Behold the face of the Left

Drudge has posted an item that has jaws dropping all over the country. The NY Times has been looking into the adoption records of John Roberts, nominee to the Supreme Court. (His two kids are adopted from Latin America, according to reports.)

Is anything off limits to these leftys? Prying into a family's private adoption records? For what purpose? What does that possibly have to do with his qualifications to sit on the Supreme Court? Tell me this isn't some sleazy attempt to try and find some problem with the records, like whether they really bought the kids on the black market or something. If the NYT wanted to do a nice little story on the kids, they could just go to the Roberts and ask. Or, if there is a credible allegation that there are irregularites with the adoptions, that laws were bent, even that would be one thing.

But, Brit Hume reports that the Times was indeed on a mere fishing expedition.

Michelle Malkin has reactions here and here as well. (In the second one, from this post you'll recognize that "Reader Jeff K." is me!)

Hugh Hewitt has a roundup of other reactions here.

Obviously, as an adoptive parent, I'm just a wee bit sensitive to the matter. I am thrilled to talk about our adoption stories, and how we came to find our two precious children in Russia. But, the adoption records are nobody's business but our own. It is up to us to decide who we share that with. For a newspaper to dig into those purely for political purposes, as part of a smear campaign against someone with whose politics they don't agree, is just beyond the pale.

Here's another danger in this. It is up to the parents and the parents alone to decide what they tell the kids about their adoption, and when. What if the paper published information the Roberts didn't want to have out there yet, what if the kids at some future date found this information in the public domain, rather than from their parents in a loving, supportive context? What in the hey gives the NYT the right to usurp one of the most important duties of an adoptive parent, that of sharing with the children where they come from?

Outrageous. I wrote to the public editor at the NYT, and received a stock reply they have been sending out. It reads:

***
Dear Reader,

Thanks for writing to us.

While the public editor does not usually get involved in pre-publication
matters, Bill Keller, the executive editor of the paper, told us that he
would not stand for any gratuitous reporting about the Roberts's children.
He said that as an adoptive parent he is particularly sensitive about this
issue.

In addition, a senior editor at the paper wrote, "In the case of Judge
Roberts's family, our reporters made initial inquiries about the adoptions,
as they did about many other aspects of his background. They did so with
great care, understanding the sensitivity of the issue. We did not order up
an investigation of the adoptions. We have not pursued the issue after the
initial inquiries, which detected nothing irregular about the adoptions."

Sincerely,
Joe Plambeck
Office of the Public Editor
The New York Times

Note: The public editor's opinions are his own and do not represent those
of The New York Times
***

Great care and sensitivity, my eye. There is no soul in the heart of a lefty, just a cold stone that would happily trample through a family's most private business simply because they want to preserve the "right" to murder unborn infants. It's a wonderful world we live in.