Today's New York Times features a short profile of Tom Ridge, the governor of Pennsylvania. President George W. Bush has now apparently named Mr. Ridge to do the jobs that the attorney general, FBI, FAA, Defense Department, National Security Council and CIA were supposed to be doing -- protecting Americans from terrorist attacks.

"Reared in a working-class family in Erie, Pa., Mr. Ridge grew up in veterans' public housing but won a scholarship to college, graduating with honors in 1967," the Times reports.

"But"?

"And" would be a better word in that spot. "But" carries a whiff of the soft bigotry of low expectations -- as if being from a working-class family and growing up in public housing for veterans are somehow inconsistent with winning a college scholarship.

The Times profile goes on to report, "Once in office, Governor Ridge became known as a fiscal conservative, cutting state spending in half, while pushing tax cuts year after year, in a crusade that he claims has saved residents $4 billion."

In fact, $4 billion is lowballing it as an estimate of the savings; Mr. Ridge's Web site says, "Since 1995, Pennsylvania families and employers have saved nearly $15 billion through tax cuts, workers' compensation reform, reduced red tape and electric competition."

And the claim that Mr. Ridge has cut state spending "in half" seems to be groundless. The 2001-2002 budget, the most recent submitted by Mr. Ridge, is for $42.6 billion in operating spending. That budget summary says, "Governor Ridge's six enacted budgets have had an annual spending growth of 2.9 percent." Now, you can argue about real dollars and inflation adjustments, but even if you take into account inflation, it's hard to see how even non-inflation-adjusted growth of 2.9 percent a year for six years translates into "cutting state spending in half." If Mr. Ridge had indeed cut state spending in half, and the budget is now about $40 billion, the savings would be in the hundreds of billions -- not, as the Times claims, "$4 billion." The first operating budget Mr. Ridge submitted as governor, for 1995-1996, was for $31.2 billion and was touted by Mr. Ridge as including a spending increase of 2.3 percent. Maybe the Times means to say that Mr. Ridge has cut in half the rate of growth in state spending. But again, even accounting for inflation, it's hard to see how the Times can say the governor cut state spending in half. There's no evidence of it in the state budgets Smartertimes.com looked at.

As for whether Mr. Ridge is on a "crusade," well, it sure is funny how to the Times, tax-cutters are always on a "crusade," while those, like the Times editorialists, who want to raise taxes are never on a "crusade."

A news article in today's New York Times proclaims, "The drumbeat for war, so loud in the rest of the country, is barely audible on the streets of New York."

If the drumbeat for war is barely audible on the streets of New York, then the Times is deaf.

The evidence the newspaper marshals for its claim is that, "In interviews with two dozen New Yorkers, most people said the desire for peace outweighed any impulse for vengeance, even among those directly affected by the destruction of the World Trade Center." That's a poorly constructed sentence -- it seems to mean that two dozen New Yorkers conducted the interviews, or that "most people" were interviewed by two dozen people. A more clear and accurate way of writing the sentence would have been, "Most of two dozen New Yorkers interviewed said . . . ."

Beyond the writing problem, there's a statistical problem. There's just no way that 24 interviews are a meaningful or accurate statistical sample of the 8 million people who live in New York City. Even if you selected the 24 people by randomly dialing a telephone, it still wouldn't be an accurate sample. The Times doesn't disclose how it chose which 24 people to interview, but the signs aren't encouraging. There are eight people whose names are given in the article. Of the six whose ages are given, none is older than 40. One of them is identified not as a New Yorker but as "a political science professor at Northern Arizona University." Six of the eight are women. None is a blue-collar worker. None is from the Bronx or from Staten Island. One is a self-described pacifist, one is a teacher at a crunchy private school that caters to the children of Range Rover liberals, another is a minister at a church whose Web site is responding to the terrorist attack by touting a petition promoting the "inalienable human right to live in a world free" of "nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, or any weapons of indiscriminate destruction."

There's also a wording problem. If the Times reporter is running around asking, "Does your desire for peace outweigh your desire for vengeance?" of course the drumbeat for war is going to be barely audible. The war against terrorism, properly conceived, is not merely about vengeance, but about assuring peace by destroying the terrorists and the infrastructure that supports them. There will be a lot more peace after America fights and decisively wins a war against terrorists and the states that sponsor them.

It's true that New York is more liberal than the rest of the country. But the city was also a target of last week's terrorist attack. It just defies common sense to believe, as the Times claims, that while polls show that nearly 90 percent of the country supports military retaliation against the terrorists, in New York "most people" oppose such retaliation.

The Times article says that "Some of those opposed to military action say their voices are not being heard by Washington or the mainstream news media."

Well, guess the New York Times doesn't count as "the mainstream news media."

Can't Spell: A front-page article in today's New York Times reports on efforts to block the terrorists' access to money. The article quotes "Senator John Kerrey, a Massachusetts Democrat." The senator spells his name "Kerry," with no "e." The one with an "e" is Bob Kerrey, who was the one from Nebraska.

A front-page story in today's New York Times reports from Washington on American diplomatic efforts to assemble a coalition against terrorism. The Times reports that "Egypt and Jordan were both crucial allies in the 1991 coalition against President Saddam Hussein of Iraq." Well, one could argue over whether Egypt's role was "crucial" or not -- and Smartertimes.com would argue it was not -- but in the case of Jordan, the Times is just flat-out wrong. Jordan was not an ally in the 1991 coalition against Saddam Hussein. Jordan was officially neutral, a stance that annoyed the U.S. government at the time.

Overly Bellicose: An editorial in today's New York Times criticizes President George W. Bush for being "overly bellicose" in saying that Osama Bin Laden was "wanted: dead or alive."

The comment "may have made the country feel better for a short period, but it was unsettling to leaders of other nations, some of whom have to reassure nervous and potentially restive populations that Washington is not planning an anti-Islamic campaign," the Times says. Since the Times doesn't specify who these "leaders of other nations" are, it's hard to judge whether much deference should be given to their concerns. Were these "leaders of other nations" elected democratically in free countries? If not, it is likely that their own policies, not Mr. Bush's rhetoric, are to blame for their tenuous positions.

The Times also complains that "Mr. Bush's comments may also create unrealistic expectations at home about what American military forces can do over the short run. Finding and capturing Osama bin Laden will be difficult without the cooperation of Afghanistan, and even the president may not know exactly how that can be accomplished." It's not unrealistic to expect that America, the world's sole superpower, can kill a two-bit terrorist like Osama bin Laden. And so what if it may be "difficult" to find him? It was difficult to win the Cold War and World War II, but that wasn't a reason to abandon the war aims or to refuse to state them in a straightforward manner.

The Times says, "The hotter the rhetoric now, the harder President Bush will find it later if his better judgment winds up telling him to delay action, or to concentrate for a while on diplomatic and economic sanctions rather than military force." That sounds to Smartertimes.com like an argument for heating up the rhetoric. What's more, it suggests that what the Times is really objecting to isn't Mr. Bush's "overly bellicose" rhetoric but the possibility that the American response to the terrorist attack will itself be "overly bellicose."

Truly Terrible: The "Reckonings" columnist on the op-ed page of today's New York Times writes, "Unfortunately, Congressional leaders seem fixated on a truly terrible idea: a permanent cut in the capital gains tax."

