On Thursday, Judith Miller was released from jail. She was in jail because she refused to testify about who in the Bush administration had revealed to her the secret that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative. Oddly enough, Judith Miller never actually publsihed anything in which SHE revealed that national secret. Robert Novak was the journalist who outed Valerie Plame in the media. But we haven't heard much about him at all. And he didn't spend any time in jail. Welcome to America, where you don't go to jail for breaking the law but you do go to jail for defying a judge.

Anyway, Judith Miller was released because she finally relented and agreed to testify, as long as the judge only asked her specific questions. Besides, her source told her it was okay to reveal his name. In fact, according to his lawyer, her source told her it was okay to testify weeks ago, but there was just some little misunderstanding.

And it turns out her source was Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. And it was Karl Rove who told Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine. So Libby and Rove were the ones who outed a covert CIA operative. And they did it days after Valerie Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, wrote an Op-Ed piece in which he revealed that he had been sent to Niger to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium and discovered there was no basis to that claim. And that was shortly after President Bush had gone on national TV and lied to the American people that Hussein had, in fact, tried to buy uranium. So the whole outing-of-Wilson's-wife sounded a LOT like a nasty case of revenge against Wilson for revealing that the president flat-out lied to the American people.

But you know it gets better. Because White House spokesman Scott McClellan, whose job it is apparently to lie to the American people every single day in his role as White House spokesman, has told reporters repeatedly that neither Libby nor Rove were involved in any way. It sure is a good thing it isn't a crime to lie to the American people day in and day out. But how much longer will Americans listen or read comments from McClellan and still believe him? How stupid are Americans, anyway?

Still, it gets even better than that. I can't shed too many tears for Judith Miller doing jail time. She was the direct White House conduit for misinformation leading up to the Iraq War. She reported on all the weapons of mass destruction and nuclear, chemical and biological production facilities that Saddam Hussein had hidden away in Iraq, just waiting to attack and destroy the United States first chance he got. She helped to stampede the gullible American public into believing, against all evidence to the contrary, that Iraq was brimming with state-of-the-art weaponry and needed to be invaded and taken down immediately.

It is fitting that the reputations of both Miller and The New York Times have suffered from the lapse of integrity that led to them publishing so many pro-war stories based on administration lies, which strengthened Bush's ability to invade Iraq when there really was no justification.

So now we know that Karl Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby revealed that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA operative to reporters for them to report and consequently "out" her. And it doesn't take much imagination to see that it was because Joseph Wilson, her husband, told the American public the truth about Saddam Hussein and the Niger uranium. It seems wrong to me that high government officials should abuse their power and position to exact revenge on American citizens who tell the American people the truth. It also seems wrong to me that anyone should be able to reveal the identity of covert CIA operatives. And, come to think of it, it seems wrong to me that administration spokesmen should be allowed to lie repeatedly to the American people about the involvement of those people.

I would like to see some prosecutions, guilty verdicts and prison sentences. Even if it is all for show and George W. Bush does what his father and Ronald Reagan did at the end of thier terms--grant unconditional pardons to administration officials who broke the law of the land in the name of the president.

That the law should apply equally to all Americans is the subjet of another essay.