Look at the op-ed page of the Times itself. It deteriorated beyond recognition. Paul Krugman, once a respected economist, has become a shrill polemicist, a show-off and a bully. A good editor would try to guide Krugman, a non-journalist, toward writing in ways that might actually influence policy or attempt to change the minds of people who aren't already far to the left. Instead of explaining economic concepts and taking a well-reasoned position (as Robert Samuelson, a meticulous non-economist, does in the Washington Post), Krugman vilifies his opponents, calls them liars, heaps abuse on them and, in his posturing, doesn't bother to illuminate difficult intellectual issues. What a waste!

Under the Raines regime, a single viewpoint has dominated among non-Times op-ed writers as well. Why doesn't the Times - unlike, say, the Washington Post - have the courage to display the other side's arguments? Is there a chance that the reader, hearing the case for tax cuts, might defect?

Luckily, there is a better model for judicial selection. Although the Constitution gives the president the power to pick all federal judges, senators have long had great influence in the choice of the federal trial judges who sit in their states. For decades, New York's Republican and Democratic senators have appointed judicial screening panels, composed of members of the community, not limited to lawyers, and charged them to recommend candidates for the federal trial courts in the state. Any lawyer can apply for a judgeship.

For each vacancy, the panels compile a list from which the senator can then recommend a nominee to the president. This tradition has given New York an excellent federal trial bench. Lawyers who would be excluded from consideration in a world that demanded political loyalty or ideological devotion have been willing to submit their names.