Investigative Reporting is not Stenography

So many mysteries. So little time.

The soap opera that is the New York Times continues to amaze me. How did the venerable old gray lady fall so low? Mysteries abound.

1. How did no one at the NYTimes see that Judith Miller had gone over the edge and had become the voicepiece of the Bush Administration's drive to war?
2. How did the NYTimes editors, already extremely nervous about a prior misuses of "unnamed sources," feel comfortable with Miller writing front page articles quoting unnamed sources justifying the alleged presence of WMDs (and at a time when there was considerable evidence to the contrary by sources GOING on record!)?
3. Why when the controversy broke out about Plame did the editors NOT demand to know who Miller's sources were, if indeed not review her notes?
4. And please tell me more about this more than chummy affair Miller has been having with the publisher of the NYTimes. Has no one on the NYTimes not felt compelled to say that perhaps the publisher is taking more than just an interest in this story? And indeed, is he blocking the investigation?

From former Timer David Halberstam:

"I think the paper has taken a terrible hit. I think it is shocking that this young woman who has been a known identified land mine for a long time seems to have guaranteed loyalty to the office of the Vice President of the United States more than to The New York Times."

It's time to let Judith Miller twist slowly in the wind. Show some gumption, NYTimes editors. Fire the bitch.