The lead editorial in today's New York Times comments on the Cleveland school-voucher case that is scheduled to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The bulk of the editorial is devoted to arguing against school vouchers on First Amendment grounds. The Times claims they violate the clause that prevents the Congress from establishing a religion. "The Supreme Court cannot permit cities like Cleveland to violate the Establishment Clause in order to improve education any more than it could allow them to deprive citizens of their free-speech rights, if that were seen as a boon to public education," the Times editorial says.

Well, that's just rich, given that the Times has just concluded an editorial campaign arguing in favor of Congress depriving citizens of their free-speech rights, on the grounds that doing so would help clean up elections. The Times calls that "campaign-finance reform." It seems that the Times is in favor of selecting one part of the First Amendment to enforce -- the establishment clause -- and other parts to ignore -- the free speech, petition and press clauses.

The Times's argument in the editorial is even weaker when you consider that the prohibitions in the First Amendment were intended to apply not to the states nor to cities like Cleveland but to the Congress. The Times's First Amendment argument might hold water in arguing against a federal voucher program, though even then it is a weak argument, because it's not at all clear that allowing choice in education is the same as establishing a religion. But it's a stretch to apply the First Amendment prohibition to a city program. Now, Smartertimes.com knows it is going to get lots of letters from liberal lawyers -- valued Smartertimes.com readers -- citing the 14th Amendment and equal protection and due process and various precedents to argue that the First Amendment does apply to the states and to the city of Cleveland. That's an argument that can be made, but the Times editorial, while it has time to traffic in anti-Catholic stereotypes -- "the driving force behind the program was the city's powerful Roman Catholic archdiocese," the editorial says, somehow omitting the freemasons and the trilateral commission -- doesn't make it. Instead the editorial makes a simple First Amendment argument without even dealing with the federalism question.

The Times editorial also claims, "The vouchers do not encourage better public schools." In fact, the New York Times itself ran a news article on February 16, 2001 that reported, "A new study of Florida's efforts to turn around failing schools has found that the threat that children would receive vouchers to attend private schools spurred the worst performing schools to make significant academic strides." The study was conducted by Jay Greene of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and was sponsored by the state of Florida.

The front page of today's New York Times carries a photograph of President Bush and a Japanese man. The cutline under the photo says, "President Bush and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan appeared together at a news conference in Tokyo yesterday." The photograph, however, shows not Prime Minister Koizumi but rather Emperor Akihito.

The Japanese can at least rest assured that they are not the only ones that get this sort of treatment from the Times; a photo of public-relations man Howard Rubenstein was labeled on the front of the Times metro section the other day as one of real-estate mogul Larry Silverstein. The Rubenstein-Silverstein error was corrected the next day, as the Koizumi-Akihito error will no doubt also be corrected, but the real question is why the Times, with its vast resources and hundreds of highly paid, college-educated editors, can't devise some sort of system to catch these errors before they get into the newspaper.

Excellent Value: One of the most disgusting examples of so-called journalism ever to soil the pages of the New York Times appears today on the front of the paper's business section. It is a dispatch from North Korea that runs under the headline, "Tentatively, North Korea Solicits Foreign Investment and Tourism." It includes, basically unchallenged, the statement from a British member of the European Parliament that "At the moment, very cheap labor is the only thing the North Koreans have going for them." It also includes, totally unchallenged, a quote from the president of the Korea Society in New York that says, "There are over 125 South Korean firms doing business in North Korea. They find it difficult to get through the bureaucracy. Once they do, they find the North Korean workers literate, hard workers and excellent value."

This is tantamount to the Times showing up in the antebellum American South or in the gulag during the days of the Soviet Union and quoting experts there about the "cheap labor," "hard workers and excellent value." The reason the workers there are so cheap and the "value" so excellent is that they are trapped in the country by Communist soldiers who will shoot them dead if they try to escape to freedom. In addition, anyone who tries to organize a free labor union -- that is, one independent of the state -- will also be shot dead. There are no real collective bargaining rights in North Korea. Had the Times bothered to call up a real human rights group like Freedom House or a real labor federation like the AFL-CIO, the newspaper might have avoided itself some of this embarrassment.

