Please Release Me, Let Me Go

According to people briefed in reality, the Miller's Tale in today's Times is a steaming pile of manure.

The discussions were at times strained, with Mr. Libby and Mr. Tate's [sic] asserting that they communicated their voluntary waiver to another lawyer for Ms. Miller, Floyd Abrams, more than year ago, according to those briefed on the case.

Other people involved in the case have said Ms. Miller did not understand that the waiver had been freely given and did not accept it until she had heard from Mr. Libby directly.

You can avoid incarceration -- or confirm your co-conspirator's source's true intention -- with a single phone call. What do you do?

Perhaps J.F. Miller will claim her high-minded principle was that she couldn't go back and ask Libby for a waiver, because then her promise of confidentiality was something less than absolute. (That is to say, meaningless.)

Oh, wait.

Ms. Miller authorized her lawyers to seek further clarification from Mr. Libby's representatives in late August, after she had been in jail for more than a month. Mr. Libby wrote to Ms. Miller in mid-September saying he believed that her lawyers understood during discussions last year that his waiver was voluntary.

One can only bear so many hip-hop videos and loads of prison laundry in service of the First Amendment.

So it comes down to this. It was all a big misunderstanding. Judy thought that that nice Scooter didn't want to take her to the dance, so she told her friend Floyd she wouldn't go with him anyway, even if he asked. And Scooter thought Judy was swell, so he just couldn't understand why Judy wouldn't want go with him. And each was too proud to approach the other, so they exchanged long, soulful glances in the hall for over a year, until Judy's other friend Billy approached Scooter's pal, Joey, and asked why Scooter was such a jerk. "Scooter's not the jerk -- Judy's the jerk, you big dope...."

And then they all went to the ice cream shoppe.

Except Floyd.

And felonies were committed and peoples' lives were ruined and many, many thousands of people died in the war that Judy and Scooter supported.

But our right to read fairy tales, like the one transcribed Messrs. Johnston and Jehl with no apparent shame, lives on.