Much ago has been made about Christopher Buckley's mutually agreed-upon departure from the National Review, the important conservative magazine his father, William F. Jr., founded back in the 1950s. In case you've been on Neptune -- Buckley endorsed Obama; he offered NR his resignation (he's not on payroll per se, but was a a regular contrib), and NR accepted it.
Mind you I think NR has become a redoubt of paranoid insanity in many cases. Some of the stuff they publish on The Corner is stuff I wouldn't say to my shrink or my priest (if I had either, which I don't). I've been reading it for the better part of 20 years, but I actually let my subscription lapse a year or two ago because I thought it was too often crossing the line from stating philosophical principle to advancing party propaganda, which is the line all ideological magazines, left and right, must navigate with care and integrity.
That said, the editors had every right to let Buckley go. It's an opinion journal. An opinion journal makes no promise to represent points of view it strongly disagrees with. In fact it largely makes its readers the opposite promise. If a writer veers too far away from the magazine's house line, letting that writer go is within the rules. And supporting a liberal Democrat for president is a pretty big veer for a conservative magazine.
It is the job of opinion journals to publish robust intra-family debate -- for example, if the election turns out the way it seems it's going to, NR and the Weekly Standard will have a duty to publish lots of different views, featuring internal disagreements, on how the GOP and conservatism pick themselves up off the floor. But it seems to me totally fine to have accepted Buckley's graciously offered resignation.
