The public editor of the NYT, with regard to Gonzales, prefers to explain the position of the newspaper in terms of its oh-so-delicate mission of the Times in reporting the news without judging the intentions of the AG no matter how obvious his lies, even after they have been repeatedly demonstrated as such. As the NYT tip toes through the tulips nowadays, its cosmetized editorial and reporting policies would seem to prefer that we forget the 1990's when Howell Rains' editorial policy was to pass on as loudly as possible any and every fake rumor and false scandal concocted by the Republican destruction machine when it was hot on the tails of Bill and Hillary Clinton for nearly a decade. The NYT was right up there alongside the right wing noise machine making sure that all the fictions and manufactured sleaze were amplifed to the max. Maybe Mr. Hoyt doesn't remember, or prefers to forget, that the NYT was, among the major news sources, the primary manure spreader about the Clintons and those terrible "scandals" that it revealed and promoted throughout the Clinton years. And does the Public editor need be reminded of the more recent internal scandals at the Times: fake news by a popular reporter, and the Judith Miller debacle, just to mention two of the more well known outrages ? Is it any wonder that many FORMER readers think that the current caution exercised by the Times is a reaction to its earlier violations of the journalistic standards it once upheld ? And nowadays with corporate "values" always trumping journalism, the Times frequently fails to report more important news stories than it does publish. In fact, it's columnists, notably Paul Krugman and Frank Rich, write essays that are not infrequently at odds with what appears on the pages of their own newspaper. We may eventualy forget about Gonzales' lies, but the integrity of the NYT and nearly all of the corporate owned newspapers have been permanently sullied by their own abandonment of investigative reporting and solid news and editorial content.