'NY Times' Burns Own Columnist's Source

Here's another possible sign that Bill Kristol has fallen into disfavor at The New York Times: The news side has taken to revealing his sources.

Today's article about the infighting between John McCain and Sarah Palin and their respective camps zeroes in on Randy Scheunemann, a foreign-policy advisor who helped prepare Palin for her debate and evidently came to identify a bit too closely with his charge. McCain loyalists, says the Times,

strongly believed that Mr. Scheunemann was disclosing, as one put it, "a constant stream of poison" to William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard and a columnist for The New York Times.

Mr. Kristol, who wrote a column on Oct. 13 calling on Mr. McCain to fire his campaign because it was "close to being out-and-out dysfunctional," said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that the campaign advisers were paranoid. Mr. Kristol has been a strong supporter of Ms. Palin.

"I wasn't writing poison," Mr. Kristol said. He added: "Randy Scheunemann is a friend of mine and I think he did a good job. I talked to him, but I talked to a lot of people at the campaign."

Kristol, of course, is a big part of the reason Palin ended up on the ticket in the first place.