Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s 2,400-word front-page Friday New York Times profile of Republican candidate Newt Gingrich, “Gingrich Stuck to Caustic Path in Ethics Battles,” rehashed the standard liberal storyline about the former House Speaker’s aggressive stance against Democratic corruption, which eventually won Republicans the House of Representatives. (Plus a severely unflattering photo on the jump page of the former speaker from 1995 heading into a hearing on ethics complaints filed against him.)

As she has before, Stolberg suggested Gingrich was to blame for today’s current partisanship – “many fault him for erasing whatever civility once existed in the capital.” As if Gingrich’s attacks on Congressional Democratic leaders could be blamed for what liberal Democrats tried to do to Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991.

New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg took a cheap shot at Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann in Wednesday’s “Bachmann Says Severe Migraines Have Never Incapacitated Her” (notice how the print headline works in the danger words "severe" and "incapacitated") jumping off an anonymously sourced report from the Daily Caller on Monday alleging Bachmann had been “incapacitated” and “hospitalized” by migraines.

Stolberg emphasized disorders linked to migraines, including “work loss,” “depression,” and “fatigue,” loaded traits when it comes to questioning a candidate’s fitness for the office of the presidency. A search of Nexis and Google News suggests the Times is the sole newspaper that has so far linked migraines and depression in its Bachmann coverage.

Marcus Bachmann, husband to Minnesota congresswoman and G.O.P. presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, runs a Christian counseling center in Minnesota that has come under fire from liberals for allegedly promoting “reparative therapy” for homosexuals. Several days after a hidden-camera investigation from a gay activist group was played on ABC and NBC, the story was prominently displayed on the front page of the Sunday New York Times.

Washington reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg filed two stories from Minnesota, yet didn’t add much to the less-than-earth-shattering original revelations: “For Bachmann, Gay Rights Stand Reflects Mix of Issues and Faith.”

New York Times Washington reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg has fired two warning shots on consecutive days across Barack Obama’s left flank, regarding his hesitation to fully endorse gay marriage.

Wednesday’s “Obama’s Position on Gay Marriage Faces New Test” painted Obama in an “awkward” situation regarding his gay supporters. Stolberg twice shoe-horned in race-based arguments to challenge Obama’s position.

 

When President Obama’s guests arrive at the White House on Wednesday for a Gay Pride reception -- just days after New York became the largest state in the country to make same-sex marriage legal -- they will no doubt be in a mood to celebrate.

But for their host, who does not endorse same-sex marriage, it could be somewhat awkward.

Sex scandal double standards?

New York Times Washington reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg managed to write an entire story about the marital woes of potential Republican presidential candidates yet only vaguely glanced over President Bill Clinton, whose proven adultery and allegations of sexual harassment almost brought down his presidency and led to his impeachment.

A marital crisis in the thick of a campaign always requires an explanation. Thus did Hillary Rodham Clinton sit by her husband, Bill, for what seemed like an excruciating "60 Minutes" interview about his alleged infidelity -- an appearance that, in the eyes of many, helped save his 1992 presidential campaign (and foreshadowed unseemly aspects of his presidency).

 

Stolberg’s lead story for the Sunday Week in Review, "Marital Matters Of 2012," avoided the names "Paula Jones" and "Monica Lewinsky," but had plenty of details about Cheri Daniels, wife of Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, and Callista Gingrich, wife of Newt. She also completely omitted the fascinating infidelities of 2004 vice presidential Democratic nominee, and 2008 contender, John Edwards.

Rush mentioned this when he opened his show today, and it deserves a bit of graphic support.

Today's New York Times print edition has a headline at the top right which reads: "Obama's Economic View Is Rejected on World Stage" (captured here for future reference).

Ouch. But there's also a story about the story, specifically concerning its stinging headline.

A round-up of New York Times post-election bias:

Thursday's Times ran a special four-page analysis of the election results from all 50 states. There were seven mentions of “conservative” Republicans, a surprising six mentions of conservative Democrats, two mentions of fiscally conservative Democrats, and six mentions of conservative or right-wing locations, including two states, Utah and Wyoming, which had both shifted “even further to the right.” There were four additional uses of the “conservative” label within the 50-state rundown, for a total of 25 “conservative” or “right” labels.

