The lead, front-page news article in today's New York Times reports on how violence in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza will affect prospects for a cease-fire there. "The violence further undermined the prospects of Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the retired Marine and Bush administration envoy, who is expected to return to Jerusalem Thursday in a renewed bid for a cease-fire," the Times reports.

A "news analysis" that runs elsewhere in today's New York Times offers a sharply different assessment, writing that the logic of the conflict "did not preclude a cease-fire once General Zinni arrived, since both sides seem exhausted by the recent wave of violence and in need of a respite."

The news analysis seems to undermine the assertion in the news article, or at the very least to make clear that it is an opinion.

It's also interesting today that, in nearly two full pages of coverage about the clashes in the Middle East, coverage that begins on the front page under a four-column headline that says "U.N. Chief Tells Israel It Must End 'Illegal Occupation,'" the Times never finds room to consider the question of whether the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza is indeed illegal. Had the Times probed the matter, it might have referred to three particularly important articles on the subject: One by Dore Gold on January 16, 2002, available on the Web at http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp470.htm , and two others by Eugene Rostow in the October 21, 1991, and April 23, 1990, issues of The New Republic. Those articles suggest that the Israeli presence is perfectly legal.

Immigration: A front-page article in today's New York Times reports: "The debate in the House today exposed a rift in the Republican Party between those who want to restrict immigration more and those who want to court Hispanic voters by addressing their concerns and making it easier for people to immigrate. Mr. Bush and his political advisers are in the second camp." Seeing pro-immigration views among Republicans as strictly an effort to court Hispanic voters is an oversimplification. Here are some other possible motivations for pro-immigrant sentiment among Republicans, none of which are considered by the Times.

1. Republicans tend to oppose government regulation. Restrictions on immigration are merely a regulation of the labor market.

2. Republicans are the pro-business party. Business supports immigration as a way to reduce labor costs.

3. Republicans are the pro-growth party. Immigration helps create economic growth.

4. The Democrats are the party that has in recent decades been strongly linked with American blacks and with American labor unions, constituencies who have opposed increased immigration on the grounds that it would drive down wages of American-born workers. While the position of organized labor has undergone some adjustments, the resistance persists at some level. But Republicans are not constrained by it.

5. Republicans don't actually hope to win many Hispanic votes. But they hope to win the votes of non-Hispanic white soccer moms by appearing sympathetic to Hispanics.

6. Republicans don't actually hope to win many Hispanic votes. But they hope to win votes and contributions from non-Hispanic rich people who would like to make it easier to employ more Hispanics at low wages.

A dispatch from Buenos Aires in the international section of today's New York Times reports on the lingering pain of a woman whose "leftist husband disappeared" during Argentina's "dirty war." The man "finally went underground because of his sympathies with the left-wing Montonero guerillas," the Times says.

The Times reports that relatives of the disappeared "find it offensive that the Argentine state, whose systematic use of violence against their family members violated every canon of the rule of law, now cites that same principle as the reason it cannot provide compensation."

Well, talk about the use of violence violating the rule of law, how about the record of the Montoneros? They were responsible for the 1974 kidnapping of Exxon executive Victor Samuelson, not to mention attacks on other Western business executives. That does not excuse the tactics that the Argentine government used in response, but the history is a lot more complex than the one-sided story painted by today's Times dispatch.

Restraint: The lead editorial in today's New York Times declares, "adding a new weapon to America's nuclear arsenal would normally require a resumption of nuclear testing, ending the voluntary moratorium on such tests that now helps restrain the nuclear weapons programs of countries like North Korea and Iran." If the Times thinks that the Iranian nuclear weapons program is being restrained by the American test moratorium, the newspaper is deluded. The moratorium did not stop the Pakistanis from testing their atom bomb. If the Iranians are exercising such restraint, why are they pouring so many resources into building the nuclear reactor at Bushehr?

The lead item in the metro briefing column in today's New York Times is an Associated Press dispatch that reports, "The annual Heisman Trophy award ceremony could disappear unless money is found to help its sponsor and dozens of other nonprofit groups hurt by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Senator Charles E. Schumer said yesterday. He urged the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to approve a $225 million plan to help the nonprofits. The money would come from a $2 billion block grant allocated by Congress. The Downtown Athletic Club, which is three blocks from ground zero, sponsors the award ceremony, but closed on Sept. 11 and has since suffered losses averaging $500,000 a month, $1.5 million in December alone, the senator said. It faces permanent closing."

It might have been useful for the Times to have noted here that the Downtown Athletic Club's financial woes far predate the September 11 attack. The Times itself reported on October 4, 1998, that "the club's financial affairs are in utter disarray. (It is in bankruptcy and owes the city more than $3 million in back taxes.)" The Times said in 1998 that "The decline of the Downtown Athletic Club has been mirrored at private clubs across New York City, many of which have been forced to close in recent years by changing fashions, economics and their own inefficiency."

The Downtown Athletic Club exists for the use of those who can afford a membership that costs $1,800 a year, the Times reported back in 1998. The idea that the hardworking taxpayers of this country ought to spring for a bailout of the place under the rubric of September 11 disaster relief is just galling. The club's Web site boasts that members include "captains of industry, people in politics, national sports figures." That 1998 Times article reports that the place has a 70-foot-long bar, and that Ivan Boesky used to keep a locker there. Given all the other competing claims on federal tax dollars -- including the claims of the individuals who pay the taxes -- why should any of those dollars go to assure that captains of industry don't have to exercise at a public health club or drink at a bar with the masses?

Even the club's own president, Jim Corcoran, doesn't buy the AP-Times-Schumer claim that "the award ceremony could disappear." Newsday reports today Mr. Corcoran "insisted, however, that even if the club has to close permanently, the venerable trophy would still be awarded each year in New York. 'I think the people deserve it and I think that's what we would do,' Corcoran said."

The Times, which only days ago devoted an inordinate amount of space to Senator Schumer's living conditions in Washington, seems unwilling to subject the senator's policy proposals to anything approaching a similar level of scrutiny.

Fundamental Goal: A front-page quote in today's New York Times from Ivo Daalder, a foreign policy specialist at the Brookings Institution, declares, "Throughout the nuclear age, the fundamental goal has been to prevent the use of nuclear weapons." The Times lets that slide without even a nod at the possibility that there might have been a more fundamental goal, like defending America, freedom and democracy from Fascism and Communism.

The lead, front-page news article in today's New York Times reports that the Middle East violence, "and the harsh Israeli reprisals, has forced the administration to re-examine its strong support for Mr. Sharon's tough policies." Oh, so now it is the opinion of the New York Times news department that the Israeli reprisals have been harsh and that Prime Minister Sharon's policies have been tough. So much for the newspaper's pretense of neutrality in the debate -- intense in Israeli circles -- over whether Mr. Sharon has stopped too far short of decisive action against Yasser Arafat. In the current issue of The Weekly Standard, for instance, the publisher of the Jerusalem Post, Tom Rose, asks, "why does Sharon hesitate?" and complains, "Sharon remains paralyzed."

The Times supports its contention about the Bush administration's supposed re-examination by quoting President Bush. The Times reports the president said of Mr. Sharon, "I think he realizes that you can't achieve peace by allowing violence to escalate or causing violence to escalate." Mr. Bush apparently shares Mr. Sharon's realizations about the importance of "tough" policies to prevent the escalation of violence: a headline on the front page of today's Times over an article from Afghanistan reads "U.S. Planes Pour Bombs Onto Fierce Resistance."

Maximum Confusion: A front-page headline in today's New York Times reads "Good Things for Maxim Writer Who Waited." There's a bit of a bait-and-switch going on there; readers will comb the article in vain for any reference to the magazine that follows the beer-and-babes formula. The article in fact appears to be about not a Maxim writer but about a writer of aphorisms.

A sub-headline on the lead, front-page article in today's New York Times reads, "The War's Biggest Clash." If it's the war's biggest clash, how come it rates only a one-column headline instead of the banner treatment that the war's less-than-biggest clashes got? And wouldn't the enemy attack on September 11, 2001, qualify as the war's biggest clash?

