very simple

But to anyone who has tried to follow the jagged contours of Ahmed Chalabi’s connections to the Bush administration, Miller’s statement was a shocker. This piece of news hadn’t appeared in The Times that morning; it didn’t appear in The Times the next morning; as I write this column, on Friday, it still hasn’t appeared. A lengthy analysis of the election aftermath by reporter Dexter Filkins, published Tuesday, didn’t even hint of any current contact between Chalabi and the Bush administration.

He writes the critique in the larger context of how problematic it is to have reporters appearing on these chatfests, but Miller is clearly floating story that didn’t have the substance to make it into the Times (and given their WMD-related mea culpas over the past few months (hey! another Miller/Chalabi lovefest), that’s a really low bar).

And the excuse as to why the story hasn’t appeared in the paper of record? Jack Shafer at Slate has the excuse response:

Why isn’t it in the Times? Miller tells Matthews that she hasn’t talked to her newspaper and is "on vacation in Florida."

On vacation in Florida? She has the second-biggest Iraq story of the day (after the successful election) and vacation is keeping her from phoning in this scoop?!

But my favorite is Bill Keller’s response – apparently he won’t comment on anything Miller does because she’s under investigation in the Plame case. Even though this story has absolutely nothing to do with the Plame case. Who would have thought that repeated abuses of journalistic ethics, not to mention the Times’ own standards, would give a reporter even more carte blanche to float theories without any institutional repercussions. Wow.