Slimeballs in New York

The International Herald-Tribune editorializes on the EU vote, starting out by blaming Chirac for the looked-for defeat of the EU Constitutional vote in the France. It's all his fault. Not, of course, the fault of the Constitution, itself "a worthy draft" by a "so diverse a group." In the end, however, the New York Times-owned IHT focusses on their real issue.

Certainly, the ordinary citizens of Europe should be given more say in the way they are governed. They can be forgiven for viewing the constitution, and treaties like it, as something cooked up between the bureaucrats in Brussels and European political leaders, who seem to consider the actual voters an annoying appendage that should be content with approving their work after it's done but not consulted in the actual decision-making.

But this is the constitution that is on the table, and as the time to vote approaches, we urge the French and the Dutch to take a moment to strip away all the local issues with which the EU constitution has been festooned, and to ponder whether a better EU is in their interest or not. We think it clearly is.

In other words, the voter is pretty much an annoying appendage but they ought to vote for it anyway because, well, the New York Times likes it.

The New York Times liked the Soviet Union in the midst of the Stalin purges and mass murders (merely breaking a few eggs), and they loved that old "Romantic Revolutionary" (and terrorist) Yasir Arafat, and they have a wonderful fondness for Fidel Castro, too, even while he still continues to jail dissidents for disagreeing with him.

Well, at least the New York Times is consistent.