Bill Keller

Bring Back Ken Starr

keller.blogs.nytimes.com — Republicans are howling for President Obama to name a special prosecutor to investigate the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of Tea Party groups. The president should call their bluff. The president should announce that he has told the Justice Department to appoint an independent investigator with bulldog instincts and bipartisan credibility.

What Bill Keller Misses in Urging President Obama to Appoint a Special Counsel in the IRS Matter

lawfareblog.com — Bill Keller of the NYT urges President Obama to order the Justice Department "to appoint an independent investigator with bulldog instincts and bipartisan credibility" to fully examine the IRS imbroglio and determine "whether the treatment of conservative groups seeking special tax status was (a) a ham-handed shortcut by overworked and badly guided bureaucrats, (b) a systematic persecution of political opponents, or (c) some combination of the two."

Bring Back Ken Starr

keller.blogs.nytimes.com — Republicans are howling for President Obama to name a special prosecutor to investigate the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of Tea Party groups. The president should call their bluff. The president should announce that he has told the Justice Department to appoint an independent investigator with bulldog instincts and bipartisan credibility.

How to Legalize Pot

nytimes.com — THE first time I talked to Mark Kleiman, a drug policy expert at U.C.L.A., was in 2002, and he explained why legalization of marijuana was a bad idea. Sure, he said, the government should remove penalties for possession, use and cultivation of small amounts.

Mandela Fades as South Africa Battles Over Legacy

nytimes.com — JOHANNESBURG - "Smile!" the visitor implored, an edge of forced bonhomie in his voice, as he held up a cellphone camera to take a snapshot. But the face of Nelson Mandela, the 94-year-old leader of the struggle against apartheid who became South Africa's beloved first black president, remained impassive as stone.

Dark Heritage - NYTimes.com

nytimes.com — Last week the Heritage Foundation delivered a report claiming that legalizing undocumented immigrants will create a more-or-less permanent underclass of benefit-sucking, wage-lowering, economy-crippling parasites, with a cost to American taxpayers of - megaphone, please - SIX POINT THREE TRILLION DOLLARS! The report was promptly denounced, not least by reputable conservative economists, for example here and here and here.

Syria Is Not Iraq

nytimes.com — IN the search for an American response to the civil war in Syria, the favorite guidebook seems to be our ill-fated adventure in Iraq. We have another brutal Middle East autocrat holding power on behalf of a sectarian minority. We have another dubious cast of opposition factions competing for foreign patronage.

Erasing History in the Internet Era - NYTimes.com

nytimes.com — One of my favorite coffee-table books is an odd volume called "The Commissar Vanishes," a portfolio of doctored photographs from Stalin's Russia. When Stalin purged one of his fellow Bolsheviks, the comrade who fell from favor was duly cropped or airbrushed out of official photographs. "The Commissar Vanishes" juxtaposes the before and after.

Jill Abramson in Politico: What Dylan Byers got wrong about the NYTimes executive editor.

slate.com — Hey Dylan, that story you wrote in Politico, about New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson-did you actually think that was interesting? Or that because you had the words turbulence and Times in the headline it counted as buzzy? Well, you're wrong, Dylan. That story sucked. IT SUCKED. And I...

Jill Abramson and the wholly sexist narrative of the woman in power

guardian.co.uk — Happy newsrooms are all alike. Every unhappy newsroom is unhappy in its own way. The New York Times newsroom is unhappy because its editor is not very nice. Allegedly. This startling revelation comes from a piece posted on Politico yesterday that instantly lost the internet but gained fans at the NYT.