CHECK OUT JOHN AT AMERICABLOG on the firing of Mary O. McCarthy for allegedly being a key source for the WaPo's Pulitzer Prize-winning story about secret C.I.A. prisons in Eastern Europe. Why is it, John asks, that when Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Condi Rice, and Dick Cheney leak classified information to justify Bush administration policies, they get hearings and legal investigations and the presumption of innocence; but when a C.I.A. officer like McCarthy gives a reporter classified information about a secret global network of prisons that violates domestic and international law, the alleged leaker is instantly fired on the basis of a confession following a failed polygraph test?

One might also ask why, when almost the entire Bush cabinet, plus the president himself, leaks classified information to reporters for the purpose of justifying Bush administration policy, it's not only legal, but rooted in the purest of motives; but when a C.I.A. officer tells a reporter about a secret government program that violates international law and the U.S. Constitution, the leaker and the reporter are motivated, not by a principled conviction that the public has a right to know that such things are happening, but by a partisan-inspired desire to damage a Republican president?