In contrast, only one politician, Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, was labeled a “liberal” in the entire section, skipping over likely names like Jerry Brown in California and Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania, who were merely labeled Democrats. The Wisconsin entry provided three of the section’s grand total of four left-of-center labels. Yet even there a euphemism was used, as Wisconsin was called a “historically progressive state.” California was also called “a liberal state,” if only to demonstrate why it rejected Senate candidate Carly Fiorina’s “staunchly conservative, anti-abortion, pro-oil-drilling message.”

Also: A TimesCast clip Wednesday morning featured reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg ignoring the unpopularity of Obama-care that helped drive the big GOP win, implausibly arguing that Republican attempts to repeal the legislation would be seen as “gridlock” and thus be unpopular with voters.

Still more slanted coverage in the New York Times of the controversy over a proposed mosque at Ground Zero: First in Saturday's story by intelligence reporter Scott Shane, fretting that public opposition voiced to the speedy approval and building of a giant Islamic cultural center topped by a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero would somehow make radical Muslim extremists, who despise the very existence of America, hate the U.S. even more: "Anti-Islam Protest in U.S. Bolsters Extremists, Experts Say" (Note: This article was compiled from three separate articles prepared for Times Watch).

Some counterterrorism experts say the anti-Muslim sentiment that has saturated the airwaves and blogs in the debate over plans for an Islamic center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan is playing into the hands of extremists by bolstering their claims that the United States is hostile to Islam.

Opposition to the center by prominent politicians and other public figures in the United States has been covered extensively by the news media in Muslim countries. At a time of concern about radicalization of young Muslims in the West, it risks adding new fuel to Al Qaeda's claim that Islam is under attack by the West and must be defended with violence, some specialists on Islamic militancy say.

The New York Times prizes itself as the newspaper of record, as the very definition of prestige media. So it's a little shocking to see them spreading the latest headlines from the Globe supermarket tabloid. Sheryl Gay Stolberg's mournful story about Obama's "otherness" and how "Misperceptions Stick" about the president began:

Americans need only stand in line at the grocery checkout counter to glimpse the conspiracy theories percolating about President Obama. “Birthplace Cover-Up,” screams the current issue of the racy tabloid Globe. “Obama’s Secret Life Exposed!”

The article claims, without proof, that Mr. Obama uses a phony Social Security number as “part of an elaborate scheme to conceal that he is not a natural-born U.S. citizen.” Despite evidence to the contrary from Obama aides — they posted his birth certificate, from Hawaii, on the Internet during his presidential campaign — polls show that as many as one quarter of Americans still believe Mr. Obama was born outside the United States.

This must be more publicity for a Globe tabloid concoction than you'd see out of Fox News or the Rush Limbaugh program. But it's used to illustrate how the president is bedeviled by lies. Stolberg didn't seem to consider that the Globe and other supermarket tabloids also published stories about Laura Bush divorcing President Bush, of Bush is "back on the bottle," and so on. But that didn't seem to outrage the New York Times.

As President Obama struggled to step back from what the New York Times called a “strong defense” of the Ground Zero Mosque proposal, Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg felt the president’s pain in a Sunday "Political Memo" article, arguing that his shifting stands on the issue betray that this debate “is riskier for him than for his predecessors.” Stolberg wrote this is because his enemies want to live in a white, Christian-dominated country:

From the moment he took the oath of office, using his entire name, Barack Hussein Obama, as he swore to protect and defend the Constitution, Mr. Obama has personified the hopes of many Americans about tolerance and inclusion. He has devoted himself to reaching out to the Muslim world, vowing, as he did in Cairo last year, "a new beginning."

But his "new beginning" has aroused nervousness in some, especially those who disagree with his counterterrorism policies, or those more comfortable with a vision of America as a white and largely Christian nation, and not the pluralistic melting pot Mr. Obama represents.

The New York Times on Thursday picked through the sordid saga of Shirley Sherrod, fired from her post at the U.S. Department of Agriculture after a clip of a speech to a gathering of a rural chapter of the Georgia NAACP appeared to show her hostility toward a white farmer seeking assistance.