Or the Times could have checked the most recent State Department human rights report, which states that in North Korea, "Nongovernmental labor unions do not exist. . . . unions function on the classic 'Stalinist model,' with responsibility for mobilizing workers behind production goals and for providing health, education, cultural, and welfare facilities. Unions do not have the right to strike. . . . Workers have no right to organize or to bargain collectively. Government ministries set wages. The State assigns all jobs. Ideological purity is as important as professional competence in deciding who receives a particular job, and foreign companies that have established joint ventures report that all their employees must be hired from lists submitted by the Korean Workers' Party. The Constitution states that all working-age citizens must work and 'strictly observe labor discipline and working hours.' The Penal Code states that anyone who hampers the nation's industry, commerce, or transportation by intentionally failing to carry out a specific assignment 'while pretending to be functioning normally' is subject to the death penalty; it also states that anyone who 'shoddily carries out' an assigned duty is subject to no less than 5 years' imprisonment. Even persistent tardiness may be defined as 'anti-Socialist wrecking' under these articles, although as a result of food shortages absenteeism reportedly has become widespread as more time must be spent finding food." The State Department human rights report notes that a North Korean official "described the labor force to an audience of foreign business executives by noting that 'there are no riots, no strikes, and no differences of opinion' with management."

"Excellent value," indeed.

An article in the international section of today's New York Times reports on a student at Tufts University. The article runs under the headline "Kashmir's Champion Finds Pitfalls to Peace." It reports, "For Mr. Ahmad, a spokesman in the United States for a nonviolent Kashmiri independence movement, the meeting was doubly important, because he has been denied an Indian visa since June 2001, a month after he joined the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, an organization that has not been accused of either atrocities or of significant Pakistani backing."

"Nonviolent"? "Has not been accused of . . .atrocities"?

The Jerusalem Post reported July 2, 1991, that the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front had taken an Israeli hostage in India after he escaped from another Kashmir group that had kidnapped him and five other Israelis.

The Jerusalem Post said, "The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) has insisted it will release Israeli hostage Yair Yitzhaki only to a UN representative, a demand that police say can be met. . . . .Yitzhaki was picked up by the JKLF after he and five other Israeli tourists overpowered kidnappers from another militant group on Thursday. Erez Cahane was killed along with a militant and three wounded Israelis are still in hospital. One escaped unhurt."

Mr. Yitzhaki was released later.

The Daily Telegraph of London reported on December 14, 1989, about another kidnapping by the JKLF: "THE KIDNAPPED daughter of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, India's Home Minister, was freed after six days yesterday in exchange for five Kashmiri militants. Mr Inder Gujral, Foreign Minister, authorised the state government to give way on the two sticking points delaying the exchange after the kidnappers, members of the secessionist Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, renewed a threat to kill Dr Rubia Sayeed, 23. The JKLF, the strongest group fighting for independence in Kashmir, freed Dr Sayeed after the militants were released in Srinagar, summer capital of the mountainous Jammu and Kashmir state. Dr Sayeed, whose Kashmiri father is the first Moslem to hold the Home Ministry post, was seized last Friday as she returned home from work."

Don't Know: An op-ed piece by Michael Naumann in today's New York Times runs under the headline, "Why Europe Is Wary of War in Iraq." The article says of Saddam Hussein, "However, while the man is dangerous and crazy, we do not know that he has weapons of mass destruction." First of all, Saddam Hussein unfortunately does have chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. The director of central intelligence's special assistant for nonproliferation, John A. Lauder, said in a statement prepared for delivery on April 29, 1999: "Iraq is another serious CBW proliferation concern, despite more than seven years of rigorous inspections. There are strong indications that Iraq retains a CW capability and that it has helped other countries--particularly Sudan--develop or expand CW capabilities. In addition, since the Gulf War, Baghdad has rebuilt chemical facilities that could be converted fairly quickly for production of CW agents. Meanwhile, Iraq refuses to disclose fully the extent of its BW program and still has not accounted for over a hundred BW bombs and more than three metric tons of imported growth media--directly related to past production and future capabilities. Iraq has demonstrated the capability to deliver BW agent from aircraft. We believe Iraq will exploit any opportunity to reconstitute its pre - Gulf War CBW capabilities as rapidly as possible, once sanctions are lifted." If anything, Saddam Hussein has accumulated more chemical and biological weapons since 1999, in the absence of U.N. inspections. What would it take for Mr. Naumann to "know" that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction -- their use against an American or Israeli city? Second of all, even if Mr. Naumann were right and Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction, what would be the point of waiting until Iraq does have them -- and is a more formidable foe -- to attack?

The op-ed page of today's New York Times offers not one but two plans for an Israeli surrender. One is by Times columnist Thomas Friedman; the other is by Jerome M. Segal, "president of the Jewish Peace Lobby." Let's take them one at a time.

