No shame

Today's Wall Street Journal lead editorial, recounting its history of editorial independence in the context of the takeover bid from Rupert Murdoch --

The 1990s were especially controversial with the Journal's reporting about Whitewater and Bill Clinton's ethics, and more than one liberal thought he could mute Bartley's campaign in the wake of the Vincent Foster suicide. But the Bancrofts and Publisher Peter Kann stood up to the pressure.

The "reporting" to which they refer took place in their editorials -- the paranoid scandal-mongering therein clearly not meeting the standard for the Journal's (excellent) actual reporters to report on. And it took the form of a series (Roman numerals, if memory serves us right) of "Who is Vince Foster?" editorials, each leaping to the most tendentious interpretation of Foster's relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton. It didn't stop even after Foster committed suicide, hounded by the Journal, and it didn't stop even when it was clearly feeding even loopier theories about Foster's life and death (e.g. ludicrous claims of an affair with Hillary or that the Clintons arranged his "murder").

If that's what Murdoch would endanger with a takeover, bring him on.