A dispatch from Damascus in the international section of today's New York Times reports: "Lacking any credible military threat as a result of its creaky Soviet hardware and with no means of tempering Israeli measures against the Palestinians, Syria instead maintains its hard-line credentials by acting as host to radical Palestinian groups and ramping up its tough talk."

It's just ostrich-like to pretend that Syria does not pose "any credible military threat" to Israel. According to an unclassified summary of a December 2001 National Intelligence Estimate prepared by the U.S. government, "Syria maintains a ballistic missile and rocket force of hundreds of FROG rockets, Scuds, and SS-21 SRBMs. With considerable foreign assistance, Syria progressed to Scud production using primarily locally manufactured parts." The same U.S. government report says that Syria "has developed" chemical weapons warheads for its Scud missiles and also has an offensive biological weapons program. One wonders what it would take -- short of a full-scale chemical obliteration by Syria of the population of an Israeli or American city -- for the New York Times to acknowledge that Syria presents a credible military threat.

Why Agree?: An article in the business section of today's New York Times reports on a new "reality" television program that shows the family life of Ozzy Osbourne. "Just why, the family was asked, did it agree? Mr. Osbourne said he wanted to showcase his version of family values," the Times reports. The article studiously avoids the question of whether Mr. Osbourne is being paid to appear on the program. If he is, that might be another answer to the question of why he and his family agreed to let the television cameras move into their house.

A book review in today's New York Times considers the question of why the Soviet Union collapsed. Several possible answers are raised, from "the regime's propaganda was a lie" to "structural contradictions in the economy and the one-party state" to "human agency -- or more specifically Gorbachev." The review calls Mikhail Gorbachev "a hero of our times." It also describes Yuri Andropov as a "reformist," which would no doubt come as surprising news to the tens of thousands of political prisoners who were rotting in the gulag during his tenure as the Soviet dictator. Natan Sharansky writes in his memoir of his time as a Soviet prisoner, "When the news came of Andropov's death, I was writing my next letter. As with Brezhnev's death, shouts of joy rang out in the cells, and prison officers and soldiers with German shepherds began making the rounds."

To read the Times review, one would think that Mr. Gorbachev voluntarily dismantled the Soviet Communist regime. In fact, he was under pressure as a result of "human agency" of another sort -- more specifically from human agents named Ronald Reagan, Lane Kirkland and Lech Walesa, not to mention Mr. Sharansky. None of their names appear in the page-long discussion in the Times about the Soviet "collapse."

Flip-Flop: A dispatch from Washington in the January 12, 2002, New York Times reported on Democratic strategy for dealing with the collapse of Enron: "Several party leaders said their strategy was to not appear crassly political by attacking the White House. Instead, they intend to sit back quietly, expressing sympathy for workers and investors hurt by Enron's collapse as Republicans face a cascade of questions. 'The strategy is going to be to let the investigation take its course and not to dial it up politically,' said one Democratic Party official. 'If your enemy is shooting themselves in the foot, you let them.' Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic Party chairman, followed just that course in an interview, saying, 'This issue does not need any fuel from Terry McAuliffe. It has enough on its own. So I'm going to stay right out of it.'"

An example of Mr. McAuliffe sitting back "quietly" and staying "right out of it" may be seen in today's New York Times, which reports on a meeting of the Democratic National Committee. The Times reports: "On display throughout the morning were signs of how the party planned to use the collapse of the energy trading company Enron to try to put Republicans on the defensive on issues including campaign finance, energy policy, Social Security and the re-emergence of federal deficits and to portray their opponents as the party of special interests. 'How about that Enron story?' Mr. McAuliffe said. 'Folks, it's simply outrageous, and my heart goes out to the employees and shareholders who were victimized by a web of greed and deceit.' He said, 'I do want to be fair though; there's no evidence yet that anyone in the Bush administration did anything improper in this case.' But Mr. McAuliffe went on to draw what he called 'interesting parallels between Enron and the administration it so generously supported.' 'Think about it,' he said, 'risky investments, mountains of debt, accounting shenanigans and a little fuzzy math, then the folks at the top cash in while innocent working people are left holding the bag.'"

The Times today doesn't make any mention of the contradiction between Mr. McAuliffe's vow "to stay right out of it" and his comment eight days later, "How about that Enron story? Folks, it's simply outrageous."

Late Again: The Sunday Styles section of today's New York Times carries articles about a new bar called Happy Ending and a new restaurant called Theo. They are both old news to readers of the Daily Candy web site or email. Daily Candy reported about Happy Ending on Friday, January 18, and about Theo on Friday, January 11. The Times waddles in later, without mentioning the earlier reports.

By BENJAMIN SMITH
Smartertimes.com Staff
NEW YORK -- Brooklyn's newly elected borough president wants to lure the New Jersey Nets back across the Hudson River, and he's been in unspecified "indirect" contact with the team to advance the effort, he tells Smartertimes.com.

"It's my dream to have a professional basketball team in Brooklyn, and the Nets would be tremendously welcome," Borough President Marty Markowitz told Smartertimes.com yesterday.

The Brooklyn Nets could be a perfect fit: the team has been unable to draw fans to the Meadowlands Sports Complex despite its recent success on the court, and the team is shopping for a new stadium. Brooklyn boasts a population of 2.3 million basketball-deprived residents, more people than live in any New Jersey city. But with New York facing a budget deficit of more than $3 billion and Mayor Michael Bloomberg tangled in debates over financial support for proposed new Yankees, Mets, and Jets stadiums, the timing of Mr. Markowitz's proposal is seen by some -- particularly by some in New Jersey -- as inauspicious.

"The siting and financing of these buildings is incredibly time-consuming and difficult" a spokesman for the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, which owns the Nets' current arena in East Rutherford, NJ, said. "I do not think it's going to happen," the spokesman, John Samerjan, said of Brooklyn's hopes.

The Nets would have to pay a $7.5 million fine if they move outside New Jersey, Mr. Samerjan said. The team's lease expires in 2007, but it can move within the state without penalty.

The company that owns the Nets, Yankeenets, has announced plans for a new stadium in Newark with a price tag of more than $300 million. But the New Jersey State Assembly balked earlier this month at a bill authorizing state support for the arena, and its future now depends on the newly elected assembly and new governor James McGreevey. A threat by the Nets to move to Brooklyn might increase the team's negotiating leverage with New Jersey politicians.

A spokesman for the Nets, Gary Sussman, would not comment on the Brooklyn offer. But a person familiar with the team's plans who insisted on anonymity said that he hadn't heard about Mr. Markowitz's proposal, and that negotiations with the New Jersey state government were going forward.

City Council member Domenic Recchia, whose district includes Coney Island, told Smartertimes.com that he has been sounding out developers about building an indoor arena next to the Brooklyn neighborhood's new Keyspan Stadium, which houses the Brooklyn Cyclones, a Mets minor league baseball affiliate. "Interest from developers has been greater than I had anticipated," Mr. Rechhia said.

