Good leaker, bad leaker.(Beat the Press)(american journalists' civil disobedience)

The hand that rules the press ... rules the county--Judge Learned Hand

Having gone to jail to protect the confidentiality of her source, Judith Miller is, in the eyes of her New York Times colleagues, not merely the brave journalist she is, but one of history's great crusaders for freedom.

"By accepting her sentence." the paper's editorialists opined, "Miller ... acted in the great tradition of civil disobedience that ... stretches from the Boston Tea Party to the Underground Railroad ... to the civil rights movement. It has called forth ordinary citizens, like Rosa Parks; government officials, like Daniel Ellsberg and Mark Felt; and statesmen, like Martin Luther King."

Heady stuff. Who knew that all it took was a contempt-of-court citation to merit a spot in the Times' pantheon?

And look at the second-to-last name on that list, the one right before Dr. King--Mark Felt, aka Watergate's "Deep Throat." Clearly, leakers and the reporters who protect them occupy a special place in the Gray Lady's heart.

Unless, of course, they go by the name of Karl Rove.

When the President's top political adviser turned out to be at least one reporter's confidential source about former CIA agent Valerie Plame, the Times quickly named him among the damned. Times editors found whatever excuse they could to make a page one story out of a rather ho-hum tale. (Actual headline: "For Bush, Effect of Investigation of CIA Leak Case Is Uncertain.")