This past Independence Day was anything but for Judith Miller, not to mention Martha Stewart! In the aftermath of the recent tragic bombings in London, the killing of Egypt’s new ambassador in Iraq, and the horrific crimes of the repeat sex offenders now on trial, don’t we all feel a lot safer now that Martha is sitting at home in Connecticut wearing an electronic ankle bracelet and Judith has been led from a District of Columbia courtroom in arm and leg shackles to a 70-sq.-ft. cell in the Alexandria Detention Center in Virginia?

Get this: Martha was sent to jail for lying about a crime that she was never charged with, and Judith was incarcerated for not revealing the sources of a story that she never wrote. What’s wrong with this picture!

We all know how Martha ended up where she is. But what exactly happened to Judith, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times? While just doing her job, she conducted interviews on who leaked the name of a C.I.A. operative to conservative syndicated columnist Robert Novak, an act which might have violated the federal Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. In July 2003, Novak printed that “Valerie Plame is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction,” noting that “two senior administration officials” told him that Plame had suggested sending her husband, retired U.S. diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, to Niger to determine if Iraq had tried to buy uranium in order to build weapons of mass destruction. Novak ruined a 20-year undercover career and discredited Wilson’s (unpaid) diplomatic mission as a nepotistic perk.

This was relevant because Wilson had just written an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times challenging the Bush Administration’s rationale for going to war, particularly the 2003 State of the Union Address claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Africa. He knew, firsthand, that statement was false. Political payback?

Both Miller, who never wrote a story, and Matthew Cooper, a Time reporter who did, were called to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the intelligence leak. Cooper had already testified once, when one source, I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, waived his confidentiality agreement. But he refused to reveal other sources, as did Miller. Both were found in contempt of court and sentenced to 120 days in jail (the time remaining in the term of the grand jury), when the Supreme Court refused to hear their final appeal on June 27.

At the 11th hour, Cooper’s employer, Time, Inc., decided not to defy the court order and handed over his interview notes. He also received another “express personal waiver” from a source (alleged to be Administration Deep Politico Karl Rove), permitting him to testify and thus avoid imprisonment.

Sending a person to jail should not be a popularity contest. Novak, who first revealed the agent’s identity in print, has neither been subpoenaed nor threatened with jail time, suggesting that his sources have also released him from pledges of confidentiality and that he, too, has provided information to the grand jury.

But the “prickly” Judith Miller, known to have a “polarizing personality,” and employed by the Democratic-leaning New York Times (whose journalists have had difficulty obtaining White House press credentials and a seat on the 2004 Bush campaign plane), received no such “express personal waiver” from her sources. Considered by some to be tough, aggressive, and competitive, Miller admitted in a recent New York Times interview, “I do have sharp elbows. I do tend to be aggressive, and that does set people off. I don’t think one can survive in places like Washington or The Times without being pushy.”

Hmmm… remember when Martha Stewart told Larry King, “I have probably forgotten to pat the back of someone, or [not] said thank you, enough times. I wish I were just the nicest, nicest, nicest person on Earth. But if I were a man, no one would say I was arrogant.” If you’re unlikable, it’s easier to turn that key.

Forty-nine states have shield laws that protect journalists from having to reveal their sources, but there is no federal law that protects Judith Miller in this federal investigation. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of The New York Times, said in a recent statement: “There are times when the greater good of our democracy demands an act of conscience. I sincerely hope that now Congress will move forward on federal shield legislation so that other journalists will not have to face imprisonment for doing their jobs.”

Between now and the end of October, think often of Judith Miller as she chooses jail in defense of our rights to a free press and freedom of speech. Four months is a long time to lose one’s liberty, no matter how noble the cause. Even Martha, ensconced in her luxe environs, has said that confinement is “horrendous.” If Richard Nixon’s dirty tricksters had done this to Woodward and Bernstein, they might have spent the Watergate investigation and an entire second Nixon term sitting in a federal prison, protecting Deep Throat.

As Frank Rich pointed out in a recent Op-Ed piece in The New York Times, “No reporter went to jail during Watergate. No news organization buckled like Time. No one instigated a war on phony premises. This is worse than Watergate.”

Remember what Judith Miller said as she was driven to her prison, past the Capitol and government buildings she used to cover, “How did it come to this?”