Ten Commandments, Two Opinions

The New York Times wins this year’s competition for how many Supreme Court decisions you can editorialize about in a single day, as the rulings come pouring out at the end of the term. It has three, compared with two in the Times you are reading, one (covering two different cases) in the Wall Street Journal and none at all in the Washington Post.

The other Times has an easier time than this Times in dealing with the court’s refusal to review the pending jail sentences for two reporters who have refused to reveal their White House sources in the case of the outed CIA agent, Valerie Plame.

That’s because that Times is a wholehearted crusader for the right of journalists to protect the anonymity of a source, whereas this Times is all nuanced and mealy-mouthed. The message from 42nd Street: This is a defeat for “news audiences as much as journalists.” Just in case you think we’re all being a bit self-referential about it.

Regarding the court’s mixed decision on the issue of government-sponsored displays of the Ten Commandments, the New York Times chooses to see the glass as half-full. The paper says it would have been happier if the high court had ruled against both of the displays at issue, but declared that even the split decision is “an important reaffirmation of the nation’s commitment to separation of church and state.”

By contrast the Journal, which thinks the whole church-and-state thing is way overblown, sees the glass as half-empty, condemning the court’s ruling as “more confusion.”

Michael Kinsley