Mr. Friedman's plan is that "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 Saudi crown prince, Abdullah, seems open to this idea. But it's extremely unlikely that Israel would ever accept it, for the following reasons:

1. It would be suicidal. The pre-1967 borders were once described by Abba Eban, the Israeli diplomat who is no hawk, as the "Auschwitz borders" because they made Israel so vulnerable. As Ronald Reagan once said, "in the pre-1967 borders, Israel was barely ten miles wide at its narrowest point. The bulk of Israel's population lived within artillery range of hostile Arab armies. I am not about to ask Israel to live that way again."

2. It ignores the significance of Jerusalem sites to the Jewish religion. The Friedman-Abdullah plan would surrender the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives into the hands of the same Arabs who desecrated these Jewish sites the last time around. When Jordan controlled eastern Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967, the gravestones of Jewish rabbis and sages were used to build Jordanian army latrines. Fifty-eight synagogues were destroyed or ruined, and Israelis were denied access to the Western Wall, according to the book "Myths and Facts." As Yitzhak Rabin, the peacemaking prime minister, said in Washington on October 25, 1995, "My Jerusalem is the focus of the Jewish people's yearnings, the city of its visions, the cradle of its prayers. It is the dream of the return to Zion. It is the name millions murmur, even on their death bed. It is the place where eyes are raised and prayers are uttered. . . . In Israel, we all agree on one issue: the wholeness of Jerusalem, the continuation of its existence as capital of the State of Israel. There are no two Jerusalems. There is only one Jerusalem. For us, Jerusalem is not subject to compromise, and there is no peace without Jerusalem. Jerusalem, which was destroyed eight times, where for years we had no access to the remnants of our Temple, was ours, is ours, and will be ours -- forever."

3. It ignores the military balance. Israel won the 1967 war. It is widely reported to have nuclear weapons, which its Arab foes do not have. America won the Cold War, in which many of the Arab tyrannies, terrorist gangs and leaders -- including Syria and the Palestine Liberation Organization -- sided with the Soviet Union. Why should the winning side surrender all the land it won? It's as if, 25 years after the Axis powers lost World War II, a columnist for the New York Times fetched up and suggested that France, Austria and Poland surrender to Axis sovereignty in exchange for the Axis powers granting full diplomatic relations, normalized trade and security guarantees to America, Britain and the Soviet Union. What kind of peace plan involves the losing side getting all the territorial concessions?

4. What the Arabs are offering is worthless. The Friedman-Abdullah plan holds out the carrot to Israel of "full diplomatic relations, normalized trade and security guarantees." Why would Israel want full diplomatic relations with governments like those that exist in Iraq or Libya? Even America does not have full diplomatic relations with those countries, any more than it does with Cuba or with North Korea. They are pariah states, as well they should be because of the horrible way they treat their own citizens. Were Israel to have an ambassador hobnobbing with the thugs that surround Bashar Assad in Syria or Saddam Hussein in Iraq, what sort of message would that send to the brave souls fighting for freedom and democracy in those countries? Israel supposedly has full diplomatic relations with Egypt and look at what it has brought Israel and the Egyptian people: a government-controlled press full of anti-Jewish blood libels, an Egyptian dictatorship that throws political opponents in prison, and an Egyptian army that is arming itself with the latest in North Korean missiles for use against Israel while the Egyptian population languishes in poverty. As for trade, Israel's economy is so first-world that its natural trading partners are America, Japan and the European Union. The Arab states are so poor in comparison that a trade relationship wouldn't mean all that much to Israel. Mr. Friedman may have been wowed by the royal surroundings in Riyadh, but even the once-rich Gulf oil states have fallen on hard economic times. The funniest of the carrots is the idea of security guarantees. The 22 Arab states are going to guarantee Israel's security against an attack by -- which country? Liechtenstein? First of all, these 22 Arab states haven't won a war yet, so any guarantees they make are not likely to make Israel feel very secure. But just as important, they are tyrannies, with a long history of double-crossing and of the rejection of Israel's right to exist, and with a need to distract their own citizens from the fact that they are living in oppressive tyrannies. Why would a "security guarantee" from these guys be worth any more than the paper it is written on -- or than the paper that Yasser Arafat wrote his worthless security guarantees to Israel on back in 1993?

Particularly rich is the news article that the Times writes about its own op-ed piece. The article runs under the headline "Arab Experts Fault Saudi's Idea Based on Land-for-Peace Trade." The article contains only Arab reaction to the Friedman-Abdullah plan; not a single Israeli reaction is included. The Times news article summarizes the plan as "declaring that if Israel withdrew from all the occupied territories, including the Arab quarters of Jerusalem, then the Arab states would offer full normalization of relations." But, as described in the op-ed column, the Friedman-Abdullah plan involves Israeli withdrawal not only from "the Arab quarters of Jerusalem" but to the June 4, 1967 borders -- in other words, withdrawal from the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, the Mount of Olives cemetery, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. The Times news department may consider these places "the Arab quarters of Jerusalem." But they are not.

