I'm far from the first to make note of this, but: if Bush's continued leadership on building and maintaining the coalition in the Middle East is impressive, what's even more astounding is the New York Times. Its editors have, so far, failed to even mention that open letter of support for Bush from European leaders.

As Poor and Stupid notes, even a few years ago that letter would have been sent straight to The New York Times by those who wrote it. It would have been unthinkable for them to send it to anyone else. Now, they don't even send it to them, and the Times doesn't see fit to mention it.

The Times' reputation for naked front-page partisanship (not to mention some of the most nasty columnists in the business) has fallen so far that even European leaders no longer think to send such things to them first. Instead they send it to The Wall Street Journal--which appears, increasingly, to be America's real paper of record. Although, if you ask me, The Washington Post probably deserves to be considered a close second.