To the extent that I trust anybody who writes for money, I trust the Globe & Mail (a Toronto-based Canadian paper), the New York Times and the New Yorker, largely because all three publications still have the resources for genuine investigative reporting.

I have some trouble assessing American news sources these days because the events I read about sometimes stretch my credulity. I boggle at the actions of the Trump administration, for example, even though I am well old enough to remember the details of Spiro Agnew's scurrilous exit from public life and the slow-motion trainwreck that was Watergate. I guess I have trouble accepting that people with the capacity to get themselves elected to national public office could be so unaware of history that happened in their own lifetimes as to copy its most egregious errors so faithfully.

So when I read a carefully reasoned editorial in the New York Times that concludes, basically, that the President is a crook and his administration exists primarily to support his exploitation of the office, I wonder if the editorial board is entirely on the level. But then I read the front page story (most recently, the coverage of the "I can so pardon myself" tweet) and I wonder how the editorialist could reach any other conclusion -- you know, waddle, quack, duck.