Mr. Segal's peace plan is just as bad. It proposes that the United Nations establish and recognize a state of Palestine in all of Gaza and in land that amounts to 100 percent of the land in the West Bank. In return, the Palestinian Arabs must recognize Israel, import no weapons, agree not to enter into any treaty with a country not at peace with Israel, and disarm terrorist groups. Mr. Segal writes, "It is quite possible, of course, that the P.L.O. would refuse to meet the conditions necessary to get the process started. That would leave us where we are today, with one great difference: The onus for the continued occupation would fall squarely on the P.L.O." Mr. Segal is trying to sell the same camel twice. The conditions that he sets for the Palestinian Arabs are the same ones that were set in the 1993 Oslo accords and in all the subsequent agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Agreement. The PLO has refused to meet those conditions. And now most everyone except for the likes of Mr. Segal realizes that the onus for the continued occupation falls squarely on the PLO. Mr. Segal does not explain why he thinks the Oslo approach will succeed under U.N. auspices when it has failed repeatedly under American auspices. There are other problems with the plan -- the "Auschwitz borders," issue, for instance, applies here the same way as it does in the Friedman-Abdullah plan.

A news article in the business section of today's New York Times reports that Enron executive Kenneth Lay "contributed about $600,000 to Mr. Bush's campaigns." That's an overstatement. According to the Center for Public Integrity, Mr. Lay's contributions to Bush's campaigns for governor of Texas amounted to $122,500. Contributions to presidential campaigns are limited to $1,000 per election, and Federal Election Commission records show that Mr. Lay contributed $1,000 to Bush for President Inc. and $1,000 to the Bush-Cheney 2000 Compliance Committee Inc. (Donations toward compliance committees don't count toward the per-election limits.) Mr. Lay raised money from other people for the Bush campaign, and he gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in "soft money" contributions to the national Republican Party. He also gave to state Republican parties. But a contribution to the Republican Party is different from a contribution to Mr. Bush's campaign. The statement in the Times news article that Mr. Lay "contributed about $600,000 to Mr. Bush's campaigns" is inaccurate.

Beetle Blunder: Remember that stirring Times editorial from Thursday? The one defending the wild salmon in Oregon that said, "Nor is the problem the Endangered Species Act, which has to do with far more than the protection of flora and fauna. It speaks to the human condition as well: when an entire species is sufficiently threatened to require protection, it usually means that the same ecosystem will eventually fail the humans who depend on it as well." Well, check out today's Times editorial on the Asian Longhorned Beetle. The Times refers to it as a "scourge" and a "pest" and calls for "nothing less than eradication of the Asian Longhorned Beetle on this continent." Well, by the logic of Thursday's editorial, once the Asian Longhorned Beetle is eradicated on this continent, humans won't be far behind. There's no attempt in today's Times to explain what makes the Oregon salmon worth saving but the Asian Longhorned Beetle worth destroying. A cynic might say that the beetles are threatening to devastate trees in Central Park -- near the homes of the limousine liberals who write the Times editorials. The effort to save the wild salmon, however, is threatening only to devastate the livelihoods of Klamath Basin farmers, who don't write the Times editorials.

The obituary pages of today's New York Times carry an article about the life and death of Vernon Walters, a former American ambassador at the United Nations and deputy director of central intelligence. An obituary of Walters also appeared in yesterday's New York Times. It's understandable that the Times would sometimes run the obituary of the same person two days in a row -- the obit may only make late editions of the paper on the first day, and may only be in early editions on another day. But what's interesting in this case is that some of the dismissiveness that characterized the obituary when it ran in yesterday's paper has been deleted in today's paper.

Yesterday's Times obituary of Walters, for instance, included a paragraph that began, "General Walters, who never married, may not have made history in his career, but he saw it firsthand." In today's Times, the sentence has been edited. It now reads, "He had many opportunities in his career to witness the making of history."

Walters gets treated better today than he did yesterday, but he still doesn't get treated as well as a fashion designer named Pauline Trigere, whose obituary the Times editors apparently judged worthy of significantly more space than Walters'. Trigere's obit also ran twice, first in yesterday's paper and then again in today's.

