These are two quotes from the same article in the NYT regarding the leadup to the Alito hearings:
First we read that “two of Judge Alito’s supporters who participated in the murder boards, speaking about the confidential sessions on condition of anonymity for fear of White House reprisals...”
Farther down the page we read of “two Democratic aides briefed on his meeting with Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York... The aides, speaking anonymously because the meeting was private... ”
Reprisals, by the way, is a loaded word in the Times lexicon. Here are some of the other parties meting out reprisals in the paper’s news columns over the course of the last month: the Communist Chinese government, Iraqi insurgents, New Jersey gang members, French police, and the Islamist murderer of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. In so many words, then, the Republicans are thugs, the Democrats gentlemen. Nice.