Free Republic

A federal judge in Washington yesterday lifted a contempt order and the threat of jail against a Time magazine reporter after he submitted to questioning by a special prosecutor who is investigating the disclosure of a covert C.I.A. officer's identity to the columnist Robert Novak and other journalists. The reporter, Matthew Cooper, was questioned in a two-hour deposition about his contacts with I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, but only after Mr. Libby's lawyer assured Mr. Cooper's lawyer that Mr. Libby had waived a confidentiality agreement with the reporter. The deposition was given on Monday...

The publication of Hubris is filled with irony for David Corn, Washington editor of the left-wing Nation magazine. He was present at the creation of the Valerie Plame "scandal," which the enemies of George W. Bush hoped could bring down a president. Nobody was more responsible for bloating this episode. Yet Corn is coauthor of a book that has had the effect of killing the story. Thanks to Corn's intrepid coauthor, Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, Hubris definitively revealed then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as my source that Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie, worked for the CIA and suggested her...