The New York Times: Reprehensible?

No, they just stink.

After being caught last week trying to gain access to the sealed adoption records of Judge John Roberts' children, they are both attempting to brazen it out and continuing to dig.

Texas Democratic Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is the one who actually called the NYT's actions "reprehensible". It may be the only time I've come close to agreeing with her.

Look: for all I or anybody else knows, Roberts might turn out to be the biggest closet liberal since David Souter. In fact, that's a big concern on my part. But adoption records, in this country, are considered to be sacrosanct. Even should there be some irregularity in the adoptions (which I doubt), the NYT can achieve no good and cause only misery by pursuing this matter. They can, in fact, hurt Roberts' family and especially his children badly.

And this just after NYT executive editor Bill Keller sent out a memo basically saying that the Grey Lady needed to clean up her act.

I believe, from the initial report last week, that senior editor Bill Borders is the guy behind this piece of investigative reporting. The from this week's report, the actual reporter poking around is a fellow named Glenn Justice. Do these two guys need to have a little conference with Bill Keller? Or was Keller just joking around?

Incidentally, Drudge has done a good job keeping up with all this. He runs the news site I'm picking most of this up from.

If the NYT really wants to turn a new leaf, then a good place to start would be to cease and desist messing with people's kids.

And maybe throw in a sincere apology for even thinking about it.