And now the New York Times

On the same day that the Washington Post published the perversion of journalism described below, the New York Times published this article by Carl Hulse regarding a supposed "grass-roots" campaign to send bricks to Congress organized by "Kirsten Heffron, a Virginian who is helping coordinate the effort."

Advocates of tougher border security have sent thousands of bricks to Senate and House offices in recent weeks to make a none-too-subtle point with lawmakers about where many of their constituents come down on emerging immigration bills.

Leaders of the campaign, which has delivered an estimated 10,000 bricks since it began in April, said they had hit on the idea as a way to emphasize the benefits of a fence along the border with Mexico.

In an age when professionally planned lobbying campaigns have long since overwhelmed spontaneous grass-roots pressure, organizers of the brick brigade said they also saw an opportunity to deliver a missive not easily discarded.

Well... as the Attywood blog pointed out, it didn't take a hell of a lot of Googling to learn some significant aspects of this story that the venerable New York Times seemingly missed.

The truth is out there about Kirsten Heffron, and it's not far out there at all. In fact, when it comes to investigative reporting, we're not talking "All the President's Men" here -- it took this intrepid reporter literally five minutes of Googling to learn the following about the spokeswoman for the Send-a-Brick Project.

-- In the heat of the 2004 presidential campaign, writing as "Kirsten Andersen Heffron" on the JerseyGOP.com Web site, she penned a hate-filled attack on John Kerry -- "'Thank You, John Kerry,' A Dear John Letter" -- that goes way lower than the notorious Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, calling the former Vietnam Vet "a treasonous scumbag." Her letter suggests -- without any supporting evidence -- that Kerry forged documents and raises "the questionable circumstances surrounding your three Purple Hearts."

-- On the Send-a-Brick Project Web site, Heffron boast of working for conservative GOP presidential candidate Steve Forbes (would that have been hard for the Times to squeeze in the article -- it's only 11 letters!) but adds that she served as "Public Affairs Director for a 2-million-member national grassroots advocacy group."

For some reason, she won't tell you what it is, so we will: It was the anti-union National Right-to-Work Committee. We guess that if it came out that Heffron worked against both unions and illegal immigrants, people might get the idea that maybe she just doesn't like working people.

Here's some more of her writings on the various right-wing cause du jour -- this is her Frist-like diagnosis of Terri Schiavo on Free Republic:

Terri Schiavo is not brain dead. She is not in a coma. She is not on life support. She responds to stimuli, smiles at her mother, and expresses agitation and distress. Yes, she is severely handicapped compared to the vibrant, intelligent young woman she apparently was at 26 years of age. But she is conscious, and aware, and most certainly alive in the truest sense of the word.

OK, Kirsten -- and you're a Virginian.

Like we said up top, none of this means the bricks aren't a story, but why doesn't the Times -- the agenda setter for the national media -- take the five minutes and 20 words to tell readers who these people really are.

Lord help us all if this is the best the journalistic elites can do.