Nesting: Wading through the nine sections of New York editions of today's New York Times, readers will come across a "special section" titled "Nesting." This is about people, not animals, and appears to be coverage indistinguishable from what appears every Thursday in the House and Home section of the Times, every Sunday in the Real Estate section of the Times, and on some Sundays in "Part Two" issues of the New York Times magazine. Why the Times editors felt the need, strictly from a news perspective, to throw a special Friday section together on the topic is a mystery. It looks suspiciously like they were just trying to help the business side meet some advertising revenue goal. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But it's an interesting illustration of the way that news space in the Times is allocated not strictly on the basis of newsworthiness but on the basis of what is likely to attract advertisements. You aren't likely to pick up the Times one Friday, for instance, and see a 26-page special section on poverty in Africa or on crime in the Bronx.

The lead, front-page article in today's New York Times reports on the House passage of speech-regulation legislation. The Times news article reports that the legislation "would also impose new regulations on thinly disguised campaign ads by outside groups, prohibiting their broadcast within 30 days of a primary and 60 days of a general election." This description is not-so-thinly disguised bias by the New York Times. The legislation in fact applies not only to "thinly disguised campaign ads" 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 disguised campaign ads but also thickly disguised campaign ads and even ads that have no relation, thickly or thinly disguised, to campaigns, but which merely happen to mention the name of or show the image of a congressman or president who is running for reelection. It's a thinly disguised 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.

Interestingly enough, the ban applies to television and radio ads but not to newspaper ads. A cynic might say that that is the reason the New York Times newspaper supports the bill so ardently, but Smartertimes.com is not so cynical as the Times and the other speech-regulation advocates, who seem to think that political decisions are driven largely by money.

Usually: The lead editorial in today's New York Times, about preserving endangered species, includes the following gem of an argument: "Nor is the problem the Endangered Species Act, which has to do with far more than the protection of flora and fauna. It speaks to the human condition as well: when an entire species is sufficiently threatened to require protection, it usually means that the same ecosystem will eventually fail the humans who depend on it as well." Note the use of the words "usually" and "eventually." Guess the demise of the dinosaurs and the passenger pigeon means that the Earth will "eventually" fail humans, too. No mention by the Times of the fact that, as one American Museum of Natural History Exhibit put it, "Extinction is a natural process and some two-thirds of all animal species that existed have become extinct." Note: Smartertimes.com is operating this morning off the New York Times on the Web.

A graphic in the business section of today's New York Times runs under the headline "Donations to the Committee." The graphic lists "contributions to Senate Commerce Committee members from 1989." One column is labeled "Enron" and another is labeled "Arthur Anderson." Beneath the column headings are dollar amounts. The Times lists the source of the information in the graphic as the Center for Responsive Politics. Check out the web site of the Center for Responsive Politics, though, and it's clear that the center, unlike the Times, is careful to note that "Totals include contributions from Enron's PAC and its employees."

The Times might consider that a distinction without a difference. But in fact, direct corporate hard-money contributions to individual federal campaigns are banned under federal campaign regulations. So it's a distinction that matters, at least to the Federal Election Commission.

More intriguingly, though, consider what would happen if the Times treated another company they way it treats Enron and Arthur Andersen employees in today's graphic, describing contributions made by individual employees as contributions made by "Enron" or "Arthur Andersen." Imagine if such a standard were applied at, say, The New York Times Company. By that standard, the New York Times contributed $3,950 to the campaign war chest of Hillary Clinton. In fact, these contributions, according to FEC records, were not from the New York Times but from its employees -- including John Rockwell ($2000) and Karen Arenson ($1000). Those names match those of an arts editor at the Times and a reporter who covers philanthropy and higher education, though it's certainly possible that there are other Times employees with those names. An owner of the Times, Marian Sulzberger Heiskell, gave $500 to the campaign of Rep. Jose Serrano, a Democrat who in August issued a press release that said, "Following a series of meetings and rallies with the Rev. Al Sharpton, Congressman Jose E. Serrano today called upon Democrats to take seriously the potential candidacy of the Rev. Sharpton for President of the United States. 'Rev. Sharpton is the political leader in this country who speaks most consistently to the issues poor people care about. He does not fear the political downside of speaking the truth about poverty in America; his concern for the poor and disenfranchised -- African Americans and Hispanics equally -- is genuine. . . . I believe that the moral energy of Rev. Sharpton will help to awaken the conscience of my party which for too long now has been relaxing in the safety of the political center.'" Also receiving contributions from those who identify themselves as Times Company employees are Senator Torricelli and the Democratic National Committee.

Smartertimes.com thinks it would be a mistake to confuse the overwhelmingly liberal campaign contributions of the New York Times Company employees with the political stance of the newspaper's news columns or the company itself, which, of course, is scrupulously nonpartisan. The only question is why the New York Times newspaper, in its business section today, does not pay Enron and Arthur Andersen the courtesy of making the same distinction.