A full version of the speech shows that was a set-up to Sherrod's tale of racial reconciliation, though there are questions of how far her racial reconciliation really goes. That same speech reveals Sherrod accusing Republicans of being racist by opposing Obama and Obama-care, and Sherrod has gone on to accuse Fox News of using her as a "pawn" for its own reactionary, racist purposes.

Fox News didn't run a report on the controversy until after Sherrod had resigned under White House pressure and after the NAACP had issued a press release condemning Sherrod. Yet in "For Fired Agriculture Official, Flurry of Apologies and Job Offer," reported by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Shaila Dewan, and Brian Stelter, and written by Stolberg, the Times chose to blame a cabal of "right-wing Web sites" and Fox News for fostering the Sherrod scandal which led to her dismissal. As if Fox forced Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to do its right-wing bidding without ever actually running a single story on Sherrod until after her firing, when the point became moot.

The White House and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack apologized profusely and repeatedly on Wednesday to a black midlevel official for the way she had been humiliated and forced to resign her Agriculture Department job after a conservative blogger put out a misleading video clip that seemed to show her admitting antipathy toward a white farmer.

By the end of the day, the official, Shirley Sherrod, had gained instant fame and emerged as the heroine of a compelling story about race and redemption.

Kagan a 'Brilliant Woman...Who Is Also Very Funny and Warm and Witty'

"Let's not forget that Elena Kagan has been an academic. She is a brilliant woman. She's somebody who is also very funny and warm and witty, and I think Americans will see that when they-when she comes before the Senate today." -- Reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, on the June 28 edition of TimesCast, at nytimes.com.

 

Venezuela Dictator Chavez a 'Good-Hearted Man of the People'

"During 'South of the Border' Mr. Stone schmoozes with several left-wing political leaders, including his good buddy the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez; he takes Mr. Stone to his childhood home, where Mr. Chávez mounts a children's bike that collapses under him. Mr. Chávez comes across as a rough-hewn but good-hearted man of the people whose bullheaded determination is softened by a sense of humor. At a corn-processing factory, he jokes: 'This is where we build the Iranian atomic bomb. A corn bomb.' Ho, ho, ho." -- Movie critic Stephen Holden, in his June 25 review of Oliver Stone's left-wing documentary "South of the Border."

New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg reported this tidbit Tuesday from the opening day of confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan, Obama's nominee to replace Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court.

Democrats described her as a brilliant thinker with what Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York called "unprecedented practical experience."

Stolberg had expressed the same feelings about Kagan the day before, roughly two minutes into the Monday edition of TimesCast, a brief news preview that airs every weekday at nytimes.com.

Kagan is so "brilliant," gushed Stolberg, that she didn't even need help from White House staffers in preparing to face her Republican critics. Stolberg was confident the GOP would "have a tough time" confronting the "very funny and warm and witty" Kagan.

They will try to paint her as a partisan, as a political lawyer, as someone who is more interested in a politically driven agenda than in applying the law in an even-handed way to judicial cases. And they'll take her to task for never having been a judge. But I think they'll have a tough time.

President Obama provided some conservative belly laughs telling an audience of high school graduates in Kalamazoo, Michigan: "Don't make excuses. Take responsibility not just for your successes."

This from a president who has blamed the last administration (and the Republican Party in general) for various economic and regulatory failures under his watch.

This should have been an easy target for New York Times White House reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, but she whiffed, even signing on to Obama's "buck-stops-here philosophy" in Tuesday's "Obama Gives Students a Principle to Guide Them."

President Obama has been telling the nation that he takes responsibility for cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. On Monday, he imparted his buck-stops-here philosophy to an audience of high school graduates, telling them: "Don't make excuses. Take responsibility not just for your successes. Take responsibility where you fall short as well."

Maybe they didn’t know it, but The New York Times left a Christmas bomb in paragraph 12 of its syrupy Sunday story on Desiree Rogers, the bumbling Obama social secretary.

Reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg sweetly touted Rogers: "Willowy and fashion-forward, with a chic pixie haircut, a designer wardrobe, and a Harvard M.B.A.," she "promptly broke the dowdy mold for the job." She also was culturally savvy enough to transform the White House into a "nerve center for creativity and culture."

