Judy's Out Of Jail

...and has testified in the Plame case. It's remarkable that anybody in the press can continue to carry water for this lady, who said time and again she wouldn't testify. The supposed change here was that she got an "un-coerced" waiver to speak from her source, widely thought to be Dick Cheney's chief of staff Scooter Libby:

At the behest of Fitzgerald, Libby and others in the administration had earlier provided a general written waiver releasing journalists from their pledge of confidentiality and allowing them to discuss their conversations. Many journalists in the case, including Miller, regarded those blanket waivers as overly impersonal and meaningless.

Libby has shown a willingness in the past to offer more personal assurances when asked, freeing journalists to talk. Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper, who barely avoided jail at the same time Miller was sentenced last summer, testified about Libby after approaching the White House aide for a waiver.

Sources close to the case said that Libby talked directly with Miller about 10 days ago, releasing her from any pledge of confidentiality.

But Libby has repeatedly said that this year-old waiver was coming directly from him and not at all coerced by the prosecutor:

But Joseph Tate, an attorney for Libby, said yesterday that he told Miller attorney Floyd Abrams a year ago that Libby's waiver was voluntary and that Miller was free to testify. He said last night that he was contacted by Bennett several weeks ago, and was surprised to learn that Miller had not accepted that representation as authorization to speak with prosecutors.

"We told her lawyers it was not coerced," Tate said. "We are surprised to learn we had anything to do with her incarceration."

Could Libby be lying? Sure. But it's clear to me that the negotiations over Miller's testimony had nothing to do with making sure Libby was OK with being outed as a source; it was because Miller was frightened that the prosecutor would push her futher on things outside the Plame case (like her Iraq stories leading up to the war), and being under oath she would have no chance to wiggle her way out of anything.

What this all really means is that the outcome is very near. Fitzgerald has reportedly maintained that Miller was the last piece of the puzzle in his investigation. We could expect indictments, or the lack thereof, in the next week. And if there are indictments, in the wake of the DeLay indictment (I wonder if Rove et al. would call the Republican US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald a "rogue partisan"?), then we're seeing the whole GOP house of cards folding before our eyes. It's hard to write off investigations, indictments, and arrests of the Vice President's Chief of Staff, the main political operative in the White House, the old House Majority Leader, the NEW House Majority Leader, the Senate Majority Leader, the head of the White House procurement office, a top Pentagon official, a Congressman, and the biggest lobbyist in DC as "coincidental." As Jonathan Chait writes in today's LA Times,

It's hard to imagine how DeLay could function without at least coming very close to breaking the law. His indictment is an indictment of the whole way the Republican Party operates. The central theme of DeLay's tenure has been to break down barriers to greater corporate influence in American politics.

Some of these barriers are mere social norms. It once was considered completely beyond the pale to, say, threaten political retribution against corporations that give donations and lobbying jobs to the other party. DeLay and his "K Street Project" made this a regular practice.

Some of these barriers are formal rules that lack the force of law. The House of Representatives forbids its members from accepting trips from lobbyists. DeLay regularly accepted such trips, financed through transparent front groups.

And some of these barriers are actual laws. Texas law forbids the use of corporate money in elections. DeLay allegedly masterminded a scheme whereby corporations would donate money earmarked for Texas races to the Republican National Committee, which would then pour the money into the Texas races.

The central vision of DeLayism is of a political system whereby business gains almost total control over the Republican agenda, and in return the GOP gains unlimited financial influence over the electoral process.

Since many of the formal and informal rules of American politics are designed to prevent this sort of corrupt plutocracy from coming to fruition, scandal follows DeLayism like night follows day.

They say power corrupts. Power's pursuit is what really corrupts, that ceaseless power grab that will stop at nothing. All
of these instances are evidence of that.

Incidentally, the Penatgon case (of Larry Franklin, who copped a guilty plea in the case of giving classified secrets about US policy in the Middle East to members of AIPAC and the Israeli embassy) is an interesting parallel to the Plame case. While Franklin didn't identify a domestic spy, he did reveal undercover secrets, and as such was charged with violations of the Espionage Act. Everyone had been talking about how hard it would be to bust Rove with the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which sets a very high burden of proof. But the Espionage Act does not require that, and it clearly is being used in our nation's courts. Just another reason for the White House to squirm.