Journal editorials are widely considered a potent, if somewhat quirky, influence on conservative political thought.
Such coverage (backed by delusional Journal editorials baffling to anyone who was actually in Iraq) misled conservatives about Iraq from the beginning.
What was groundbreaking and unsettling about the Journal editorial was that it besmirched the separately run news operation of The Journal itself.
But the nastiness of the Journal editorial is a preview of what we can expect from the administration and all of its surrogates this year.
It wasn't McConnell and Boehner who formed what the Journal editorial aptly referred to as a "circular firing squad."
The Journal editorial had a significant effect.
(After his death, a Journal editorial said piously that on his flight "Secretary Brown was serving his country as others served it before.")
I did my best in our phone conversation to persuade him to shrug off the Journal editorials.
Jonathan Chait, in The New Republic, reacted to the Journal editorial by writing:
There were two further nasty references to him before he committed suicide - leaving a note that mentioned his distress at the Journal editorials.