Stefan Aust, the new chief editor after Augstein, was the boss of SPIEGEL TV before. There were some minor signs of a separate line back then: less precise reporting and with some ominous moments like one reportage about 'immigrant crime' in Hamburg. Then during the run-up of the Iraq war, it caused me some head-scratching when they chose to report about anti-war protests by showing one NPD [German neo-Nazi party for the uninitiated] protest at a US base.

The economy department also harboured the men of the future, and there is Henryk M. Broder, SPIEGEL's de-facto senior columnist, who let his pro-Israeli views lead him straight to neoconservatism.

The first time they got their line across was when just before the Iraq War started, SPIEGEL printed excerpts from Kenneth Pollack's ridiculous The Threatening Storm.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}