A dispatch from Atlanta in today's New York Times quotes the president of Teachers College at Columbia University, Arthur Levine, as saying, "What Sept. 11 should have been is a signal that the canon ought to be expanded to include books like the Koran. Other than the Constitution, no work has had a larger impact on the United States." The editor of Smartertimes.com has a great deal of residual warm feeling toward Mr. Levine, but this remark of his is so ridiculous that one wonders whether he was misquoted. Some compassionate Times editor might have asked the reporter to check back with Mr. Levine and ask him if he really thinks that. Nothing illustrates Mr. Levine's error -- and the Times's error in printing his remark unchallenged -- quite so dramatically as a passage from another article in today's Times, this one a dispatch from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: "'I have three Bibles,' said one M.P. at an American military installation, who said he was able to attend Protestant services. 'Just let someone try to take them away.'" If the Constitution counts, so too should probably the Declaration of Independence, the Seneca Falls Declaration and the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Not to mention the Bible.

Robust: An article in the business section of today's New York Times reports that "in terms of building and serving an audience," the online magazine Slate "was notably successful." The Times cites a statistic that claims Slate "serves 2,320,000 unique users a month," a number that the Times news article describes as "robust." The Times article also claims that Slate "along with Salon is one of the few significant publishing enterprises remaining on the Web." It makes you wonder if the Times definition of "significant" means "liberal." The Drudge Report, for instance, reports that it receives 3.8 million visits a day and 97 million a month. Compared to that, Slate's performance doesn't look exactly "robust." And Slate, unlike the Drudge Report, is backed with a lavish budget from Microsoft. That budget supports a staff that vastly outnumbers that of the Drudge Report. The Slate monthly viewership figures aren't robust compared to television or to the weekly print newsmagazines. Why doesn't the Times just tell readers how much traffic Slate gets, give some relevant comparison points, and let readers decide for themselves whether Slate's performance is "robust," "notably successful" or anemic. This is supposed to be a news article, after all, not a review or an opinion column. Notably absent from the Times article is the number of dollars Microsoft has burned through on Slate since 1996 in pursuit of a profit that still hasn't materialized.

Disclosure: Arthur Levine once taught a class that the editor of Smartertimes.com took in college. And the writer of the article about Slate in today's Times has a forthcoming magazine article about the New York Sun, a newspaper in which the editor of Smartertimes.com is involved. Smartertimes.com disagrees with the proposition that these sorts of disclosures should be necessary, but the present environment with respect to this disclosure issue is so highly charged that the editor of Smartertimes.com will go along until he has a chance to make his case in more detail elsewhere.

A news article in the business section of today's New York Times reports on changes at ABC News, including the presence of John Miller as an anchor on "20/20." The Times says of Mr. Miller, "Though he is attractive, he does not have the generic good looks and silky voice of Stone Phillips of NBC's 'Dateline.'" It's nice to know that the New York Times, speaking in a news article with all the authority of the newspaper as an institution, finds Mr. Miller "attractive," and considers Mr. Phillips to have "generic good looks." It's also somewhat amusing. "Attractive" strikes Smartertimes.com as a quality that depends on whether the person being attracted to Mr. Miller is his wife, a man, a woman, a New York Times beat reporter who covers television, or someone who just is attracted to, as Mr. Miller describes himself in the article, "gray hair and crooked teeth." Some people may find him attractive; others may find him grating. Others may not ponder his attractiveness; they may be watching the program for some reason other than the looks of the anchorman. Virginia Postrel is writing a book that is partly about these questions; in her proposal(http://www.dynamist.com/proposal.html ) she writes: "Researchers have found some universal patterns in what humans, from infants to adults, find attractive in other people, in music, and in landscapes. People perceive some things as beautiful without regard to culture or context -- symmetrical faces, smooth surfaces, specific color combinations. Aesthetics is not merely a matter of social manipulation. But hard-wired reactions don't explain everything either. Aesthetics always operates in a personal and cultural context." It's that personal and cultural context that may make more than one Times reader pause for a moment and chuckle when reading the New York Times news article describing Mr. Miller as "attractive."

Right-Wing Ideas: A dispatch from Utah in the sports section of today's New York Times reports on a place where residents oppose gun control and distrust the United Nations. The Times dwells on these sentiments as "extreme," without going into much detail about the views of the genuinely extreme groups like "skinheads" who are mixed into the area. The Times article contains the following quote from "Mark Pitcavage, national fact-finding director for the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks extremist groups": "You can't judge an entire community. But in this country there are a couple of places where time and time again right-wing ideas keep turning up. It's hard to say whether it's a core group of people who keep this alive. But the La Verkin area is one of those places."