The columnist writes, "The economic impact of this move would be uncertain at best. Its most obvious effect would be to encourage people to sell stocks, driving markets down even further."

It's weird for the columnist not to mention that the last time the capital gains tax was cut, in 1997 -- when the long-term capital gains tax rate for individuals was reduced to 20% from 28% under a bill signed by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton -- the stock market soared. It's hardly "obvious" that doing the same thing again would have the opposite effect on the markets this time around. It's possible that the money freed up when people "sell stocks," as the columnist predicts they will, will be reinvested in other stocks. The new investments might be made on the merits rather than on the basis of inertia stemming from the desire to avoid taxes, and the overall allocation of capital might end up being more efficient, leading to greater growth.

There are strong indications that the Times columnist himself doesn't believe his own claim that a capital gains tax would drive "markets" -- presumably he means stock prices -- down. The columnist asserts it would be "a tax cut of dubious economic value, which delivers 80 percent of its direct benefits to the wealthiest 2 percent of the population?" Well, if this tax cut is really going to drive the stock market down, presumably it would hurt the rich more than anyone else, because the rich have a lot of assets invested in the stock market. The poor without stock market investments would be hurt less, since they have less invested in the stock market and less to lose if the capital gains tax cut really does have the effect of "driving markets down even further." It takes a good bit of flexibility for the columnist to argue that a capital gains cut would drive "markets" down, then turn around in the same column and complain that it would benefit the wealthiest 2 percent of the population.

The columnist says Congress should "focus on what the country needs, not on what a wealthy minority wants." Are the "wealthy minority" really so dumb that they want a tax cut that is going to have the "obvious effect" of "driving markets down"? Maybe the effect isn't as "obvious" as the columnist claims.

Late Again: Today's New York Times waddles in with an article about a controversy over schools that specialize in educating homeless children. The Los Angeles Times had this story back on June 12, 2001, and did a better job with it.

Get Out the Umbrellas: A news article in today's New York Times about how President Bush has been handling the terrorist attack reports, "So far, Mr. Bush's advisers have resisted reigning him in, saying that the ordinary language has worked at places like the site of the wreckage of the World Trade Center on Friday." This is the third time Smartertimes.com has noticed the Times confusing "reign" and "rein." The correct phrase is "reining him in," like a horse, which has reins, not reigns. A king reigns. A horse has reins. Rain falls from the sky. This is basic middle-school stuff, and it's disappointing that the countless layers of highly paid, college-educated reporters and editors at the Times can't get it right, even when the mistake had been twice noted earlier on Smartertimes.com. If this were this first time the Times had made this error, Smartertimes.com would be inclined to give the newspaper some slack on it, given the burdens of moving vast amounts of copy under deadline pressure after a terrorist attack. But they were making this error even before the terrorists struck. So given that a new executive editor has begun his reign at the newspaper's reins (yes, the editor's name is Raines) -- it's worth a mention.

Note: Smartertimes.com is in Massachusetts today and operating off the New York Times on the Web.

A front-page article in today's New York Times reports on a meeting between President Bush and American Muslims. The Times article says "The president of the Council on American-Islamic relations, Nihad Awad, who attended the session with Mr. Bush, said, 'We thank the president for taking the initiative to reach out to the American Muslim community during this time of national crisis. His supportive remarks will help set a tone of tolerance and inclusion for our society.'"

The Times article refers to "Mr. Bush's twin messages of retaliation abroad and tolerance at home," and it notes that the president, in his appearance with the American Muslims, referred to "the good folks standing with me."

The New York Times, which wasted supertankers full of ink in the immediate aftermath of last week's attack criticizing Mr. Bush for not answering questions publicly, for not publicly explaining his personal security measures, and for not flying immediately to New York, lets Mr. Bush's appearance today go entirely uncriticized. There's not even a hint in the Times coverage that the characters Mr. Bush met with might be anything other than "good people," or that by meeting them with them the president is sending a dangerous message of naive complacency about the real dangers of Islamic radicals in America.

Since the Council on American-Islamic Relations is mentioned in the New York Times article by name, let's look at its record first.

Here's a rundown from Daniel Pipes, a former Reagan administration Middle East aide who now runs the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia and the wonderfully informative Web site DanielPipes.org:

Mr. Pipes says: "CAIR is a particularly worrisome organization because it has succeeded in portraying itself as a public affairs organization promoting 'interest and understanding among the general public with regards to Islam and Muslims in North America.' In fact, this organization is radical to the core; it seeks nothing less than the imposition of Islamist mores on the United States."

Mr. Pipes notes that CAIR's record includes the following: "Apologizing for such killers as Hamas (a group associated with the murder of 7 Americans) and Usama bin Ladin (charged with the Tanzania and Kenya embassy bombings a year ago). . . . Helping promote terrorism: In the words of Steve Pomerantz, a former Chief of Counterterrorism for the FBI, 'CAIR, its leaders, and its activities, effectively give aid to international terrorist groups.' . . . Intimidation of patriotic Muslims who disagree with CAIR's chauvinist agenda: In one case (Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani), the FBI is looking into charges that he received death threats after renouncing the chauvinists. . . Defense of even the most archaic and barbaric of customs associated with Islam: When a prosecutor in Cleveland argued that the bail of two young men being held for an 'honor killing' of their female cousin should be increased, CAIR replied by accusing him of 'ethnic and religious stereotyping' and called for a formal investigation into the prosecutor's actions."

In addition, as anti-terrorism expert Steven Emerson has noted in Congressional testimony, CAIR co-sponsored a May 24, 1998, all-day program in the Walt Whitman Auditorium of Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, New York. As Mr. Emerson testified, "In Arabic, Wagdi Ghuniem, a militant Islamic cleric from Egypt, mesmerized his audience, with his relentless tirade against the Jews, reminding them of the Jews' 'infidelity,' 'stealth' and 'deceit.' Known for his folksy deliveries and exhortations to commit violence against the Jews, Ghuniem did not disappoint his crowd, several of whom had come just to hear him. The conflict with the Jews, he said, was not over land but one of religion. 'The problem of Palestine is not a problem of beliefÉ suppose the Jews said "Palestine--you [Muslims] can take it." Would it then be ok? What would we tell them? No! The problem is belief, it is not a problem of land.'"

Mr. Emerson continued: "Ghuniem then led his rapt audience, which numbered as many as 500, in a special song, the audience responsively repeating each refrain: 'No to the Jews, Descendants of the Apes.'"

Says Mr. Pipes: "In short, CAIR represents not the great civilization of Islam but a radical utopian movement originating in the Middle East that seeks to impose its ways on the United States. Americans should consider themselves warned: a new danger exists in their midst."

So much for CAIR. But, according to the CAIR Web site, CAIR wasn't the only radical, terrorist-sympathizing American Muslim group that President Bush met with yesterday, less than a week after the worst terrorist attack in American history. In fact, according to the CAIR web site, the meeting yesterday also included "representatives from the American Muslim Alliance" and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council is a group founded and headed by Salam Al-Marayati. He's the man whose views on terrorism were so problematic that, after an outcry, Rep. Richard Gephardt withdrew his support for Mr. Al-Marayiti as a nominee to a federal anti-terrorism commission.

