I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it . . .

Judy, Judy, Judy reminds us why she is so special:

"[Julian Assange] didn't care at all about attempting to verify the information that he was putting out or determine whether or not it would hurt anyone."

Love 'ya, babe. Excellent stuff.

Your follow-up is equally priceless:

If anybody bothered to read the Iraq war stories they're now so busy criticizing, they would see that Julian Assange and I were involved in very different kinds of journalism. They are not morally equivalent. While we both sought to publicize official secrets, I and my co-authors at The NYT spent enormous time trying to verify the secret government reports and other WMD-related stories we published. Every exclusive story of mine appeared with a discussion of its context, the difficulty involved in corroborating the highly classified information, and an assessment by at least one independent expert and likely skeptic, often identified by name and organization. Julian Assange, whom I have repeatedly defended, did none of these things. He engaged in data dumping and left these vital journalistic tasks to the papers that used his information. I stand by my criticism of this aspect of his work, as well as by my conclusion that he should not be punished or even faulted for trying to ferret out government secrets. That is what journalists do. Rather, our government is to blame for failing to safeguard truly sensitive information, for grossly over-classifying too much of it, and now, I fear, for deciding to circulate less of it rather than figure out a smarter way to share more of it safely, as the 9/11 Commission recommended almost a decade ago.

So compelling. Ah, Judy, I miss those days when you graced the NYT with tid-bits like this:

Hard-liners are alarmed that American intelligence underestimated the pace and scale of Iraq's nuclear program before Baghdad's defeat in the gulf war. Conscious of this lapse in the past, they argue that Washington dare not wait until analysts have found hard evidence that Mr. Hussein has acquired a nuclear weapon. The first sign of a ''smoking gun,'' they argue, may be a mushroom cloud.

It seems so long ago - 2002, when most of what Miller wrote was filled with many statements like "they argue", and "hardliners are worried", and "Bush administration officials", without ever identifying these individuals. Judy didn't trouble us with silly details like "the individuals spoke on the condition of anonymity".

At one point in my credulous youth, I believed the NYT justifiably held itself out as a credible newspaper, something Wikileaks never has had pretensions of doing. But, never mind: the distinction seems lost on Judy.

Go back to the aspens, Judy - Scooter is waiting for you.