Time Inc., which reportedly paid about $4 million for pictures of Brangelina's baby, recently let go two of the best investigative reporters in the business, Donald Barlett and James Steele. The company said it could no longer afford them.

While TimesWatch and the MediaResearch Center [Journalists Mourn Loss of Leftist, Ideologically-Driven Reporters] are certainly right about Barlett and Steele's general ideological bias, I'd like to note two stories they broke that we've commented on here, one of which was this one: New H1B Scandal - Tax Evasion!, in which Peter Brimelow said ''Oddly, this curious situation has been exposed by two muckraking liberal journalists, Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, in their latest paean of praise to interventionist government, The Great American Tax Dodge: How Spiraling Fraud and Avoidance Are Killing Fairness, Destroying the Income Tax, and Costing You."

The other, of course, is their massive Time cover story of September 20, 2004:Who Left the Door Open? (also archived free here)

The next time you pass through an airport and have to produce a photo ID to establish who you are and then must remove your shoes, take off your belt, empty your pockets, prove your laptop is not an explosive device and send your briefcase or purse through a machine to determine whether it holds weapons, think about this: In a single day, more than 4,000 illegal aliens will walk across the busiest unlawful gateway into the U.S., the 375-mile border between Arizona and Mexico. No searches for weapons. No shoe removal. No photo-ID checks. Before long, many will obtain phony identification papers, including bogus Social Security numbers, to conceal their true identities and mask their unlawful presence.

That is the kind of immigration coverage that has gotten so many writers fired, over the years. I have no idea if that's the case here. Maybe their jobs have just been outsourced.