While waiting on the 4 & 1/2 block long line of cars to get to the DMV inspection station, I listened to a discussion on NPR about the Miller-Cooper-Plame thing. One of the more interesting tidbits was the angriest and least sympathetic callers were liberals. They called Miller and Cooper White House lapdogs and whatnot. Part of this was clearly — and in some cases explicitly — a hangover of the Judith Miller/WMD reportage. But what was amusing and interesting was that these people didn’t seem to care or realize that Miller and Cooper did not do the White House’s bidding on the Plame affair — even according to the anti-Rovian conspiracy theories. Miller refused to write about Plame. Miller wrote about it after Novak and, if memory serves, not in necessarily White House-favorable terms. The reason this is interesting is it illustrates the utilitarianism of at least some liberals when it comes to first principles. There’s no way of proving this, but I cannot imagine that these callers would have taken the same position if Bill Clinton’s White House was the target.