Paul Krugman denounces "the cult of balance, of centrism."

It's "a true moral failure," he says:

We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backward to be accommodating — offering plans that are all spending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right of public opinion.

So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent...

Etc. etc. You know the argument. It's quite familiar really. I remember it from 1964: