Spikey’s Threat

I woke up this morning thinking about Michael Isikoff, which isn’t my favorite thing to think about first thing in the morning. Last night he told Jon Stewart that Pat Fitzgerald had better have something really, really strong to justify this investigation taking the turns its taken. It had better be about something really important — it had better be about national security. He was quite fierce about it.

I didn’t hear the rest because I threw the remote at the TV and it mercifully turned off.

The idea that Michael Isikoff, of all people, is laying down the gauntlet — warning Fitzgerald that if he’s thinking of prosecuting someone for perjury, say, or obstuction of justice, he will lead the chorus denouncing him as an overzealous prosecutor — is stunning. I don’t know what is in the Chardonnay in DC but it’s causing a lot of people to have severe problems remembering things — and seeing themselves in the mirror.

Michael Isikoff was practically Ken Starr’s right hand man in the media. He performed at only a slightly less partisan level than Drudge or Steno Sue Schmidt. He admits in his book that he became convinced that the president treated women badly and therefore needed to be exposed. He didn’t seem to think that throwing a duly elected president from office for lying about a private matter was overzealous in the least. He was on that bandwagon from the very beginning and one of the guys who drove it.

Michael Isikoff did not go on television and say that the punishment didn’t fit the crime or that Starr should have had something really, really important to justify his 70 million dollar investigation. Indeed, he did exactly the opposite.

Isikoff has done good work on this story. He continues to do good work. But apparently he doesn’t see outing CIA agents as serious as presidential fellatio. I suspect that holds true for the entire press corpse. They haven’t really had the fire in the belly for this one, have they?

Isikoff was a fine help to the Bush administration last night and I hope it makes up for that unfortunate Koran in the toilet business. He set the frame for indictments to be seen as unreasonable if don’t show national security was compromised. If Fitzgerald indicts members of the administration for lying or covering their tracks, it will not be taken well by the king of the kewl kidz. I have no doubt that the lemmings of the independent press corpse will fall into line as well, in the unfortunate event that Karl Rove is indicted for perjury or obstruction. After all it’s not as if he’s anything like that mean bitch Martha Stewart or that cruel lothario Bill Clinton. Those people really deserved it.

Update:

I realize that Isikoff was talking about the heinous, heinous crime of sending poor Judy Miller to jail. But I don’t really think that should be the standard by which a prosecutor should decide that only proveable crimes of national security should be investigated.

The point here is that this case is intrinsically about the press. Fitzgerald wasn’t conducting a fishing expedition to find out what Judy and Matt might know about a potential crime — he wanted them to testify because they may have been an element of the crime itself. This is a very important distinction.

It’s nice that Mikey and others are such zealous defenders of the freedom of the press. But freedom of the press is a right. Serving our democracy by giving the public the information it needs to govern itself is their responsibility. It is very hard to see how Judy’s martyrdom can be seen as a pure unalloyed matter of principle when(as Stewart pointed out) the press’ privilege seems to have been used pretty exclusively these last few years to protect their access to powerful government officials who want to use them to spread official lies.

I compare the coverage and attitude of the press covering this investigation to the shrill and breathless reporting of the Clinton years because it’s instructive. Never once did Isikoff express reservations about the non-stop partisan character assasination, the invasion of privacy, the perjury trap or the clear overstepping by the prosecutor as he “investigated” whether Bill Clinton lied about sex in a case that had already been dismissed — all of which were betrayals of principle just as important as the reporter’s privilege in my mind. But because this case involves a member of the press caught in a prosecutors net, suddenly he isn’t so sanguine about charging people with the crimes of lying or covering-up. That’s just not a good enough reason to put one of them on the hot seat. He and all of his brethren salivated at the idea that our democracy would be weakened by the partisan removal of a duly elected president, but let Judy go to jail and the hinges are coming off the nation.

I am reserving judgment on Judy’s status in the investigation because I have no facts one way or the other. I suspect it is more complicated than just protecting Karl Rove or someone else, but I don’t really know. I do know that she is the type of person who relishes drama, so I have a feeling that this little sojourn in lock-up isn’t exactly traumatizing for her. She’s already compared herself to soldiers in Iraq (where she wore a military uniform for god’s sake!) I’m figuring she’ll soon be saying she’s like MLK in the Birmingham jail. I think ole Judy can handle doing the time. In fact I think she relishes it.

Mickey and his friends can stop worrying about that part of the case and worry about why this government has lied to the nation repeatedly and blown over 200 billion dollars on an illegal and unnecessary war when terrorists are blowing shit up all over the world. Judy is more than happy to do her time for the principle of the reporter’s privilege.

.