Mr. Markowitz declined to go into detail about his "indirect" contacts with the Nets, but acknowledged that any move would depend on a new stadium. He said he will push to build the Coney Island arena. The Cyclones drew 289,381 fans to Keyspan stadium last summer, more than any other class "A" baseball team.

The Nets haven't been so lucky. They drew an average of 13,575 fans in their 41 home games last year, fewer than all but three of the other 28 National Basketball Association teams, according to the league. The Nets average attendance has dropped further this year, despite the fact that they lead the NBA's Atlantic Division.

The birth of the Brooklyn Nets wouldn't be without precedent. The team began as the American Basketball Association's New York Nets, and they left the Nassau Coliseum in Long Island for New Jersey when the ABA and NBA merged in 1976.

And Brooklyn has a rich history of professional basketball, if a rather thin one in recent years. Four Brooklyn teams competed in the Metropolitan Basketball League in the 1920s, including the Brooklyn Visitations and the "Greenspoint Knights of Saint Anthony," the Web site of the Association for Professional Basketball Research reports.

Today, the United States Basketball League's Brooklyn Kings call the borough home, playing in a gym on the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University.

But it's the National Basketball Association that Mr. Markowitz wants to bring to Brooklyn.

"Could you imagine the Manhattan Knicks versus the Brooklyn whatever? Oh my god. Happy days would be here," the borough president said.

City Sting Operation Targets Black Cars To Boost Yellow Cabs
BY RACHEL P. KOVNER
Smartertimes.com Staff
NEW YORK -- A Taxi and Limousine Commission sting operation has been issuing record numbers of summonses to illegally operating livery cars and "gypsy cabs" in an effort to aid medallion-bearing yellow cabs, whose business was hurt by the Sept. 11 attacks.

Since early December, "Operation Street Hail" has issued more than 1,200 summonses to licensed livery cab drivers for picking up passengers who hail them on the street. The operation has also led to the seizure of more than 80 vehicles from drivers who are not licensed to operate cabs at all.

Taxi and Limousine Commission press officer Allan Fromberg called the operation a "win-win" situation, giving a boost to taxi drivers who have seen fewer customers since Sept. 11, and protecting passengers' safety by routing them to highly regulated yellow taxi fleets. Others say the crackdown is keeping transportation from willing customers in under-served areas. The operation represents a change of tone in the sometimes contentious relationship between yellow cab drivers and the board that regulates them. In 1998, drivers of medallion-bearing taxis staged a one-day strike to protest new rules and stricter penalties, and Mayor Giuliani responded with an executive order allowing car services and limousines to pick up passengers on the street. A New York judge later struck down the order.

The chairman of the taxi and limousine commission, Matthew Daus, has stepped up outreach to the taxi industry, Mr. Fromberg said. "There's a unity between the Taxi and Limousine Commission and the industry that's never existed before," said Mr. Fromberg. "We're out there to help the industry."

But critics argue that riders in neighborhoods not served by yellow cabs are the real losers in "Operation Street Hail," in which commission employees, in plainclothes, try to get black cars to stop and pick them up in response to street hails. Mr. Fromberg said it was the first use of sting tactics against livery cabs in New York.

The number of taxi medallions stayed constant at 11,787 between the 1940s and 1992, even as the total number of for-hire vehicles in the city more than tripled. (The city issued 400 new medallions between 1992 and 1997.) A 1983 study estimated there were more illegal gypsy cabs operating in New York than licensed yellow cabs.

"Yellow cabs don't go into the inner cities, and even if they could, there aren't enough," said Fernando Mateo, president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, composed primarily of livery drivers. Some federation members organized a rally Thursday to oppose the street hail crackdown. Mr. Mateo said he'd like the law changed so livery cabs can legally make such stops in Harlem and outside Manhattan. He pushed a similar proposal before the City Council last year and has met with yellow cab owners in an effort to build support for reviving the measure under the new council.

Marc Weinrich, a lawyer who represents drivers before the Taxi and Limousine Commission's administrative court, said he'd seen a big increase in the number of drivers seeking representation in illegal street hail cases over the past month as a result of the sting operation.

But Clark Neily of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian legal group in Washington, D.C., said he doubted that the operation would succeed in putting livery cabs out of the street-hail business as long as there's a market for their services.

Mr. Neily, who represents "dollar van" drivers in a lawsuit seeking the right to compete for street hails and to make stops along bus routes, argues that riders would be better served in a free-market system, with cab companies competing to offer the best service.

"The regulatory authority has to go out and do sting operations to keep willing providers from willing customers," said Mr. Neily. "This is all part and parcel of a hopeless attempt to regulate an economic market that would be much more efficient and provide a much better quality of service if it were allowed to operate freely."

Michael Higgins, a licensed cab driver for 20 years and publisher of the industry magazine Taxi Talk, said the commission has had some success in the past curtailing illegal activity such as running stop signs and poor vehicle maintenance. Mr. Fromberg said preventing illegal pick-ups by drivers who are sometimes unlicensed or uninsured has always been a commission priority, but said the latest crackdown was galvanized by drivers' economic struggles.

Business has been slower than usual since Sept. 11, according to Mr. Higgins and Richard Kay, a spokesman for the 3,000-member League of Mutual Taxi Owners.

"For the month after September 11, it was a ghost town, and this January has been extremely slow," said Mr. Higgins. "It's not scary slow, but it's hairy-eyeball slow."

***

Missing Fact: The New York Times this morning has an obituary of Harding Lawrence. Like a recent long article in the House and Home section, the obituary fails to mention the fact that Lawrence renounced his American citizenship. It's a small point but well worth mentioning.

By BENJAMIN SMITH
Smartertimes.com Staff
NEW YORK -- A face-off is developing at Columbia University between students and the administration over a "counter-conference" planned by opponents of the World Economic Forum.

A key element of the dispute is the students' reluctance to make available a list of participants in their gathering, which, like the conference of business leaders that is usually held at Davos, Switzerland but this year is to be held in New York, begins January 31.

The "students, activists, rabble-rousers, and concerned citizens" invited to attend the Columbia conference will join thousands of protesters expected to flock to New York for the World Economic Forum. The forum is one of a number of global meetings that have been enveloped in recent years in demonstrations against capitalism, corporations and globalization. Clashes between police and demonstrators last July in Genoa, Italy, left one protester dead, and similar protests marked meetings in Seattle and in Gothenburg, Sweden. The outcome of negotiations between Columbia and the students organizing the conference could set a tone for the New York event.

"The administration is throwing roadblocks in our way," a member of Students for Global Justice, a group of student activists formed to organize the counter-conference, said. The member, Columbia junior Michael Castleman, accused Columbia of a "clampdown on academic freedom."

