New York Times Investigation of Roberts Children Weekend Update

Here is a recap of the history line of the original post. Via a recap post of that post here is the summary on the story on the NYT and the investigation of the Roberts children. Summary:

NYT denies hiring attorney to try and unseal the children's adoption records, and claim they are not investigating the children and their adoption. Drudge has basically the same update.................................


Update II 8/5/2005

Fox New and Brit Hume are reporting that the NYT is in fact investigating the Roberts children and have asked lawyers who specialize in adoption cases for advise on how they can get info from the sealed files of the children. The NYT is lying in their "Letters to Bloggers" about the scope of their INVESTIGATION in this matter..............

Fox/Hume

Update III: 8/6/2005

Not much out there on the NYT investigation into the Roberts children. On Fox, Brit Hume has this up today on the Political Grapevine:

Fox

The New York Times said Friday it is not pursuing attempts to unseal the adoption records of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' two children. Executive editor Bill Keller — himself an adoptive parent — told the Times' public editor that "he would not stand for any gratuitous reporting about the Roberts's children."

This after a Times spokesman said yesterday "our reporters made initial inquiries about the adoptions, as they did about many other aspects of his background... We have not pursued the issue after the initial inquiries, which detected nothing irregular about the adoptions."

For some reason the video clip ( Jim Angle did the report ) does not work, but it would appear that Fox either got a clarification from the NYT or they simply issued a direct denial of the earlier Fox report that stated the NYT was asking for legal assistance to open the sealed files.

Thursday PM, this was on the grapevine, which carried the information of the NYT asking adoption attorney's to assist in getting the sealed records opened:

Fox Earlier

So as of now it would appear that the NYT is insisting that they are not doing an investigation, with or without attorneys on the Roberts children or trying to gain access to their files/records. Time will tell if it was actually appropriate inquires or in fact the start of a investigation. I'd still like to know a whole lot more about what they were asking about in their initial inquiries and why. What exactly did they think needed to be inquired into on this matter? Kids are off base, pure and simply, 100%. Let's hope that the NYT has gotten the message loud and clear that this is not going to be tolerated. This story still smells to me.................

Other than the above, the only other MSM piece on this story is via Drudge on a Dallas Morning News article via The State:

The State

Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, herself an adoptive parent who had media intrusions into her adoptions, put a personal and I think powerful human face on this. Here is what she had to say:

Citing "simple decency," Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison demanded Friday that journalists quit poking around for details on Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' adopted children. "Some boundaries should be placed on inquiries into the private lives of public figures," said Hutchison, who faced some uncomfortable questions after she adopted her son and daughter four years ago, when she was 58 and husband Ray Hutchison was 68.

If the MSM did it to Kay Bailey Hutchison, there is no reason to believe that they were not prepared to do the same to Roberts and very well may still be willing to and planning to. Hopefully they got the message loud and clear that it is not acceptable. If they still have an appetite for this grotesque fare, lets hope the appetite has been at least curbed to the point of preventing them from moving forward on it..............................

Powerpundit has a post up on a scolding from Democratic strategist Bob Beckel on Fox with Tony Snow:

Powerpundit

Update IV 8/7/2005

Nothing really new today on the NYT investigation of the Roberts children. Drudge has up the same basic summary of Thursday through Sunday that I posted last night above:

Drudge

We shall see what next week brings on this story. Like I said, I still say it smells really bad still. There was smoke without a doubt so I say there was also lots of fire...................