Sing, sing, sing

from E&P, The Queen speaks:

I went to jail to preserve the time-honored principle that a journalist must respect a promise not to reveal the identity of a confidential source. I chose to take the consequences -- 85 days in prison -- rather than violate that promise. The principle was more important to uphold than my personal freedom.

I am leaving jail today because my source has now voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality regarding our conversations relating to the Wilson-Plame matter. My attorneys have also reached agreement with the Office of Special Counsel regarding the nature and scope of my testimony, which satisfies my obligation as a reporter to keep faith with my sources.

This enables me to appear before the Grand Jury tomorrow.

Remember Matt Cooper's convenient hail-Mary waiver reception on the courthouse steps, narrowly avoiding his own jail time? One has to wonder if the prospect of ciminal contempt charges was the factor that suddenly made Scooter's oft-offered waiver suddenly seem sufficently uncoerced.

Jeebus, how did it come to this? How did we come to a juncture where a good leftie has to ridicule the newspaper that printed the Pentagon Papers and exposed the Tuskegee experiment? How did the very concept of a free press become so utterly corrupted?

The outing of Valerie Plame was a heinous crime, and the piper really should be paid. I hope this sudden development signals a climax that befits the criminal hubris that put these forces in motion.

Go get 'em, Mr. Fitzgerald.

Update: good discussion here, and here, but I think we are all shooting in the dark tonight.