You have a problem with the Crooks & Liars link on the live site. A 403 Forbidden error comes up when I try to click on the link.

And, your text regarding Bill Kristal is not clear in your post. If a reader didn't know that he has been hired by the Times, they wouldn't understand your post. Something must have happened with some of the copy when you posted it.

I was thinking the same thing with the Kristol announcement - that it may have pushed me passed the point of caring about the mainstream press, and particularly the NYT - the last paper a progressive could somewhat trust - and their survival. The MSM still does the heavy investigative lifting and reporting, but as for guiding public opinion and challenging conventional wisdom and power, it's the blogs that now lead the way. I really don't understand the Times' thinking here - they gain nothing adding another dubious right-wing voice, and much to lose in terms of support. Baffled....

re: "The main thing the Times has, as a brand -- and believe me, it's a lot -- is its association with and dedication to the truth."

Two words: Judith Miller

The prosecution rests.

Absolutely right Joan re Times and Willy (Wrong Again) Kristol. A moronic decision. The paper's brand is steadily eroding.

that the one misguided decision Bhutto made that left a lasting impact on America is being omitted from her resume by all of the media, not just the mainstream.

How can we deal with the Taliban if we don't understand the complete story of their birth?

The Taliban's birth had a lot to do with Pakistan's attitude towards Afghanistan.

We need to be realistic about Pakistan's attitude towards Afghanistan, especially now.

...about Kristol and the NYT.

I've been a subscriber for nearly two decades.

Enough is enough. My cancellation surely won't bring the paper to its knees, but I'm done enabling this sort of crappy infotainment disguised as journalism.

I couldn't agree more with jlamkin, above, that this move marks the Times' further degradation into the realm of "infotainment" rather than informed commentary.

Editorial pages should not be platforms for paid hackery. It's bad enough that the paper's political reporting tends to focus on horse-racing. When you hire commetators solely based on their political positions--he's the mister right to balance our left, or vice versa--what gets lost is one core function of journalism: to provide the public with real, honest debate.

What we have here is simply the contest of paid flunkies--with the left, as it were, not particularly well represented.

I should also say that as a person who'd rather not place himself on a left-right spectrum, but rather recognize the complexity of the world and the need for complex, often eclectic solutions, I am completely unserved by this practice of hiring hacks.

---

On my definition of the term "hack": One might argue that as a hereditary member of the conservative power structure, Kristol has more power than the term 'hack' implies. True enough. He doesn't need to shill for a living or influence. He could have power and money without prostituting himself.

That said, he's still a hack in my book because he long ago sold out his integrity as a thinker by embracing an inflexible, unrealistic, and dishonest rhetoric over the problem of grappling for the truth. Just why he did so--for power, money, or the hobgoblin of consistency--I don't know, but his intellectual collapse before a complex world is what makes him a hack in m book. That I think this son of privilege did so for power and money only makes it worse in my eyes.

I would correct your statement that lumps DailyKos in with "objective" blogging. I am a fan of the site, but have been deeply turned off by it as of late. Markos posts blatantly anti-Hillary blogs often. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/15/224112/84

At one point he did have to provide an update apologizing for an erroneous post about her, but it hasn't stopped him from acting very condescending to DailyKos Hillary supporters, or making them feel unwelcome on the site. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/12/17/11329/780

I've read many comments left by objective Democratic voters who wonder what crimes Hillary has committed to Kos that ejects statements from him such as, "Actually, her Iran vote made this clear, and is the main reason she is unacceptable as our nominee."

I have yet to see him hold Obama to the same standard as he co-sponsored a bill in April '07 labeling the Iran Revolutionary Guard terrorists ("The Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007") which effectively provided the same result as the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, or Edwards who was on the Senate Intelligence committee when he voted "yes" on the same Iraq resolution Hillary did (and therefore had more knowledge that the intelligence was unconfirmed, but still voted yes).

Many of the criticisms leveled at her are the things I've read over and over, so there are no new revelations about her. He has just jumped the shark regarding how he views her and I see him as rabid as other republicans out there.

It's been very disheartening and disappointing to watch this unfold on his popular website, nonetheless. I cannot understand why liberals would attack another liberal who has not displayed , in any comparable way, the wretchedness that republicans have over the last decade, yet they will conflate her behavior to that level all the time.

p.s.

The NYT move to hire is Kristol, is just bizarre. He has been proven to be blatantly delusional and an incorrect judge on everything, so he's given valuable space in the "paper of record" to opine? Why are they rewarding him? Do we Democrats have some disease where we allow Bush & Co. to get away with this stuff and still win something?

Wen Ho Lee

Remember this?

http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2000/09/21/nyt/

Sorry, everyone, there is an html coding error that bollixed the middle of the piece and the transitions from bloggers to Kristol. Will fix shortly.