RAINES OF TERROR? The New York Daily News reports the brass of the Times has killed sports columns by Harvey Araton and Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Anderson which opposed the Gray Lady's editorial stance on the Augusta National flap -- a controversy, BTW, that's been completely ginned up the Times and USA Today. Add to that the Times' recent front-page hatchet job on Robert McTeer of the Dallas Fed, skillfully dispatched by the WSJ's Bill McGurn, and you wonder whether the title "newspaper of record" is up for grabs.

As Virginia Postrel, Mickey Kaus and others have pointed out, NYT Executive Editor Howell Raines cut his journalistic teeth as a Southern newpaper editor during the early stages of the civil rights movement. Back then, Raines, Tom Wicker and others were heroes. Unfortunately, their worldviews are frozen in that era and as a consequence they've become some of the most pernicious advocates of racial preferences since.

IF IT AIN'T REGULATED, IT'S ILLEGAL: Soon-to-be Senate Minority Whip Harry Reid decides to make a federal ban on Internet gambling a top priority next year. My editorial is here.