According to an article in the August 22, 1998, Los Angeles Times, the Muslim Public Affairs Council called America's 1998 missile strikes on Osama Bin Laden's training camps in Afghanistan "illegal" and "immoral."

Again, Daniel Pipes, in an article posted on DanielPipes.org, is instructive. Mr. Pipes writes of Mr. Al-Marayati: "Here are three elements of his radicalism: First, he wraps the American flag around some of the least attractive features of Middle Eastern life. In 1993, he memorably asserted that 'When Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death," that statement epitomized jihad [Islamic holy war].' In 1996, he made the silly and inaccurate observation that 'American freedom fighters hundreds of years ago were also regarded as terrorists by the British.' Mr. Al-Marayati's intent here is obvious: to render jihad and terrorism acceptable to Americans."

Mr. Pipes continued: "Second, Mr. Al-Marayati apologizes for the most ghastly Middle Eastern regimes and draws moral equivalencies between them and America. In his view, Iraq is no better or worse than America: 'Saddam Hussein's behavior in and around Iraq has been characterized as reckless. The same can be said about U.S. policy as a result of its reactionary mode.' . . .Third, Mr. Al-Marayati turns a blind eye to terrorism if it is of a fundamentalist Muslim persuasion (not a great credential for someone hoping to serve on a counterterrorism commission). Take the February 1996 incident when a Palestinian named Muhammad Hamida shouted the fundamentalist war cry, Allahu Akbar (Allah is Great), as he drove his car intentionally into a crowded bus stop in Jerusalem, killing one Israeli and injuring 23 others. Before he could escape or hurt anyone else, Hamida was shot dead. Commenting on the affair, Mr. Al-Marayati said not a word about Hamida's murderous rampage but instead focused on Hamida's death, which he called 'a provocative act,' and demanded the extradition of his executors to America 'to be tried in a U.S. court' on terrorism charges."

Then there is the American Muslim Alliance, another group that CAIR reports had a representative at the Bush event yesterday. That's the group so extreme that even Hillary Rodham Clinton, no anti-Muslim extremist, decided to return $50,000 it had raised for her senate campaign. The American Muslim Alliance was also a sponsor of the "No to the Jews, Descendants of the Apes" rally at Brooklyn College. And, as Steven Emerson has reported on OpinionJournal.com, "AMA's head, Agha Saeed, has openly sanctioned the use of 'armed resistance' against Israel and declared that the 'Zionist occupiers of Palestine can be beaten back.' At its 1997 annual convention, the AMA distributed an article by S.A. Ahsani, head of the AMA's Texas chapter, denying the existence of 'Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek.' At AMA national conferences in 1997, 1998 and 2000, numerous speakers numerous speakers condemned the 'Jewish and Zionist' lobbies and their 'control' of the United States."

Mr. Bush may have had a good reason for luring these folks to a meeting with him. He could, for instance, have wanted to give the FBI a way to get their faces in the database. But there are also less sympathetic possible explanations. Mr. Bush's staff could have blundered in trying to achieve the worthwhile goal of distinguishing between fanatic Muslim terrorists and patriotic American Muslims who genuinely condemn terrorism (yes, there are indeed some). Or, even worse, it is possible that Mr. Bush's actions are being driven in this critical hour not by his national security team but by his political aides with a misguided eye on the 2004 vote in Michigan and other swing states with large Arab and Muslim populations.

Regardless of the reason, though, describing the CAIR, MPAC and AMA gang as "good folks" is so inappropriate that the Times would have been wise to at least probe further into what exactly Mr. Bush was doing at this event. Inappropriate, too, is the message of "retaliation abroad and tolerance at home." Tolerance at home is one of the things that got America into the trouble it got into last Tuesday morning. Some of the terrorists had been tolerated for years while living in apartments in Florida and getting flight training. It's as if during the height of the Cold War, an American president had shown up at a convention of the Communist Party, USA, declared that the American communists were "good folks," and called for containment abroad but tolerance at home. That's not to defend the excesses or First Amendment violations of McCarthyism, but neither is it to be complacent or naive about the genuine threat that was posed by Soviet spies in America. Tolerance is one thing; a presidential appearance and endorsement of enemy sympathizers during wartime is quite another.

Note: Smartertimes.com is in Massachusetts today and operating off the New York Times on the Web.

A front-page article in today's New York Times reports that Vice President Cheney "said there was no indication that Iraq was linked to last week's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. 'Saddam Hussein's bottled up at this point,' he said."

Vice President Cheney may have reasons for saying this, chief among them retaining the advantage of surprise in the event America takes action against Iraq. But it is odd for the Times to just let this comment slide unchallenged, given that there are in fact many indications that Iraq was linked to the attacks. For one thing, an official statement read on Iraqi state television praised the attacks, saying, "the American cowboys are reaping the fruit of their crimes against humanity." For another thing, former Mossad agent Gad Shimron told Berlin's Die Welt, "The name Bin Laden is like a mantra, he is the 'usual suspect,' like Carlos in the 1970's. As far as I know, he is sitting somewhere in Afghanistan, a country with no infrastructure. He has a cell phone which the Americans monitor. Maybe this act of terrorism was his idea, but I am sure that it was carried out by others. Perhaps by a coalition of organizations. Yet they must have received support from a sovereign state. . . .My guess is Iraq. But I have no proof. It cannot be Afghanistan, because it is not a sovereign state." For another thing, there are indications that Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that was also linked to bin Laden, had ties to Iraqi intelligence. For these points Smartertimes.com is indebted to Laurie Mylroie, who runs an indispensable e-mail list called Iraq News. None of this is airtight evidence that Saddam was behind last week's attack on America, but it sure seems to go beyond "no indication." In addition, the same Israeli intelligence officials who warned Washington in August of an impending attack "told the Americans that there were strong grounds for suspecting Iraqi involvement," according to London's Sunday Telegraph.

No Warning: An editorial in today's New York Times claims "there was no warning about last week's attacks." Not so, according to the report in London's Sunday Telegraph. That paper reports that "two senior experts with Mossad," the Israeli intelligence service, "were sent to Washington in August to alert the CIA and FBI to the existence of a cell of as many of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation." The Israelis warned of imminent "large-scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland," the Telegraph says.

A front-page note in today's New York Times says, "Several of today's sections, including The Times Magazine and The Sophisticated Traveler, went to press before the terrorist attacks last week. The Times regrets that some references to events are outdated, and that the tone of some articles and advertising is inconsistent with the gravity of the news."

Well, Smartertimes.com went looking for what this note in the Times could possibly be referring to. Sure enough, there in the Sophisticated Traveler section is an advertisement announcing "Syria: Land of Civilizations." The ad copy announces "Discover the Cradle of Civilization at Wilmington's Riverfront. . .an epic adventure of ancient wonders. This acclaimed international exhibition features nearly 400 precious artifacts from ancient civilizations dating as far back as one million years. Gathered from museums throughout Syria, many have never left the region before this showing, and may never do so again." The ad doesn't acknowledge the fact that the "Ministry of Culture, Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums of the Syrian Arab Republic" assembled the exhibit.

