The media is in full blown mode trying to publicly pressure Patrick Fitzgerald into indicting major government figures. If Fitzgerald falls for this ploy and bows to the current orchestrated effort by the media to pressure him into phony indictments just to placate these salivating coyotes it will be another sad day for the justice system.

Judith Miller has managed to pull a fast one on investigative prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald.

The scene sets up like this (from our friends at Powerline via the NY Times) …

Mr. Fitzgerald asked if I [Judith Miller] could recall discussing the Wilson-Plame connection with other sources. I said I had, though I could not recall any by name or when those conversations occurred.

Selective memory loss anyone?

In order to get Miller to testify before his grand jury he had to agree to limit his questioning of Miller to her conversations with Scooter Libby of Cheney’s office.

Judith Miller writing in the NY Times…

Equally central to my decision was Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor. He had declined to confine his questioning to the subject of Mr. Libby. This meant I would have been unable to protect other confidential sources who had provided information - unrelated to Mr. Wilson or his wife - for articles published in The Times. Last month, Mr. Fitzgerald agreed to limit his questioning.

Powerline notes…

It is hard to square this with the interview given by her former lawyer Floyd Abrams, in which Abrams said that Fitzgerald’s agreement to limit his Plame questioning to Libby, and forgo asking about other sources of the same information, was critical to Miller’s decision to testify.

It would seem clear there are other sources involved with this so-called Valerie Plame “leak”. Otherwise, why limit the questioning to only Libby? Why not limit the inquiry to the subject of Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, rather than just Scooter Libby? Miller’s insertion in her article of “unrelated to Mr. Wilson or his wife” seems designed as a decoy.

Who else is Miller trying to protect? Tim Russert perhaps? And why is she so concerned about restricting the questions to her conversations with Scooter Libby? What about other conversations related to this matter?

Given Miller’s liberal bent and Wilson’s Democrat Party connections along with Plame’s rather suspicious involvement in the selection of her husband for the mission to Niger, we can reasonably assume Miller would have no hesitations about discussing sources which could potentially injure the current administration. So who is she protecting that might conceivably cause real problems for the Democrats?

Thus surfaces the now common malady among the left, selective memory loss.

Which brings us to Harriet Miers and Trent Lott.

Miers could use the same approach with the Senate Judiciary Committee. She could only agree to entertain questions related to the office for which she is being nominated. That would take the lottery commission off the table completely.

Recall too, that the precedent setting Trent Lott agreed to the Democrats’ demands at the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton that the Senate could not call any witnesses nor explore any of the peripheral evidence. Thus Lott presided over a sham trial, in effect, no trial at all.

So the precedence is set Harriet. Democrat senators should certainly understand your desire to limit the scope of inquiry. But should their memory loss persist then you could join their memory loss chorus.