Social Security reform -- a tactic?

Josh Marshall calls out Jim McCrery for flipflopping on Social Security privatization. I cannot find the post, but a couple of weeks ago the Duke read a warning that Bush' s Social Security push was all a plot to get Democrats to say they were for tax-free savings for everyone, and then eliminate capital gains and dividend taxes. Is anyone else worried that McCrery's tone implies that exact strategy?

To wit (emphasis added):

"I'm convinced the president's approach is worth pursuing in the legislative process."

... and

"I had not thought of the policy rationale they described yesterday."

If he had changed his mind on the President's specific proposal, he would have said his concerns were addressed. Instead, he said exactly what the Duke would have said privately if his objective was to use the President's proposal as a legislative ruse. Folks, Republicans are smart enough strategically to pull something like this. Anyone else pick up any similar clues?

Pat Fitzgerald and the First Amendment

The Duke has followed U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's prosecution of the Valerie Plame case for two reasons: (1) the Duke knows personally how sensitive covert identities are, and is rip-roaring outraged at those who blew her cover; and (2) the Duke is a big fan of Mr. Fitzgerald's tenacity on terrorism and Illinois corruption cases.

But Fitzgerald's subpoenas to reporters have riled big media:

The Prosecutor Never Rests (washingtonpost.com): "His assiduous demands for answers from journalists alarms [sic] critics who believe he has created the greatest confrontation between the government and the press in a generation.

The Times editorial page has hammered Fitzgerald, saying that 'in his zeal to compel reporters to disclose their sources, Mr. Fitzgerald lost sight of the bigger picture.' His demand that Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper be forced to testify prompted the paper to call the case 'a major assault' on relationships between reporters and their secret sources, the very essence of reporting on the abuse of power.

Fitzgerald is too politic to talk back, at least before he has wrapped up the case. A federal appeals panel in Washington is due to rule any day on whether the reporters must testify, and his work on the leak investigation is not done. But he appears to wonder what the fuss is all about. He says freely that he is zealous, a term he translates as passion within limits."

But in a case like this, doesn't a prosecutor have an obligation to pursue the facts as far as the courts will allow? I would much prefer to have a court evaluate this issue than simply expect prosecutors to say "hands-off" of all reporters, all the time. It strikes me that Fitzgerald is bending over backwards to be quite focused and limited in his information requests. In somewhat uncharted waters, I want the prosecutor to make the best case for getting the information, the media to make the best case against it, and the judges to rule. That's what we pay these folks for.