Imagine the shoe on the other foot: The Times quoting the Anti-Defamation League, "which tracks extremist groups," to the effect that "In this country there are a couple of places where time and time again left-wing ideas keep turning up. It's hard to say whether it's a core group of people who keep this alive. But the Berkeley, Calif., and Cambridge, Mass., areas are among those places."

If the New York Times or the Anti-Defamation League want to make these folks in Utah sound ominous, then "extremist" is a perfectly good adjective, though mere suspicion of the U.N. and opposition to gun control aren't exactly sufficient to qualify. Merely calling it a place "where time and time again right-wing ideas keep turning up" doesn't really do the trick of backing up the headline calling the denizens of the area "extreme." By that definition, the White House, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Republican Party and even the Anti-Defamation League itself, which has been known to advance what might be called some "right-wing ideas" with respect to Israeli security and American counterterrorism policies, would qualify as extreme.

An article on the op-ed page of today's New York Times asserts, "Actual military action against Iran would be disastrous." The article does not contemplate what would be even more disastrous -- the chance that, while American policymakers delay and desist under the influence of op-ed pieces like the one in today's New York Times, Iran launches a nuclear, chemical or biological attack against America or Israel. The Times op-ed says, "The charge that Iran is producing weapons of mass destruction has never been substantiated. If Iran is developing a nuclear program, or chemical and biological weapons, a surgical military strike is unlikely to eliminate such projects entirely. The persistence of such threats in neighboring Iraq is a case in point."

"If"? "If Iran is developing a nuclear program or chemical and biological weapons"? Consider the testimony to the U.S. Senate by the deputy director of the director of central intelligence's nonproliferation center, A. Norman Schindler, in September of 2000. "The Intelligence Community judges that Iran is actively pursuing the acquisition of fissile material and the expertise and technology necessary to form the material into nuclear weapons," Mr. Schindler testified. "Despite international efforts to curb the flow of critical technologies and equipment, Tehran continues to seek fissile material and technology for weapons development and has established an elaborate system of covert military and civilian organizations to support its acquisition goals." As for chemical weapons, Mr. Schindler testified, "Iran has a large and growing chemical warfare production capacity and already has produced a number of chemical warfare agents, including nerve, blister, choking, and blood agents. We believe it possesses a stockpile of at least several hundred metric tons of weaponized and bulk agent."

If the Times editors don't believe the U.S. government on this, they could try reading their own newspaper. Here is 2001 testimony from the director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, Gary Milhollin, to a federal commission: "In 1995 my organization discovered, and wrote in the New York Times, that the United States had caught China exporting poison gas ingredients to Iran, and that the sales had been going on for at least three years. In 1996, the press reported that China was sending entire factories for making poison gas to Iran, including special glass-lined vessels for mixing precursor chemicals. The reported shipments also included 400 tons of chemicals useful for making nerve agents. This activity appears to have continued. In May 1997, the U.S. government sanctioned the Jiangsu Yongli Chemical Engineering and Technology Import Export Corporation for contributing to Iran's chemical weapon program. The same Chinese firm was sanctioned again in June 2001 for helping Iran build a plant to manufacture equipment useful for making chemical weapons."

One wonders what it would take for the Times writer -- a Yale professor -- to consider the charge that Iran is producing weapons of mass destruction to be "substantiated." Would the obliteration of New Haven by an Iranian nuclear warhead or chemical weapons attack be substantiation enough?

Galling, too, is the writer's citation of Iraq as a "case in point" of the limits of a surgical military strike. Had Israel not successfully eliminated the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in its military strike on June 7, 1981, America would have faced a nuclear-armed foe in the Persian Gulf War. Just because Saddam is still hiding some germs and chemical weapons does not mean that depriving him of the atom bomb was pointless. If there's a good argument that the 1,000-megawatt Iranian nuclear power reactor at Bushehr shouldn't get the Osirak treatment, the Times article doesn't make it.

A front-page news article in today's New York Times runs under the headline "S.E.C. Scrutinizing Another Company; Questions on the Accounting Methods at Global Crossing." The article reports that "Among the shareholders of Global Crossing at one point was former President George Bush, who took an $80,000 speaking fee in stock that at the peak was worth $14 million." It's odd that the Times would mention former President Bush's connection to Global Crossing without also mentioning that the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Terry McAuliffe, had a similarly lucrative relationship with the company. The Times had mentioned that connection in earlier articles on the subject but today omits it.