Valentine To Barghouti: A dispatch from Ramallah in the international section of today's New York Times profiles a Palestinian Arab terrorist leader named Marwan Barghouti. The Times reports, "Mr. Barghouti favors attacking Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the lands Israel occupied in the 1967 war. He opposes suicide bombings and other attacks within pre-1967 Israel, and he recognizes Israel's right to exist." The Times here displays an astonishing ability to read Mr. Barghouti's mind. It would be less naive, more skeptical and more newspaper-like to report: "Mr. Barghouti says he favors attacking Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the lands Israel occupied in the 1967 war. He says he opposes suicide bombings and other attacks within pre-1967 Israel, and he says he recognizes Israel's right to exist." The Times news department, unless it has developed mind-reading ability, has no way of knowing whether Mr. Barghouti genuinely opposes suicide bombings within pre-1967 Israel or genuinely recognizes Israel's right to exist. There are plenty of Palestinian Arab leaders, such as Yasser Arafat, who claim to Western audiences in English that they recognize Israel's right to exist but who pursue policies -- such as advocating that Israel retreat to indefensible borders and accept waves of Palestinian Arab "refugees" -- that would have the practical effect of destroying Israel's existence.

Paid to Dig Dirt: A "news analysis" (the other stories are certified analysis-free) in the national section of today's New York Times identifies David Brock as "a journalist who was paid to dig up anti-Clinton stories in the mid-1990's." Journalists are, by definition, people who are paid to dig up stories, so the sentence is a bit silly. The Washington bureau of the New York Times itself contained, in the mid-1990s, journalists who were paid to dig up anti-Clinton stories. Today it contains journalists who are paid to dig up anti-Bush stories and anti-Enron stories. There aren't many good journalists who are willing to dig up stories without being paid. Smartertimes.com isn't suggesting that is the assignment in the Times Washington bureau -- "go out and dig up some anti-Bush stories and anti-Enron stories," the editor growled -- but a journalist who is paid to dig up stories about President Bush or about Enron is bound to come up with at least one or two that could be described as anti-Bush or anti-Enron.

A dispatch from Chicago in the national section of today's New York Times reports that the president of the Polish American Congress, Edward Moskal, "suggested, erroneously, that" an Illinois congressional candidate, Rahm Emanuel, "had dual citizenship with Israel and has served in its armed forces."

If the impression that Mr. Emanuel served in the Israeli armed forces is erroneous, it is certainly widely held. Mr. Emanuel's White House colleague, George Stephanopoulos, told "Nightline,""Rahm had served in the Israeli army." The Jerusalem Post reported in July 1997 after an interview with Mr. Emanuel that, "What has perhaps gained Emanuel the greatest admiration in Jerusalem was his coming to the country during the Gulf War to volunteer at a supply base near Kiryat Shmona. He did menial work at the base, separating tank brakes from jeep brakes from truck brakes. He downplays the trip, saying it was not a sacrifice, merely 'something I wanted to do.'" The Associated Press reported in a 1996 biographical sketch of Mr. Emanuel that "In 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, he spent 2 and a half weeks rustproofing brakes for Israeli Army vehicles." And the Washington Post reported in 1992 that "Rahm retained dual citizenship until age 18, when he gave up his Israeli passport, but sometimes thinks 'ambivalently' about moving permanently to Israel. It is now part of his legend that during the Persian Gulf War in early1991, when Iraqi scuds were falling on the country where he spent many a childhood summer, he volunteered for 2 1/2 weeks on an army base near the Lebanese border, rust-proofing brakes for military vehicles."

The New York Times article would have been better if it had included some of this context rather than simply dismissing the claim as erroneous .

Backfire: An article in the business section of today's New York Times runs under the headline, "Author's Attempt to Promote Book Backfires." Well, if generating a full-length article in the New York Times business section, complete with a photograph and several prominent mentions of the book, constitutes a "backfire" of a book-promotion effort, one wonders what a success would be.