The counter-conference could draw from 250 to 1,000 participants, not all Columbia students, Mr. Castleman said. It is scheduled to take place at Columbia-affiliated Barnard College, and will run from January 31 to February 3, the first four days of the five-day World Economic Forum. The Columbia event is scheduled to avoid conflicting with the Midtown protests against the forum, according to information on the Web site studentsforglobaljustice.org. The workshops at the Barnard counter-conference will say "NO to the war on terrorism" and participants will discuss "US imperialism" and "global corporate domination," the Web site says.

The students met with the administration last Thursday, and the students complain that, in that meeting, the administration offered them too little space for the workshops and speeches. But Mr. Castleman said late yesterday afternoon that the university has made more space available.

"We're glad to work with them," Columbia spokesman Virgil Renzulli said, calling the students' claims "misinformation." "We haven't banned anything," Mr. Renzulli said.

The university's request for disclosure of the names of the participants in the counter-conference, however, remains a source of conflict. Barnard College Director of Safety and Security William Plackenmeyer met yesterday with Mr. Castleman to request that the students agree to give him access to the list of participants who register for the counter-conference. But Mr. Castleman said he refused, on the grounds that "the administration might share" the list with the police.

"I am interested in having that information available in case of an emergency," Mr. Plackenmeyer told Smartertimes.com. "I am not interested in the names of the people attending."

The students, he said, are "being paranoid."

Mr. Castleman said his group was exploring its options in case the university refuses to compromise. The conference could relocate to New York University or Hunter College of the City University of New York, he said. Mr. Plackenmeyer would not comment on what the university will do if the students try to hold the conference without making names available.

Now, the political stakes could go up for the university: the Reverend Al Sharpton's National Action Network took up the students' fight Thursday.

"We are very concerned about protecting civil rights and civil liberties on the college campus," said an aide to Rev. Sharpton, Dedrick Muhammad.

***

Terrorists and Militants: Dispatches from London and Washington in today's New York Times refer unblushingly to Osama bin Laden's "terrorist network." But a front-page article from Israel seems to bend over backward to avoid describing as a "terrorist" the Palestinian Arab who walked into a bat mitzvah reception yesterday and opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle, killing six and wounding at least 25. The Times article refers to a "militant group" that claimed responsibility for the attack, and makes reference to another "militant Islamic group," Hamas. The bat mitzvah crasher himself is not described by the Times as a terrorist but rather as a "gunman" or an "assailant." If the Times is willing to use the word "terrorist" to describe Al Qaeda in news articles, it is hard to see why the term would not also be applied to Palestinian Arabs who launch attacks that target Israeli civilians to advance their political goals.

President Bush yesterday announced the names of the members of the President's Council on Bioethics. Today's New York Times deals with this news by reprinting a dispatch from the Associated Press under the headline "Bush Picks Members of Advisory Panel on Bioethical Issues." The eight-paragraph long AP dispatch names not a single one of the members of the council whose names were announced yesterday. If a reader wants to find out who the members of the panel are, he could read the Washington Post, which has a staff-written news story that reports, "Among the other conservative voices on the council are Francis Fukuyama of Johns Hopkins University; James Q. Wilson of the University of California at Los Angeles; Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer (who several months ago called for Kass to be named surgeon general); and Princeton theologian Robert P. George, who has said that, when it comes to such things as the integrity of Christian doctrine, 'there is, I'm afraid, an "us" and a "them." ' But a few members carry more liberal credentials -- including Rebecca Dresser of the Washington University School of Law -- and there are high-powered scientists on board, including Janet D. Rowley of the University of Chicago and neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga of Dartmouth." Or a reader could consult the New York Times Company's Boston-based cash cow, the Globe, which reports, that two of the panel's members are from Harvard University: "Mary Ann Glendon is a law school professor and a scholar on human rights, family, and abortion law. Glendon, who once described embroyo research as 'morally repugnant,' has held lay positions in the Roman Catholic Church, which strongly opposes human cloning. Michael Sandel, a professor of government at Harvard, has written extensively about the impact social change has on communities and civic values." The Globe reports, "The panel also includes Charles Krauthammer, a syndicated columnist in Washington who is a psychiatrist; Gilbert Meilaender, a conservative Lutheran theologian from Indiana; James Q. Wilson, a UCLA political scientist who coauthored a book with Kass on the dangers of cloning; Stephen Carter, a law professor at Yale; Michael Gazzaniga, a brain researcher at Dartmouth College; Alfonso Gomez-Lobo, a professor of metaphysics and moral philosophy at Georgetown University; and Dr. Janet Rowley, a professor of medicine, cell biology, and genetics at the University of Chicago." It sure looks like the Times got caught flat-footed on this story compared to the Boston Globe and the Washington Post.

One-Sided: A dispatch from Washington in the national section of today's New York Times runs under the headline, "U.S. Plans to Delay Requirement That Utilities Cut Emissions." True to form, the Times article quotes a representative of an environmental group and an anonymous Democratic congressional aide who oppose the Bush administration's decision, but there is no quote from anyone representing utilities or from anyone representing consumers concerned that the utilities might pass along to them the costs of the changes necessary to decrease emissions.

One-Sided: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports that "With tax revenue declining because of the faltering economy and unemployment rates rising, Gov. George Pataki has joined governors from around the country in seeking increased federal aid for welfare assistance." The article quotes two state welfare officials and two officials of the National Governors' Association. All four seem to support the idea of the federal government shipping more money to the states for welfare. The Times article reports that "The governors are likely to meet resistance in Washington, where lawmakers are warning that the arrival of budget deficits will make it nearly impossible to meet the broad array of needs nationally, from health care to domestic security." If this "resistance" is so likely, how come the Times couldn't find at least one such resister to quote in order to balance out the four voices in the article calling for more federal welfare spending? If the paper found one, the argument the resister might have made could have been something like, "We've kept federal welfare spending to states roughly steady as the welfare rolls nationwide have plummeted from 12.9 million recipients six years ago to 5.4 million recipients today. In addition, over the past decade we've dramatically increased spending on the earned-income tax credit, another way of redistributing money to the poor. So now that the welfare rolls are headed up again -- to maybe the 6.5 million range -- the states want more money? That's ridiculous. If they showed up in 1996 and said, 'we're expecting half as many people to need welfare, could you please increase our budget?' we'd have laughed in their face. Why should the situation now be any different? It's the equivalent of a newspaper whose circulation went from 1 million in 1996 to 500,000 in 2002, and that has kept the prices it charges advertisers the same through the entire period, going to the advertisers and saying, 'we're expecting our circulation to increase to 550,000, and we are going to ask you to pay more for your advertising space as a result.'" The Times doesn't have to endorse this view, but it would be nice if once in a while it were included instead of being ignored.

