Every once in a while I don't like the NY Times

It's really true. Forever liberal that I am (and you can google hdhouse + liberal to find the first of 15 pages of entires...and for a hoot do hdhouse + cheney), the NYTimes has nearly always proven up to be the best newspaper in the World and frankly you have to be nuts not to include it in factual reading.

Where the grey lady looses me is when they editorialize on protecting members of the press like they did this morning.  Because the press doesn't have some imagined protections so their reporters are virtually immune from retribution, they feel they can't do their job.  What bull. 

There was a time when being an investigative journalist was a high calling and those who were in the profession were highly esteemed and admired.  It was an era of the Woodwards and Breslins and gumshoe digging to get all the story.  It was an era when Time Magazine didn't look like Hollywood Extra and read like Ned in the First Reader.  Journalism has been so dumbed down and gotten so lazy that to schill for an excuse like "we need more protection" falls on deaf ears.  How dare they?

Bush and Cheney and Iraq and the loss of freedoms through the Patriot Act would NOT have happened if papers like the NYT had gone out and gotten to work, dug, prodded, demanded, and when thwarted gone out again and again until they got it right and published it.

It's 12 degrees out. The wind is out of the NE at 30 and the trees are solid white on one side and I have to walk the dog so its just not a good time to get me pissed off.