But then there was the bomb. In a description of how Rogers would make sure the White House was "Obama-tized," Stolberg noted Rogers would bend tradition to make Christmas much more secular in the new era:

When former social secretaries gave a luncheon to welcome Ms. Rogers earlier this year, one participant said, she surprised them by suggesting the Obamas were planning a "non-religious Christmas" -- hardly a surprising idea for an administration making a special effort to reach out to other faiths.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg devoted most of her article in Sunday’s New York Times detailing the concerns of radical feminists over the future of legalized abortion, specifically its support among the younger generations. Stolberg tried to downplay the larger opposition to abortion in the 18-30 year old demographic, and only one of the pro-abortion activists that she quoted in her article belonged to this group.

The New York Times correspondent began her article, “In Support of Abortion, It’s Personal vs. Political,” with a sympathetic personal anecdote from one of the aging radicals, Representative Louise Slaughter of New York: “In the early 1950s, a coal miner’s daughter from rural Kentucky named Louise McIntosh encountered the shadowy world of illegal abortion. A friend was pregnant...and Ms. McIntosh was keeper of a secret that, if spilled, could have led to family disgrace. The turmoil ended quietly in a doctor’s office... Today, Louise McIntosh is Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York. At 80, she is co-chairwoman of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus — a member of what Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, calls ‘the menopausal militia.’”

This so-called militia, and the wider “abortion rights movement,” according to Stolberg, has been “forced...to turn inward, raising questions about how to carry their agenda forward in a complex, 21st-century world.” The reason: “a generational divide — not because younger women are any less supportive of abortion rights than their elders, but because their frame of reference is different.” The correspondent continued that “[p]olls over the last two decades have shown that a clear majority of Americans support the right to abortion, and there’s little evidence of a difference between those over 30 and under 30, but the vocabulary of the debate has shifted with the political culture.”

Obama victory on health care reform is just around the corner! Once again.

Monday's collaboration in the New York Times by health reporter Robert Pear and White House correspondent Sheryl Gay Stolberg was headlined "Obama Strategy on Health Care Legislation Appears to Be Paying Off."

After months of plodding work by five Congressional committees and weeks of back-room bargaining by Democratic leaders, President Obama's arms-length strategy on health care appears to be paying dividends, with the House and the Senate poised to take up legislation to insure nearly all Americans.

Debate in the House is expected to begin this week, and the Senate will soon take up its version. Democratic leaders and senior White House officials are sounding increasingly confident that Mr. Obama will sign legislation overhauling the nation's health care system -- a goal that has eluded American presidents for decades.

Pear and Stolberg aren't the first Times reporters to declare an Obama victory on the health "reform" front. David Herszenhorn did the same back on September 10, calling Obama's joint address to Congress on health reform "a clear turning point in the health care debate."

Not quite.

New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg paid tribute on Friday to Sen. Ted Kennedy as one of the last remnants of a more collegial, less combative U.S. Senate. But she neglects to point out how Kennedy himself corroded the institution he claimed to hold in such esteem. 

In "For Better and for Worse, Senate Has Seen Changes in Kennedy's Time," Stolberg fretted that the Senate "has become coarser, more partisan." But she conveniently skipped Kennedy's own sterling contribution to that coarseness -- his demagogic 1987 attack on conservative Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork.

On Saturday Barack Obama visited the West African nation of Ghana, held up as a standard of good government (by regional standards) and delivered a "tough love" speech to the entire continent.

Doing his part, New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker delivered a laudatory story: "Obama Delivers Call for Change to a Rapt Africa." (Baker was chided by Slate's "Today's Papers" columnist for overdoing the "heavy-handed symbolism" of an African-American president visiting Africa.)

But just how "rapt" were those Ghanians? Were they any less rapt when President Bush visited Ghana last year?

The visit of the first African-American president, the son of a onetime Kenyan goat herder, electrified this small coastal nation and much of the region. Thousands of people lined streets, crowded rooftops, packed balconies, climbed trees, leaned out windows, even hung off scaffolding to glimpse his motorcade.