A brief item in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on the launch of a new newspaper in New York of which the editor of Smartertimes.com will be the managing editor. The item reports, "The New York Sun, a daily newspaper being started by investors and former members of The Forward, announced yesterday that it would begin publication in the spring." In fact, of the 11 backers announced by the New York Sun yesterday, a grand total of two of them are former investors in a company which once owned 50% of the Forward newspaper and which now owns zero percent of the Forward newspaper. As for being "members of the Forward," the phrase is meaningless. You can be a member of the Careless Journalists Association, but you can't be a "member" of the Forward any more than you can be a "member" of the New York Times. It's a newspaper, not a membership organization. There is something called the Forward Association, which owned the half of Forward Newspaper LLC that was not owned by the company that the two New York Sun investors invested in. The Forward Association has members. But none of them are among those starting the New York Sun. Maybe the Times meant to write "former staff members" of the Forward. The Times item goes on to report that Seth Lipsky will be "vice president of the new paper's parent company." As the press release issued yesterday makes completely clear, Mr. Lipsky will be president and CEO of the new paper's parent company. He does not hold the title of vice president of that company.

Racial Profiling: An item in the national briefing column of today's New York Times reports, "Michigan: More Domestic Security: Dearborn, home to the country's largest concentration of Arab-American Muslims, is creating a new police position to oversee terrorism-related security. Mayor Michael A. Guido said the city would earmark $250,000 in next year's budget for counterterrorism, including heightened building security, hazardous-materials response and handling anthrax threats. The lieutenant, who has not yet been named, will be a liaison to state and federal agencies."

What is the relevance of the "concentration of Arab-American Muslims" in Dearborn to the fact that a new police anti-terrorism position is being created there? The Times article doesn't say. Are the Dearborn-based Arab-American Muslims hiring a police lieutenant to protect them from terrorists who are not Arab-American or Muslim? Or are the non-Arab-Americans and non-Muslims in Dearborn concerned about an attack by the Arab-American Muslims in their midst? The New York Times metro section today manages to write an entire full-length news article about the appointment of a new deputy police commissioner for counterterrorism in New York City without making any stray remarks about how many Arabs or Muslims there are in New York, so it's a bit odd that this brief in the national section would mention the issue in Dearborn without making the relevance clear.

Clintonesque: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times profiles an aide to Bill Clinton. Speaking of a bakery in Harlem, the aide declares, "They got empowerment zone money. And who created the empowerment zones? Clinton." That's a distortion that the Times passes along to readers without even a raised eyebrow. The Housing and Community Development Act of 1987 included an enterprise zone program, based on the ideas of Jack Kemp. In the Clinton administration, empowerment zones, which are enterprise zones with more government spending, were hardly a White House initiative. As Mitchell Moss described it in the Spring 1995 issue of City Journal: "Congressman Charles Rangel of Harlem, then the third-ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, was largely responsible for inserting the empowerment zone proposal into the 1993 act, which combined tax hikes for the rich with tax credits for the working poor. Before that, President Clinton had given up on any large-scale public investment program, after failing to pass an economic stimulus package that would have channeled federal money into communities across the country. But Rangel pushed hard to authorize tax credits and funds for empowerment zones in the budget reconciliation act, which was subject to a single up-or-down congressional vote. Once the money was authorized, it took the joint efforts of New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley and Congressman Rangel actually to appropriate funds for the empowerment zone program in the appropriation bill for the U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education for fiscal year 1995." To say that Clinton "created the empowerment zones" without giving credit to Mr. Kemp, Mr. Rangel and Mr. Bradley is to twist history.

Say That Again: An article on Page B2 of today's New York Times reports, "Donor's Death at Hospital Halts Some Liver Surgeries." An article on page A15 of today's New York Times reports, "Death of Donor Halts Some Transplants." The Times editors apparently liked this news story so much they printed it twice.

Militants: A front-page article in today's New York Times studiously avoids the use of the word "terrorists" to describe Arabs who intentionally kill Jewish civilians. The Arabs are referred to as "militants" and "gunmen" but not as terrorists.

Front-Page News: Two students are shot inside an Upper West Side high school, the first such attack in New York in nearly 8 years, and what does the New York Times put on its front page today instead? A feature on catfish in Arkansas. The school shooting didn't even merit a mention in the "inside" box on the paper's front page, according to the judgment of the Times editors.

An update about the new newspaper to be launched in New York City is available this morning at http://www.NewYorkSun.com

Angered: A dispatch from Washington in the national section of today's New York Times reports on revisions to Clinton administration rules covering wetlands. "The steps outlined today by the Army Corps angered environmental advocates, who accused the administration of capitulating to the interests of developers and miners and jeopardizing ecologically sensitive areas," the Times reports. The news article goes on to quote "the managing attorney of Earthfirst, an environmental law firm" (never mind that the law firm is Earthjustice, and Earthfirst is something else) and "the wetlands lobbyist for the National Wildlife Federation." Both oppose the rule changes. "Environmental groups said the administration, under pressure from home builders and coal miners, was reducing its oversight role in the name of slashing bureaucracy," the Times reports.

The Times news article quotes not a single coal miner, not a single developer and not a single home builder. If you want to know what home builders think about the matter, you have to read the Washington Post, which reports this morning, "Susan Asmus, a vice president of the National Association of Home Builders, described the changes as a modest but welcome improvement. The builders sued to try to stop the Clinton administration's stricter rules, a suit that is pending. 'We're happy the Corps has not taken the opportunity to clamp down further,' Asmus said. 'To the extent that they're reducing some of the excessive burdens, that's good.'" Or you could read the Los Angeles Times, which reports, "Developers welcomed what they said is much-needed flexibility in the rules, and they said they are hoping the administration will continue to roll back onerous regulations. 'California home builders need as much flexibility as possible to build homes,' said Brian White, legislative representative for the California Building Industry Assn. 'We look forward to working with the administration for more changes.'"

It's a classic example of the difference between an unfair news article and a more fair one. The New York Times article quotes two environmental groups; the Washington Post story and the Los Angles Times article each quote one environmental group and one developer. It's as if the New York Times, while happy to accept advertising from real estate developers, doesn't want to stoop so low as to sully itself by actually quoting in its news columns someone who represents the developers' point of view. None of the articles get into the quite relevant fact that the definition of a wetland has become so all-inclusive that, while the word evokes sweeping, wildlife-filled places such as Everglades National Park, for regulatory purposes the term now just about includes everything down to a parking lot puddle.

Managed Care: A dispatch from Kandahar, Afghanistan, in today's New York Times reports on "the Taliban's rigid rules that had made teaching and practicing medicine nearly impossible in Afghanistan." The Times reports that, "In addition to forbidding medical students to use skeletons and cadavers, the Taliban banned women from medical schools and prevented men who were physicians from examining patients who were women. They forbade women studying nursing to look at images of the human body."