A dispatch from Albany in the metro section of today's New York Times quotes Andrew Cuomo's campaign manager as claiming about New York, "we have the highest state and local tax burden in the country." The Times lets this statement pass without comment. Smartertimes.com certainly wouldn't quibble with the statement that taxes in New York state are high compared to those in other American jurisdictions. Smartertimes.com thinks the taxes in New York should be lower. And New York City has a host of taxes -- like the commercial rent tax and the personal income tax surcharge -- that we'd all be better off without. But it doesn't help the argument for lower taxes to exaggerate the problem by distorting the facts. In fact, New York's state and local taxes are not "the highest." According to the Tax Foundation, both Maine and the District of Columbia have higher tax burdens. The comparisons are available on the Web at http://www.taxfoundation.org/statelocal01.html. The Tax Foundation ranks tax burdens as a percentage of income. The Census Bureau ranks states differently, dividing state tax revenue on a per capita basis. By this measure, according to the Census press release (http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/cb01-127.html) and table (http://www.census.gov/govs/statetax/00staxrank.html), the highest tax states were Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Minnesota and Massachusetts. New York's state taxes were the 11th-highest in the nation, by this method of ranking.

American-Supplied: A front-page dispatch from Jerusalem in today's New York Times makes a point of noting that Israel used "American-supplied F-16 fighter planes and Apache attack helicopters" to strike at Palestinian Arab targets. No mention by the Times of who supplied the "M-16 assault rifle" and "two grenades" that the Palestinian Arab terrorist -- the Times calls him a "gunman" -- used to murder civilians in a Tel Aviv nightspot, according to the Times.

Seeing Double: The metro section of today's New York Times carries an article about a program by which Columbia University and Hostos Community College cooperate to train students who hope to become American diplomats. If this story sounds vaguely familiar, it is because the Times ran a nearly identical article about the Hostos-Columbia program on February 26, 2002.

A front-page news article in today's New York Times reports on President Bush's plans with respect to a steel tariff. "Rarely has Mr. Bush faced such a delicate economic decision," the Times reports. "He is weighing the costs of keeping Americans employed -- one of his most impassioned current themes -- against the inevitable charges from conservatives that he is violating free-market ideals."

So in the delicate way the Times phrases this debate, free-market ideals work against keeping Americans employed. And conservatives are only interested in "ideals," not in jobs. One has to read far down into the Times article to find out about a study cited by Senator McCain "concluding that tariff increases could cost 86,000 American jobs in industries that use steel -- 13 times the number they would save." A little Web research shows that the study in question comes not from "conservatives" but from a senior fellow at the eminently center-left Brookings Institution. The study is available in PDF format at http://www.criterioneconomics.com/documents/crandall_report.pdf

Egyptian Peaceniks: A dispatch from Cairo in the international section of today's New York Times reports, "One of Egypt's major concerns is that a move by the United States against Iraq would torpedo any peace move in the Middle East." Talk about taking the Egyptians at their word. If the Egyptians were really concerned about peace in the Middle East, they could stop smuggling arms into Gaza, stop running the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in their government-controlled press, and send their ambassador back to Israel. And if the Egyptians were really concerned with peace in the Middle East, they would favor the immediate removal of Saddam Hussein, who is supporting the families of suicide bombers with "martyr" payments. The Times exhibits a breathtaking lack of skepticism in the face of the propaganda claims of the Egyptian dictatorship.

A front-page article in today's New York Times reports, "the fact reported by all Western travelers to the Middle East is the rage of the streets, and the corresponding spread of anti-Americanism. In a recent Gallup poll of nearly 10,000 Muslims in nine countries -- five of them Arab -- respondents overwhelmingly described the United States as 'ruthless, aggressive, conceited, arrogant, easily provoked, biased.' Saudi Arabia was among the countries where people registered the most negative views."

The full Gallup poll results are available online only to those who are willing to pay Gallup $1,250, a group that does not include the editor of Smartertimes.com. The Gallup Web site explains that "In possibly the most challenging project in Gallup's history, 10,000 people in nine predominantly Islamic countries were interviewed. In December 2001 and January 2002, researchers conducted hour-long, in-person interviews in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, Turkey, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan and Morocco."

The reason the project was "challenging" is that it is tremendously difficult to get accurate measures of public opinion in unfree states, which is what most of these nine countries are. In some of these countries, people aren't used to voting or to being asked for their opinion. If the press in a country is controlled by the government and if opponents of the government line can be killed or thrown in jail, it is hard for people to form independent opinions. And if they have formed independent opinions, they tend to be reluctant to share them with strangers.

