NYTimes editorial watch

Today's installment: McCain-Feingold

As you might expect, the Times' editors are hoping (and praying? probably not) that McCain-Feingold survives a court challenge on the question of whether or not it impinges on the First Amendment. Which it does, of course, but the Times doesn't seem to mind.

One of the things that struck me, though, came when the editorial listed the "usual suspects". Among the "unlikely array of opponents" to the law, it includes "the National Rifle Association, civil libertarians and the political parties themselves."

What I want to know is this: why did the editors name the main gun lobbyist (the NRA), but not name the main civil libertarian lobbyist, the ACLU? Is it perhaps that they want to disguise the fact that the ACLU comes down (for once!) on the opposite side of an issue as the Times editorial staff, lest anyone realize how far out the Times' position is? Hmm...