D.C. is on the edge.  The grand jury expires in the next two weeks and only one thing is on everyone's mind.  Cabbies, people you meet at parties--all want to know:  Who will be indicted?

What's going on here?  There appears to be a secret that nobody wants to get out.  Take this CNN headline: 

Miller Testified Again Before Grand Jury: New York Times Reporter Disclosed Conversation With Second Source.

Yet when one reads the article, there is only discussion of a previously undisclosed conversation between her first source, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff and herself.  So whose the other source? 

Now take that tidbit and then look at the alleged terms of the deal between Miller and Special Counsel Peter Fitzgerald from Judy Miller's press appearance after leaving jail:

Q. Your source's lawyer has said that had you asked, you wouldn't have had to spend any time in jail; he would have been more than willing to give you the explicit waiver you say you now accepted.

MILLER. No. Since I was not a party to those discussions, I'm going to let you refer those questions to my lawyer. I can only tell you that as soon as I received a personal assurance from the source that I was able to talk to him and talk to the source about my testimony, it was only then and as a result of the special prosecutor's agreement to narrow the focus of the inquiry to focus on the way - on that source, that I was able to testify. I testified as soon as I could. And I will ask you to please address the questions to which I was not a party to my lawyers.

What is this narrowing of the focus?  The narrowing was to contacts between Miller and Libby:

For his part, Fitzgerald promised to limit his questioning of Miller to the Libby contacts regarding Plame.

So we seem to be dancing around a second source--one who Miller did not want to talk about.  But the indications are that she is now talking?  Why?  Probably because the Special Counsel has something new on her--the fact that she previously did not disclose that she had notes from the earlier meeting with Libby.  What we know backs this up as Lou Dobbs indicated that NY "Times editor Bill Keller tells me that she does face legal jeopardy."  

Let's look a bit closer at the notes issue:

But after she testified, Miller discovered that she had additional notes from the June 2003 conversation with Libby.

That was well before Wilson on July 6, 2003 published an opinion piece in The New York Times accusing the White House of twisting intelligence on Iraq, but after reports of his mission had begun to surface.

A column by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times on May 6, 2003 may have been the trigger for the interest by Cheney's office, the sources said.

Kristof's column contained the first public mention of Wilson's mission in Niger, though Wilson was not identified by name. It also mentioned for the first time the alleged role of Cheney's office in seeking an investigation of the uranium deal, prompting the CIA to dispatch Wilson.

Remember, she claimed she had no notes and then all of a sudden had them.  So whose she protecting?  Rove?  Can't be, he's already been connected to the issue by Time's Matthew Cooper.  So it must be someone higher than Rove.  Whose higher than Rove? Hmmmm. . . .

On ABC's rightly-detested, Bush-worshipping The Note, the following appears:

As for the other story that dominates every steak-laden table at the Palm and all fajitas-fueled conversations at Lauriol Plaza, per usual, the questions about special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald outnumber the answers.

Could Fitzgerald's apparently solo trip to the court house yesterday mean that he is seeking or receiving an extension of the grand jury? What questions will Karl Rove be asked? [OTHER QUESTIONS REDACTED BY ABC NEWS MANAGEMENT.]

What does OTHER QUESTIONS REDACTED BY ABC NEWS MANAGEMENT mean?

And who the hell is willing to wait 45 minutes to sit at Lauriol Plaza?  The food just ain't that great folks.  (Does that make me a Beltway Insider?)

It looks like there are blind trusts and then there are those HCA stock holdings controlled by your brother outside the trusts?  Whoops!

Looks like Scooter Libby forgot to tell the FBI and Fitzgerald about an important conversation with Ms. Judy Miller of the NYT.  oops, looks like he'd better call Martha Stewart:

      TITLE 18--CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE

                             PART I--CRIMES

                 CHAPTER 47--FRAUD AND FALSE STATEMENTS

Sec. 1001. Statements or entries generally

    (a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any
matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or
judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and
willfully--
        (1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or
    device a material fact;
        (2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent
    statement or representation; or
        (3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same
    to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement
    or entry;

shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or
both.

Looks like its hammer time!

It will be the White Sox and Cardinals in the World Series - which will prove yet again that pitching, defense, and speed still matter in the steroids era.

Karl feeling the heat:

Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.

The persons, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, said Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has not made any decision yet on whether to file criminal charges against the longtime confidant of President Bush or others.

Bob Luskin promises, this time for sure, to stop leaking:

"I can say categorically that Karl has not received a target letter from the special counsel. The special counsel has confirmed that he has not made any charging decisions in respect to Karl," Luskin said.

He said that Rove "continues to be cooperative voluntarily" with the special counsel investigation and "beyond that, any communication I have or may have in the future are going to be treated as completely confidential."

As I said earlier, the Family Research Council sends me E-mails.  I can't say I didn't sign up for them.  Take a close look at what they have to say about Bill Bennett's racist outburst the other day:

When Bennett offered what he called a "noxious" hypothetical example on his Morning in America talk show saying that abortion might be used to lower crime rates in the black community--but that it would be morally reprehensible to do so--liberals pounced.

That's right, they are claiming that Bennett was talking about "lowering crime rates in the black community."  Not exactly:

"you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down."

That's right--Bennett was talking about reducing crime in general, not in the "black community."

And that's where the racism is, folks.  No amount of distortion by the Family Research Council can change it.

The Family Research Council has bombarded me with daily E-mails about John Roberts for months now.  I didn't get an E-mail from them and was a bit concerned?  Food poisoning?  Bus broke down at the wingnut retreat?  Nope:

Washington D.C. - President Bush's announcement this morning of White House counsel Harriet Miers as his nominee for the Supreme Court drew a cautious response from the Family Research Council (FRC), a pro-family public policy organization.

FRC's president, Tony Perkins, commented:

"President Bush has long made it clear that his choices for the U.S. Supreme Court would be in the mold of current justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. We have no reason to believe he has abandoned that standard. However, our lack of knowledge about Harriet Miers, and the absence of a record on the bench, give us insufficient information from which to assess whether or not she is indeed in that mold.

"In the days to come, Harriet Miers will have the chance to demonstrate such a philosophy. We will be watching closely as the confirmation process begins, and we urge American families to wait and see if the confidence we have always placed in the President's commitment is justified by this selection."

I hear tell that some conservatives are thinking of filibustering her.

And they said irony was dead after September 11th!

In the White House that hero worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met.

Ironmouth.  We report, you decide.

After much time spent musing about effective crime-fighting strategies, we at the Ironmouth predict that Bill Bennett will turn his attention to Iraq and recommend bringing back genocide as a time-honored strategy for breaking pesky insurgencies.  Bill is after all a man of letters and high moral certitude and hell, if the Roman, Greek, Mongol, Ottoman and British Empires could use it effectively why not us?