PARTISAN WITCH HUNT?….As Amy mentioned earlier, a U.S. appeals court ruled today that reporters Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper are required to testify before a grand jury in the Valerie Plame case. Sam Heldman points out that aside from the broad importance of the ruling itself, there’s an interesting additional tidbit: the judges have seen a huge amount of information and apparently think the Plame case is pretty important. Here’s the key passage:
Having carefully scrutinized [the special prosecutor’s] voluminous classified filings….
[Eight pages of redactions follow]
….In sum, based on an exhaustive investigation, the special counsel has established the need for Miller?s and Cooper?s testimony.
Were laws broken? Was national security compromised? That’s still to be decided, but three circuit court judges seem to think that Patrick Fitzgerald has a pretty good case so far. That’s bad news for the conservative apologists who keep pretending this is just a partisan witch hunt.
