Billmon has the definitive view of Chief Justice Roberts, in my eyes. More coy than Bill Bennett’s morally indefensible tongue, but still dancing at the same prom.

we were having lunch with a good friend of ours yesterday, and were happy to be the ones to break the news to him about delay’s indictment.

this lead to conversation about all things political, and eventually we voiced a theory that we had been formulating as of late.

the corrupt toadies that run this administration are doomed to fail, for a very simple reason. they don’t do what they do for love of the country or conviction of ideals. if they did, they would be unstoppable.

if they truly believed that eradicating science in favor of religion was a path to god, we would be hiding in the basement, because there is no arguing with that kind of mad commitment, as any veteran of world war ii can tell you.

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After sitting in jail for 85 days, NY Times reporter Judith Miller let herself out. While the Times execs contacted the Vatican to seek her sainthood for refusing to reveal her confidential source, her sources indicated she had previously been told they’d waived their confidentiality.

Asked to explain that discrepancy, Miller refused to respond, indicating she couldn’t say anything without a signed release from herself.

A confidential source indicated that Miller went to jail because a Private Radar O’Reilly - who she’d been embedded with - told her the topic matter was top-secret, and she’d always been a sucker for uniformed liars.

Update: according to a source at the Brooklyn jail, Ms. Miller spent all 85 days forcing herself to make a pyramid of herself, while masturbating and wearing a leash.

[I posted this at my other site a few minutes ago, but as only four people read it, I thought it might do some good here. Have fun, conspiracy theorists!]

I’ll probably regret this, but the theories are so rich and lustrous that I can’t avoid a full briefing on them. Today’s version will be about the grand conspiracy to out Valerie Plame, as seen through the lens of yesterday’s juicy news that Judy Miller is out of jail. If the names Miller and Plame rattle off your pate like summer rain, you may want to cut your losses. If, however, they inspire grassy-knoll like delight, read on. At the end of the post, I’ll include a thumbnail sketch of the issues for those of you wishing to disappear down the rabbit hole.

Okay, to yesterday’s news: Judith Miller was released from the slammer, freed by the source she was protecting, one Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who apparently gave her permission to reveal his name a year ago. So why did Judy sit in jail for three months? Let us first turn to the ur-source, Tom Maguire, who suspects that she’s protecting her own arse, having inadvertently slipped Scooter the news that began the whole affair. (This may exonerate the White House, which conservatives like, but also doom Miller, which liberals will applaud.)

Needlenose is not convinced. Swopa sees a noose tightening around Scooter’s neck that Miller can’t loosen: “By admitting (through his lawyer the Post’s anonymous source) that he was trying to get information from the CIA — and then passing details to Schmidt — he’s provided all the circumstantial evidence needed to convict himself of leaking classified information.”

If the NY Times is trying to polish their reporter’s incarceration with Bernsteinian sheen, the WaPo is not. Froomkin shares my skeptisicm: “The least charitable explanation is that going to jail was Miller’s way of transforming herself from a journalistic outcast (based on her gullible pre-war reporting) into a much-celebrated hero of press freedom.” Froomkin follows it up with a nice rundown of the relevant MSM commentary and news.

Arianna Huffington has taken a keen interest in the Plame affair, and predictably weighs in this morning. It’s a bit of a broadside, but there is this interesting question: “And so we don’t forget what this story is really about, and given that the aluminum tubes crap that Miller put on the front page of the New York Times was being heavily promoted by Cheney, how much of that bogus information came to Miller via Libby?”

David Corn weighs in with his own thoughts at the Nation, at length, and I find no sentence pithy enough to quote. You’re on your own.

Finally, Liberal Oasis steps back for a bigger picture look, and concludes on this note: “It is indisputable that both Karl Rove and Scooter Libby have violated their national security clearance agreements. They have yet to be punished by their boss.”

And there you have it.

We will apparently know more soon. Miller is scheduled to testify th