A curious reader of our editorial page here at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette wants to know if we publish every Paul Krugman column we get from the New York Times Syndicate or just the gloomy ones.

It is wholly a pleasure to satisfy Curious Reader's curiosity:

Sir, they are all gloomy, and have been since my memory runneth not to the contrary.

But, no, we don't publish every Paul Krugman column we get.

For that matter, we don't - and couldn't - publish all the work of any single syndicated columnist, there's so much out there in the not so brave new world of electronic cyberspace, where anybody can be his own pundit, even anonymously.

I think, Descartes declared, therefore I am. Today it's: I blog, therefore I am.

But before I start sniffing at these mere amateurs, allow me to be candid on that subject, too: The proliferation of blogs may be much closer than oh-so-respectable journalism to the freedom of the press envisioned by the authors of the First Amendment. They lived in a world of pamphleteers in which the readers were the judge of quality, not some distant authority cloaked in a Ph.D. with a magisterial column in the New York Almighty Times.

Respectability may be a far greater enemy of freedom of thought than the wildest array of opinions on the net. In the Golden Age of television, which was really more like brass, the whole country tuned in to Walter Cronkite on CBS every evening to see the proper way to react to the news. (The really adventurous might try NBC's Huntley-Brinkley on occasion.) Those were the days when the gamut of American opinion ran from A to B. Give me the wild, wild net any time.

Which brings me to the respectable if not dowdy Dr. Krugman. His mantra not only of the day but of the Bush Years has been that we stand on the edge of worldwide economic collapse, another Great Depression, widespread panic, and maybe an asteroid shower to top off Global Warming. A collection of his columns would beat any disaster movie ever made, including Al Gore's. After reading Dr. Krugman first thing in the morning, it's a wonder Times readers have the strength to finish their breakfast. What's the point? Continued...