In large display type accompanying this article, the Times announces, "Mullah Omar supervised the ultimate in managed care." The news article makes no reference to managed care, so it looks like what happened was some copy editor in New York was looking to add a dose of wry humor to an otherwise stirring and somewhat grave article. But it sounds a wrong note. No matter what one thinks of managed care in America -- which can sometimes be frustrating and cruel and harmful but can also at times be a way to ensure better medical care at lower cost -- the idea that the Taliban system is its "ultimate" or logical extreme goes beyond the claims of even the most determined critics of managed care in America. One might as well call the Taliban system "the ultimate in government-run and government-regulated care." But then the laugh would be at the expense of government regulators, not HMOs; naturally, the Times sees the humor in the other direction. The dispatch from Kandahar is compelling enough on its own terms; there's no need to stretch for a comparison to the health care woes of Americans, which seem trivial by comparison.

Can't Spell: A dispatch from Washington in the business section of today's New York Times refers to the chief of staff of Rep. Henry Waxman as "Philip M. Schilaro." If the Times is going to go to the trouble of including Mr. Schiliro's middle initial, it could at least spell his last name correctly. The Times had Mr. Schiliro's name spelled correctly on yesterday's op-ed page, but in today's business section the paper gets the name wrong.

A front-page news article in today's New York Times reports that "officials are alarmed" by a police "exodus." The Times reports: "Twice as many police officers retired in 2001 as in 2000, police officials said. Their reasons varied, but the most significant seem to be a growing dissatisfaction with salary levels. The annual base salary for a beginning officer in the city is $31,305, which lags behind such places as Suffolk County and Los Angeles by roughly $10,000."

One remarkable aspect here is the ability of officials to be "alarmed" on the demand of the New York Times, no matter what the underlying trend. If half as many police officers retired in 2001 as in 2000, officials would surely be "alarmed" at the aging police force that is costing the city more in salary for the same number of officers, and that is preventing the replacement of a mostly white, male force hired decades ago with a younger and more diverse group.

Another remarkable aspect is the use of the irrelevant statistic. The officers that are "retiring" aren't beginning officers, so presumably the salary gap between what beginning officers are paid in New York City and what beginning officers are paid in Suffolk County or Los Angeles is irrelevant. The salary gap might be relevant if experienced New York officers were quitting to go work for more money in Suffolk County or in Los Angeles, but the Times article does not say that this is happening. Readers aren't told anything about what the salary gap is, if there is one, for experienced officers. In fact, the article says that rather than going to work for other police departments, some officers who have been leaving are going to work in the private sector, where "For the last few years, a booming economy has drawn officers in droves into higher-paying private-sector jobs." You'd think that now that the booming private-sector economy is a thing of the past, the officials would cease being "alarmed," but it looks like the "alarm" is going to continue until the police get a raise.

The police and the Times seem to be copying the stunt pulled by the New York public school teachers, who often compare New York City salaries with those in the suburbs and warn of an exodus. But as Sol Stern has reported, Professor Michael Podgursky of the University of Missouri Economics Department actually studied the issue and found that, as Mr. Stern summarized the finding, "For the two school years 1996-97 and 1997-98, there was an average net outflow of 293 New York City teachers to the suburbs. That's less than one half of 1 percent of all city teachers." The Times article gives no estimate of how many police officers New York City has lost to Suffolk County or Los Angeles.

Good News, Bad News: A graphic on the front of the business section of today's Times has two columns, one labeled "good news" and another labeled "bad news." Under good news is an increase in "government approvals for construction of moderately priced housing units." Under "bad news" is a decline in the amount of venture capital invested in Silicon Valley companies. There are plenty of people out there who would prefer less destruction of California hillsides for new housing construction, "moderately priced" or otherwise. And there are plenty of people who think that any such new construction should be dictated by the workings of the free market, not by a system of government approvals and price controls that tend to breed both corruption and perverse incentives. There are also plenty of people who think a decline in venture capital investment from the overheated environment of 2000 is a welcome return to sanity. Given all that, why doesn't the Times just report the news, skip the heavy-handed labels, and let the newspaper readers decide for themselves whether the news is "good" or "bad"?

Nonnews: An article in the business section of today's New York Times reports on a cover story in Time magazine devoted to a new Apple computer. "It is hard to argue that the piece -- one of the first nonnews cover articles delivered to Time's 4 million plus subscribers since Sept. 11 -- was a model of objectivity," the Times reports. Well, the Apple product announcement sure struck Smartertimes.com as news. It was a new product. It was interesting. It was important. Lots of other news organizations wrote about it as news. Where does the Times get off describing it as "nonnews"? Never mind the richness of the Times business section -- "good news," "bad news" -- lecturing Time magazine on the topic of objectivity.

Sloppy on Syria: Today's New York Times carries an entire dispatch from Damascus that dwells on Syria's relationship with Washington. The article somehow omits the news that a meeting between the Syrian dictator, Bashar Assad, and the American president, George W. Bush, is planned within the next 30 days. The president of the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon, Ziad Abdelnour, told Smartertimes.com that he hopes Mr. Bush exercises caution in any such meeting. "The Syrians -- they can't be trusted. They have their own agenda," he said. "We don't want Bush to be swayed into the appeasement of Syria." Today's Times article refers to Syria's efforts to "focus attention on ending Israel's occupation of Arab lands," but the Times somehow avoids making any mention of Syria's own occupation of the entire country of Lebanon.

The lead article in the city section of today's New York Times is a scare story about the effects of lead on children. "Darien Young was poisoned by lead paint," the subheadline begins. The article says, "Darien was a good baby, she said. He had her wide eyes and Mr. Young's dimples. He rarely got sick, which was why she became worried when he stopped eating and refused to go to bed. His speech seemed slurred. On July 11, she took him to the pediatrician. The next day, the nurse called, frantic, saying that Darien's blood-lead level was 34 micrograms per deciliter. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have set the acceptable lead level at under 10 micrograms, the bar for concern at 20. . . .Children exposed to high levels of lead suffer learning and behavioral problems, stunted growth, hearing loss and hyperactivity. Lead poisoning has been linked to lower I.Q.'s. The damage can be kept from worsening, but is irreversible."

A 3-year-old who "refused to go to bed." Certainly it must be the fault of lead poisoning, because who ever heard of a non-lead-poisoned child refusing to go to bed?

The "frantic" nurse notwithstanding, the Times article doesn't mention that the median lead level for children in Chicago during the 1960s was 30 micrograms per deciliter. Amity Shlaes's articles on this topic in the December 20, 1995, Wall Street Journal provide that fact as well as other scientific and historical context on lead and children that is glaringly absent from today's New York Times article. The point is not that lead is good for children -- it isn't -- but that frantic alarmism isn't good for children, either. Hospital emergency rooms in New York will no doubt be swamped tomorrow with mothers wondering if their children who refuse to go to bed are suffering from lead poisoning.

