What’s missing in this New York Observer front-page story about Senator Charles Schumer’s fight to block the confirmation of Charles Pickering and other right-wing Bush judges? Well, for one thing, what’s missing is any attempt to ascertain whether Schumer is right -- whether Pickering’s record is so extreme that he is unworthy of confirmation. Do you wonder what Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler howls about, day after day? This is what he howls about. The Observer assigns a two-man team to write a 1,758-word, 26-paragraph, front-page article on this subject, and neither reporter can be bother to look into the facts of the case. Or maybe it’s not laziness -- the Observer traffics in a lite version of 1980s-style, Spy magazine-style cynicism and irony, and perhaps the reporters who wrote this story, and their editors, believe that unearthed truths are of interest only to wimps and wonks and geeks; cool people who eat in tony restaurants care only about who’s up, who’s down, who’s jockeying for position.

So it’s not surprising that another thing missing from the Observer story is any sense whatsoever that Schumer actually thinks what he’s doing is right -- that he actually believes it’s a bad idea to have Pickering and other right-wing ideologues on the bench. He’s doing this to make himself a national figure, he’s doing this to play to his base, he’s doing this because he’s pathologically publicity-hungry, say the Observer’s writers -- it’s just inconceivable to them that Schumer means what he’s saying. (The article is titled “Chuck’s Game.”)

What else is missing? Any mention whatsoever of the fact that Republicans blocked Bill Clinton’s judicial nominees regularly and relentlessly for years, thus creating many of the judicial vacancies Bush wants to fill with conservative ideologues.

Ideologues will dominate the federal bench for decades if the White House gets its way. Schumer is a hero. This article is a disgrace.