Son of Safliar

Grammar writer William Safire is back on the NYT editorial page, issuing orders on behalf of his partner in fraud, Judith F. Miller. Here's his list of terrorist demands:

1. The judge should resist the prosecutor's pressure for coercive, lengthy and possibly dangerous confinement. Judy won't crack and should not be made to suffer.

Uh, isn't all confinement coercive?

2. The prosecutor should submit an information bewailing his witness difficulties in fingering sources in false denial, but showing why no major national-security crime had been committed.

So much for the rule of law. Although I appreciate his plea for eliminating all federal prosecutions where "no major national-security crime" has been committed.

3. Mr. Novak should finally write the column he owes readers and colleagues perhaps explaining how his two sources - who may have truthfully revealed themselves to investigators - managed to get the prosecutor off his back.

Interesting. Safliar thinks that Novak's sources control the prosecution.

4. The Congress should urgently hold hearings on shield bills to conform federal practice to the states' laws based on Congress's 1975 directive to the Supreme Court to apply "reason and experience" to extending privilege - which the court did in its 1996 Jaffee decision to psychotherapists.

Uh, why does Congress need to follow its own directive to enact a shield law?

Safliar says "The contempt epidemic is spreading fast." Don't be so modest, Bill. Right-thinking people have loathed you for 30 years.

Now get the hell out of here, and take that jackass John Tierney with you before he summarizes another libertarian policy paper.