Anti-American: A dispatch from Kuala Lumpur in the international section of today's New York Times reports, "Long a bone in Washington's throat, Dr. Mahathir opposes American policy in Israel, a major cause of anti-American sentiment throughout the region." This is a poorly constructed sentence in so many ways that it hard to know where to begin. For starters, it's unclear what exactly is the cause of the anti-American sentiment. Is it the American policy? Is it Prime Minister Mahathir's opposition to the policy? Is it Israel? And what "region" is the Times referring to? The region of Israel or the region of Malaysia? Also left unexplained is exactly what about America's policy in Israel Dr. Mahathir opposes and may be causing anti-American sentiment. Is it America's refusal to abandon Israel while it is under attack? Do the Malaysians think America has been too tough on Israel in encouraging the Israeli government to negotiate with Palestinian Arab terrorists? Also taken for granted -- if the sentence is to be interpreted the way the Times probably means it -- is the idea that it is the American policy that is causing the anti-American sentiment and not the way the policy is being interpreted and conveyed to the Malaysian public by Malaysia's state-controlled media and by some Jew-hating Muslim clerics.

A dispatch from the West Bank in the international section of today's New York Times reports on a village of Jews in a place called Hamra. "If you ignore the messages of the barbed wire and the pistols on residents' hips, it is easy to sense the appeal of Hamra, which like other settlements is built on land Palestinians regard as stolen," the Times reports. This understates the Arab claims; it's not just the West Bank "settlements" that many Arabs regard incorrectly as being built on stolen land, but the entire state of Israel.

The same Times article reports, "after occupying the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the 1967 war, Israel set about building settlements to give citizens a stake in holding the land." That's a distorted oversimplification of the reason Israel set about building in places like Hamra, which is in the Jordan Valley. It makes it sound as if a land-hungry government manipulated its citizens. In fact, the Israeli citizens who elect the government had a stake in preventing their country from being divided at its narrow waist by an invasion of tanks from Iraq and Jordan. Such a division would be a prelude to Israel's destruction, which was the stated aim of the neighboring Arab states. So the Israelis tried to gain some strategic depth by establishing a line of defense in the Jordan Valley.

The same Times article reports that a spokeswoman for the Jordan Valley Settlers Council "said that about 4,000 Israelis, in 680 families, lived in the valley at the beginning of the conflict." It's unclear what the Times or the spokeswoman mean by "the beginning of the conflict." Is that a reference to the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict? To the most recent round of Arab terrorist attacks? There's so much conflict and the reference is so vague that it's not particularly helpful to readers.

An article in today's New York Times runs under the headline "French Minister Call U.S. Policy Simplistic." The article begins, "PARIS, Feb. 6 -- Frustration with President Bush's worldview burst into the open here today, as Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine openly criticized Washington's approach to terrorism as 'simplistic.'" It's impossible for anyone other than Mr. Vedrine himself to know for sure why he is frustrated, but the betting here is that it has less to do with President Bush's worldview than with the fact that Mr. Vedrine is the foreign minister of a country that has long since passed into America's shadow. Here is Mr. Vedrine talking about France's relationship with America: "No one is easy to get on with in international relations. I don't think we are either. In any event, we don't have that reputation in the United States. . . . There remain serious disagreements which we talk about frankly, amicably." That comment is from an interview Mr. Vedrine gave in 1998 -- during the Clinton administration. The Times article manages to avoid mentioning the fact that Mr. Vedrine was frustrated back then, too.

Wrong Party: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on the New York City Council and refers to "Michael E. McMahon, a Republican of Staten Island." In fact Mr. McMahon is a Democrat.

The inside headline on a metro page in today's New York Times reads, "Bloomberg Passes Hat, Aiming at Corporate Help for City Budget Gap." On the same page of the Times metro section is a teacher-recruitment ad from the New York City Board of Education, the text of which reads in part, "No one ever goes back ten years later to thank a middle manager." Nowhere in the Times news article is the suggestion that if the mayor indeed wants corporate help to close the city's budget gap, it might behoove him to stop spending city money on ads that insult corporations.

Low Growth Rate: An article in the national section of today's New York Times runs under the headline, "Bush Budget's Low Growth Rate for Medicare Is Questioned by Lawmakers." What is the "low" growth rate? The Times article makes clear that under the Bush budget, "Medicare spending would grow 73 percent in the next decade." The Times reports that "the Bush administration foresees increases averaging about 5.5 percent a year" over the course of the decade. The total cost of Medicare over the next decade, according to the Bush administration, will be $3 trillion. These numbers may be "low" compared to historic growth rates in Medicare or in private-sector health insurance costs, but they are high compared to inflation overall and high compared to the projected rates of growth in other government programs. The lawmakers may indeed be right that the growth rate is "low," but it's a matter under dispute. The Times headline sides with the complaining lawmakers against the Bush-budget-makers.