Valerie Flame

James Wolcott has some fun. Yup, Judith Miller should be fired so she can go to Fox where her journalistic hackery can be overt rather than covert. And, frankly, the NY Times ought to clean house -- they're going down with the Bush ship along with any good name the US continued to have before this administration came along. Apologies just aren't good enough any more. Should Keller apologize? What for? Why does that matter? That's not accountability. It would be the same if Bush apologized for the Iraq War. So what? It's too late now. Apologies mean nothing except a brief moment of genuflection on the apologizer's part. But firing Miller would be a good start. And if Bush really cared about anything at all except self-preservation -- and even that -- he would at least fire Rove and Libby, as my good friend David suggests.

...You're sitting there having breakfast at the St. Regis with Scooter Aspen, buttering each other's toast, and somehow the name "Valerie Flame" pops up in your notebook without you knowing how it got there! It's your handwriting, sure enough, but rack your brain much as you will, you just can't remember which little birdie tweeted that name into your ear.

Like I say, it could happen to any of us intrepid reporters on the danger beat.

Nevertheless, it does appear inescapably evident that Judith Miller lost sight of where her true loyalties lay, or lie. Her first committment, the first committment of any star reporter, is to the integrity and reputation of her own phony-baloney career. And here Miller failed. She subordinated her own interests and that of her newspaper to Scooter Aspen and his mysterious dance of the dangling waivers. And for that dereliction of duty, if justice is to be done, she must be booted through the uprights and never allowed to show her bangs at W. 43rd Street again.