As a result, it's easy to misinterpret Arab and Muslim public opinion. This same front-page news article in today's Times reports, for instance, that "There is a widespread presumption that the administration wants to keep the Israel-Palestinian conflict on a back burner while it weighs its options on ousting Mr. Hussein, and there are those who see the timing of the Saudi statement as trying to forestall an American strike on Iraq. On this view, it would be harder to bash Mr. Hussein against the wishes of the Arabs if at the same time they were stretching an olive branch toward Israel."

That assumes "the Arabs" oppose ousting Saddam Hussein. In fact the Arabs who are leading the opposition to Saddam Hussein are eager to oust him, as are many of those Arabs who have been stuck under the boot of his brutal regime. The Arabs who oppose ousting him are the corrupt Saudi monarchs who are only afraid that if a free and democratic regime emerges in Iraq, the people of Saudi Arabia might hear about it and get their own ideas.

An article in the Week in Review section of today's New York Times makes the same error, reporting of Saudi Arabia, "Even more than the scourge of terror, the Palestinian plight has seized the conscience of the kingdom. Television is dominated by one-sided images of the Palestinians -- and none of Israelis -- as victims of violence. Sympathy for the cause of Osama Bin Laden, the Saudi-born terrorist, runs high, Saudi officials and academics say, not because the Saudis like terrorism, but because he has latched onto the Palestinian cause."

Well, this is a convenient explanation for the Saudi officials to offer, because it absolves the tyrannical and corrupt and failed Saudi regime of any responsibility for the unrest among its own people. The Times might ask which Arab dictator decides what images dominate on television. The passive construction -- "Television is dominated by" -- makes it sounds as if these images just appear on their own.

A news article in today's New York Times prints the confidential medical records of an 8-year-old child who is named and pictured on the Times front page.

The Times reports: "In a clinical report from Children's Hospital, where Justin was transferred in November at his mother's request, psychiatric evaluators said Justin 'has not either been given a chance or has chosen not to develop his own sense of self.'"

This child did not ask to have his medical records splashed across the front page of the New York Times. He's not old enough to grant an informed consent to releasing such records. The Times doesn't say how it got those particular records, though there is some indication that they were given to the Times by the child's mother, who has been charged with neglect, according to the Times.

But isn't the violation of doctor-patient confidentiality and of the child's privacy as much the story here as the 8-year-old's psychiatric state? If the child were an assassin or a suicide bomber or a head of state there might be some reason to violate his privacy and share this information with Times readers. In the absence of such news value, all the Times is doing by publicizing the child's medical records is aiding and abetting a mother who, according to the Times, has been charged by Colorado authorities with neglect.

Imagine you were the 8-year-old. Would you want the New York Times printing your psychiatric evaluation records?

Of course, the Times prints lots of stuff every day about people who would prefer that the information not be printed. But generally those people are adults. Adults are generally expected to be adult enough to take the public heat for their actions. The rules ought to be a little different for people, like crime victims, who are in the public eye through no fault of their own. And they ought to be a lot different for children, who, no matter how gifted, aren't able to negotiate well for themselves with Times editors on these matters.

One could also argue that some public interest is served by illuminating the problems of pushy parents and gifted children. But surely the Times could have found a way to probe these issues without trampling all over the privacy of this 8-year-old.

A front-page news article in today's New York Times offers the following characterization of the Friedman-Abdullah plan for Israeli surrender: "The plan would trade normalization of Arab relations with Israel for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, lands it occupied in the 1967 war."

Here's how Times columnist Thomas Friedman described the plan in his February 17, 2002, column: "In return for a total withdrawal by Israel to the June 4, 1967, lines, and the establishment of a Palestinian state, the 22 members of the Arab League would offer Israel full diplomatic relations, normalized trade and security guarantees."

The two descriptions of the plan sound similar, but in fact the Times news article significantly distorts the Friedman-Abdullah plan. "A total withdrawal by Israel to the June 4, 1967, lines" means not only an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also from the Golan Heights and from eastern Jerusalem, including the Western Wall, the Temple Mount, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives. Smartertimes.com is aware of the subsequent Times op-ed by an American dove claiming that unnamed Saudis had indicated flexibility on the question of the Western Wall. But there has been no official or public statement by the Saudis to that effect. And the Saudis certainly aren't talking publicly about allowing Israel to keep the Golan Heights. By minimizing the territorial concessions by Israel that are involved, the Times news article makes the Friedman-Abdullah plan sound more feasible than it actually is. That escalates the Times pattern of relentlessly hyping the plan.

