I wrote this on my own blog last month, and I am still not convinced it's false. This idea that the troops would be in danger started with the White House, and just as Glenn says we should take the president seriously when he says that he doesn't intend to leave Iraq, I think we have to take him seriously when he says that the troops would be in danger - because the president knows that he will put them in that danger.

Nonetheless, if Congress does not approve funds for W's Great Military Adventure, then he must withdraw the troops and bring them home. If Congress does not fund any executive branch policy that requires spending money, then that activity cannot take place. The conservative elite has been trying to work around this since Iran-Contra, but they've always been wrong, as several felony convictions have proven.

Let me repeat that: if Congress does not fund the war, there is no war. The president would have to end the military's involvement in Iraq. But the president has indicated, repeatedly, for several weeks, that he has no intention of doing that under any circumstances, ever. He keeps saying that if Congress doesn't appropriate the money exactly the way he demands, then the troops will be in danger.

What I don't understand is why Democrats and the media are not listening to what the president is saying. He's saying, as plainly as he says anything, that if Congress refuses to fund his war, he will leave the troops in Iraq with no funding and no supplies. If that means a tenfold or even a hundredfold increase in casualties, then President Bush is not only ready for that, but eager to blame it on Congress.

Remember Donald Rumsfeld? "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had?" They are bound and determined to keep the troops in Iraq forever, and if Congress won't fund them and thousands more of them die, they might regret that, but they clearly think it is Congress's fault, not theirs.

George W. Bush has no intention of withdrawing troops from Iraq even if Congress deauthorizes the military effort, much less if Congress simply cuts off funding. He does not care how many extra American lives that would cost, and he has said so in his own tortured English at every opportunity.

Why isn't anyone listening to him?

I can't express in words how much I hope I'm wrong about this, but Mr. Decider guy clearly thinks that deployment of troops is his choice, and that if Congress refuses to fund them, any bad consequences are on Congressional shoulders.

If the troops will be in danger without funding, it's because the president will leave them in that danger. If you want a frame to change the discussion, try that one.

As a writer, I'd been nominally in favor of a formal reporter's shield law for quite some time, but covering the Apple vs. "bloggers-who-aren't-bloggers" (they're professional journalists) case changed my mind, for two simple reasons.

• A shield law exempts "journalists" either from responding to subpoenas for compelled testimony, or from the consequences of failure to honor those subpoenas. People who are not journalists must, of course, still comply with subpoenas.
• In this Internet age, when anyone can become a "journalist" with a free blog, or at the very least perform the functions of "journalism" from time to time, everyone would be covered by the shield, and subpoenas would effectively die as a way to compel testimony from anyone.

If a law is going to grant a privilege to a specific group of people, the law must define who those people are, or the "privilege" belongs to everyone. That means a shield law must, by definition, "define" journalism, or else anyone can claim the privilege at almost any time. Even if you never "reported" anything, perhaps you intended to, and your conversations are your "reporter's notes," for example.

In the Apple case, the California shield law includes a specific lists of jobs and tasks considered "reporting," and Internet writing was not among them. The legislature has amended the law in the Internet age but did not add Internet writing to the protected list. The trial court found that compelling; the appeals court said Internet writing should have been protected and acted as if it was. But again, this begs the question: if anyone can be a reporter, who would still be compelled to testify under a shield law?

Until that's worked out, it's a very difficult concept to support, unless we're completely giving up on the courts' power to compel truthful testimony.

It's probably the first time anyone with a microphone has asked.