Other Countries: A graphic in the Education Life section of today's New York Times reports on the "countries of origin" for foreign students studying in America. Under the heading "selected other countries" is listed "Palestinian Authority." The Palestinian Authority is not a country, however.

An article in the Arts & Ideas section of today's New York Times reports, "The Bush administration has done its own brand of mix-and-match. After showing isolationist instincts -- withdrawing from an active role in the Israel-Palestinian negotiations and dismissing the idea of nation-building -- it has been sampling from the theoretical buffet. Washington acted unilaterally in Afghanistan but worked hard to create international consensus around its objective."

It's not clear that withdrawing from an active role in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is a sign of "isolationist instincts." It could be a sign of realist instincts, or of idealist instincts. It depends on what one does instead. For instance, one could say, "let's withdraw from an active role in the Israel-Palestinian negotiations and instead fund, arm and train pro-Western democratic insurgencies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Iraq and the West Bank and Gaza," and one would not be an isolationist. In other words, isolationism is not America's only alternative to negotiation with terrorists like Yasser Arafat.

It's also just not true that Washington "acted unilaterally in Afghanistan." There were British special forces on the ground with the American special forces.

Gusinsky Goof: A dispatch from Moscow in today's New York Times reports, "The travails of TV-6 uncannily resemble those of NTV, which until last summer was controlled by another sharp Kremlin critic, Vladimir Gusinsky, who is also under criminal investigation and also lives in self-imposed exile, in Spain." It's not fair to Mr. Gusinsky for the Times to report that he is "under criminal investigation" without including in the article Mr. Gusinsky's own response, or at least without making an effort to obtain such a response. It certainly wouldn't be unheard of in Russia for a "criminal investigation" to be a politically motivated effort to crush an independent news organization. As for Mr. Gusinsky's supposed residence in Spain, the New York Post reported last month that he lives in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Tucked in the final three paragraphs of a front-page news analysis in today's New York Times comes the news that "David Boies, a leading trial lawyer, represents Andrew S. Fastow, Enron's former chief financial officer. W. Neil Eggleston, a prominent Washington lawyer, represents Enron's outside directors. And Robert S. Bennett, the Washington lawyer who represented President Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones matter, is now Enron's lead Washington lawyer." A photo cutline, but not the text of the Times article, adds the information that Mr. Eggleston was "lawyer for former labor Secretary Alexis M. Herman" and that Mr. Boies "represented Al Gore."

The headline atop the article is "A Familiar Capital Script," and the article's point seems to be that the Enron inquiry "presents elements reminiscent of earlier Washington scandals."

But what's striking to at least one reader is the extent to which this is not a familiar capital script but an unfamiliar one. Mr. Eggleston is not just "a prominent Washington lawyer," as the Times put it, but a former White House associate counsel in the Clinton administration who also represented the neighbor who helped sink Linda Chavez's nomination as labor secretary. He also worked for the Democrats on the Iran-Contra investigation and represented one of the women who accused then-Senator Packwood of an unauthorized kiss. In other words, he is strongly identified as a Democrat, and to see him representing directors of Enron, which is identified with the Bush administration and the Republican Party, is an interesting reversal. Similarly, Mr. Boies not only is "a leading trial lawyer," as the Times puts it, but was a key figure in the fight against Mr. Bush in the Florida election recounts. The Clinton administration Justice Department also hired Mr. Boies to litigate the antitrust case against Microsoft. To see him representing a former Enron official is not a familiar script but somewhat unexpected.

Wrongful Births: A dispatch from France in today's New York Times reports on a controversy over "wrongful birth" lawsuits in France. The article makes it sound as if France is the only place such controversy exists. But as Overlawyered.com and the Bergen Record noted months ago (see http://overlawyered.com/archives/01/aug3.html#0822a), lawyers in the U.S. have also been aiming to carve out a legal right for disabled people not to have been born.

Large Bottles: The lengthy obituary in today's New York Times of Moe Foner reports, "his father was a seltzer man who lugged large bottles up to tenement apartments." It seems unlikely that Abraham Foner's seltzer bottles were any larger than anyone else's seltzer bottles. The refillable glass seltzer bottles came in a standard size. There was plenty of lugging involved if the bottles were full and they were in trays that held a bunch of them. But the Times article makes it sound like Abraham Foner was delivering seltzer in Nebuchadnezzar-sized bottles.

When the House Government Reform Committee was investigating the Clinton fundraising scandals, the New York Times wrote an editorial under the headline, "A House Investigation Travesty." The editorial, which ran on April 12, 1997, said of the committee's chairman, Rep. Dan Burton, "His odd obsession with the suicide of Vincent Foster led him to stage a mock shooting in his backyard trying to prove that the White House lawyer had been murdered. His dubious choice for chief investigator in the campaign finance inquiry is David Bossie, a 31-year-old non-lawyer who has spent much of his professional life zealously working to discredit President Clinton. So much for balance."

So it's pretty amusing to see Times reporters openly trolling for news tips on a Web site zealously working to discredit President Bush. The Web site yesterday featured an article under the headline, "The Man Who Knew Too Much: Who Killed John O'Neill." The article implies through innuendo that the Bush administration killed a former FBI official on September 11: "What CNN didn't find interesting was the fact that John P. O'Neill was in his 34th-floor office in the World Trade Tower when the first of two hijacked planes hit the building, or that he phoned a son and a friend to reassure them he was fine. What the US media have apparently found less interesting than the death of Clinton's dog is that we have only the government's version of what happened next. O'Neill is reported to have called FBI headquarters, and then re-entered one of the towers to help others. The official story is that O'Neill was inside when the buildings collapsed. How convenient for the Bush administration that Mr. O'Neill would not only die in the attack, but also that he would make such a call. Not only was the Bush administration's most dangerous critic forever silenced, but he also provided the administration the perfect story to explain his death."

This sort of stuff makes Mr. Burton's backyard shooting look only mildly eccentric. Yet right there next to it, under "today's announcement," is the text, "I am a New York Times reporter working on stories about Enron. If you have information or documents about the way Enron structured its off-balance sheet partnerships, paid its top executives, or accounted for gains and losses on its trades, I would very much like to talk to you. Please call me at [New York Times email address and direct-dial phone line deleted by Smartertimes.com]."

Now, neither news sources nor newspaper reporters should necessarily be held to the same standards as congressional investigators. And, in general, newspapers should be judged by their content, not by how savory or unsavory the characters are that a reporter deals with during the newsgathering process. Still, given all the sneering that the Times columnists and editorial writers did at the rabid conspiracy theorists on the right back in the days of Vincent Foster, it's funny to see the Times diving in with the rabid conspiracy theorists on the left in search of scoops on the Enron story.