An article on the front of the arts section of today's New York Times reports on the controversy over lifted passages in the books of some historians. "There has been some criticism in print but mostly not too harsh," the Times reports. "Booksellers haven't stripped their shelves of these books, customers aren't demanding their money back, the authors' publisher seems more annoyed than angry, and no television producers or moviemakers are suggesting blackballing them."

An article in the "A" section of today's New York Times, about the same topic, tells a different story. "Writer Leaves 'NewsHour' in Furor Over Book," the headline over this article says. The article begins, "Under fire for inappropriately copying passages in a 1987 book, the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin has taken a leave of absence from her role as a commentator on the 'Newshour With Jim Lehrer.' In addition, the University of Delaware has withdrawn an invitation to Ms. Goodwin to be the commencement speaker this year. The two moves indicate that her admissions of insufficiently acknowledged borrowed passages in one of her four books are casting a shadow over her reputation and career."

It's always nice for newspapers to include a variety of opinions, but in this case the descriptions of the facts at hand are so disparate that it is hard for a Times reader to make sense of what is going on. It would be nice if an arts editor had said to the arts columnist, "What do you mean no television producers are suggesting blackballing them? It says right here that the producers of the 'NewsHour With Jim Lehrer' are dropping her." Or if a news editor had said to the headline writer, "What do you mean 'furor'? It says right here that there has been some criticism in print but mostly not too harsh. Booksellers haven't stripped their shelves of these books, customers aren't demanding their money back, the authors' publisher seems more annoyed than angry, and no television producers or moviemakers are suggesting blackballing them."

Critics Would Say: The Times coverage of welfare reform reaches a new, unreformed low today in an article in the metro section. The article reports on a new computer program that seems designed to help maximize welfare dependency. The Times reports that the program "can also tell them if a $2-an-hour raise, for instance, will result in lower benefits. 'If an employer understands that giving a raise from $7.50 an hour to $9.50 an hour costs the worker her child care subsidy or food stamps, then instead of offering a raise, it might offer to pay for six months of computer training.'" (Wasn't that kind of perverse incentive supposed to have ended with the end of welfare as we know it?) The article quotes four people who like the software. One of them is the commissioner of the city's Human Resources Administration, Verna Eggleston. The Times reports, "Ms. Eggleston predicted that critics would say that the software will increase the costs of public support while government budgets are contracting." That's the point at which the Times hits a new low. The Times doesn't actually quote any critics -- it just quotes the advocate predicting what the critics will say. Imagine if the Times covered the Bush administration this way -- not quoting any Democratic critics of the administration, only quoting Bush White House officials predicting what critics would say. It's lazy and one-sided. And it smacks of a deal made in exchange for a day-ahead look at the software: we'll give you this story a day before the official announcement so long as you agree not to call any critics. Had the Times bothered to actually call up any critics rather than relying on Ms. Eggleston's portrayal of their arguments, it might have found that their main criticism would not be the cost but the message. Telling poor citizens that they should turn down a private-sector raise so that they can retain government food stamps and child-care subsidies sends a message that endorses welfare dependency. It's a shame that that the laws are set up so that a rational economic actor would prefer prolonged government dependency to a private-sector raise, but in a strictly economic sense, it doesn't matter to the poor person whether the income comes from a private employer or from the government. Software that demonstrates these perverse incentives may help the cause of those seeking to reform the welfare laws, but the claim in the Times news article that the software will help set the poor "on the road to self-sufficiency" is laughable. A critic -- had the Times bothered to call one -- would say that rather than setting the poor on the road to self-sufficiency, the program seems designed to encourage dependency.

The New York Times this morning escalates its relentless campaign to hype the Friedman-Abdullah plan for Israel to surrender its capital and retreat to indefensible borders in exchange for nebulous promises of "normalization" from the surrounding third-world Arab dictatorships.

