Sex and the Court

"The lifting of the contempt order against Judith Miller of The New York Times in connection with the Valerie Wilson leak investigation leaves no reason for the paper to avoid providing a full explanation of the situation. Now. As public editor, I have been asking some basic questions of the key players at The Times since July 12. But they declined to fully respond to my fundamental questions because, they said, of the legal entanglements of Ms. Miller and the paper. With Ms. Miller in jail and the legal situation unclear, I felt it would be unfair to publicly castigate them for their caution.

"At the same time, I decided my lack of information made it impossible to fairly evaluate for readers Ms. Miller's refusal to identify confidential sources and how The Times was handling the matter . . .

"Now I look forward to assessing the full explanation that Bill Keller, the executive editor, has promised the paper will deliver to readers. . . . I certainly will expect The Times's explanation to address these fundamental questions that I first posed to the key players at the paper in July:

"-- Was Ms. Miller's contact with the source she is protecting initiated and conducted in genuine pursuit of a news article for Times readers?

"-- Why didn't she write an article?

"-- What kinds of notes are there and who has them?

"-- Why wasn't she exploring a voluntary waiver from the source?"

All excellent questions.

Is the right melting down? Newswek's Howard Fineman , is in end-of-an-era mode:

"President George W. Bush may have no military exit strategy for Iraq, but the 'neocons' who convinced him to go to war there have developed one of their own -- a political one: Blame the Administration.

"Their neo-Wilsonian theory is correct, they insist, but the execution was botched by a Bush team that has turned out to be incompetent, crony-filled, corrupt, unimaginative and weak over a wide range of issues.

"The flight of the neocons -- just read a recent Weekly Standard to see what I am talking about -- is one of only many indications that the long-predicted 'conservative crackup' is at hand.

"The 'movement' -- that began 50 years ago with the founding of Bill Buckley's National Review; that had its coming of age in the Reagan Years; that reached its zenith with Bush's victory in 2000 -- is falling apart at the seams."

Vaughn Ververs must shock easily, but here's a candid post:

"I can honestly tell you I was shocked to see a story on CBSNews.com headlined, 'McCain Eyes '08 White House Run.' Shocked not from the revelation but from the fact someone actually thought it to be 'news.' I don't blame the Web site and I don't blame the New York Daily News scribe who originally reported it or the AP writer who picked it up. I blame an overall media culture steeped in hype and a paint-by-the-numbers approach to political coverage.

"This just in: John McCain is considering a presidential bid -- in other news, smoking still considered bad for your health. I seriously doubt there are many people who even remotely pay attention to politics who couldn't have reported that tidbit. Next someone's going to tell me that Hillary Clinton might run for the White House too! LOL, you can't make this stuff up!

"Unfortunately, it's not all that funny after awhile. Take the two pieces of 'news' in the story -- a) McCain is 'seriously' thinking about running for president and, b) he isn't interested in being anybody's vice presidential nomination. Um, OK, what exactly is news there? He's said for months that he's thinking about running for president and will wait until after the 2006 elections to decided (at least publicly). Maybe it was the humorous way he addressed the VP question, saying, 'I spent all those years in a North Vietnamese prison camp, kept in the dark, fed scraps, why the hell would I want to do that all over again?' Maybe that was worth running the story? But alas, it's a line he's used for a long time, dating back at least to the last presidential election. Here's what he said on NBC's 'Late Night' in May of 2004 when he was being discussed as a possible running mate for John Kerry . . .

"Are we really going to have to sit through two more years of constant repetition? McCain is 'considering,' Clinton is 'planning,' Allen is 'preparing,' Biden is 'exploring.' By the time I've read those headlines for the thirtieth time, it's going to make even a political junkie like me tune out."

Finally, one of the haunting religious questions of our time, as posed by Media Bistro's Fishbowl NY :

"Does 'no work on Yom Kippur' include blogging?

"A learned Talmudic scholar says yes, but carves out an exception if that is the only way to keep from eating."

Personal News : Some of you--all right, a few of you--have been asking in online chats and e-mails about what's happening with my show, which has been bouncing around the CNN schedule. Beginning Sunday, "Reliable Sources" expands to one hour and moves to 10 a.m. eastern, which will give us more time to probe the inner recesses of the media, or at least yak a lot more.