Now, one can make the argument that cultural exchanges between America and Syria help promote democratization there. That's beside the point. The problem with this ad isn't that its "tone" is "inconsistent with the gravity of the news." The problem is that it is essentially propaganda for the Syrian government, which is on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism -- at a time when terrorists have just killed about 5,000 persons in an attack on American soil.

The New York Times magazine, meanwhile, features an insipid question and answer interview with William "Bill" Ayers. The magazine describes him simply as "a former leader of the Weathermen," not mentioning that, according to his memoir, he participated in the bombing of the New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, of the Pentagon in 1972. The Times interviewer today asks him, "was it worth it, all the struggling?" And his answer is, "Without a doubt."

Now, it's ridiculous enough for the Times to be fawning all over this guy, even without a terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the Times already wrote about Mr. Ayers pretty generously in its Arts section on Tuesday morning. Now the newspaper does so again in today's magazine. Again, the problem here is not that this article is "outdated" or that its "tone" is "inconsistent with the gravity of the news." The problem is that in the wake of a terrorist attack on the Pentagon that killed about 190 people, it's just obscene for the Times to be helping another terrorist whose group attacked the same target sell his new book, and for the newspaper to refer to bombing the Pentagon as "struggling."

Mr. Ayers has a weaselly attempt to explain this matter in the letters to the editor section of today's Times, claiming that he is "filled with horror and grief for those murdered and harmed, for their families and for all affected forever." (He's apparently referring to those hurt last week, not back in the 1970s.) The Ayers letter goes on to say that his memoir "is now receiving attention in a radically changed context." The letter claims that Ayers' book is "a condemnation of terrorism in all its forms." But the Times reported Tuesday morning that Ayers said in an interview, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." That doesn't sound like a "condemnation." It sounds like an endorsement.

The Times claims wanly in its front-page note that it has "regrets" about these preprinted sections. But it would have been easy enough for the Times just not to distribute those sections with today's newspaper. Apparently the Times' "regrets" weren't substantial enough to outweigh the paper's short-term greed for the advertising revenue it derived from those sections. This is a direct turnabout from the newspaper's performance during World War II. Ever since that war, the newspaper has taken pride in the fact that, in the face of newsprint rationing, Arthur Hays Sulzberger turned down some ads during the war and printed news instead, sacrificing short-term revenue in favor of news values, long-term credibility with readers, and profits once the rationing was ended after the war. If the New York Times today had any shame or grace or self-respect or decency at all, it would donate all the ad revenue from today's magazine and Sophisticated Traveler sections to the war effort. Otherwise, the newspaper's "regrets" are nothing more than a cynical public relations ploy. And otherwise, Arthur Hays Sulzberger would roll over in his grave if he could see his grandson the current publisher-heir shredding the credibility and respect that a family of newspapermen and women spent more than 100 years amassing.

Maligning Midge: A truly smallminded and nasty review of Midge Decter's latest book, "An Old Wife's Tale" appears in today's New York Times Book Review. The review asserts that Decter's son-in-law, Elliott Abrams, "was put to work formulating policies in support of military regimes in Central America." That's an absurd formulation. What Mr. Abrams was doing was fighting the influence in Central America of the most menacing military regime in the world at the time, the Soviet Union. If Mr. Abrams's job was to formulate policies "in support of military regimes," why did he take a firm stance against Fidel Castro's Cuba and Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua? Does the Times's hand-picked reviewer think those were not military regimes but proletarian utopias? One can argue that in retrospect it was a mistake for America to cooperate so closely with some anti-Communist military regimes. But the Times reviewer doesn't make that argument, she just offers a na•ve caricature of it.

The review concludes: "These days Decter is a woman triumphant. Liberalism, which permitted so much heresy in the form of criticism of official policies, was her enemy. And liberalism has apparently been vanquished. Certainly, it is no longer in political vogue to envision a government with the responsibility not only to make laws that protect property and life, but also to intervene between the weakest citizens and the depredations of capitalism unbound. It seemed a nice idea at the time. If liberalism's day has passed, we ought to give a bit of credit where credit is due, and acknowledge the effectiveness of Midge Decter's mouth."

Well, the notion that Midge Decter is the enemy of "criticism of official policies" is just ridiculous. The liberal pieties that she attacked -- among them that the Cold War was unwinnable, that capitalism hurt the poor and that welfare helped them -- were the official policies among the New York Jewish intellectual elite (and for that matter, at the Times). If anyone is a liberal freethinking heretic willing to criticize the official policies, it's Midge Decter. For evidence of that, look no further than how this reviewer treats her -- like a heretic -- for her willingness to criticize the official policies of the liberal orthodoxy.

If liberalism has been so thoroughly "vanquished," why is the Times Book Review still running hatchet pieces against books that dare to express thoughts like Midge Decter's? The notion that Midge Decter and her ideological allies are against government intervention on behalf of "the weakest citizens" just misses the point. Midge Decter and her fellow neoconservatives -- and Bill "End Welfare as We Know It" Clinton, for that matter -- saw that these interventions often fostered dependency and ended up hurting the poor. It may still seem like a "nice idea" to the unvanquished liberals at the Times, but it was a proven failure. And now a new generation of policymakers inspired by Midge Decter and her neoconservatives allies is implementing new ways to help the "weakest citizens" -- school vouchers, federal support for faith-based social services. Rather than intervening against the "depradations of capitalism," these programs seek to harness the strength of capitalism to allow the "weakest" to share for themselves in creating and benefiting from capitalism's riches.

Today's New York Times waddles in with a dispatch from Israel reporting that journalists who tried to report on a rally in the West Bank in support of the terrorist attacks said they were threatened by "Palestinian gunmen." The Associated Press reported this on Wednesday, and USA Today reported it on Thursday. Smartertimes.com on Thursday complained, "Nowhere in the Times is there any mention of the fact that the Palestine Liberation Organization threatened the life of an Associated Press freelance cameraman who taped the Nablus demonstrations." An editor at the Times who was asked about the matter Thursday in an e-mail from a reader replied by offering the excuse, "Unlike Smartertimes, The Times can print things only if we know them to be true."

No mention in today's Times of a rally of what the Associated Press reports were "About 1,500 Palestinians, many supporters of the Islamic militant group Hamas," who "marched in a Gaza Strip refugee camp on Friday, burning Israeli flags and carrying a large poster of Osama bin Laden." The AP reports that "After the rally, plainclothes Palestinian policemen questioned several journalists, including staffers of foreign news agencies, and confiscated videotape and film as well as camera equipment. An Associated Press Television News video was among the materials taken, and an AP photographer was warned by officials not to publish pictures of the bin-Laden poster." Today's Washington Post reports the news of the Gaza rally, but the New York Times omits it.

If the same three-day delay the Times applied to the news of the Nablus incident applies to the Gaza incident, then Times readers can expect the Times to carry the news of the Gaza incident on Monday.

Today's Times dispatch from Israel is relegated to the World/Nation section rather than being up front in the "A" section with the rest of the news about the terrorist attacks. As a result, many readers are likely to miss it.

