I seem to recall that just a little while ago Kevin Drum was lamenting the fact that congress hasn't passed a law that would have kept Judith Miller out of jail. Now, he wants a whole bunch of subpoenas:

And since we're getting back to basics here, here's a question to ponder: who is the "senior administration official" quoted in this story? He obviously seems to know who the leakers were. Has he been subpoenaed? Dana Priest and Mike Allen, who wrote the Post story, know who he is. Have they been subpoenaed? They don't seem to have been. How come?

I don't think this is so hard to understand. The reason we get along okay without a federal journalist shield law is that prosecutors do a good job of abiding by the DOJ guidless that ask them not to go around subpoening journalists unless it's truly necessary to solving an important case. As a result, Patrick Fitzgerald seems to have been taking a minimalist approach to compelling testimony. One of the great oddities of l'affaire Plame has always been that a prosecutor willing to really throw subpoenas around could crack it quite easily -- a pretty large number of reporters in this town have a good picture of what happened here. But there really are other principles at stake. Fitzgerald seems to know what he's doing, and the investigation seems to be moving forward. I'm frustrated, too, and would like to get this done with, but caution seems warranted. The Priest/Allen source, it's important to note, seems to be a bona fide whistleblower, exactly the sort of leaker we don't want to deter through the legal process. It'd be fun to know who it was (Colin Powell? George Tenet?), but probably better for the country for him to stay secret.