Miller Goes to Jail While Novak and Rove Remain Free

New York Times reporter Judith Miller was jailed Wednesday for refusing to divulge a confidential source to a grand jury investigating the Bush administration's leak of an undercover CIA operative's name. It added legal drama to what was already one of the most closely watched press freedom cases in recent history. Another reporter, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, agreed to cooperate with prosecutors after disclosing that his source had given him permission to do so hours earlier.
(AP)

Nutty Santorum Criticizes Views of Sen. Clinton

"The African proverb says, 'It takes a village to raise a child,'" Santorum writes. "The American version is 'It takes a village to raise a child _ if the village wants that child.'"

Santorum, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, is sometimes touted as a possible 2008 presidential candidate. Books outlining a politician's philosophical views often precede campaign announcements.

He could face a tough re-election battle in 2006. Early polling shows him behind state Treasurer Robert P. Casey Jr., the favorite to win the Democratic primary.

In the book, Santorum makes the case that abortion puts the liberty rights of the mother before those of her child just as the liberty rights of slave owners were put before those of the slave.

"This was tried once before in America ... But unlike abortion today, in most states even the slaveholder did not have the unlimited right to kill his slave," Santorum said.
(AP)

Katherine Harris Advocated Kabbalah Water to Treat Citrus Cankers

Four years ago, as the state labored to eradicate citrus canker by destroying trees, officials rejected other disease-fighting techniques, saying unproven methods would waste precious time and resources.

But for more than six months, the state, at the behest of then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris, did pursue one alternative method -- a very alternative method.

Researchers worked with a rabbi and a cardiologist to test "Celestial Drops," promoted as a canker inhibitor because of its "improved fractal design," "infinite levels of order" and "high energy and low entropy."

But the cure proved useless against canker. That's because it was water -- possibly, mystically blessed water.

The "product is a hoax and not based on any credible known science," the state's chief of entomology, nematology and plant pathology wrote to agriculture officials and fellow scientists after testing Celestial Drops in October 2001.
(Orlando Sentinel)

Joe Conason: World too dangerous to have Bolton in UN

Supporters of John Bolton, the president's frustrated nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, tell us that this is a dangerous world. They say that the U.N. must be reformed if it is ever to fulfill its original mission of preserving peace and promoting human rights. They insist that the American ambassador must be someone who will advance our national interests.

They're right, of course. It is a dangerous world. The U.N. needs reform. And our diplomacy must be devoted to our national interests. Those are precisely the reasons why Bolton failed to win confirmation in the Senate -- and why the president should withdraw his name rather than send him to the U.N. with a recess appointment.

When conservatives of the Bolton stripe tell us that the world is dangerous, they seem to be talking about military and terrorist threats to our security, from the likes of Kim Jong Il and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (they don't talk so much about Osama bin Laden anymore). According to their worldview, the proper responses to such threats are to avoid the hindrance of arms treaties, build more nuclear weapons and missile defense systems, and beware of traditional alliances and international laws that might hamper our freedom to act.

Alan Dershowitz: Why is Novak Skating on the Rove/Plame Affair?

One of the dangers inherent in jailing journalists for not disclosing confidential sources, is that this draconian punishment can be invoked selectively against targeted journalists. Two excellent and independent reporters may go to jail while Robert Novak has not -- to my knowledge -- been presented with the tragic choice of disclosure or imprisonment. Why has he been exempted? Is it because he toes the administration's line? Is it because he knows whether Karl Rove was the source? An explanation for this apparent double standard is called for!
(huffingtonpost.com)

Protesters Demand Guantanamo Shutdown

The Bush administration "has claimed the power to kidnap men anywhere in the world and hold them, interrogate them, detain them without any process of law," said Meeropol, the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 after being convicted of conspiring to commit espionage for the Soviet Union.
(AP)

John Nichols: Not Dominion, But Liberty

As the 229th anniversary of the founding of the American experiment approached, President Bush provided a painful reminder of how far the United States has drifted from the ideals of her youth.

Speaking to soldiers who would soon be dispatched to occupy Iraq, Bush sounded an awfully lot like the King George against whom George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the other revolutionaries of 1776 led their revolt.

America was founded in opposition to empire. The Declaration of Independence was a manifesto against colonialism. And the founding generations abhorred imperialism.

Their opposition to empire was not merely rooted in their own bitter experience. It was, as well, rooted in a faith that American freedoms and democracy would suffer in the nation embarked upon a career of empire.

So, while Bush suggests that other lands must be occupied to preserve liberty at home, the patriots of our time recall will do well to recall words spoken on another July 4.

When America was younger and truer to her ideals, on Independence Day, 1821, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams appeared before the US House of Representatives and declared:

And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind?

Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.

She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights.

She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.

She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for p