Paul Krugman is running roughshod over New York Times editors. In previous incidents we’ve seen Krugman accuse fellow academic Times bloggers of making statements that are “flatly untrue or deeply misleading.” In the latest episode, Krugman clashes with Times reporter Edmund Andrew over his front page story warning about the unsustainability of U.S. government deficits. Once again Krugman not only disagrees with his Times colleague, but he also questions his motives and journalism, at least indirectly.

Krugman starts off by stating that Andrews wrote a biased piece: “[Andrews’s article is] saying that, on the one hand, some people say that we’re going to have a debt crisis any day now, while on the other hand … well, actually we never hear from the other side.”

And he concludes that Andrews has ulterior motives in mind, or is serving those with nefarious designs: “This suggests that James Kwak is right: a lot of this is about scaring the government into inaction on unemployment.”

One of these days he’s going to slip and condemn the whole paper as a mouthpiece of the Republican establishment. I hope that his editors are watching closely.