New York Times White House reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg issued another flattering bunch of factoids about Obama's Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor -- she controls her diabetes: "Court Nominee Manages Diabetes With Discipline." Stolberg suggested that Sotomayor's "no-nonsense" approach to her insulin injections was a sign of how she will tackle Supreme Court cases.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor carries a small black travel pouch, not much larger than a wallet. It contains the implements she needs -- a blood sugar testing kit, a needle and insulin -- to manage diabetes, a disease she has had for 46 years. Friends say she is not shy about using it.

"She'll be eating Chinese dumplings," said Xavier Romeu Matta, a former law clerk to the judge, "and she'll say, 'Excuse me sweetie,' and pull out the kit and inject her insulin."

That no-nonsense attitude, combined with the attention to detail that characterizes her legal opinions, has been a hallmark of Judge Sotomayor's approach to Type 1 diabetes, according to friends, colleagues and her longtime doctor, Andrew Jay Drexler. An endocrinologist in Los Angeles, Dr. Drexler pronounced her "in very good health" in a letter provided by the White House.

It was a liberal-fest on MSNBC's weekly "New York Times Special Edition on MSNBC" show, hosted last Friday by John Harwood and Norah O'Donnell and featuring a rotating gaggle of Times reporters, both in studio and on location.

To preface a discussion about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor about 20 minutes into the show, host Harwood (who also writes for the Times) broadcast a clip of former Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo describing the liberal Hispanic activist group La Raza, which Sotomayor once belonged to, as the "Latino KKK without the hoods and-or the nooses."

For that bit of commentary, Harwood called Tancredo "a little kooky." Next, reporter Adam Nagourney accused Rush Limbaugh of "incendiary" comments on Sotomayor, while Sheryl Gay Stolberg lamented that "with an African-American president trying to bring people together, now we're seeing those old ugly culture and race wars bubble up, and it'll be interesting to see if President Obama himself can kind of tamp that down."

Wednesday's New York Times led with Obama's choice of Sonia Sotomayor as his Supreme Court nominee -- "Obama Chooses Hispanic Judge for Supreme Court Seat," by Peter Baker and Jeff Zeleny.

Baker and Zeleny never directly acknowledged Sotomayor's liberal outlook, although there is enough in her judicial record (and her own words) to indicate her ideology.

President Obama announced Tuesday that he would nominate Sonia Sotomayor, a federal appeals judge in New York, to the Supreme Court, choosing a daughter of Puerto Rican parents who was raised in a Bronx public housing project to become the nation's first Hispanic justice.

In making his first pick for the court, Mr. Obama emphasized Judge Sotomayor's "extraordinary journey" from modest beginnings to the Ivy League and now the pinnacle of the judicial system. Casting her as the embodiment of the American dream, he touched off a confirmation battle that he hopes to wage over biography more than ideology.

Judge Sotomayor's past comments about how her sex and ethnicity shaped her decisions, and the role of appeals courts in making policy, generated instant conservative complaints that she is a judicial activist. Senate Republicans vowed to scrutinize her record. But with Democrats in reach of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster, the White House appeared eager to dare Republicans to stand against a history-making nomination at a time when both parties are courting the growing Hispanic vote.

Again, the Times hinted at but didn't directly label Sotomayor with the still-damaging label of "liberal," never using the term to describe her.

The New York Times seems to think there was no such thing as partisanship in Washington, D.C. until conservative Republicans came around in the 1990s to invent it. White House reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg's front-page Sunday Week in Review story, "Cutting the President Slack Is So Old School," is another example of that ideological blindness, impying that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich personally invented partisanship.

That requires ignoring Bill Clinton's "war room," his administration's persecution of the White House Travel Office, and before that, the personal attacks made by liberal interest groups on conservative Republican Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. Which is just what Stolberg does: 

....the concept of the "loyal opposition" came to mean that a president, especially a new one elected by comfortable majority, could expect cooperation from the other side, in deference to the will of the voters. But in the partisan politics of recent decades, another view developed, advanced by Congressional leaders like Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, that the minority party has the right, even obligation, to stick to its ideological principles.

History will tell that the New York Times actually endorsed John McCain as its preferred Republican nominee, albeit in a hold-your-nose fashion. History will also tell that the paper began souring on its former favorite "maverick" and moderate Republican almost immediately after he clinched the nomination and becoming the only thing standing between the White House and a historic Democratic victory for either the first woman or first black president.

