An apt observation from &c, The New Republic's blog ...

WHEN YOUR ZONE GOES BONE DRY: We've taken our fair share of shots at Howell Raines. But say this for the former New York Times executive editor: You'd certainly be able to tell from reading his paper that the Bush administration was embroiled in its first major foreign policy scandal. By contrast, the Times' actual coverage of the Niger uranium hoax has been virtually non-existent under interim executive editor Joe Lelyveld--save for a single David Sanger piece earlier this week, written mostly on the basis of an Ari Fleischer press conference. Pretty much the only place you can consistently read about that scandal in the Times these days is in the paper's the op-ed pages. Is it too much to ask that the paper put a single investigative reporter on the beat? (Or, if there already is one, then how bout an investigative reporter who produces a piece every once in a while?) Under Lelyveld the paper seems to have lapsed into its prior stupor as the official, but barely readable, paper of record.

Too true ...