Disconcerting: The lead editorial in today's New York Times says that "Some of the initial war talk we have heard from Washington is disconcerting." The Times singles out for criticism the deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, who spoke of "ending states who sponsor terrorism." "That may work as a form of intimidation, but we trust he does not have in mind invading and occupying Iran, Iraq, Syria and Sudan, as well as Afghanistan, nations with a combined population of more than 160 million people," the Times writes.

Of course you don't have to invade and occupy a country to change its regime. America fostered regime changes in communist Poland and in communist Nicaragua by aiding the democratic resistance forces in those countries. The example of the rollback of the Soviet Union showed that regimes can be ended with radio broadcasts, with aid to labor unions and with military pressure short of a U.S. occupation and invasion. Even so, given the scale of the attack on New York and the Pentagon, it still seems a bit ridiculous for the Times to be suggesting that America quake at the number of people who live in Sudan. There were plenty of people who lived behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War, too, and in Europe under Nazi domination before the Allied Invasion during World War II. But that wasn't a reason for America to sit at home wringing its hands. It's wrong to assume, too, that all those 160 million people would support their regimes in a struggle against America. In Iran and in Iraq, in particular, there is a huge yearning for Western freedom and culture among the masses.

The Times says that "Forcing a change of governments in Iraq or Syria would require in each case the application of military power on the same scale that was used in the Persian Gulf War, or greater."

Again, this is ridiculous. The Iraqi National Congress, a democratic opposition group that has an extensive network of sources within Iraq, estimates that Saddam Hussein could be overthrown primarily by an Iraqi force, with a minimal commitment of American troops. The main challenge would be feeding all the members of Saddam's army who will defect and join the resistance as soon as a serious battle is joined. It would take some American air support and materiel, but there already are American air forces in the region patrolling "no-fly" zones in the north and south of Iraq. Syria might be tougher to overthrow, but it would be easy, at least, for the U.S. to win a Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon and effectively halve the domain of the Damascus dictator. Again, this could be done primarily with Lebanese troops and not American ones; the Lebanese are eager to escape Syrian domination.

The Times suggests that instead of pursuing a policy of regime change Washington should concentrate on "changing the behavior of the present governments." That is a policy doomed to failure. The external behavior of these governments stems directly from their nature as repressive dictatorships. They need to pursue terrorism and external aggression to distract their own people from their misery. America and Israel tried with Yasser Arafat to change his behavior and look where it got them. It's as if after Pearl Harbor the Times was suggesting that America try to get Japan to change its behavior through, as the Times puts it today, "intensive diplomatic pressure, severe economic sanctions and united international support."

The "Reckonings" columnist on the op-ed page of today's New York Times attacks President Bush for his handling of the aftermath of the terror attack. "One hopes that the White House will distance itself from this disgraceful opportunism, that it will deliver the bipartisanship it originally promised. But initial indications are not good: the administration developed its request for emergency funding in consultation with Congressional Republicans -- full stop. A Democratic contact says that his party received 'no consultation, no collaboration, virtually no information,'" the Times columnist writes. "I didn't want to mention this, but now is the time to draw the line. This tragedy will only be magnified if it is exploited for political gain. Politicians who wrap themselves in the flag while relentlessly pursuing their usual partisan agenda are not true patriots, and history will not forgive them."

What kind of alternate reality is the "Reckonings" columnist living in? Why should any reader believe him and his anonymous "Democratic contact," when the House Democratic leader, Richard Gephardt, is quoted elsewhere in the Times today saying, "There is no division between parties, between Congress and the president"?

"No consultation, no collaboration"? Here's a quote from a Times news article today: "Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. Schumer asked for an extra $20 billion from Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the majority leader, and then brought up the sum with Mr. Bush." Bush expressed support for the additional spending. If that's not consultation and collaboration, it's hard to imagine what is.

Low-Key: The lead editorial in today's New York Times suggests that America work with China, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to pressure Afghanistan. "India might also be a willing partner. But its role should be low-key to avoid unnecessary complications with Pakistan and China," the Times writes.

That's a perfect example of the appeasement attitude that emboldened these terrorists to attack us to begin with. India is a democracy. China and Pakistan are authoritarian. Why should America keep its relationship with another democracy "low key" to avoid "unnecessary complications" with dictatorships? In fact, these complications are necessary. They are unavoidable. So long as America is a free democracy, we will have "complications" with those countries that are not, because America's very existence provides an example that threatens the dictatorships by inspiring the people under the dictator's boot.

The Times editorial asserts that "China fears a spillover of Islamic terrorism into its own western province of Xinjiang, where Muslims make up about half the population." But there's a huge difference between the terrorism that struck New York and America and efforts by Muslims in Xinjiang to break free of the Chinese dictatorship. The attack on America was an attack on freedom in a free country; the effort in China is an attempt to win freedom in an unfree empire. For the Times to combine the two as "Islamic terrorism," confusing America's interests with China's, is wrongheaded.

Israeli Oppression: An article in today's New York Times reports that Osama Bin Laden and other Arab militants "increasingly came to blame the United States for Muslim woes, among them oppression of Palestinians by Israel." Unless it is the position of the Times news department that Israel is oppressing the Palestinians (and if that is the position then it explains a lot), that sentence could be improved by writing "among them what they consider the oppression of Palestinians by Israel."

Can't Spell: An article in today's New York Times reports on a $1 million gift to the New York Times 9/11 Neediest Fund from the "Edmund J. Safra Foundation." You'd think if a foundation gave a newspaper's charitable fund $1 million dollars the newspaper could at least be bothered to spell the foundation's name correctly. It's the Edmond J. Safra Foundation, with an "o," not a "u."

Over-Overview: An article on page A3 of today's New York Times is labeled "The Overview," and another one on Page A18 is also labeled "The Overview." Maybe there needs to be some oversight of the overviews.

On the second day of its coverage of the attack on America, the New York Times is beginning to show some rough spots.

One sign of the trouble is a mindless ganging up on President Bush. A front-page news article in today's Times complains that the specific and credible threat against the president was not made public in the middle of the threatening situation. "Neither Mr. Rove or other officials explained why this information was not made public on Tuesday. Partly because it was not, Mr. Bush was criticized for spending the day traveling a zigzag route." The article goes on to say that "On television, in newspapers and in animated discussions in offices across the country, Mr. Bush's conduct was compared unfavorably with that of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, who went to the scene of the attacks in Lower Manhattan; to John F. Kennedy, who stayed in Washington throughout the Cuban missile crisis of 1963, when many feared that nuclear war was imminent, and to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who remained at the Pentagon after it was hit and for a time helped in the evacuation of the dead and wounded."

If Mr. Rove and others haven't "explained" why this wasn't made public Tuesday, it is because no explanation is really necessary. Does the Times really think that it would have helped the situation if, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon having been hit, Karl Rove had gone on television or called the New York Times and said, "Oh, by the way, we are zig-zagging the president around the country because we have received specific and credible evidence that he is next"? It might have panicked the population. It also might have compromised intelligence and security sources and methods, as well as the ongoing investigation -- the Pentagon was reportedly furious yesterday when the White House press secretary announced that the president had been targeted, and Secretary Rumsfeld went out and gave a stern speech about the importance of keeping classified information secret.

