Waiting For The Other Shoe(s) To Drop

Generally, news is about what we know. Today, though, much of it is about what we don't know -- and are waiting to find out:

Why exactly did Judy Miller decide to go to jail and then come out of jail? The Times promises full disclosure "soon", but in the meantime skepticism abounds. From Dan Froomkin's long article on the subject in today's WaPO :

So what was Miller doing in jail? Was it all just a misunderstanding? The most charitable explanation for Miller is that she somehow concluded that Libby wanted her to keep quiet, even while he was publicly -- and privately -- saying otherwise. The least charitable explanation is that going to jail was Miller's way of transforming herself from a journalistic outcast (based on her gullible pre-war reporting) into a much-celebrated hero of press freedom.

The rest of the article makes clear that he is not buying "the charitable explnantion." Neither is Jay Rosen at Pressthink.

Why did it take Ronnie Earl three grand juries to get a money laundering indictment against DeLay (see last 2 paragraphs of story linked below), and why was he able to get it only after DeLay had moved to quash the original indictment? As reported in today's WaPO, Ronnie claims that it was the result of "new information" recieved over the weekend. Maybe. But he's not saying what information and Delay's lawyers are skeptical:

Responding to Earle's new statement, DeGuerin said, "That is just a confabulation. What information came over the weekend? What came over the weekend is that he heard we were going to move to quash the indictment because the statute had not been written yet in 2002."

What does Harriet Miers think about anything? The only thing everyone appears to agree on is that no one (other than Bush perhaps) has a clue. See this, this and this for a small sampling of the consensus. Waiting for this shoe to drop will likely take years.

Will the Right desert Bush and oppose the Miers nomination? Geroge Will certainly believes they should. As do others. And many others are very decidedly on the fence:

“There are a lot more people — men, women and minorities — that are more qualified in my opinion by their experience than she is,” said Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., formerly the Senate Majority leader.

Lott said it’s not enough for the president to say “trust me” when it comes to the Supreme Court.

“I don’t just automatically salute or take a deep bow anytime a nominee is sent up,” Lott told MSNBC. “I have to find out who these people are, and right now, I’m not satisfied with what I know.”

Why did a 40 foot boat overturn in calm waters? Could it really have been that the passengers were too fat?

Will the North Koreans disarm?

Will the Shiites and Kurds rig the Iraqi constitution vote?

Will Austrian racism keep Turkey out of the EU?

Etc. Etc.

It's an unsettled world we live in