News Article: An original, non-New York-Times-related news article follows: Universities May Be Tempting Target for City in Search of Revenue

By RACHEL P. KOVNER
Smartertimes.com Staff
NEW YORK -- While New Yorkers pay some of the highest tax rates in the nation, for local universities, calling the city home can be a bargain.

As in most states, in New York, colleges are exempt from property taxes on land they use for their non-profit missions. But while many local governments have demanded payments in lieu of taxes from universities for the government services they use, in New York City the in-lieu-of-taxes collector hasn't come knocking.

The universities represent an untapped source of potential city revenue that could be a tempting target for the Bloomberg administration as it seeks to close a budget deficit that is estimated at $4 billion. New York's colleges have prospered in the past eight years, drawing record numbers of applications and record fundraising totals as crime has dropped and schools have placed greater emphasis on their links to the city. And, unlike some businesses and residents who may decamp to New Jersey, Connecticut or elsewhere if New York increases taxes, it's not as if NYU or Columbia could threaten credibly to leave.

Some watchers of city government would like to see New York seek more revenue from its universities.

"There are a number of institutions that are not contributing their fair share," said Harvey Robins, an official in the Dinkins and Koch administrations who has urged the city to seek greater revenue from non-profits. "What I think has happened in the city is that over the years there have been stakeholders that have said, 'Don't touch me.' The basic feeling from Koch to Dinkins to Giuliani, was these are not areas we're going to ask for contributions from."

A Bloomberg spokesman did not return a call yesterday seeking comment on the issue.

Aside from an annual payment to the city from Columbia University because one of its buildings rests on government-owned land, payments in lieu of taxes weren't made last year by any of the New York City schools with endowments of more than $100 million: Columbia, Rockefeller University, New York University, Yeshiva University, Fordham University, Cooper Union and Barnard College. Nor were they made by the New School for Social Research, Juilliard School, Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute or Marymount Manhattan College.

No major study has tracked how common payments in lieu of taxes are, but the New York schools are getting off easily compared to colleges in some other areas.

Harvard University has signed agreements to pay $40 million to Boston and $40 million to Cambridge over the next 20 years. Emerson College, MIT and Northeastern also make the payments, as do Ithaca, N.Y.-based Cornell and Des Moines-based Drake University.

Jefferson Burnett, director of government relations for the National Association of Independent Schools, said his group has heard of more and more communities requesting payments from local colleges starting in the mid-1990s.

Evelyn Brody, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law who is writing a book on payments in lieu of taxes, said the agreements vary widely from institution to institution and are hard to track because they are often negotiated in secret. In a single town, she said, "one charity might be making a contribution and the other wouldn't know. It's that ad hoc."

The city does get payments in lieu of taxes from some organizations, with about $157 million in revenue from the payments projected for the 2002 fiscal year. But much of that revenue comes from tax-incentive arrangements like the one at Columbia's Audubon Biomedical Science and Technology Park, where payments are made in exchange for the right to develop on government-owned land.

Columbia has not been asked to make payment on the land it owns and uses for non-commercial purposes, said university spokeswoman Anne Bayne.

Universities nationwide have argued that their special social mission justifies their property-tax exemption, and that they aid the community by employing local residents and producing well-educated graduates who draw tax-paying businesses to the area. Local governments respond that universities still incur costs by using city services like police, fire, sanitation and street repair.

Robert Fitch, whose 1993 book "The Assassination of New York" estimated that non-profits owned six percent of New York's then-$400 billion in property, now estimates that non-profit land is worth far more due to rising property values and major building campaigns by schools like NYU.

He said he believed lobbying by colleges and other non-profits makes it hard for the city to demand payments.

"New York City has the biggest non-profit sector in the world," he said. "It has an enormous amount of clout."

But Joan M. Youngman, a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass., said payments in lieu of taxes wouldn't do much to fatten the budget of a city as large as New York.

"It's in the small areas that the schools will be a big part of the potential tax base," Ms. Youngman said. "In a place like New York, the size of everything diminishes the impact of one institution."

A front-page article in today's New York Times reports on the Bush administration's decision to change tacks in encouraging low-emission vehicles. The article quotes two non-government groups, both of which react with some skepticism to the Bush administration's decision. One of the groups is the Alliance to Save Energy, described by the Times as "a bipartisan advocacy group in Washington."

Just how "bipartisan" is the Alliance to Save Energy? Well, check out a list of its board of directors. (http://www.ase.org/about/board.htm ) Its chairman is Senator Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota. Its vice chairman is Senator Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat from New Mexico. Its congressional vice chairman is Senator James Jeffords of Vermont, the independent who threw the Senate into the control of the Democrats when he left the Republican Party. Its other congressional vice chairman is Rep. Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts. Indeed, of the four incumbent politicians listed on the Alliance to Save Energy board of directors, three are Democrats and the other one is James Jeffords. This is what the Times describes as "a bipartisan advocacy group in Washington."

The other group quoted in the Times article is something called the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, which the Times identifies as "energy experts" and "a research and advocacy group in Washington." A quick check of the Web site of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy makes clear that it is backed in part by electric power companies. The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy's board of directors includes a representative of Pacific Gas & Electric and of the old New England Electric, and the council's funders include Boston Edison and Southern California Edison Company. These companies have a stake in the debate over low-emission vehicles -- if these vehicles are electric-powered, then some of the money that now is collected at gas stations may well be collected instead at the future by electric companies, as consumers who once filled up their car's tanks with gas instead plug in their cars to charge the batteries.

Note: The editor of Smartertimes.com is in Florida and is operating this morning off the New York Times on the Web.

News Article: An original, non-New York Times-related news article follows: New City Council Shows Limits of Term Limits

By BENJAMIN SMITH
Smartertimes.com Staff
NEW YORK -- The new world of term limits may be here, but the most powerful city legislator is still likely to be a man who has spent his professional life in politics and who is backed by Democratic party bosses.

The emergence this week of Upper East Side City Council incumbent Gifford Miller as the probable speaker of the New York City Council demonstrated the limits of term limits in changing the composition of city government. Mr. Miller, like most of the 38 new members who will join him on the Council Wednesday, has not recently worked in the private sector.

While Mayor Michael Bloomberg embodies some of the hopes of term-limits backers for officials who understand private business, a closer look at the results of November's election shows that he was more an anomaly than part of a trend. Term-limits backer Ronald Lauder promised the legislation would eliminate "government by the politicians, of the politicians, and for the politicians," bringing in leaders with skepticism of government and experience outside it. But of 38 new members of the council, fewer than ten (children of politicians excluded) come from the private, for-profit sector. Even fewer have ever run a business. And Mr. Miller's traditional path to power -- he is a former political staffer with the support of key municipal unions as well as party organizations -- suggests he may run into conflict with the mayor's aims to attract businesses and impose fiscal austerity. In particular, the new speaker could fight Mr. Bloomberg's promise not to raise taxes and his attempt to save money on labor contracts.

