PLAYING CATCH-UP

The New York Times apparently decided to answer Jess Bravin's Page One piece in The Wall Street Journal with a news story by David Kirkpatrick. This morning -- Saturday -- buried low on page A9 deep within the print edition (as you'd expect from miffed or embarrassed editors playing catch-up), The Times points to the groundwork now being laid by Democrats to challenge the nomination of Judge John Roberts Jr. to the Supreme Court, "in part by seeking to shift the focus from volatile issues like abortion to the broader subjects of personal privacy and government power."

Kirkpatrick quotes Sen. Richard Durbin as telling reporters on Friday: "Be careful that you don't translate this entire process into a referendum on Roe v. Wade." Durbin expects Roberts to discuss "the constitutional principles underlying" the right to abortion in his confirmation hearing, Kirkpatrick writes, "specifically the right to privacy," which, the Illinois Democrat also noted, had established "the far less controversial right to buy contraceptives."

It's a sure bet Durbin read Bravin's front-pager on Thursday or, at the very least, this passage in it: " ... the Supreme Court has in recent decades concluded that Americans have 'privacy rights,' even though the document doesn't explicitly say so. The court derived from those rights the Roe decision on abortion, as well as other rulings ending government restrictions on contraception and, more recently, homosexual sodomy." Durbin didn't mention homosexual sodomy, of course. You wouldn't expect him to, given the public he's trying to persuade. Just as you wouldn't expect The Times to front-page Kirkpatrick's report, given that The Journal got there first.