Brain Fertilizer

Isn't this an obvious point that hasn't been made about Joseph Wilson and the Rove/Plame controversy: If you accept an assignment to investigate possible WMD-related activity in Niger on behalf of the CIA, and your wife works at the CIA, shouldn't you think before you make your CIA mission the subject of a high-profile New York Times op-ed piece that there might be the eensiest weensiest chance that in the course of the ensuing controversy your wife's CIA connection might come out in public?

and

Maybe I've missed something, but as far as I can see the New York Times still hasn't gotten around to giving its readers any taste, in its news pages, of the actual content of Matt Cooper's email in the Rove/Plame case. Isn't that odd? The LAT's done it. WaPo's done it. But if you search for the words "double super secret background" in the NYT, you won't find them. This is four days after Newsweek disclosed the content of the email. ... I know NYT readers live in a cocoon. But I can't quite figure out why Times news editors would want to deny them this juicy information. ... ...According to NEXIS, when it comes to MSM newspaper news stories, the actual, semi-exculpatory text of the email has only been printed in right-of-center outlets (e.g., Washington Times). This is pretty solid evidence of print-MSM balkanization, it seems to me. Here's a puny little email, which could easily be reprinted in its entirety. Everybody's writing about the controversy it generated--but only conservative news editors actually publish one of the key bits of evidence. ...

Read it all to get the parts I left out, and the links Mr. Kaus includes.