Salon is reporting the SCOTUS has refused to hear the appeals of Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper:
The Supreme Court is issuing several major decisions today, but the biggest may be in the case it didn’t take: In an order issued a few minutes ago, the court said it will not hear the appeals of Time’s Matthew Cooper or the New York Times’ Judy Miller in the Valerie Plame case.
Cooper wrote a story on the Plame case. Miller didn’t. But barring some other legal development — and there really aren’t any on the radar — today’s Supreme Court decision means that both Cooper and Miller will soon be in jail. Meanwhile, Robert Novak and whoever it is that leaked Plame’s identity to him continue to go free.
Retuers also has the story here.
So, will they testify, or go to jail??
In case you’re looking for your diary, MLR, I moved it to the front page so we can discuss this key announcement + the others to come.
Wow, thanks!
This case has gone on so long, and is so important, that I’m really anxious for indictments, answers, etc. Of all the lousy things this administration has done, outing Plame is certainly among the most heinous.
So…no 10 commandments displays inside (Kentucky), but showing them outside (Texas) is okay. Now wait a minute. The argument made was that they are historical documents? Does that mean that any displays from the Koran, Torah etc would be disallowed because they’re not part of the legal history of the US? Afaic, SCOTUS should have ruled against any religious displays on government property, but I guess they got cold feet since they have their own display in their court.
Meanwhile, one of the religious mouthpieces shown on CNN praised God for allowing Rehnquist to weigh in on this decision and declared that this is the beginning of the religious right’s crusade (my word) to take back the country from the heathens (my phrase).
Catnip, I was watching Democracy Now and missed the news … and CNN is talking about the BTK killer. HELP!
It was chilling watching the BTK killer recount how he killed his victims after he pleaded guilty. CNN did cut that off when the 10 commandments decision came in, but they showed Mr Religious Wingnut ranting and allowed about 2 seconds for the opposite side’s reaction.
Why would they refuse to hear the appeal?
There’s a variety of reasons the Court may have declined to hear the appeal. Rarely if ever does the Court give a reason. In fact the overwhelming majority of appeals to the Court are rejected. Only a select few are heard.
Among the reasons the Court may have for declining to hear the appeal are that the Justices feel that existing precedent adequately addresses the issues presented or that the Justices do not feel the case is of sufficient importance when compared to the other cases presented to it this term (they can only hear so many). The Court has nearly total discretion to select the cases it hears.
Can someone explain why these two particular journalists were called to testify before the grand jury and Novak wasn’t?
If Miller didn’t even write a sotry about Plame, what is it that she is supposed to be testifying about? her sourced for the garbage she wrote about the Iraq war?
In Coopers’ case, what if he just says “my source was Robert Novak”, then where are we?
If they both decide to go to jail rather than testify, what does that do to the state of indicments? Have there even been any or has the case not gone beyond the grand jusry stage yet?
Excuse my total ignorance on the subject and thanks in advance for filling me in!
NYT background info on Miller and Cooper (Feb, 2005):
…
Mr. Cooper and two other Time reporters published an article on the magazine’s Web site three days after Mr. Novak’s column was published. It questioned the administration’s motives for disclosing Ms. Plame’s identity and said that the magazine had received similar information.
Ms. Miller conducted interviews in contemplation of a possible article, but she has not written on the Plame matter. However, that did not spare her from her obligation to testify, Judge David S. Tatel wrote in a concurring opinion.
The crime, if there was one, was the communication from government officials to the reporters, Judge Tatel said. “It thus makes no difference,” he continued, “how these reporters responded to the information they received.”
Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper were held in contempt of court by Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan, of the United States District Court in Washington, in the fall. He ordered them jailed for as long as 18 months. They would be released, he said, if they agree to testify.
I am idly wondering whether she (Miller) gets to keep her spot on the Newshour after this.
Judith Miller is on the Newshour now?! I’ll confess that I haven’t been able to watch the Newshour since November 2004 — just upsets me too much to watch and listen to those Beltway collaborators — but I can’t believe they would have sunk this low!
How can they possibly justify having her on? And do they actually pay her? There goes my PBS membership renewal if they do!
I have not seen her there in a long time…but for a while she had a spot in the Hour for reporting things that the NYT said or on things that related to them. So whenever the New York Times came up and they reported on it her face would be seen.
Oh yes! I forgot to add that Miller is just one more thing PBS did to bring “balance” to the liberal bastion that is Public Broadcasting.
If you remember they cut back NOW with Bill Moyers to 30 minutes instead of a full hour back when Bill left the show. They also added that hack .. ack cant remember his NAME!! he used to be on Crossfire for a while as the right and he is famous for having that silly bow tie. all.
