<H4>You just can’t get Miller/Cooper and shield laws much more wrong</H4>

Than Kevin Drum did .

Kevin blows it in these ways:

1. Implying that people who disagree with him have a personal animus against Judith Miller;

2. Believing that shield laws should be absolutes, or nearly so, like minister, doctor or lawyer confidentiality of confessional, counseling or professional advise relationships, when journalists are not giving advice to sources for which confidentiality is of the essence;

3. Failing to see that his absolutist solution would lead to the floodgates of politically abusive Plame-type leaking opening wide.

4. Citing Armando from Daily Kos as a “professional reference/backstop” on this issue. This is, what, issue No. 697 that Armando has had partially if not completely wrong? As for Armando’s comment about the Circuit Court’s “sweeping” opinion, well, as there is no federal shield law, any opinion on this issue had the potential to be sweeping, if you will look at it that way. I believe Branzburg was a valid precedent for this case. In any case, that leads back to Kevin …

5. Otherwise generally not thinking this baby through at all.

In more detail on Point No. 2:

Unlike doctor-patient, counseler-client, or minister/priest/rabbi-parishoner relationships, there is no absolute, even at the state level, to journalist-source protections. And, in the case of things such as child abuse, there's not even an absolute confidentiality privelege to those professions.

Also, journalists do not provide a service to their sources, other than the "service" of being a funnel, a conduit, a catalyst, for political gamesmanship in many cases. This again distingushes the journalist-source relationship from the others above.