you know people have done an amazing squawk about the appointment of bill kristol  as a columnist for the nytimes. get over it. some idiot on the guardian said there were no liberal columnists in the times. huh? of course we'd all like to see, not to put too fine a point on it, ourselves on that page, and barring that, someone who agrees with ourselves totally. my argument would be for strange or fringey voices etc. why, i wonder? but the times conceives itself as dead center of the mainstream. on their own account they have to have central voices, speaking from the basic nodes of the ideological taxonomy. i think, first, that kristol is a reasonable selection: surely a lucid spokesman for a basic position in the spectrum, who writes well. actually, today's column was refreshing and reminds you how warm and fuzzy and non-partisan david brooks's "conservativism" is. do i think that bill kristol is wrong? of course. is he bizarrely and even dangerously enthusiastic for armed conflict? hey we all have our eccentricities, and the right approach is to grapple with the arguments. it's a needed voice on that page.