Do you buy the cover story about the New York Times firing heroic famous person Ben Stein over a "conflict of interest?" You are so naive. This was a preemptive hit, to protect Barack Obama, our dictator.

Stein detailed on his American Spectator diary how he used to be allowed to do whatever he wanted at the Times, even making a TV ad for Comcast and releasing a nutty creationist documentary. Then he questioned the legality of Obama firing a bailed-out CEO; suddenly Stein's copy got spiked. He criticized Obama's lack of focus; then immediately got fired over the supposed "conflict" over his latest batch of ads.

You can attack Obama from the left at the Times but not from the right.

Read between the lines. Sure, Stein's latest TV spots were a much bigger conflict of interest than his prior ads; as Reuters' Felix Salmon writes, "Stein provides financial advice in his column, and he provides financial advice in the ad." And it's true the credit-report company he endorsed was a bait-and-switch operation from a deceptive corporation. But, bottom line, Stein spoke truth to power and was brought down by "the haters and the weak-willed."

This persecution is why Stein is entitled to call himself a "poor... servant" and argue that he's under seige by "the atheists and neo-Darwinists" and by "the real power in this country," Goldman Sachs. Despite all this, he manages to maintain homes in both Beverly Hills and Malibu. And if you want to know his secret, tough luck, because someone just canceled his finance column.