Posted 7:18 PM by Robert

O! Linda!

Read the terrific undressing of Linda Greenhouse by Kausfiles today.

Is there anyone out there who thinks - or is even willing to argue - that those new Times ethics rules do anything to dispell the horrible odor of rank partisanship from a Greenhouse column such as this one?

Maybe she's just all pent up, since those ethics rules do keep her from marching in today's D.C. anti-war/anti-Bush rally. Perhaps she's just ventilating her political frustration through her "reporting."

In other words, have the new ethics rules just made her obvious partisanship worse?

And one might also consider Ms. Greenhouse's repeating duet with the Professor Thomas Merrill, who Kausfiles correctly describes as the sole Supreme Court lawyer she actually names. The Professor has played straight man to Ms. Greenhouse previously - supplying all kinds of curious, fatuous comments about the Court while Ms. Greenhouse fails to disclose even which justice he clerked for. Aren't there other Court specialists that the Times can interview for attribution? Or is it just that Professor Merrill is the one that Ms. Greenhouse can count on to say what she wants - a kind of legal academic sock puppet? The whole, repeating context suggests some kind of, well, friendship or political or other special relationship between the two of them. Is that unethical - or at least does it present the possible appearance of the unethical?