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I've had more than a few people ask me why I was so adamantly opposed to Bush in the last election. Some of them, I think, fully expected me to fly into a nonsensical tirade about a myriad of issues, but my response has slowly whittled down to one simple comment: He could cause me to serve time.

This is the easiest, and most accurate, answer that anyone involved in journalism or publishing could give to this question - one answer that cannot be denied by even the most zealous supporter of Bush. Why? At no point during the past year has Bush ever stated publicly that the courts should consider the journalistic standard of maintaining anonymity of sources sacred. Admittedly, this is a time-honored tradition, not letter of the law, on the Federal level - I won't open the can of worms over those who were asleep at the wheel on that issue, and didn't push for it to become law.

To place this in perspective, we should examine the media's response to the current trend in the Federal Court System. Judge Earnest C. Torres, Federal Judge seated in Rhode Island, recently sentenced Jim Taricani, WJAR-TV reporter, to six months house arrest for refusing to reveal his source of a video tape showing a public official taking a bribe from an undercover Federal agent. NBC graciously picked up Taricani's tab - $85,000 for 85 days of silence with a price tag of $1000 a day. Since the fine obviously was doing nothing to weaken Taricani's resolve, Judge Torres resorted to imprisonment - his only regret was that Taricani had to serve time at home, due to health issues arising from a heart transplant. Now, where did this story finally end up in the New York Times? According to the online archive, the print editors placed it on page 27 - so much for front-page coverage of the erosion of Freedom of the Press. Beyond the various legal intricacies the prosecutors used to justify this brain-child, I have to get a good laugh out of the name of the operation that yielded the tape in the first place - shades of "Mad Max", Plunder Dome at least leaves Taricani with a decent title for a memoir, if he can find a publisher who isn't scared to print it.