The Torture-Mongers vs Froomkin

The WaPo's statement drips with condescension:

Sometimes features must be eliminated, and this time it was the blog that Dan Froomkin freelanced for washingtonpost.com.

My italics. But Hiatt will publish op-eds peddling dishonest partial numbers to buttress Ahmadinejad, because that's what the neocons wanted. On Monday, at least. Froomkin has been a hero in exposing the torture regime of Bush and Cheney. He has also criticized Obama as this blog has done as well. Benen:

Far-right complaints notwithstanding, Froomkin has spent months scrutinizing the Obama White House, cutting the Democratic president no slack at all. Just over the past couple of days, Froomkin offered critical takes on the president's proposed regulations of the financial industry, follow-through on gay rights, and foot-dragging on Bush-era torture revelations.

Froomkin was one of the media's most important critics of the Bush White House, and conservative bashing notwithstanding, was poised to be just as valuable holding the Obama White House accountable for its decisions.

Maybe the quality of his free-lancing was showing up the hackneyed AIPAC boilerplate they publish every day on their op-ed page. Greenwald asks, understandably:

At a time when newspapers are relying more and more on online traffic, the Post just fired the person who, in 2007, wrote 2 out of the top 10 most-trafficked columns.  In publishing that data, Media Bistro used this headline:  "The Post's Most Popular Opinions (Read: Froomkin)."  Isn't that an odd person to choose to get rid of?

And then the shoe drops:

Froomkin just recently had a somewhat acrimonious exchange with the oh-so-oppressed Krauthammer over torture, after Froomkin criticized Krauthammer's explicit endorsement of torture and Krauthammer responded by calling Froomkin's criticisms "stupid."  And now -- weeks later -- Froomkin is fired by the Post while the persecuted Krauthammer, comparing himself to endangered journalists in Venezuela, remains at the Post, along with countless others there who think and write just like he does:  i.e., standard neoconservative pablum.

Exposing the torture-monger Krauthammer would almost certainly have enraged Hiatt. They look after their own the neocons.