The reference in the Times news story to the unfavorable comparison with Mayor Giuliani "in newspapers" is particularly choice. Talk about your self-fulfilling prophecies. The Times criticizes Mr. Bush, then writes a front-page news article about how newspapers are criticizing Mr. Bush.

But the front-page article is just the beginning. There's a "Metro Matters" column asking "shouldn't the president have made it his business to plant his feet in New York City by now?"

There's an editorial referring to the "disturbing" fact that the president did not field questions on Tuesday. The nation is under terrorist attack. The president's life is being threatened. The Times editorialists want Mr. Bush to stop during the 12 hours following the attack and hold a press conference?

And there's an entire separate freestanding news article asserting that "Democrats and Republicans began to question why Americans had seen relatively little of the president in the immediate aftermath of the crisis." That article reports only that Mr. Bush "only briefly" mentioned New York in his address to the nation Tuesday and "did not offer any condolences in that speech specifically to New Yorkers.

Meanwhile, with all the criticism, nowhere does today's Times find room to report that Mr. Bush at 5:53 p.m. yesterday while visiting the Pentagon, said, "We're here to say thanks to not only the workers on this site, but the workers who are doing the same work in New York City."

It's enough to make Smartertimes.com agree with the comment by Senator Schumer about Mr. Bush, a comment buried at the bottom of one New York Times article today: "we don't need people taking shots at him right now."

The Times coverage is starting to fray in other ways, too.

There are inconsistencies. A front page article reports, "Officials said that a breakthrough came when a witness alerted authorities to a rental car parked at Logan International Airport in Boston. The vehicle yielded an Arabic-language flight manual and other documents that contained a name on the passenger list of one of the flights." But an article from Boston inside the Times reports, "The Boston Herald reported this morning that the car contained flight training manuals in Arabic and had been used by at least some of the hijackers, but neither the F.B.I. nor the Boston police would confirm the report." One Times article, in other words, attributes the information to "officials"; the other attributes it to the Herald and says some officials refused to confirm it.

There is sloppy editing. A front-page article reports, "The eyes of Joe Lashendock, an ironworker, had tears in his eyes as he recalled assisting in the rescue . . . " Another front-page article reports that "Macy's Herald Square, the world's biggest store, was open, but the aisles were thin in the late morning." The aisles were thin? Is that because there weren't many people shopping there, or because the racks of clothing were placed close together?

There is repetition of idiotic cliches. The lead, front-page article refers to "a faceless enemy." This business about a "faceless enemy" is rubbish. There is a photograph of the face of Mohammed Atta on page A4 of today's Times. There is a drawing of the face of Osama bin Laden on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal. An editorial in today's New York Times refers to "the handful of governments that sponsor or aid international terrorist groups," including "Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya and North Korea." (The Times mysteriously omits Cuba from the list.) The leaders of those countries have faces.

And there is the usual maddening softness on Yasser Arafat. A front-page news article reports unchallenged that Mr. Arafat "angrily rejected accounts that some Palestinians had rejoiced over the attack." Asked about televised pictures, the Times says, Mr. Arafat insisted that "it was less than 10 children in East Jerusalem, and we punished them." Another article inside the Times says "It is unclear how this assertion could be squared with photographs suggesting that there were more people." But the front-page article lets Mr. Arafat have the last word, also ignoring the fact that the celebrations took place in Nablus as well as in Jerusalem. Nowhere in the Times is there any mention of the fact that the Palestine Liberation Organization threatened the life of an Associated Press freelance cameraman who taped the Nablus demonstrations.

Letter to the Editor: Harvey Klehr, Andrew W. Mellon professor of politics and history at Emory University, writes to Smartertimes:

"It was a horrible irony that on the day of the worst terrorist attack in American history, the NYT saw fit to publish a goofy interview with ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers, married to a fellow terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, which begins with the startling declaration by Mr. Ayers that 'I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough.' Among other bombs the Weatherman, and Mr. Ayers, set was one that struck the Pentagon. In his dishonest memoir, 'Fugitive days,' Mr. Ayers mourns the death of his girl friend and two other Weathermen, killed when a bomb they were making accidentally exploded in a New York townhouse. The Times neglects to tell its readers that the bomb being prepared was an anti-personnel bomb, desigend to kill soldiers at Ft. Dix. He insouciantly brushes off his and his wife's comments from the late 1960s and 1970s applauding the Manson murderers and urging people to kill others as just a joke. And he 'doesn't want to discount the possibility' that he would do it all over again."

"One assumes that the NYT would not offer us a fawning interview with the KKK men who blew up a Birmingham church in the early 1960s, complete with a dramatic photo of the mellowing ex-bomber with his glamorous wife."

"And, one assumes that no educational institution in the United States would think of making such a despicable human being a distinguished professor -- of education, no less, as Mr. Ayers is, at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Perhaps some in the news media can use him as an expert talking head in the coming weeks. He's quite knowledgeable about bombing and terrorism and he shares with the perpetrators of yesterday's violence, a hatred a American capitalism and the military-industrial complex, and a deep contempt for the American people. "

The New York Times news department responds in today's paper to yesterday's attack the way a great newspaper should -- with textured, factual and comprehensive coverage that puts the newspaper's vast resources on display in an impressive way. Sure, there are moments of unintended comedy, as when the Times reports that President George W. Bush's plane "was surrounded by Air Force personnel in full combat gear with drawn M-16's." (An M-16 is big enough that, unlike a sword from a scabbard or a pistol from a holster, one wouldn't ordinarily speak of it being "drawn.") And sure, there are ways in which the Times news department was beaten by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post; the Times, for instance, does not publish the list of tenants of the twin towers, the way the other two papers did.

Where today's Times is disappointing, though, is on the editorial page, which propagates a number of harmful myths.

Perhaps the most wrongheaded is the newspaper's call for a change to a defensive posture in American foreign policy. "While the United States must retain its conventional and nuclear war-fighting machinery, the government needs to consider a reallocation of resources to homeland defenses against unorthodox threats," the Times editorial says. The editorial concludes, "A concerted national effort to remake the nation's defenses must begin immediately." The reader is left with the image of America retreating like a turtle into its shell in the face of this attack -- exactly what the terrorists want. There's no recognition in the Times editorial that the best defense is a good offense -- the capacity to disrupt and destroy America's enemies on their own soil. What's needed is a concerted national effort to remake -- and to use -- America's offense. And that offense consists not just of missiles and bombs and battleships, but of aid to the democratic resistance in Iraq and support for radio stations and free labor unions like the ones that helped overthrow the Soviet empire.

But the flaws in the editorials are manifold. The Times writes, "This is an age when even revenge is complicated, when it is hard to match the desire for retribution with the need for certainty. We suffer from an act of war without any enemy nation with which to do battle." This is just sheer applesauce. That the morning after the twin towers and the Pentagon are attacked and hundreds die, the Times could write an editorial claiming that America is "without any enemy nation with which to do battle" is just a sad and stunning example of the fog of delusion that has settled in the minds of many Americans. America has plenty of enemy nations with which to do battle. The editorialists might check out the report in their own newspaper which says Iraqi state television hailed the attacks on America as the "operation of the century" which the United States deserved because of its "crimes against humanity." As Laurie Mylroie has usefully documented, there is strong evidence of Iraqi involvement in the last attack on the World Trade Center. Other enemies include the other states on the U.S. State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Syria, North Korea, Sudan, Cuba, Libya. And Afghanistan, where Osama Bin Laden is in refuge. And Saudi Arabia, which has obstructed the American investigation into the bombing of the Khobar Towers in Dharan. And Yemen, which has obstructed the American investigation into the bombing of the USS Cole. These nations, particularly the seven on the terrorist list, are America's enemies even if it turns out that yesterday's attacks are the work of a domestic group of environmental activists or anti-globalization protesters. America's failure to hold those nations accountable for past attacks like the one on the Cole and on the barracks in Dharan only emboldens other aggressors.

