Having Cake, Eating Cake… (UPDATE)

As anger continues to build over the latest perfidy of the New York Crimes Times, we ought not to act like Bill Clinton.

Prosecuting Bill Keller and his ilk for leaking would be gratifying in the short term. It would feel good.

So did bombing an African aspirin factory… instead of taking the hard road, and hunting down bin Laden and his cadre.

So did sending some FBI agents to “investigate” the Khobar Towers bombing… with no intention of taking action against the Iranian intelligence services who set the bombing in motion.

What do those three examples have in common?

They felt good… and did nothing to stop the problems they purported to address.

For better or worse, there’s still enough of the… romance of Watergate? in our culture to make a successful prosecution of Mr. Keller unlikely. Despite the clear facts, admitted by Keller with a magisterial arrogance which is breathtaking in it’s contempt for the intelligence of the American people, too many potential jurors are unlikely to be comfortable with convicting a newsman for publishing a story.

Love it; hate it; matters not. That’s a fact, and best we understand that, accept it, and work around it to stop the problem… which is not the New York Crimes Times. Those moral midgets are enablers, no better. The problem is the leaks… and those doing the leaking. The important thing is to stop those leaks; stop the disclosure of classified information by government bureaucrats who abrogate to themselves the right to ignore their oaths, their promises, their responsibilities… and in doing so, make it increasingly more difficult to effectively dismantle terrorist networks.

How might we do that, given the way in which Keller and his lot seem immune?

Make them even more immune. LEGALLY immune.

Andrew McCarthy makes a persuasive argument for this approach. McCarthy’s approach has much to commend it… including the fact that it’s already been successful in l’affaire Plame, as Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper can attest to.

Give the likes of Mr. Keller formal immunity from prosecution… and haul them into a federal grand jury, with no legitimate reason to stand silent on the witness stand, because they cannot incriminate themselves by their testimony. Give them a choice… up to eighteen months in prison for contempt of court, or identify the leakers, who then can be prosecuted for their contemptible actions.

What do you think Mr. Keller would do, faced with “Miller’s choice”?

Or Patterico’s current “favorite” editor, Dean Baquet of the LAme Crimes LA Times?

Contemplate that for a moment.

See? Sometimes, you can have your cake, and eat it too.

UPDATE: Well, it’s not quite a consensus yet. But it should be.