Shame. Period.

Today’s op-ed in the New York Times, “Why Rush to Cut Nukes?”, shows how debased journalism and public discussion of world affairs have become. The authors claim that the New Start treaty with Moscow will undermine natural security. Shaving off a few nuclear warheads from the American stockpile will somehow lessen this country’s ability to destroy the entire planet multiple times over. The recent election, they claim in a delusional crescendo, hinged on this issue.

But what stands out are the op-ed’s authors. One is John Bolton, the discredited American unilateralist. Suckled for years by far-right think tanks, Bolton is considered as a strangelovian clown abroad, the type of screaming, bellicose, inhumane hawk that all empires belch out from time to time. Naturally, he was Bush’s guy at the UN for a couple of years. If your family dies in a war soon, look no further than Bolton for the reason.

It gets better. The other author is John Yoo, former deputy assistant attorney-general. Yoo is famous for penning the “torture memo,” effectively tearing up US principles and international engagements for the sake of unfettered, brutal presidential power. Now this paragon of human decency, this technocrat of torture, this profoundly impaired apparatchik, is somehow an expert on arms control. Nuclear weaponry! Were it not so terrifying, it would be laughable. Torquemada meets Clausewitz, minus the intellect.

UC Berkeley, to its everlasting shame, has kept this immoral homunculus on its faculty, and now the Times publishes him.

There may very well be something to discuss on the the New Start treaty. But I would trust my local school crossing guard’s opinion on the subject before I would listen to either of these two guys. There is absolutely no reason to publish thoroughly illegitimate voices on matters of importance. There are places for these voices – it’s called Fox News.

Perhaps the Times is hoping to bump up circulation. What’s next? An etiquette column for Rush Limbaugh, a legislator’s diary by Jim DeMint, an ethics rubric for Tom DeLay?

John Yoo and John Bolton on nuclear armaments – somewhere in a forest, there are trees weeping over this waste of newsprint.

The editors of the New York Times, apparently, do not take their paper seriously. Do they really expect us to keep reading it?