The current head of PBS is a radical righty
I’m live video blogging the SCOTUS developments.
Video – Reporters’ Subpoena Appeal Rejected
Video – Supreme Ct. Says No To 10 Comandments In Court House
In what could be a rather frightening precedent, the SCOTUS has ruled that there is no constitutional right that police enforce a court order without incurring liability for their failure.
The case is a gruesome domestic violence case in which a restraining order was not enforced and the estranged husband killed the three daughters. The woman sued the police.
This case clearly splits the law from those that are supposed to enforce it. Details are meager at this time. Interested readers should look here
Hal C
Stevens’ pdf dissent signed by Ginsburg focuses on a restraining court order as property comparable to for example disability benefits or access to public education and notes that a private security outfit could be sued for negligence, so why not the state.
Hal C.
I don’t know why every one assumes Judith Miller did not write the Plame story merely because it wasn’t published. We know for a fact that several journalists were given the story, and that their editors thought it inappropriate to run it. My guess is that Miller was given the story and did write it, and that the Times refused to go with it. After all, Miller is buddies with the Neocon leakers in the White House, and the puiblication of that story in the Times would have carried much more weight there than in Novak’s column. As for why Miller faces charges and Novak doesn’t, it could be as simple as Novak cooperated with the grand jury and Miller did not. She is incredibly arrogant. Her defense for all those WMD stories being so dead wrong is that it is not her job to question the veracity of her sources. As far as she is concerned, if she ran with their stories and they proved wrong, that is neither her fault nor her responsibility. Similarly, she obviously feels that her role as a propagandist for the Neocons should be constitutionally protected speech, even when, as in this case, the leaking of the information is a felony and a breach of national security. Plame, after all, was a deep cover CIA agent engaged in thwarting the proliferation of WMD. Outing her was a clear violation of the law, and it clearly compromised our safety. She is lucky she isn’t being charged as an accessory to treason.
Yet more confirmation, if we needed it, that Miller is at best a hack and should have been removed years ago from getting anything into newsprint:
Journalistic rule of thumb: If your mother says she love you, check it out!
Never take a source’s word for anything. Confirm with at least two sources, more if possible. Yes, sometimes you can’t, but if you’re then wrong, you have an obligation to make later corrections.
Her attitude, and the fact that the Times still supports her, shows how low American print journalism has sunk.
… and they proved wrong, that is neither her fault nor her responsibility.”
Sounds like she has a promising career ahead of her as a stenographer.
That is all she has ever been, and yet the Times continues to protect her tout her as one of its prized journalists. Jack Shafer did a piece in Slate a year or so ago that documented that virtually every article she wrote in the runup to the Iraq war (she was, after all, one of Bush’s major propagandists in building a case that Saddam was a major threat to world peace) proved to be wrong factually and fundamentally wrong. Her reporting has resulted in a couple of Times mea culpas, but they always scrupulously avoid mentioning her by name. Now she is covering the UN Oil for Food beat where her reporting is just as flawed and echoes the anti-UN Neocon line while ignoring the major conscious role the U.S. played in corrupting that program and diverting profits to its friends and allies. There has to be a reason why the Times protects her to the extent they do, because by now she has to be something of an embarrassment.
I couldn’t find info on the SCOTUS news on those two outlets so gave up and went back to Democracy Now!.
What I heard was BTK – Aruba – shark/girl dead – BTK – weather – Aruba/parents upset – and so on.
Poor folks 🙁
This was a surprise to me this morning. I was sure they would take on the case in order to continue the foot dragging well into ’06 when SCOTUS would carry on with stentorian musings about the founders intentions.
Instead, there is now intense pressure for the songbirds to sing. Let the pleas commence! I had an email exchange with the Daily Howler that the Plame affair would result in indictments after his harsh words regarding Joe Wilson. I need to be right on that point, in order to twit him with it afterward. Nothing’s more satisfactory in today’s modern age than being able to wag one’s tongue and intone “Nyah, nyah!!”
I’m waiting on Novak to go to jail.
Miller, too. But chiefly that major vampire…
Today’s decisions have been posted here.
I know that frog Darwin is supposed to represent Rove, but if anyone physically resembles a toad it’s Robert Novak, with his thickly sunk frog red limned eyes and croaking voice…
The man is physically repulsive, mirroring his equally repulsive acts as a “journalist”.
Pax
if I could, I wold give you 500 “4’s” for that one, dear heart. I so agree with you there.