Much has been made of the $2 billion Goldman Sachs lost in market value on Wednesday, the same day that the NY Times published an op-ed by a disgruntled employee who criticized the firm's new focus on money over clients. Now, Bloomberg News reports that the Times paid him $150 for his unsolicited views. more ›

What's with technology? Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert wants you to know that's he's had enough of our multitasking culture, and wants you to follow him in his quest for a simpler time. And though we agree that watching a movie with a DVD player in your lap while driving to work is pushing it (Herbert says it's happened!), we're not sure if we can return to a time before Facebook. How does he suggest taking the edge off of our technology addiction? "Try kissing more and tweeting less." But then how would the internet know who we're making out with?! more ›

Lee Sander, who resigned as MTA CEO last month, has an op-ed in the NY Times today and goes to town on the state lawmakers that dragged out the process for an MTA bailout, writing, "In the political process that led up to this rescue, damage was inflicted on the M.T.A.’s reputation." He elaborates:

Elected state and city officials leveled the old and discredited accusation that the agency keeps two sets of books, one real and one for public consumption, and suggested that agency officials were untrustworthy and corrupt, comparing them to Bernard Madoff, the self-confessed mastermind of an enormous Ponzi scheme. These false charges landed enough sensational headlines to help camouflage the politicians’ own inability to reach a timely agreement on how to finance public transportation. more ›

In an Op-Ed in today's Times explaining his aborted mayoral campaign, Rep. Anthony Weiner explains that, unsurprisingly, Mayor Bloomberg's godly fortune had a little something to do with it: "The Supreme Court decision in 1976 in Buckley v. Valeo, which allows candidates to spend however much they want on their own races, makes it possible for billionaires to swamp middle-class candidates. In this case, a sports analogy is apt: If one football team has 110 players on the field, the team with 11 has a hard time getting through the blocking and tackling on the crowded turf." more ›

Well, fancy that: A TPM Cafe blogger noticed how a passage in Maureen Dowd's Sunday op-ed column was very similar to a Talking Points Memo column, posted on Thursday, by TPM editor Josh Marshall. Dowd's passage read, "More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq." Marshall's was exactly the same, except he used "we were" instead of "the Bush crowd was." Dowd later admitted to the Huffington Post that it was a mistake—she was discussing the column with a friend "who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent -- and I assumed spontaneous -- way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column. but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me." Gawker calls it BS and Politico's Michael Calderone has emailed Dowd, asking "if it's common practice to take an entire passage from a friend and weave it into her column." In the meantime, Dowd's column is updated, acknowledging Marshall. more ›

Bill Ayers has written an op-ed for the New York Times this weekend where he addresses his decision to stay silent throughout a presidential campaign in which he "felt at times like the enemy projected onto a large screen in the “Two Minutes Hate” scene from George Orwell’s 1984." Ayers admits regrets for some of his actions with the 1970s anti-war group the Weather Underground and takes "responsibility for the risks we posed to others," but overall defends them as "attacks on property, never on people, (that) were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war." And as for all of his alleged "paling around" with now President-elect Obama, Ayers says, "I knew him as well as thousands of others did, and like millions of others, I wish I knew him better." more ›

U2 frontman and political activist Bono has a new gig! Radar is reporting that the New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal has hired him to write a handful of the paper's Op-Ed pages next year. He announced the news last night to students of Columbia's School of Journalism, following the "suspicious package" that was delivered to his office yesterday. Radar wonders if the news will off-set the recent right-leaning columns devoted to Sarah Palin, written by Bill Kristol (who Rosenthal dodged questions about last night), but a bigger question is whether Bono will be able to help keep the sinking Gray Lady afloat? more ›

Barack Obama contributed on an Op-Ed for today's Daily News. Much of it reads like a standard Obama stump speech on the economy--albeit if you read it online, now it's a stump speech with classic News headlines shuffled in like "MAC: YOU'RE LYING! BAM: STOP DIVIDING!" Obama does cater parts of the piece directly to the Empire State, saying that his economic plan would mean $3.2 billion in an economic stimulus for NY and that he'd help save 64,000 jobs here alone. While the Post was one of the first daily papers in the nation to come out with an official endorsement (of John McCain), the News has not yet chosen who they will back. The paper did turn a few heads back in 2004 with their endorsement of George W. Bush over John Kerry. more ›

Off of their balcony seats and into a NY Times Op-Ed spread, it's Statler and Waldorf! Together again, still grumpy and disagreeable, and speaking out on tonight's big debate. This isn't the first time the duo has been dragged into politics, they're often used in Jon Stewart's commentary (as recently as this year's DNC, in fact). But the question remains: who will be their Fozzie Bear of tonight's action? more ›