Blaming the Victims in the Plame Case

Every so often you read an article in the MSM that leaves you whacking yourself on the side of the head, saying, "Wha--?" That's my reaction to today's Washington Post op-ed by Richard Cohen about the Valerie Plame case.

As you probably know, the investigation by a special prosecutor into how a CIA operative was illegally outed in a column by Bob Novak has produced subpoenas and threats of jail time for Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, Judith Miller of the New York Times, and other reporters--but not for Novak. Of course, the fact that right-winger Novak wrote his column at the behest of the Bush administration to punish Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, for criticizing the Iraq war, may help to explain this pattern.

So now I read Cohen's op-ed and find that he pins the blame squarely on--the press? The logic, apparently, is that some newspaper writers urged an investigation into the Novak case. Now, according to Cohen, "The press, alas, is getting what it wanted. . . . the press ought to remember never to call for a special prosecutor. The trouble with them is that they are, as designed, above politics--which too often means common sense and compromise."

Oh, now I get it--the problem with the current attacks by the Justice Department on the independence of the press is that they are too non-political. I guess that was the same problem we had with our last special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr . . .