Press Liberties: Valerie Plame

At a family get-together in Flint this weekend, talk turned political, as it's inclined to do among the offspring of sit-down strikers (don't even get us started on NAFTA). My mother expressed dismay at the lack of a riot -- by the press and public -- over the president's commutation of "Scooter" Libby's sentencing for obstruction of justice, etc. "It's treason," she said. "Why would Martha Stewart have to serve time, but not someone who commits treason? Why isn't the press up in arms about this?"

It's simple. The press isn't reacting much because they'd be implicating themselves. Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and whoever else is involved on the executive-branch level didn't buy themselves some airtime on CNN or ad space in Time magazine to reveal CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to the world. Columnist Robert Novak wrote about it, and the press published this information. Valerie Plame was outed by national media, not just the president's operatives. When this first happened in 2003, I fully expected Novak to face charges, along with a slew of publishers.

And why didn't that happen?