The November election "brought a lot of new faces, not a lot of new perspectives" to the city's legislature, Cooper Union historian Fred Siegel said. "These are people who are very close to the public sector in the first place."

Term-limits advocates argue that people who have spent their lives in government are disposed to expand government, while private citizens are more inclined to fight regulation. "The career politician is more likely to vote for higher taxes and more government control than the private citizen," the executive director of the national advocacy group U.S. Term Limits, Stacie Rumenap, said.

The victory of term limits in a 1993 New York City referendum came as part of a national movement to replace the professional political class with officials drawn from private life. The measure won in New York despite being unpopular among elected officials and liberal civic groups, who argued that it would oust capable and experienced politicians and favor rich candidates like Mr. Lauder, a cosmetics heir and businessman in his own right who was the legislation's main backer.

Even the new mayor is not the typical "citizen legislator" pushed by term limits advocates in 1993, Democratic political consultant Jerry Skurnik said. "The voters weren't thinking about billionaires," he said.

Mr. Miller, on the other hand, is a familiar face in city politics. Despite his youth -- he is 32 -- Mr. Miller is now the longest-serving member of the council. He was elected in 1996 after working for more than three years as an aide to Carolyn Maloney, now a member of Congress. Most of the new council members are former political staffers, civil servants, or staff members of non-profit service organizations that depend on city funds. Four used to hold seats in the New York State legislature.

Those with private-sector backgrounds include John Liu of Queens, a former consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Charles Barron of East New York, who ran a small leadership training company that had some government contracts.

Term-limits legislation "is not a panacea, and it's not going to resolve everything that concerns us about politicians," former City Councilman Sal Albanese, an early ally of Mr. Lauder in the movement for term limits, said. "But overall, you shake things up and give more power and influence to grassroots people." Mr. Lauder's aide who handles term limits, Allen Roth, did not return a call seeking Mr. Lauder's opinion on the new City Council and its speaker.

Mr. Miller's strength became clear this weekend when he won the open backing of Queens Democratic leader Thomas Manton and his Bronx counterpart, Roberto Ramirez. Their support does not come cheap, however: people familiar with the City Council say they expect the political chiefs to pick members to chair the body's two most powerful committees, Finance and Land Use.

The council will formally choose a speaker when it meets for the first time today, but Mr. Miller's leading rivals conceded defeat Monday.

Selecting the speaker "is always done by the leaders" of the Democratic Party, Democratic political consultant George Arzt said. "It would be unrealistic to expect otherwise.

Indeed, the alliance of Queens boss Donald Manes and the Bronx's Stanley Friedman brought the last speaker of the City Council, Peter Vallone, to office.

Some members of the last City Council tried to repeal term limits, and Mr. Vallone has started a political action committee to reverse term limits.

The rule remains popular with voters, however, despite the fact that it prevented mayor Rudolph Giuliani from seeking a third term. Even after September 11, 57% of New York registered voters opposed repealing term limits, according to a Marist College poll.

A dispatch from Jerusalem in today's New York Times reports on interviews with the captain of the ship that was caught delivering Iranian weapons to the Palestine Liberation Organization. "The interviews with the captain were rationed to selected news organizations," the Times reports. That's a pretty amusing line. It sure looks like code for "the New York Times was not among the selected news organizations and is peeved about it." If the New York Times had scored one of those interviews, do you think the newspaper would have noted that "The interviews with the captain were rationed to selected news organizations"? Unlikely. Just about anyone with newsworthy interviews worth granting "rations" the interviews to selected news organizations; the practice is entirely routine. When the New York Times is among the news organizations that are granted the interviews, the newspaper hardly ever notes that the interviews were rationed to selected outlets. The White House routinely rations out interviews to the New York Times and Washington Post -- and sometimes to the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today, too -- that the other papers have to wait until the next day for, or that the other papers are denied entirely. The Times usually attributes the information garnered in such interviews by writing, "a senior administration official said" or "White House officials said." Not, "a senior administration official said in an interview that was rationed to selected news organizations, including the New York Times."

Double Jeopardy: An article in today's New York Times reports on the decision of a federal appeals panel to order a new trial for two men who had been convicted of federal civil rights violations stemming from their behavior in the 1991 Crown Heights riot. The Times manages to write the entire article without once calling the riot what it was -- a riot. Instead the newspaper euphemises, referring to "unrest" and "violence" and "events." The newspaper also dwells on the jury selection in the original federal trial, but it never once mentions the truly knotty constitutional issue involved -- double jeopardy.

Note: Smartertimes.com is in Florida and is operating this morning off the New York Times on the Web.

An article in the national section of today's New York Times reports on a teenage pilot who crashed a small plane into a Tampa office building in what a suicide note said was a gesture of support for Osama bin Laden.

"Law enforcement officials had no explanation of why the youth developed sympathy for Osama Bin Laden," the Times reports. The Times also reports that "none" of the pilot's neighbors and school acquaintances in Florida and Massachusetts could recall the boy's father.

Well, "none" might be a bit of an overstatement. Maybe "none" of the neighbors and school acquaintances that the New York Times could find. But this morning's Tampa Tribune quotes one of the pilot's classmates saying, "I remember him saying his father was foreign, but I don't remember what nationality." The Tampa Tribune also reports that authorities are looking into the possibility that the pilot was part Arab. "According to public records, the family name was once Bishara," the Tampa Tribune reports. Bishara is also the last name of an Israeli Arab lawmaker, Azmi Bishara. The Israeli parliament voted in November to lift Mr. Bishara's parliamentary immunity so that he could be prosecuted for incitement against Israel in connection with a June 10, 2001, speech to an audience in Syria that included the leader of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization. In the speech, Mr. Bishara told Arabs to choose "the path of resistance," according to an Associated Press report.

There is a big difference between law enforcement officials saying they had "no explanation" and law enforcement officials saying that they were investigating whether the pilot was part Arab. Even if he were part Arab, that still wouldn't be a good explanation for why he would crash a plane into an American office building -- there are, needless to say, many Arabs who abhor such behavior -- but, in the context of the war that some Arabs and some non-Arab Muslims are waging against America and Israel, such information could provide a bit more than "no explanation."

Great Appeal: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports about Governor Pataki: "Last year, Mr. Pataki offered proposals for easing the state's Rockefeller-era penalties for drug sale and possession, an idea with great appeal to the moderate, liberal and minority voters the Republicans have been trying to court." If getting softer on criminals has such "great appeal" to moderate voters as the Times news department imagines it does, one wonders why these penalties have not been eased since they were passed back in the Rockefeller era. Are the district attorneys who oppose the easing immoderate, in the view of the Times news department?