Judith Miller goes to jail for keeping her sources confidential.

It is heroic and dangerous at the same time. Heroic because Judith Miller delivered information we needed. Dangerous because others may be reluctant to try the same. I do hope this results in bringing attention to the mistreatment of an honorable reporter.

Matthew Cooper's source apparently contacted him and let him know that he could reveal his/her name. Why didn't Miller's source do the right thing as well? How many sources are involved?

In any case, when someone goes to jail for finding out information and reporting it, then that person is a hero.

____===____

I know this is a completely different topic, but I was thinking about this before the Miller news broke. Maybe today's question is, "What is a hero?"

I'm curious about Lance Armstrong's politics.

I mean, clearly Mr. Armstrong is a high-profile hero, what with doing automobile commercials, having a famous girlfriend, and, oh yeah, being hell on wheels. He also has a great name for a hero. But what does he believe in?

Anybody have the inside skinny on Lance Armstrong's political views? Does he support Bono?

I know he's from Texas, but that's a big place with all sorts of people.

I ask because I'm new to this whole Armstrong thing. I don't have a yellow bracelet. I don't shave my legs. I don't clog up roads with my bicycle. But I do think he's an important popular figure, and I better learn more about him before he wins another Tour de France.

Karl Rove continues to skate by on his good looks and pleasant personality.

But outing a CIA agent is usually a pretty serious crime, I hear.

Lawrence O'Donnell is to be credited with going after this in a strong way. I keep looking at his column, and we all owe him for pushing this story further.

Unless someone starts doing some Watergating, Rove will walk away from all this unscathed. If the Newsweek article is our best indication, Rove will likely be found perjurious, at best.

The Rove machinery works better than our investigative reporting machinery and better than our justice machinery. Reporters know too much and don't make enough to pursue a scary Bush puppeteer like Rove. The justice system is going after two lesser known (than Novak) reporters, one of whom did not even go to print with his info. Meanwhile, the big guy who broke the story (Robert Novak) apparently is not significant. And the persons who actually outed Valerie Plame do not have the guts or honor to come forward to reveal their own identities, a move that could help two reporters from being sent to jail to for the crime of keeping their promises.

The machine that is winning is the one that Karl designed.

I am not a reporter. I do not live in Washington, D.C. I also do not have the guts to pursue Rove. In fact, I can be fairly certain that no one is even reading these lightweight commentaries.

Still, we must keep bleating at each other, keeping our memories fresh, and watching justice stagger ahead, by hook or by crook.

As we have been preparing to roast weenies and chill Bud, Karl Rove has been slowly stewing in his own juices by the disclosures to Newsweek that he "never knowingly disclosed classified information" to a reporter who later confirmed the outing of a CIA agent. Rove denies (or, rather, his lawyer denies) telling "any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." Let's watch as those words get parsed, spun, and revised as intelligent Americans everywhere start squeezing at the truth.

The phrase "never knowingly disclosed" is the one I want to parse. Why include the word "knowingly"? Should not the genius of the Whitehouse know that he is disclosing classified info?

If Karl Rove was the one who blew the cover of a CIA agent, as some predict Newsweek will reveal this week, we may be seeing the first significant stumble in a presidency falling down forever.

If President Bush continues to do the slowdown dance with aid to Africa, while the Live 8 concert draws the attention of millions, he will be pushing his accelerating decline into lame duckness -- and on a global scale.

Perhaps the Bush habit of checking out for summer vacations will come back to bite him this year. It doesn't look like the news cycle is going to go on vacation this July 4th weekend. With Sandra Day O'Connor stepping down, Rove in trouble, and the whole world watching the G-8, Mr. Bush may just have to lose a few hourse sleep.

We can continue to analyze Bush's speech, can't we?

Of course, if we're fighting a war and the original reason has evaporated, we want to believe we have another reason. Therefore, it makes sense that people want to believe that "the war on terror" being fought in Iraq stems from Saddam Hussein's involvement in 9/11-- even though no authoritative source (i.e. the FBI, the CIA) will substantiate any connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

Still, if your troops are at war and your president and commander-in-chief keeps using the phrase "September 11" while talking about Iraq, you want to believe that the enemy in that war had something to do with September 11. That makes sense emotionally, even logically.

So I can sit through some of the arguments that are claiming that it is a "Big Lie" to say that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. Indeed, if Saddam Hussein was, at times, cozy with some of the same people who attacked us, then it is not entirely incorrect to say that he had some connection. But the degree to which that connection is at all meaningful is important to examine critically when our president is sending our troops into battle.

There is not now, nor has there ever been, any evidence that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11. However, intelligent people, liberal Democrats included (I saw man-on-the-street interviews with people in the SF Bay Area on CBS news), want to believe that there may be a connection. To paraphrase one reasonable looking man, yes, there possibly could be a connection; we may find out that there is. This attitude is not outrageous or stupid. For many, this hypothesis will be correct until evidence emerges that disproves it. Of course, Americans want to believe there is a connection. Our president keeps suggesting that there is. Now that we're there, and our young men and women are dying as they work to help a unstable region and the tragic consequences that have fallen upon its people, we want to have a reason for being there.

Just because we want it, however, does not make it true.

And if pundits and presidents keep playing with semantics in order to justify a war that has attracted more terrorists and rallied them to the cause of killing innocents, then we have a responsibility to look at words critically and consider the implications of believing in half-truths. Saddam Hussein did not attack the U.S. He was incapable of doing so, and he was not involved with those who did. Furthermore, he had no intentions of attacking the U.S., again, because he had no way of doing so. If we believe that Saddam Hussein did attack the U.S. on 9/11, then we are in danger of believing anything.