Reporters Trapped by a Promise not to reveal sources

One of the problems on these posts, Perception is that you can't really tell whether people like Frank A Pisa and Joe from Chicago can't read or don't read.

You have put up a great column by Blankley. They are either afraid to comment on it or haven't read it.

How to find such a person? It turns out, the administration may have an ally in its hunt. The Patriot Act, the anti-terrorism law this administration has fought for and defended, could be used. Viet Dinh, a former assistant attorney general and one of the act's architects, says, "The normal investigative tools contained in Title II of the act may well apply to a leak investigation, such as the voice mail subpoena authority or perhaps the electronic trap and trace authority." The question, he says, is whether the facts of the case will prompt its use.

Of course, the law has already been used in several cases that have nothing to do with terrorism - from white-collar crime to blackmail. All of which suggests that even if you don't like the Patriot Act (and many on the right and the left don't) it's hard to argue against its being used here.

This is a test for the Justice Department and this administration as a whole. Over the past decade, as the Clinton scandals swirled in this town, there has been one consistent theme: Denials aren't enough. Accusations demand investigation. If that was true in the case of an Arkansas land deal gone bad, it is doubly true here, where the stakes are higher - the CIA officer is home, but the network of contacts she established is potentially compromised.