King of Zembla: Deliberate Speed

A couple of days ago we quoted, half in jest, a comment from Hullabaloo suggesting that Judy Miller spent three months in jail as a favor to the White House, to prevent Patrick Fitzgerald from handing down indictments in the Plame case until John G. Roberts could be installed as Chief Justice. (Our eminent colleague Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake endorses the same hypothesis here, and reinforces it with a link to Steve Perry of the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages here.) After all, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is up on three separate charges with more to come, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is inquiring about the availability of Martha Stewart's old cell, and Messrs. Libby and Rove are surely tired of glancing upward at the sword and waiting for the single horsehair to snap. The President's father, as he left office, slipped the noose that special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh had prepared for him by pardoning anyone who could testify to his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal as he left; Bush the younger may not have the luxury of waiting until the end of his term. Looking at Harriet Miers, and Harriet Miers's anemic C.V., and the right wing's bitter reaction to Harriet Miers's nomination, it is increasingly difficult to avoid the conclusion that Mr. Bush, for reasons best known to himself, means to pack the Court with presidential-jock-sniffers.

What are Ms. Miers's qualifications again? As Mr. Bush keeps explaining, he knows her heart. And that heart, we're betting, is practically brimming over with leniency for Mr. Bush, should he need it.