3 solutions

Matt Welch has a column over at Reason detailing “three simple solutions” to the quandary that we’re currently facing with Judith Miller and Matt Cooper. While I, like any sensible person, I think, would enjoy seeing Karl Rove carted off in cuffs (however unlikely that particular fantasy may be), I agree with Welch’s general sentiment in this article and in his conclusion:

… no matter how much we hate individual or institutional journalists, no matter which political party we shill for, expanding that protection to cover those who intend to commit acts of journalism is at least a pinkie in the door. It’s a small gesture toward protecting what few constitutional checks we still have against the government’s ability to demand anything out of anyone at any time. A federal shield thus construed would also make it easier for all of us to contribute to the free exchange of information.

A country that shrugs at the sight of reporters getting hauled off to jail—or of 87-year-olds being forcibly removed from their houses, or of senior-citizen cancer sufferers being prosecuted for growing their own medicine—is a country that looks less inhabitable by the day. Unless you take your comportment cues from Time.