What Happened to the Privilege in Privileged Communications?

In defending his decision to cooperate with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and reveal TIME journalist Matthew Cooper's source of information about the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Norman Pearlstine, editor-in-chief of Time Inc. said (TIME, July 11, 2005):

"when the courts rule that a citizen's obligation to testify before a grand jury takes precedence over the press's First Amendment right, to me, going against that finding would put us above the law."

That, of course, confuses the issue. The rules of confidentiality which protect a journalist's source, a lawyer's client, a priest's confessional penitent, and a partner's spouse are all designed to protect the nature of the relationship despite legitimate societal needs voiced by the government and the courts. If society could benevolently determine when to honor and when to void these relationships, there would be no need for rules about them.

Unfortunately, Pearlstine is not alone in his confusion about the case. It's hard to understand why nobody's on Robert Novak's tail since he actually outed Plame. And why is Judith Miller of the New York Times in jail when TIME revealed the source? Is she really standing on principle? Or is her source -- for work she never published -- different from Matthew Cooper's? And is Novak's different still, and has he revealed it in his cooperative testimony? And with all fingers pointing to the master puppeteer, Karl Rove, as "the source," why is nobody bringing him before a grand jury?

I didn't pose that last question seriously. Would an administration that thinks the Freedom of Information Act means the freedom to coerce information by any act -- the same administration whose mastery of double-speak is epitomized in the naming of the Patriot Act -- would that administration allow the puppeteer to get caught up in his own strings?