head right back to jail.

In other words, soon - most likely by month's end -- it could be déjà vu, and 'Miller Time,' all over again.

[Oversea Visitor]

2. Rove first

Then (ok fortune telling ) break fortune cookies found name ........ gee George the Chimp
Who the hell is george the chimp :rofl:

Ok ok all you Dems Congresscritter and Dem Senator very naughty dont want share yet.

See me super tinfoil hat with super uber diamond on it.

Fitz look at Rove and say Roast Pork
Me look at Rove and say Roast Pork
Bush look at Rove and say Roast Chimp.

Dick look at ROve and say " Lets go hunting"
Rumfield look at Rove and say " Sorry Ray paying me a visit"
Condi look at Rove and say "Barbara Boxer"

Remember Condi you not nice girl at your confirmation hearing.
Boxer waitng for you.

[Peace Patriot]

3. When you have war profiteering corporate news monopolies colluding in

the crime of treason--not to mention colluding in the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people in Iraq--should these issues be viewed in the old fashioned context of First Amendment rights, journalistic immunity and a free press? Will treating Judith Miller--or other journalist conspirators with the Bush junta (say, Robert Novak, or Bob Woodward)--like ordinary criminals, and forcing disclosure of their notes as evidence, help or hurt recovery of a free press?

The reason we have reached this pass is that our country's news organizations have gone fascist: they have colluded in treason, in illegal war and in stolen elections. They are part of the fascist coup that regards our young people as cannon fodder and slave labor, and that is robbing us blind and destroying our democracy. They have gradually accumulated undemocratic power over all news and opinion venues, through monopolistic practices, starting back in the Reagan era of "deregulation." Our public airwaves are no longer public airwaves; they are corporate airwaves. Newspapers are no longer newspapers; they are engines of corporate/government propaganda that feed vast empires of news and entertainment, and that are just one subsidiary of megalopolies that profit from war contracts, environmental destruction, sweatshop labor and oppression of the poor all over the world.

Did Thomas Jefferson design the First Amendment for THEM? Did he envision a free press as the bullwark of Corporate Rulers and warmongers? Did he believe that only the super-rich and mass killers should have a voice?

IF the New York Times was still a free press, WOULD IT have been publishing Judith Miller's lies about WMDs on its front page every day for months leading up to the ripping to shreds of the bodies of over one hundred thousand Iraqi men, women and children, by Bush's "shock and awe" bombs? IF the New York Times had any journalistic integrity left, WOULD IT have permitted its "star reporter" to directly collude with Bush junta operatives in placing U.S. counter-proliferation agents all over the world in immediate danger of death?

Is THIS what Thomas Jefferson imagined that he was protecting?

I think not. And I think we all need to consider whether the rights that so many American patriots have died for extend to corporate war profiteers and their propaganda wings?

Are these "reporters" we are talking about--or the paid operatives of the fascist junta that has seized our land?

The judge in this case, and the prosecutor, have rightfully limited themselves to specific crimes. But the rest of us have a much larger issue to settle--which has come up before, with the first jailing of Judith Miller, for protecting Libby and probably other Bush henchmen, from prosecution for specific felonies, starting with the disclosure of a covert counter-proliferation agent's name, and the name of an entire counter-proliferation network, and including perjury and obstruction of justice. DU split right down the middle on whether or not Miller was a "reporter" protecting her "source"--just as Karl Rove would have wanted us to.

I think the worm has turned. Just as with George Bush wrapping himself in Jesus Christ and ordering the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people, the UTTER HYPOCRISY of cloaking war propaganda and treason in the First Amendment must be exposed and rejected.

There is a free press--and then there are war profiteering corporate news monopolies. They are not the same thing. And they do not deserve equal protection.