The Judy Chronicles

The Wall Street Journal lands a brief Judy interview and asks about the "Valerie Flame" notation in her notebook:

"'I don't remember who told me the name,' she said, growing agitated. 'I wasn't writing a story, remember?' Asked if the other source was Mr. Rove, she replied, 'I'm not going to discuss anyone else that I talked to.'"

At Daily Kos , Armando starts by quoting Bush's insistence he'd fire any Plame leakers and McClellan's denial that Rove was involved:

"Of course Karl Rove was involved up to his eyeballs. And Karl Rove still works at the White House. And George Bush is a liar. And where is the Media outrage at being lied to? Well . . . . "

Here he quotes a Richard Cohen column:

" More is at stake here than bringing down Karl Rove or some other White House apparatchik, or even settling some score with Miller, who is sometimes accused of taking this nation to war in Iraq all by herself. The greater issue is control of information. If anything good comes out of the Iraq war, it has to be a realization that bad things can happen to good people when the administration -- any administration -- is in sole control of knowledge and those who know the truth are afraid to speak up. This -- this creepy silence -- will be the consequence of dusting off rarely used statutes to still the tongues of leakers and intimidate the press in its pursuit of truth, fame and choice restaurant tables. Apres Miller comes moi. This is why I want Fitzgerald to leave now.

"Yes, this would be hilariously incoherent if it were not so serious. This is the Washington Establishment Media. Incompetent. Idiotic. Incoherent. Incapable of doing its job."

But only 35 cents a day, in The Post's case.

The sexism debate over Harriet Miers, which I tackled Friday, gets a going-over from the New Republic's Michelle Cottle :

"Even if dear Laura really believes that Miers is the victim of a cruel double standard, what on earth made her think it was a shrewd political strategy to play the gender card with her own party?

"While shameless, cynical, morally reprehensible, and only occasionally effective, Republican efforts to bully Democratic lawmakers into line by painting them as sexist, racist, or some other kind of pernicious '-ist' at least make sense. Liberals in general tend to freak out whenever anyone accuses them of any sort of bigotry or retrograde thinking. Democratic politicians in particular live in terror of offending all those non-white-male voters upon whom they rely so heavily.

"At this point, however, the folks giving Bushie so much grief over Miers are his right flank--a group that tends to be dramatically less squeamish about accusations of sexism. If anything, conservatives tend to get brassed off about such charges and denounce whomever is leveling them for acting like a bunch of loony liberals. Sure enough, upon hearing of Gillespie's comments, National Review editor Rich Lowry publicly expressed dismay over the former RNC chief's using the same 'talking points' as liberal Democrats. Neocon eminence Bill Kristol dismissed the sexism theory as 'liberal talking points,' while conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg said this was the kind of nonsense he typically expected from 'left wingers.'