To say that the New York Times leans left is equivalent to noting that the famous tower in Pisa tilts to the south: It's a statement of the obvious. So diversity of opinion on the paper's op-ed page is always welcome. On the other hand: Be careful what you wish for.  

The other day, the Times featured columns by Senator John McCain and their regular op-ed writer Thomas Friedman that might have found readers yearning for the sonorous liberal bromides in which the editorial page typically specializes. The views expressed by McCain and Friedman are alike in one respect only: They are bizarre, the sort of stuff that readers might once have encountered in some whacked out magazine put out by over-caffeinated nut-jobs, but that the Old Gray Lady of yore never would have dignified by publishing.

Yet if weird, they also qualify as instructive. Together, they illustrate how the fix in which the United States finds itself in this first year of the Trump presidency has resulted in the establishment becoming fully unhinged. Or maybe it's just that Halloween is right around the corner.