It's the lead, front-page news article in today's New York Times. The Times news article quotes unchallenged a "senior" Bush administration official who claims, "This is the first time we've heard any nation in the region talk about full normalization between Arab nations and Israel at the end of the peace process."

First time? Israel and the Arabs have been talking about this for almost 25 years, since the Camp David agreement with Egypt. The New York Times itself reported on January 16, 1998 that "The diplomats said that Mr. Assad told a visiting American Congressional delegation last week that next week's meeting should serve as an occasion for Mr. Clinton to urge Mr. Netanyahu to be more open to the prospect of resuming talks with the Syrians in a way consistent with the conditional assurance provided by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as early as July 1994. It was at that time, American and Israeli officials have said, that Mr. Rabin told Secretary of State Warren Christopher that Israel would be willing to withdraw from the Golan Heights to the lines that were in place before the 1967 war in return for security assurances and the full normalization of relations between the two countries. That assurance was the basis of talks between Syria and Israel that reached their peak at the Wye Plantation, a conference center in Maryland, in early 1996. The talks were halted after a series of bombings in Israel."

So according to the Times itself, Israel and Syria have been talking about "full normalization" since at least July 1994. Talking is the operative word, because most of the Arab tyrants are not interested in normalizing relations with Israel. They are interesting in "talking" about it, because it reaps them the public relations benefit of changing the subject away from their own repressive human rights practices and their support for terrorist attacks against Americans.

Then there is the case of Jordan. The Israel-Jordan peace treaty signed on October 26, 1994, states, "The Parties agree to establish full diplomatic and consular relations and to exchange resident ambassadors within one month of the exchange of the instruments of ratification of this Treaty. The Parties agree that the normal relationship between them will further include economic and cultural relations." Maybe the "senior" Bush administration official hasn't read that treaty. If he had, he wouldn't be hyperventilating about the "first time."

One reason that these "senior" Bush administration officials seek to be identified as such in the Times is that when they say surpassingly stupid things, they are not held accountable by name. The Times lets this "first time" quote pass unchallenged, as if it were true.

The same Times article goes on to say that the Friedman-Abdullah plan "revived demands for an Israeli withdrawal far greater than the Israeli right could agree to." It is not only a withdrawal far greater than the Israeli right could agree to; as Dore Gold points out in an op-ed piece in today's Times, it is a withdrawal greater than that required by U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which has been the basis for the Israeli-Arab negotiations, and it is a withdrawal beyond "the most conciliatory Israeli positions advanced by the Barak government." But rather than using Mr. Gold's description, the Times news article invokes the bogeyman of "the Israeli right."

Thinly Veiled: A dispatch from Washington in the national section of today's New York Times reports that the free-speech restriction legislation under consideration by the Senate -- the Times calls it "legislation to overhaul the campaign-finance law" -- "puts new restraints on thinly veiled campaign advertising by outside groups." As Smartertimes.com noted earlier this month, this description is not-so-thinly veiled bias by the New York Times. The legislation in fact applies not only to "thinly veiled campaign advertising" but to, as the bill text puts it, "any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication which refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office." In other words, the bill prohibits within the designated period not just thinly veiled campaign advertising but also thickly veiled campaign advertising and even advertising that has no relation, thickly or thinly veiled, to campaigns, but that merely happens to mention the name of or show the image of a congressman or president who is running for reelection. It's a thinly veiled effort by Congress to abridge the First Amendment right of the press, the First Amendment right of speech and the First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

Group Rights: A dispatch from Washington in the national section of today's New York Times reports on a hearing about the nomination of Gerald Reynolds to head the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Education. "As assistant secretary of education for civil rights, Mr. Reynolds would oversee laws to protect the rights of minorities, female students, children with learning disabilities and disabled people," the Times reports. "His nomination is opposed by a number of organizations that represent the people whose rights he would be in charge of upholding, including the N.A.A.C.P., the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the American Association of People With Disabilities and the American Association of University Women." This is a strange definition of what Mr. Reynolds would do as assistant secretary of education for civil rights. A less politicized definition would say that he would enforce the five federal laws that prohibit discrimination in education programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance. These laws outlaw discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability and age; that's a different thing from saying they "protect the rights of minorities" and "female students." The same laws protect the rights of majorities and of male students. The Times defines Mr. Reynolds's job as to defend the rights of only some Americans, not the rights of all Americans. So it's no wonder that the Times only mentions the groups that oppose his nomination, not the groups that support it -- groups that also represents people whose rights Mr. Reynolds would be in charge of upholding.

