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Obviously, Mr. Wehner’s organization and its backers are desperate to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House. The purpose of today's article seems to be little (if anything) more original than just the right's latest attempt to try to divide Democrats and smear Secretary Clinton. Short version: She isn't sufficiently charming and she did not do a good enough job cleaning up the international mess left by GWB's warmongering.

But the dealbreaker, according to the author, is of course the State Department email scandal, which he compares to the actions of former CIA director David Petraeus, who was convicted -- after lying to the FBI during the investigation -- of knowingly and deliberately mishandling and disclosing classified materials. (Anne M. Tompkins, the U.S. attorney who oversaw the prosecution of Gen. Petraeus, calls bullshit on this bogus comparison, not that you shouldn't still expect to keep hearing it repeated ad nauseam.)

Donald Trump gets less than a paragraph in the article (despite the bait-and-switch headline), and he seems to be there merely as the author's half-hearted gesture toward trying to satisfy the (false) equivalency requirement that passes for journalistic objectivity these days. (See? We take on both sides!) But don't be fooled. This is deliberate, politically motivated propaganda with no other purpose than to try to discredit Secretary Clinton, who terrifies the right not only because of her politics and who she's married to but especially because she has something very important going for her that not one single Republican candidate has: electability.

But a smear job is to be expected from this author. That is what he is paid to do. The real question for me is why the NYT keeps publishing this kind of propaganda, which is becoming increasingly common on their editorial pages. In addition to Wehner, other NYT editorial contributors presented as mainstream writers and not the paid hacks they are include Arthur C. Brooks (of the American Enterprise Institute) and Ronald Radosh (of the Hudson Institute).

For another recent example of this kind of mainstreaming of hackery, see Mr. Radosh's August 27 whitewashing of the Warren G. Harding administration (He’s just like Reagan!) by Mr. Radosh of the Koch-funded Hudson Institute. (Note some of the other luminaries on the Hudson payroll.) The piece is as much a smear of Woodrow Wilson as an attempt to rescue Harding from his well-deserved reputation as a checked out chief executive who appointed his cronies to Cabinet positions that they totally abused while he either deliberately looked the other way or presided over it cluelessly. Despite Harding's responsibility for one of the most incompetent and corrupt administrations in U.S. history, Radosh doesn't mention the Teapot Dome scandal, absolves Harding of responsibility for the astonishing corruption of his appointees, and treats his opposition to pensions for WWI veterans as if screwing over war veterans is something to be admired:

Most telling was Harding’s veto of the popular so-called bonus bill, which would have given veterans an expensive bonus paid over time through deficit spending. The country, he told Congress in a speech, simply did not have the money. He argued it would also set a precedent to use public funds to pay for anything if it was “publicly appealing.”

It's not clear why the NYT is allowing these partisan organizations so much editorial space (and by extension, unearned credibility) without disclosing their true agendas or identifying their ideological orientations. A 2011 analysis by NPR then-ombuds Alicia C. Shepard looked at the relative rarity of such identifications on NPR by reporters when they interviewed "experts" working for partisan "think tanks," many of them with bland (or Orwellian) names, and concluded (rightly) that

Not finding a way to identify a group's leaning does a huge disservice to listeners. NPR reporters, editors and producers are seasoned and clever veterans. When quoting someone, they should go the extra distance to tell the audience why this person has been chosen and what message they are pushing.

The New York Times has apparently not engaged in any similar soul-searching. While letting these organizations place op-eds may be cheaper than paying actual journalists, it hurts the credibility of a newspaper whose reputation has already taken a serious beating in recent years. For the Kochs, the advantages are obvious, and the arrangement has got to be cheaper than buying up newspapers. I am not going to get into the ongoing failures of the NYT in relation to Sec. Clinton (although there is plenty to say about that) or their dismissive and disrespectful treatment of Sen. Bernie Sanders, when they bother to cover his campaign at all, or the fact that former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley might as well not even be a candidate, for all the coverage the supposed national newspaper of record has given him.

For now, I am simply focused on the NYT's disturbing habit of publishing right-wing propaganda as if it is something other than what it is. Presenting op-eds from a variety of perspectives is important, but that's not what's going on here. There's a big difference between a newspaper's exploration of issues from multiple perspectives and letting itself be used (or bought?) by some billionaires intent on transforming the country into something none of us is going to recognize and most of us are not going to like, and exploiting the so-called "liberal media" to help get its message out to people who don't watch Fox News.

For the record, I am with Hillary all the way, but I also very much respect and admire Sen. Sanders and Gov. O’Malley and will support whichever one of these three outstanding candidates becomes the Democratic nominee. Mr. Wehner and his friends ought to consider putting more of their energy into finding better candidates and less into their anti-Hillary hit pieces, because not one of the Republicans on what he inexplicably refers to in the article as their “much deeper and more impressive field” of candidates is anything close to presidential material. If the Republican bench were really so deep and impressive, they would not be so worried about Hillary. Or about Trump.

I apologize for linking to these bastards, but here in their own words is the EPPC in defense of Scott Walker. And here is one of EPPC’s recent attacks on Planned Parenthood. Finally, don't miss EPPC’s claim that calling out climate change denial is censorship and also proves that climate change is a hoax.