Same day, same paper: Trump's press ban is 'unquestionably warranted' and a due process violation.

…(cont) Roughly twenty-four hours later, in the same paper, another column reached the opposite floor. The ban, it argued, is "unquestionably warranted" — citing Covington Catholic, "hands up don't shoot," and the Russia collusion coverage, a ledger of grievances that predates this administration by a decade. Same masthead, same week: one side saying the emperor has no legal clothes, the other saying he never needed them.

That is not spin drifting off message. That is the in-house legal desk and the in-house grievance desk filing dissenting opinions against each other, in public, under contract to the same publisher. Scott Jennings, no liberal himself, called the move a loser in court that costs the White House "reach" it can't afford to lose. Even the friendly bench is doing math the press office apparently didn't run first.

None of this required CNN, MS NOW, or Politico to say a word in their own defense. Their own opposition did the work for them — one columnist read the Constitution, the other read the grudge list, and the paper ran both without ever deciding which one was the official position. Jon Stewart summed up the net effect without needing either column: banning the outlets covering the war and the gas prices doesn't fix the war or the gas prices, it just leaves fewer people in the room to ask. The reporter is still standing outside. The door is still locked. The people arguing about whether locking it was legal both draw a paycheck from the same institution asking that question out loud.