Which is why the Times assertion that "retaliation is warranted . . .once the organizers are identified" is so silly. Why wait to identify the organizers of this particular attack? Why not retaliate now against the countries that have already been identified as sponsors of prior terrorist attacks against American targets?

The Times editorialists also revert to the "root causes" argument that they also use to explain crime. "Part of the challenge for the United States is to recognize that the roots of terrorism lie in economic and political problems in large parts of the world," the Times writes. "The end of the cold war has brought a resurgence of ethnic conflicts that were often stilled by the superpower conflicts between East and West." Again, this is just applesauce. It absolves individuals and governments of the responsibility for their evil acts. There are plenty of people who grow up in places with "economic and political problems" who respond to those challenges in a more constructive manner than by intentionally flying jet planes into American office buildings. They fight for freedom in their own countries, or they immigrate to places where they can build better lives. America can respond to those economic and political problems by helping the forces of freedom and democracy around the world -- today's Times instead calls for America to "consider a reallocation of resources to homeland defenses." The newspaper's editorialists sound like Patrick J. Buchanan or the America First Committee on the eve of World War II. It's the sort of thinking that in this sort of crisis sends American warships steaming for New York Harbor instead of the Persian Gulf. The point about the Cold War is particularly ill-conceived. In fact, terrorism has declined with the fall of its main sponsor, the Soviet Union. Most of the terrorist states -- North Korea, Syria, Iraq, Cuba -- are former Soviet clients. The notion that terrorism is yet another reason for the Times editorialists to lament the fall of the Soviet Union says little about terrorism and a lot about how much the Times editorialists miss the Soviet Union.

The Times op-ed page today isn't much better than the editorial. One Times columnist writes, "If we are smart, like Israel we may now start thinking more clearly about the stateless enemy as a threat to our national security." The Israelis that Smartertimes.com talks to don't make the mistake of thinking about a "stateless enemy." They know that the enemy is funded by Iran and Iraq and Saudi Arabia, trained in Syria, armed by North Korea, based in Syria and Afghanistan. The "stateless enemy," like the "faceless enemy," is a myth, and the sooner the Times gets over it, the sooner America can get to the task of spreading freedom and democracy to the states that harbor these enemies.

The op-ed page of today's New York Times carries a particularly pernicious article that runs under the headline "The Broken Windows Myth."

The article criticizes the "broken windows" theory of the police cracking down on quality-of life offenses like graffiti and aggressive panhandling. It says "There is little, if any evidence that the crackdown on squeegee men and graffiti scribblers has played much of a role in reducing crime in New York." It says the broken windows "approach to law enforcement diminishes trust between the police and the community, violates basic rights and scapegoats the homeless and other people we deem disorderly." And it contrasts the broken windows approach with the "very different style" of policing in San Diego -- "a problem-solving, community oriented approach."

Well, since the headline of the article is "The Broken Windows Myth," and the article refers repeatedly to "broken windows," you might think that a law professor or a Times editor would have paid some attention to where that phrase came from. If you did think that, you would be wrong. In fact, this article manages to mischaracterize the broken windows theory and attack it while never even bothering to mention who coined the phrase and where and in what context. Ordinarily one might chalk this up to carelessness or lack of generosity, but in this case, the mischaracterization of the original theory is so egregious that it almost is enough to make a reader suspect that the op-ed writer is hoping that the Times readers never read the original "Broken Windows" article. Because if they did read it, they would realize that today's op-ed piece is wrongheaded in almost every way possible.

The original article, "Broken Windows: The police and neighborhood safety," was written by James Q. Wilson and George Kelling in the March 1982 issue of The Atlantic Monthly. It is available free online at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/crime/windows.htm , and Smartertimes.com highly recommends it to anyone who hasn't already read it. It is one of the most brilliant articles ever written.

In fact, if you go read the original Broken Windows article, you can see that virtually every complaint made in today's Times article on "The Broken Windows Myth" is bogus.

Today's Times article complains that the practice has not been effective in fighting crime. But Professors Wilson and Kelling never claimed it would directly fight crime.

Here's what they wrote in The Atlantic, based on a study of policing in Newark, N.J.: "Five years after the program started, the Police Foundation, in Washington, D.C., published an evaluation of the foot-patrol project. Based on its analysis of a carefully controlled experiment carried out chiefly in Newark, the foundation concluded, to the surprise of hardly anyone, that foot patrol had not reduced crime rates. But residents of the foot patrolled neighborhoods seemed to feel more secure than persons in other areas, tended to believe that crime had been reduced, and seemed to take fewer steps to protect themselves from crime (staying at home with the doors locked, for example). Moreover, citizens in the foot-patrol areas had a more favorable opinion of the police than did those living elsewhere. And officers walking beats had higher morale, greater job satisfaction, and a more favorable attitude toward citizens in their neighborhoods than did officers assigned to patrol cars. These findings may be taken as evidence that the skeptics were right- foot patrol has no effect on crime; it merely fools the citizens into thinking that they are safer. But in our view, and in the view of the authors of the Police Foundation study (of whom Kelling was one), the citizens of Newark were not fooled at all. They knew what the foot-patrol officers were doing, they knew it was different from what motorized officers do, and they knew that having officers walk beats did in fact make their neighborhoods safer."

As for the claim that the broken windows approach "diminishes trust between the police and the community, violates basic rights and scapegoats the homeless and other people we deem disorderly," that, too, is contradicted by both common sense and the evidence of the Newark foot patrol experiment. And Professors Kelling and Wilson addressed these points, too, in their original article back in 1982. They wrote: "Arresting a single drunk or a single vagrant who has harmed no identifiable person seems unjust, and in a sense it is. But failing to do anything about a score of drunks or a hundred vagrants may destroy an entire community."

Professors Kelling and Wilson also addressed the issue of "racial divisions," which today's Times article also blames on broken windows practices. They wrote back in 1982, "how do we ensure that age or skin color or national origin or harmless mannerisms will not also become the basis for distinguishing the undesirable from the desirable? How do we ensure, in short, that the police do not become the agents of neighborhood bigotry? We can offer no wholly satisfactory answer to this important question. We are not confident that there is a satisfactory answer except to hope that by their selection, training, and supervision, the police will be inculcated with a clear sense of the outer limit of their discretionary authority. That limit, roughly, is this--the police exist to help regulate behavior, not to maintain the racial or ethnic purity of a neighborhood."