Even before the presidential race narrowed down to an Obama-McCain matchup, the Times did its best to kneecap GOP candidates, reserving special hostility to its hometown Republican, New York Gov. Rudy Giuliani, portraying him as a racist mayor who exaggerated his post 9-11 herosim.

Times Watch has put together the 10 absolute worst stories that appeared in the Times during Campaign 2008, pitting that historic beacon of hope, Democrat Barack Obama, versus the temperamental, inarticulate appeaser of right-wing racists, Republican John McCain.

The New York Times's President-elect Barack Obama suck-up for today comes courtesy of White House reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg and the opening to her Thursday story, "Used to Early Nights, Washington Is Ready To Stay Up Late."

Bill Clinton brought jazz, Rhodes scholars, a slice of Arkansas and all-night pizza policy sessions. When George W. Bush arrived, Texans took over the town. Blue jeans were out; coats and ties and cowboy boots were in.

Now comes Barack Obama: young, hip and multicultural, with a Harvard law degree, a writer's sensibility and a smooth left-handed jump shot -- not to mention two little girls who, America learned Tuesday night, will soon get a new puppy.

Thursday's New York Times lead story by Elisabeth Bumiller and Michael Cooper covered Palin's rapturously received speech at the Republican Convention Wednesday night, "On Center Stage, Palin Electrifies Convention." After describing how she introduced herself to the "roaring crowd" in St. Paul, the Times threw in this dubious assertion:

But the nomination was a sideshow to the evening's main event, the speech by the little-known Ms. Palin, who was seeking to wrest back the narrative of her life and redefine herself to the American public after a rocky start that has put Mr. McCain's closest aides on edge. Ms. Palin's appearance electrified a convention that has been consumed by questions of whether she was up to the job, as she launched slashing attacks on Mr. Obama's claims of experience.

Actually, only the liberal media was consumed by that question -- Palin was a wildly popular pick even before her impressive convention speech.

Meet the newly minted traditionalists at the New York Times, two female reporters who seem to doubt whether or not a woman can have it all -- at least if she's a Republican vice-presidential nominee.

The Labor Day edition of the Times's "Political Points" podcast, recorded at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn, was hosted by Jane Bornemeier with commentary from reporters Jackie Calmes, Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David Kirkpatrick. The conversation was predictably dominated by "baby-gate" -- the news that Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol was pregnant. Some choice excerpts in which the two female reporters question the judgment of McCain and Palin and find the issue of a teenager's pregnancy fair game:

In a pointed news release, the White House has punched back at the tendentious “White House Memo” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg that appeared on the front page of Thursday’s News York Times. Headlined “Setting the Record Straight: The New York Times Mistakes Its Own Blindness for Presidential ‘Invisibility’,” the White House press office notes even more factual flaws and omissions than reported yesterday by the NewsBusters contributing editor Clay Waters in his own lengthy TimesWatch critique of the same piece, which portrayed President Bush as detached from the government’s reaction to the current economic slowdown.

Stolberg’s snarky third paragraph cast the President as a neglectful globetrotter while Senators have their sleeves rolled up working on solutions:

The New York Times front-page "News Analysis" by Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jim Rutenberg delved into President Bush's dissatisfaction with Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his failure to bring Sunnis and Shiites together politically -- and strangely finds Bush "already facing skepticism" about the troop surge in Iraq (um, didn't that surge start some months ago?)

"It was not quite the vote of no confidence delivered by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, who on Monday said Mr. Maliki should quit. But it was a striking attempt by the White House to distance itself from the Maliki government before September, when the president’s troop buildup faces an intense review on Capitol Hill.

Are White House reporters taking cue from liberal bloggers? A bit near the end of the New York Times "White House Memo" by reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "An Ebbing of Coverage With '08 on the Horizon," certainly puts the idea out there.

White House correspondent Stolberg again indulged herself in portraying Bush as a fallen and failed president.

"Back when he was riding high in the polls, when his every utterance made headlines and the press planes trailing him around the country were still full, President Bush had little need to indulge reporters with ceremonial pleasantries.