An article in the Science Times section of today's New York Times quotes Ralph J. Cicerone, chairman of a National Academy of Sciences panel on climate change. The Times reports, "He said there was no longer any ambiguity about whether humans were significant contributors to global warming, and he noted that in the opening line of its report to the White House, the panel stated plainly that 'greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise.'"

It is true that that was the opening line of the report to the White House by the panel of the National Academy of Sciences. But Mr. Cicerone and the New York Times omit the third line of that report: "The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability."

It's a bit of fast footwork by Mr. Cicerone and the New York Times to quote that opening line of the report without also quoting, or at least mentioning, the third line. The panel may have stated something plainly in the opening line, but the third line states it significantly less plainly, using words like "likely mostly." The recent reports of warming in the climate of Mars, where greenhouse gases generated by human activities are scarce, would seem to support the "natural variability" camp.

Taming China: A column by Nicholas Kristof on the op-ed page of today's New York Times calls for American "engagement" with North Korea. "The only practical measure I can see is to press ahead on engagement with North Korea. That helped tame another Asian Communist regime, beginning in 1972 when an earlier Republican president showed the courage to initiate a real, high-level dialogue with China."

This argument has at least three glaring flaws. Nixon's opening to Communist China in 1972 was probably a mistake. But the case for it rests largely on the fact that, at the time, America was fighting a Cold War with the Soviet Union. The argument was that it was to America's strategic advantage to try to play the Chinese Communists off against the Soviet Communists. Now, unlike in 1972, America is the world's sole superpower. So there's much less reason for us to be "engaging" -- Times-talk for appeasing -- brutal regimes like those in Red China or North Korea. They need us more now, and we need them less.

Second, Red China hasn't been tamed, despite 30 years of bipartisan American appeasement. Just ask the Dalai Lama or the Chinese Christians or those trying to organize free labor unions there. Of course, it may be hard to ask them, because they are either in exile or stuck in prison camps. Or they have been shot dead by the Communist government. Some of them, as the Times itself has reported, have been shot dead after having their organs harvested for resale, or have been killed by the organ-harvesting. The "tamed" China was as recently as January shipping surface-to-air missiles to the Axis theocracy of Iran, another country that the Times types are proposing to "engage" with.

Finally, "engagement" is never defined. If engagement means trying to overthrow the evil Axis government and help the people to freedom and democracy, that is one thing. But if "engagement" means sending American diplomats over to negotiate "arms control" agreements with the dictators, creating an illusion of security while doing nothing to help those stuck under the boot of the regime, then that is another thing.

A dispatch from Washington in the international section of today's New York Times reports, "American businesses have virtually no dealings with Iraq, Iran or North Korea, by law."

On the page of the New York Times directly opposite that news article is a full-page, four-color advertisement from an American business called ABC Carpet and Home, which is a frequent advertiser in the Times. The ad lists for sale an "Iranian Kashmere" rug, "red/blue," at a price of $6,999. It lists for sale an "Iranian Kerman" rug, "dark blue," at a price of $9,999. And it lists for sale a "Persian Isfahan" rug, "beige/wine" and roughly 20 feet square, at $109,999.

In a March 17, 2000, speech, then-Secretary of State Albright announced that America was easing restrictions on imports of Iranian carpets, caviar and pistachios. According to a December 4, 2001, report by Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service, "Iranian carpets are being sold in the United States, estimated to be a $100 million per year market." The New York Times news department may consider $100 million a year in carpet imports to be "virtually no dealings." But $100 million can go pretty far when it is used to buy explosives for suicide bombers to use against Israel. Or when it is used to issue payments to the families of "martyrs" who kill themselves in terrorist attacks. Or when it is used to pay nuclear weapons experts from the former Soviet Union to help Iran build an atom bomb. So one might call the Times news article "virtually" inaccurate.

Note: The next update of Smartertimes.com will be Tuesday morning, February 26, 2002.