Reply #18: Your arguments don't have anything to do with the issue.

[Inland]

1. It is not appalling that the grand jury proceedings are being kept secret. Not only is it the law, but it’s the only protection of the civil liberties of targets, witnesses and merely associated persons in a grand jury setting.

2. That one is reduced to reading tea leaves in an effort to guess about what the gj is doing is a reason to be cautious and skeptical, not an invitation to be neither.

3. There is no citizens’ duty to speculate about gj proceedings, at least, not where it’s clear they are being handled by a professional. Indictments are newsworthy and important. Scooping the announcement of an indictment by two days is not. Rove being indicted is important. An article scooping it is not.

4. As to Leopold’s sources, there’s only two types that know about what is going on with the gj, Fitz and the gj itself, and the defense attorneys. The former isn’t talking, so the sources are either the defense attorneys, who have an incentive to lie, or people who really don’t know. If he relied on defense attorneys, he got played and if he relied on someone else’s educated guesses, then he should have said so. In either event, I would have warned Leopold to use better judgment in the small purpose of trying to “scoop” the indictments. I did warn the DU member last month about getting ahead of secret grand jury proceedings, and got a number of sarcastic replies for my trouble. Too bad. It’s not my problem, one way or another. Nobody really has much at stake in scooping the announcements of indictments by two days than the scooper, and he’ll take the glory or the heat personally, and the real life concerns are unaffected.

In sum, nothing you talked about had anything to do with the article in question.