It's just your average Sunday in the New York Times, still lost in trying to evaluate the Reagan legacy, in this case, the new Richard Reeves book. An old MRC colleague e-mailed to note that in the Times Book Review, Adrian Wooldridge of the Economist, a man who's written a book about the conservative movement in America, still manages to accuse Ronald Reagan of being a wild-eyed lunatic:

Reagan's imagination was fired by ideology but tempered by pragmatism. He was a product of the conservative revival of the 1950's and 60's, a revival that was driven by a combination of free-market enthusiasm and antitax fervor, superpatriotism and anti-Communism, religious revivalism and, to be frank, wild-eyed lunacy, and he possessed a rare gift for rendering conservative ideas into emotion-laden rhetoric. Even as a senior citizen in the White House, Reagan was a sucker for far-out conservative ideas: from the "space lasers" that were being championed in Human Events (which his aides tried to prevent him from reading) to Arthur Laffer's supply-side economics.

Here's a real puzzler that I hope I am wrong about:

Am I the only person noticing a silence, bordering on total, from the big lefty blogs?

There are plenty of examples in history of the Left looking the other way when oppression rears its ugly head. Just one -- the non-reactions of presidential candidates Gene McCarthy and George McGovern in 1968 when the Russian tanks rolled into Czechoslovakia and crushed the Prague Spring, as documented by Evans & Novak in their column just before that year's Democratic convention (sorry, I don't have a link, but I remember it like it was yesterday; e-mail me if you have a link).

If I am correct, the big left blogs' ignorance of the Google censorship story may be yet another instance of "see no evil" when it's perpetrated in the name of a Communist government.

Writing in today's Chicago Tribune, author and former Tribune political writer Jon Margolis begins his "Tribal America defends right to ignore facts" by flatly asserting: "The flap over intelligent design poses a special quandary for us Americans. Our puzzlement has nothing to do with the merits of the intelligent design argument. There are none."

Having established where he's coming from, Margolis then moves on to criticize rock celebrity Ted Nugent for criticizing actress Pam Anderson: "Aha! An object for the anger, the artificially enhanced TV star who has supported People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an animal-rights group that opposes hunting." Three sentences later, Margolis states that "there is no visible anti-hunting movement."

ABC News is reporting that Bob Woodruff, one of the just-named anchors of "World News Tonight," who has traveled intensely in the new job, has been seriously injured in Iraq, as was his cameraman. The tone does not sound good. It would be a good day for prayers.

"World News Tonight" co-anchor Bob Woodruff and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were seriously injured and are in serious condition after their convoy was hit by an improvised explosive device in Taji, Iraq, today.

Woodruff and Vogt are undergoing surgery at the U.S. military hospital in Balad. Both men suffered head injuries. Woodruff sustained shrapnel wounds and Vogt was hit by shrapnel in the head and suffered a broken shoulder.

If there was any doubt that the New York Times thoroughly despised President Bush, the last shreds were erased this morning. In an editorial entitled “Spies, Lies, and Wiretaps,” the Times presented a case against the Bush administration with similar gusto as it might attack an organized crime family and it’s Mafia Don. Assuming it had already received an indictment, the Times then prosecuted its case, and acted as both judge and jury to seal a conviction.

The piece began with a subtle reference to Woodward and Bernstein’s famous Watergate expose while sexistly ignoring the female members of the administration:

“A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.”

After these opening remarks, the prosecution built its case. It began by discrediting what it perceived was lie number one:

Remember the good old days, when Democrats and their friends in the MSM would regularly bash Republican administrations for doing business with less-than-democratic, even unsavory foreign governments and their leaders?

From the Shah of Iran, to Marcos in the Phillipines, Suharto in Indonesia, Pinochet in Chile and a variety of strong men, authoritarians and tinpots in between, liberals lambasted Republican presidents for "coddling dictators" and doing nothing to promote freedom and democracy.

It seems the MSM has overhauled its ordre du jour [to use a phrase one might hear in, oh, Davos, Switzerland]. At least when it comes to those 'furriners,' could it be that Democrats and their MSM buds suddenly aren't so keen on . . . democracy anymore?

Normally, liberals and other assorted leftists love to make a display about how much they care for the indigent; however, it seems now in France such gestures of goodwill are only acceptable if the meals appeal to the dietary peculiarities of every immigrant falling off the boat.

Groups linked to the "extreme right" in France are offering pork soup to their countrymen needing a helping hand. Since certain religious groups don't consume pig products --- particularly Muslims --- the eleemosynary is being denounced as "racist".

However, the charities point out the soup is being offered to anyone that wants it. If Muslims decide to decline the offer, that is their choice.

It is bad enough that governments of the West are allowing their borders to be overrun by alien cultures and belief systems. Now we are being told what kind of charity we are to extend to those we might decide to take pity on.

Buried a little inside my Prince William weekly section of the Washington Post on Thursday was a story by Michael D. Shear touting the boldness of new Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, who will provide the Democratic response to President Bush's State of the Union this week. The headline is "Kaine Going Boldly Where Few Dare to Tread." This is becoming a habit. Remember Shear is the same "objective" reporter who touted Gov. Mark Warner with the recent front-pager headlined "Warner's Triumphant Legacy No Easy Feat: Bipartisan-Minded Governor Broke Tax Vow But Revived Va." Shear is amazed that Kaine is taking on the developers' lobby with slow-growth talk, and...