Thursday Articles

Here are some interesting articles from US newspapers:

The LA Times Editorial compares the nomination of Harriet Miers with the marketing of New Coke. In other words - despite the efforts of the White House, it appears as though no one is taking their product seriously.

Another LA Times Editorial speaks about the lumber trade between the US and Canada, and pulls no punches when it says that current US policy is protectionist and against NAFTA guidelines. From my understanding, almost every nation that has signed a "free" trade agreement with the US has come away complaining that it is anything but free.

Tina Brown at the Washington Post paints a very sad picture of what is happenning at the New York Times in the light of the Judith Miller fiasco. Learning almost nothing from the Jayson Blair fiasco, it appears as though the paper's editors were unable or unwilling to control a reporter that was breaking every rule in the book when it came to truthful reporting. I think that one definite casuality of the Plame investigation will be the NYT, which, given their recent history of troubled reporting, is unlikely to recover in my opinion.

Despite the negative vibe surrounding the New York Times, I still read it and will link to interesting articles until it closes down. The Times' Editorial is very unimpressed with Harriet Miers. Less than three weeks into her nomination, it appears as though the mainstream media may have finally clicked with the basic idea that Miers is, well, just not good enough. Heavyweight topics like Roe vs. Wade have been bandied about, with many Evangelical conservatives backing her because they "know" her stance - but it appears as though a far simpler problem that Miers has is that she just doesn't come up to scratch.

Following on from this, a report from David Kirkpatrick from the New York Times indicates that Republican and Democratic senators from the Senate Judiciary Committee are thoroughly confused by Miers' answers to some questionaire they sent out. Apparently she didn't answer the questions well, so they've given her a second chance. This seems to confirm the idea that Miers is just totally unsuitable to be a Supreme Court Judge. In my opinion, the trouble surrounding Miers is not indicative of some complex political game set up by Bush to get someone else into SCOTUS, but a stupid and embarrassing mistake by a President who has got other things on his mind.