I’ve gotta jump into this reporters-going-to-jail thing for a second. It’s too bad that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is being a total prick and urging that Time reporter Matthew Cooper and the New York Times reporter Judith Miller be sent to the slammer for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating the outing of Valerie Plame as a covert C.I.A. operative. It’s a little bit wimpy for Cooper and Miller to ask to be sent to a couple of summer-camp prisons, but it’s still incredibly shitty of Fitzgerald to say no, fuck you, do your time with hard-core cons in a jail somewhere around D.C. Today’s New York Times story reports that a Judge Hogan held the reporters in civil contempt last October and sentenced them to up to 18 months in jail. These sentences were suspended while the reporters appealed, however, and it now looks like the maximum time the reporters will face is 120 days, as the term of the grand jury will expire in October. That’s it? Jimmy Cagney or George Raft could do four months standing on their heads in Sing Sing or San Quentin. On the other hand, Fitzgerald has suggested in a recent filing that criminal prosecution is also a possibility. “The court should advise Miller that if she persists in defying the court’s order that she will be committing a crime,” he wrote in a 21-page briefing about Miller’s position. “Miller and The New York Times appear to have confused Miller’s ability to commit contempt with a legal right to do so.”