Why not Scott McClellan?

I really really really would love to see Fox "fair and balanced" News spin this, from the NYTimes:

A federal judge today ordered Judith Miller of The New York Times to be jailed immediately after she again refused to cooperate with a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a covert C.I.A. operative......

Ms. Miller herself told the court that she would not reveal her source no matter how long they jailed her.

"If journalists cannot be trusted to guarantee confidentiality, then journalists cannot function and there cannot be a free press," she read from a statement as she stood before Judge Hogan. "The right of civil disobedience is based on personal conscience, it is fundamental to our system and it is honored throughout our history," she said before court officers led her away, looking shaken.

In the 1970's... journalists using bunch of technically illegal and secret sources contributed to the resignation of a president and had themselves played by Dustin Hoffman and a very hot Robert Redford in a movie. In 2005, a journalist is thrown in jail for maintaining confidentiality of her source.

Keep in mind that the Times is going to be a little defensive about their own reporter, but it does have a good background on this whole fiasco. :

It began two years ago, when the identity of the C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame, was first disclosed by the syndicated columnist Robert Novak, presumably after the information was provided by someone in government. Three days later, Mr. Cooper, in an article that also carried the bylines of two other reporters, made a similar disclosure on Time magazine's Web site.

Ms. Miller, on the other hand, did not publish any such disclosures in The Times or elsewhere.

In his column, Mr. Novak, who identified Ms. Plame as the wife of a former diplomat who was critical of American policy on Iraq, cited as his sources two senior Bush administration officials whom he did not identify.

Mr. Fitzgerald is investigating whether by telling reporters about Ms. Plame people in the Bush administration broke a law meant to protect the identities of covert intelligence operatives. As part of that inquiry, several senior administration officials have testified before the grand jury.

Ms. Plame's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former United States ambassador, has maintained that his wife's cover was blown in revenge for an Op-Ed article that he had written for The New York Times questioning Bush administration assertions about weapons of mass destruction that served as sizable justification for going to war with Iraq.

I don't care how much some of the most respectable liberal bloggers disliked Judith Miller. The fact is, it just seems so wrong. Especially in context of ongoing, current battles between the White House and "the press".

The Washington Post lead editorial sums it up very well:

Yet while special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald was legally entitled to take action against her, his judgment in doing so is highly questionable. We don't yet know how compelling are the facts underlying this extraordinary sanction. They are still mostly secret. But unless Mr. Fitzgerald is preparing to bring a case of great public importance to which Ms. Miller's testimony is indispensable, her jailing will appear as a serious abuse of prosecutorial discretion and a gratuitous assault on press freedom......

Commitments of confidentiality by journalists to their sources will have little value if they can be invalidated by waivers obtained by prosecutors or demanded by senior government officials from their subordinates. In such cases, journalists are obligated to protect their sources even if the law is against them. Indeed, reporters have been willing to face jail to protect confidential sources for decades; few have been regarded by the public as criminals.

Note that the Post isn't saying anything about this being an actual abuse of the free press. They know that we can only assume that Fitzgerald, the special prosecuter, has justifications for his actions. One can't help but sympathize with the journalists, rather than "the government," represented by folks like the special prosecuter or White House press secretary, Scott McClellan.

And, to close, the statement from Joseph Wilson, former diplomat and husband of Valerie Plame (the secret CIA operative exposed by the reporters):

The sentencing of Judith Miller to jail for refusing to disclose her sources is the direct result of the culture of unaccountability that infects the Bush White House from top to bottom. President Bush's refusal to enforce his own call for full cooperation with the special counsel has brought us to this point. Clearly, the conspiracy to cover up the web of lies that underpinned the invasion of Iraq is more important to the White House than coming clean on a serious breach of national security. Thus has Ms. Miller joined my wife, Valerie, and her 20 years of service to this nation, as collateral damage in the smear campaign launched when I had the temerity to challenge the president on his assertion that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium yellowcake from Africa.

The real victims of this cover-up, which may have turned criminal, are the Congress, the Constitution and, most tragically, the Americans and Iraqis who have paid the ultimate price for Bush's folly.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
- First Amendment of the United States Constitution