"I'm worried about bloggers," she said. "(A post) starts as a rumor and within 24 hours it's repeated as fact."

So. You are a disgraced New York Times reporter whose bid at martyrdom failed after everyone realized that, actually, you might have led the U.S. into war. Oops!

Apparently missing the sweet taste of martyrdom's liqueur, former New York Times reporter, WMD confabulist, and leak-protecting jailbird Judith Miller sent out a letter to 600 friends thanking them for their support during her time in the clink. Naturally, by "thank," Judy means, "how wise you were to agree with me." In her own words: "I chose to defend your right to know and you were kind enough to write to support my stance." Take your pick of the worst offense, from Miller or the Washington Post paraphrase:

• Five news orgs — including NYT — pay Wen Ho Lee $750,000 to settle his case. Which seems not a not entirely unreasonable amount after mistakenly being labled a nuclear spy. [NYT]
• CBS News Iraq reporter Kim Dozier now off respirator, breathing on her own. [CBSNews.com]
• Charlie Gibson thinks New York's Joe Hagan "is something of a snake" and will never talk to him again. Mind you, this is over a fluffy Q&A. [Chicago Defender]
• Best attack on Judy Miller ever: She could have prevented 9/11. [TAP]
• Time loses Baghdad reporters; New York to lose dapper WSJer Matthew Rose. [NYP]
• Time's Jim Kelly to take sabbatical, visit Statue of Liberty before starting new corporate gig. [MW]
• GMA EP Ben Sherwood quits. Presumably he just couldn't bear not having Charlie Gibson's full attention. [Media Mob/NYO]

Where's a reporter with no credibility and a reputation for being an administration mouthpiece to go once she's been drummed out of her former place of employ for practicing some of the most sloppy, credulous, bordering-on-disingenuous journalism that said employer has even seen, even considering the fact that it once also employed Jayson Blair? Naturally, The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, a magical world where taxes cause cancer, the ghost of Vince Foster has risen from the grave to wreak havoc on President Bush's poll numbers, and Judith Miller can be considered a legitimate journalist. Judy shows up today with the first of a two-parter on Libya's nuclear ambitions. If you think that maybe the last topic Judy should be reporting on is W.M.D. then you have no idea what passes for fact in the Rightwing Funny Farm that is the Editorial Page. I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing (too busy with the piece next to it, "People Are Poor Because Jesus Hates Them"), but, guess what? We really dodged a bullet!

Today in Holy Shit: The New York Sun reports that Vice-President Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, told a grand jury that an Iraq intelligence leak to the Times was authorized by none other than President Bush himself. Not that this surpises us — someone's got to get the press behind this war, and nothing melts Judith Miller like Bush's big, blue eyes. But what's particularly horrifying is that this not-really-illegal intelligence leak, supposedly OK'd by the big guy, lead to the eventual disclosure of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

Because we'd hate to disappoint George Clooney's publicist by not giving you the chance to locate and physically harm famous people, we thought we'd pass along this exciting report from Gawker's northernmost correspondent:

The Observer's aggressively bespectacled Gabe Sherman wins the Gawky gold star for delivering the answer we've been looking for: The piece Judy Miller is working on for The Atlantic is about Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi. It was assigned months ago, Sherman reports, before James Bennet was named editor, and it's unclear whether Bennet plans to run the piece. He does, however, have a working telephone.

We're totally digging this we-ask-you-answer thing. Today brings answers to two more of our outstanding queries. Outstanding!

