Drudge wants to make a big deal over the NYT rejecting an op-ed piece “written by” John McCain, as though the rejection is the product of bias.

Anyone who knows anything about op-eds, though, knows that no serious newspaper would print McCain’s piece because it doesn’t conform to one of the basic guidelines for op-ed articles: you need to just state your own views, not attack someone else’s op-ed from the same paper. Criticism of someone else’s article is only appropriate for a letter to the editor. (You’ll note that LRC, too, prints differing views, but never in the form of one piece attacking another.)

Of course, it could be that McCain’s people are (like everyone else) more web-savvy than John McCain, knew the piece would be rejected, and knew that publicity from Drudge is more valuable than appearing in the increasingly irrelevant Times. It seems more likely, though, that they’re incompetent and it just happened to pay off.

Anyway, it’s not like the NYT has any problem with running things by warmongers. They run Bill Kristol’s column, after all, and last week ran this item about why it’s better for Iranians that we or Israel bomb them sooner rather than later.