One of the only (perhaps THE only) reasons that I even bother to read the Washington Post is now gone. This is a great loss for the Post as well as its readers.

Froomkin is a real journalist and op ed writer. He's criticized both Bush and Obama in more honest terms than the likes of Krauthammer, Kristol or any of the other right wing propagandists that write for the Post. The corporate culture of our media is toxic at this point. I'm finding that I look more and more either to overseas sources of information or the web. Are they really so unable to see the bias of their editorial pages and their unwillingness to support strong voices on the left?

UPDATE (3:50pm): Washington Post Media Communications Director Kris Coratti tells POLITICO:

I think the easiest way to put it is that our editors and research teams are constantly reviewing our columns, blogs and other content to make sure we're giving readers the most value when they are on our site while balancing the need to make the most of our resources. Unfortunately, this means that sometimes features must be eliminated, and this time it was the blog that Dan Froomkin freelanced for washingtonpost.com

2009: Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, "for his eloquent columns on the 2008 presidential campaign that focus on the election of the first African-American president, showcasing graceful writing and grasp of the larger historic picture."

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They got enough commentators and when was the last time loser Froomkin was on MSNBC, Frontline or Hardballs With Tweety?

The Post has not merely intertwined its editorial stance with the positions of the Republican Party: it is now adopting their business model. They both seek to avoid antagonizing an ever-shrinking pool of subscribers/believers by exiling the impure.

Do they really not understand the end game that such a strategy ordains?

Last one to leave the Republican Party, please turn out the lights at the Post.

Ari Fleischer, Norm Coleman, or another F#$^ing stupid neocon idiot.

That's just like being attacked w/ a machete in Caracas.

Now that Dan Froomkin is gone,

the only criticism of Obama in the MSM will be coming from "those crazy George Bush lovers who nearly ruined the country, who were voted out by you, the viewers, and who are now desperately trying to smear Obama, regain power, and finish turning America into a fascist state."

I emailed Dan Froomkin a few years ago, back when his White House column was categorized as news and analysis. I asked him about that very designation, because his piece was very opinionated. He wrote back to express his feelings that what he was doing was news, but there must have been an internal battle at the Post too, because it was soon switched to opinion.

You can imagine that Froomkin had philosophical differences with editors about that change, and that it probably created acrimony.

If you want a crusade, go after Krauthammer. That guy is an evil genius. I actually think he means well, but man is he misguided by anger and hate. He's like Darth Vader. Someone needs to bring him away from the dark side.

Their loss. And the aged news wonders what's wrong. He'll be fine--probably even do better. Salon would be wise to snap him up.

I guess I'm late to this story but, can anyone here tell me just what, exactly, was the Post's official reason for his termination?

-- NYShooter

I suppose it's entirely too optimistic to hope that the once-but-no-more left-leaning New York Times will sign Froomkin and get rid of Ross Douthat, so we can stop being subjected to his addled musings about how to make women happy, and all the other santorum that spews from his blog-they-now-call-a-column, or the Bible-thumping Nicholas Kristof, or even Maureen Dowd, who's just gotten too weird to read.

I posted this on the previous thread, but thought it would be worth it repost...

To prove that Froomkin was "stupid" on the "ticking time bomb" scenario, Krappy produced this example of a real-world TTB:

On October 9, 1994, Israeli Cpl. Nachshon Waxman was kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists. The Israelis captured the driver of the car. He was interrogated with methods so brutal that they violated Israel's existing 1987 interrogation guidelines, which themselves were revoked in 1999 by the Israeli Supreme Court as unconscionably harsh. The Israeli prime minister who ordered this enhanced interrogation (as we now say) explained without apology: "If we'd been so careful to follow the [1987] Landau Commission [guidelines], we would never have found out where Waxman was being held."

Who was that prime minister? Yitzhak Rabin, Nobel Peace laureate. The fact that Waxman died in the rescue raid compounds the tragedy but changes nothing of Rabin's moral calculus.

Firstly, this is the silliest example of the ticking time bomb scenario one could imagine since that scenario is generally given much more traction than it should have BY REPRESENTING THE HUMAN STAKES IN DOZENS, HUNDREDS OR EVEN THOUSANDS. Secondly, there's a reason Krauthammer was the only idiot to use this as a successful example of the "ticking time bomb". Such torture techniques only rendered enough data to get the target of the rescue killed. The Israelis did not seem to know, for example, that HAMAS had express instructions to shoot the soldier if there were any rescue attempts.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wosold024804627jul02,0,1051004.story

GAZA CITY - The kidnappers of the young Israeli soldier knew that his comrades would be searching for him, and that the end would come quickly if the Israelis found their safe house.

So the commanders of the four Palestinian militants holding the terrified soldier gave them special instructions, a former Hamas leader recalled Friday, describing the 1994 kidnapping of Cpl. Nachshon Waxman.

"The order was, 'If there's any movement around the house, your first step is to kill the soldier. ... Don't think about your life. Your first step is to kill the soldier,'" said Imad Falouji, who was one of the Hamas leaders negotiating in secret with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. "From then on, one man stood by the soldier 24 hours."

When Israel located Waxman, its commandos stormed the safe house in the West Bank and began blasting the reinforced doors that stood between him and them. By the time they reached the second-floor room where the Israeli-American was tied to a chair, he had a bullet hole in his neck and one in his chest. He was dead.

If there had been numerous hostages, or if indeed, the scenario involved hundreds or thousands as it often is depicted [and this is a completely fair characterization since its advocates tout it as a one-size fits all example], Krauthammer's example today would be viewed as a complete failure of torture! Imagine touting techniques that quite counter-productively actually pulled the trigger that the terrorists had cocked! Stupid wouldn't cover it.

In fact, the only way to succesfully save the life of the soldier, given the fact that HAMAS operatives were instructed to shoot him even though it would cost them their lives, WAS TO NEGOTIATE WITH THE TERRORISTS!

AND THEY FIRED FROOMKIN!