If you’ve been relying on the establishment press for news on Karl Rove’s apparent involvement the Valerie Plame controversy, you might be missing a few very important details that PowerLine and The Wall Street Journal have outlined.

I haven’t had much to say on this affair because almost all of the reporting is based on speculation about secret grand jury testimony. There aren’t many real details known except that Karl Rove spoke to a few reporters, a fact that the entire media establishment is now spinning into scandal. Okay, fine, if Karl Rove broke the law, President Bush should get rid of him, but there’s absolutely no evidence of that; there are just the expressed wishes of a few Democrats and their media mouthpieces.

Something about the way the media is acting makes me think they’re going to end up with egg on their faces yet again. That’s just a gut feeling, perhaps fed by my own biases—in this case, my hyper-skepticism about the press—so I reserve the right to be wrong.

Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter, sits in jail right now for refusing to testify for the grand jury. She claims she’s protecting a source, but she also admits that the source granted her permission to talk. In her judgment, the source’s permission was granted under duress and therefore wasn’t truly voluntary, so she’s sticking with her commitment to hide her source even though she’s been released from that commitment. Would a New York Times reporter really go to jail to protect Karl Rove?

Miller believes that her source was essentially coerced to release her from the confidentiality agreement. President Bush is only person who could conceivably exert pressure on Rove to release Miller from the confidentiality agreement. So we’re expected to believe that Miller sits in jail even though Rove and (presumably) President Bush authorized her testimony. Sorry, that doesn’t seem plausible to me. My suspicion is that Miller’s source—and perhaps the source of other reporters—is not Karl Rove. Perhaps the source is actually someone who will embarrass the Times instead of the Bush Administration. That would explain the tight lips over at the Times.

Judith Miller is now being cast as a noble journalist who’s willing to go to jail to stand by her principles. Is she protecting a source, or is she really just protecting the name of the Times from further self-inflicted sullying?

The only people who know for sure are the source and a few people at The New York Times. But the Times isn’t talking. So much for the public’s right to know!