Lately we've been kind of into this whole ask-for-things idea. (It's new for us, and apparently it works.) So yesterday we reported the rumor that Judy Miller is working on a piece for The Atlantic, and we asked for your help. "Anyone have more confirmation that Judy's working for The Atlantic?" we queried. "On what? To be published when?" You can imagine our excitement, then, to find on the Observer's Media Mob sorta-blog today the headline, "Miller Back From Middle East, Writing for Atlantic." Gabe Sherman reports:

Last we heard from Judy Miller — or, at least, the last time we were paying attention to Judy Miller — she was skulking away from the Times and promising, in her negotiated farewell letter to the editor, to continue fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. "In my future writing," she vowed, "I intend to call attention to the internal and external threats to our country's freedoms — Al Qaeda and other forms of religious extremism, conventional and W.M.D. terrorism, and growing government secrecy in the name of national security — subjects that have long defined my work." But the question has been: For whom would so do this writing? Then we received an email from a reliable source:

• Judy Miller finally figured out why her Times career went to hell: It was the bloggers' fault. Of course it was. [Slate]
• Six weeks later, ABC anchor Bob Woodruff is released from the hospital to continue his rehabilitation elsewhere. [ABCNews]
• And 18 months later, NYT researcher Zhao Yan is released from prison after the Chinese government withdraws state-secrets charges. [NYT]
• Jon Friedman's doesn't love Mike Wallace. [MW]
• Coming soon: Isaac Mizrahi: The Magazine? [WWD (second item)]

• More subpoenas for the Times and Judy Miller, this time from Scooter Libby. Fun! [NYT]
• Times reporters win $25k Harvard prize for domestic-spying story. But, of course, the Bushies already knew that. [E&P]
• Newspapers are not, in fact, dying. Apparently it only seems that way. [WSJ]
• Advertisers hate men. [Medialife]

• As Fairchild is integrated into Conde Nast, portraits of the Fairchilds go, a fancy cafeteria arrives, and garlic is banned. [NYO]
• Absolute mag might live again, that to Realtor William B. May. At the very least, the already-completed next issue will be distributed. Oh, and that trademark thing the Post was all worried about last week? Not a big deal, May says. [NYP (second item)]
• ABC's Bob Woodruff still has a face for TV, his brother reports. The talking for TV? Less so. [NYDN]
• Judy Miller admits she was wrong! OK, the other Judy Miller, and about moving to New York. [Romenesko]
• Maer Roshan delays your plane. [Media Mob/NYO]

No, no, it's a different one. And: Yes, yes, it must suck for her these days.

Missile Dick Chicks [Official site]

• Who'd have thunk it? CBS Evening News sees rising ratings, happy staff. [LAT]
• The newsweeklies are cutting their overseas bureaus and — stop the presses! — media do-gooder types think this is bad. [IHT]
• Judy Miller's tough post-Times life: Joining David Brooks on a panel at the Four Seasons in Palm Beach. [South Florida Sun-Sentinel]
• In honor of the Dr. King, Simon Dumenco confesses his dream: That one day bloggers and newspaper reporters will join hands together and sing "We Shall Overcome." [Ad Age]

• James Risen's State of War — the impending publication of which forced the Times to finally publish the domestic-spying story — also makes Judy Miller's WMD excuses fall apart. [NYO]
• Still, the domestic-spying articles were better than the book is, says Jack Shafer. [Slate]
• Lunatic talking head Bill O'Reilly promises to "get into the lives" of Bill Keller and Frank Rich if (perhaps imagined) Times attacks on him continue. We really hope he does, because Keller would be so much sexier if he were a little less earnest. [Media Matters]
• Yesterday was CBS's first day as its own company. Well, except for all those all days as its own company. [WP]
• New Oxygen show features middle-aged women partying with college guys. We're pretty sure we saw that same show on Cinemax once. [NYT]
• Not-quite-victorious — but still really good — GMA staffers get cheesy commemorative trinkets. [NYO]
• Jon Friedman is clearly smoking crack, as proved by (among other things) his prediction that MSNBC will beat CNN and Fox News in 2006. [MW]
• Latest Q-ratings study shows Katie Couric isn't as popular as she used to be. Clearly not in the polling sample: Les Moonves. [WWD]

Judith Miller, dressed for an arctic expedition, on the subway to Times Square yesterday afternoon, when the high temperature was 50 degrees. "My sources told me it would be very cold," Miller explained later. "And I still believe they might be proved right."

Mr. Fed-Ex just came by with the most fantastic Christmas holiday gift from our friends at The Smoking Gun: a tasty bottle of Valerie Flame Hot Sauce (click to enlarge).