Friday, September 30, 2005

Judy Judy Judy

Digby has a good overview of some of the recent ins and outs. There appears to be a wee dispute between Miller's laywer and Libby's lawyer about the "confidentiality waiver." I think these confidentiality waivers have always been a little fiction designed to make everyone look good. Arianna gets it right:

So

it defies credulity for Miller, Sulzberger, and Bill Keller to keep insisting that Libby’s earlier waiver was coerced when Libby says that it wasn’t. I don’t have much good to say about the vice president’s chief of staff, but I don’t doubt that he knows the difference between being coerced and acting on his own free will. How deep is the Times’ contempt for its readers that they really think they’ll buy the “Oh, Judy finally has the right waiver” line?

The truth of the matter is there is no way that the New York Times editorial claiming “it should be clear…that Ms. Miller is not going to change her mind” can be squared with Ms. Miller changing her mind. And there is no way to accept at face value Miller’s grandstanding about “fighting for the cause of the free flow of information.” Who is she still trying to convince? Herself?