Legal Commentary

Not sure if anyone else picked up on this from reading today's NYT, but I thought the photo appending Charlie Savage's piece on Elena Kagan and her views on executive powers was execrable. Why on earth would editors of a paper select a picture where the person has her eyes closed? Really! Are we supposed to believe that this photo was the only one available from yesterday? The fact that the pic was with Sen. Lautenberg is itself unconnected to the actual topic of Charlie's piece (ie., her views on executive power). 

To my mind, the pic itself is just designed to say, Ha, ha, we're the press and we can do anything we want. What was the editor who selected this picture thinking? What was the photographer thinking when he passed it on as a shot to be considered for the story? And if you look at some of the other pics on the NYT Topics page, they're almost as bad (most of them have Kagan looking squinty as if the sun is in her eyes -- near Austin Hall at HLS it seems). Not as pernicious as this asinine softball playing shot that ran in the WSJ last week, but really, not a menschy performance. Charlie/Adam/John, on the off-chance that you guys are reading this, I hope you'll urge your editors to exercise more taste when selecting photos of people who have served or are serving their nation with commitment and honor.