To the extent that any of the complaints in today's Times article are valid, they demonstrate not problems with the original broken windows theory but with the implementation and distortion of it by police and politicians. In New York, in particular, foot-patrol, a cornerstone of the original broken-windows theory, has been de-emphasized. But the fact that there are problems with implementation -- and on the whole the improved order in the city has not been problematic but a great boon to the economy and to residents -- doesn't mean broken windows is a myth or that police should stop trying to maintain order, as the Times article suggests.

Shark Attack: Until today, the New York Times has been dismissive of the idea that a recent wave of shark attacks may be related to federal limits on shark fishing that went into effect in 1993. On September 5, 2001, the Times mentioned the argument, made by Sean Paige, a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, only to reject it: "But Sonja V. Fordham, a shark fisheries expert at the Ocean Conservancy, a private group in Washington, said Mr. Paige had exaggerated both the rise in attacks and evidence that devastated shark populations were rebounding. 'This is an irresponsible argument' made to foster the shark-fishing industry, Ms. Fordham said. 'There's no basis for it in fact.'"

A New York Times editorial on September 6, 2001, took the same line, ridiculing Mr. Paige's argument: "at present, the idea of an environmentally driven shark-attack trend is no more founded in fact than the hypothesis of one conservative commentator that the whole thing is the fault of Bill Clinton, or at least of tighter shark-fishing limits passed during his presidency."

So it sure is interesting to see the article in the Science Times section of today's New York Times, which asserts, "it is possible that federal rules and commercial fishing practices are interacting in unexpected ways to create new dangers in coastal waters." Today's article goes on to acknowledge that "Although many scientists have publicly questioned" Mr. Paige's theory, "a few have voiced support." The Times today quotes "a research biologist in Miami for the National Marine Fisheries Service" as expressing support for Mr. Paige's theory.

Now that the Times news coverage has adjusted itself on this issue, it will be interesting to see whether the editorialists are going to be willing to retract their ridicule and acknowledge that regulation may have played a role.

Keeps You Going: The business section of today's New York Times carries the end of an article about Wrigley, the gum company. Guess the editors thought this article was so good when it originally ran in full back on August 28, 2001, that they decided it was worth running again.

An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on the rededication of Central Synagogue in Manhattan, which was severely damaged in a 1998 fire. The first sentence of today's Times article reports that the rededication was of "the home of what is thought to be the oldest continuing Jewish congregation in New York."

Well, it may be "thought to be" the oldest, but whoever is having that thought isn't thinking very hard. And no one at the New York Times seems to have thought very hard before plopping that thought into the newspaper. As the Encyclopedia of New York City notes, the first Jewish congregation in North America was Shearith Israel, which was founded in 1654 in what was then New Amsterdam. Shearith Israel, a Sephardic synagogue, still exists in New York, in a building at 70th Street and Central Park West.

The New York Times itself, on December 6, 1996, identified B'nai Jeshurun as "New York's oldest Ashkenazic congregation."

Central Synagogue's distinction, until the fire, may have been as the oldest synagogue in continuous use in New York City. It was completed in 1872. But obviously there is a difference between being the oldest continuing congregation and having the oldest building. That distinction seems to be lost on the Times.

Unreformed on Tort Reform: An article on the front page of today's New York Times reports that jury awards in medical malpractice cases reached an average of $3.49 million in 1999, up from $1.95 million in 1993. The article reports that in California, "juries awarded more than $1 million in 39 malpractice lawsuits, up from 28 seven years earlier. . . .The average award rose to $2.9 million, from $2 million." Well, the Times looks a bit silly, in retrospect, for that largely uncritical report in its national section on August 6, 2001, which ran under the headline, "A Study's Verdict: Jury Awards Are Not Out of Control," and concluded with a quote from a law professor who asserted, "The evidence is that juries are not out of control." That August article didn't mention any of these statistics about the increase in jury awards in malpractice cases. Today's article, meanwhile, is flawed because it doesn't say how many of these large jury awards are reduced by judges on appeal.

An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on how bloc voting may affect the upcoming primary elections in New York. "Besides, the question of Latino turnout is uncharted territory, the grim lessons of Los Angeles aside," the Times reports. "There, earlier this year, a Latino mayoral candidate lost in a run-off against a white candidate. The Latino proportion of the Los Angeles electorate had grown to 21 percent, compared to 18 percent four years ago, according to an independent analysis by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a California research group. But black turnout grew slightly as well, and the vast majority of them voted for the white man."

This is a classic example of how the New York Times is dropping even the pretense of keeping its own opinions out of the news coverage. What is "grim" about what happened in Los Angeles? Is the Times news department admitting that it was rooting for the Latino candidate? There was nothing "grim" about the lesson for those who voted for the winner. In fact, there may even be some people out there who think that it is not a grim lesson but an encouraging one when people vote on a basis other than sheer racial determinism.

Some editor could have fixed this with a few keystrokes by ending the first sentence after the word "territory" and beginning the next sentence with the words, "In Los Angeles earlier this year." But the grim lesson of this example is that the Times no longer seems to care about maintaining even a pretense of objectivity in its news columns.

Conservative Stalwarts: A front-page news article in today's New York Times reports on a dinner in Washington "attended by conservative stalwarts including David Keene, Haley Barbour, Kenneth M. Duberstein, Vin Weber, Charles Black, Linda DiVall, Bill Paxon and Ed Gillespie." Smartertimes.com doesn't mean to cast any aspersions on Mr. Duberstein or Mr. Paxon, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to call them conservative stalwarts. When Mr. Paxon retired, the Times types were bemoaning the loss of a Northeastern moderate from the congressional Republican leadership. And Mr. Duberstein has recently been actively promoting embryonic stem-cell research, angering the anti-abortion conservative stalwarts. Mr. Duberstein is also very close to Senator McCain and to Colin Powell, both of whom are not exactly conservative stalwarts. Mr. Paxon and Mr. Duberstein may strike the Times news department as conservative stalwarts, but conservative stalwarts would probably consider them moderate centrists.

Lost in New York: The travel section of today's New York Times carries an article about New York City. "New York's distinctive neighborhoods extend from the vivid street life of the East Village and Lower East Side to the architectural splendors of upper Fifth Avenue and Riverside Drive," the Times reports in this article. You don't say. It is sentences like that that make actual New Yorkers long for a newspaper that seems written for them rather than for a nationwide audience. After all, if you live in New York City rather than Berkeley or Cambridge or Ann Arbor or wherever the Times reader that the editors have in mind lives, you don't need to be told that the East Village and Lower East Side have a "vivid street life."

An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on a recent surge in Michael Bloomberg's charitable giving. "While his company may derive some tax benefits from its charitable donations, Mr. Bloomberg's personal tax returns show he is already in the highest tax bracket and his campaign said he derived no tax benefit from the additional giving," the Times reports.

That sentence displays a stunning lack of understanding of the tax code. In fact, it doesn't particularly matter if Mr. Bloomberg is already in the highest tax bracket. Taxes are a function of a rate and a base. While Mr. Bloomberg is already paying the top rate, he can adjust the base -- his taxable income -- by making charitable donations. The more he gives away, the more his taxable income is reduced, so the base that he has to pay the high rate on is reduced, and his taxes are reduced. It's just nonsense to say that Mr. Bloomberg derives no tax benefit from the additional giving. The fact that he is in the highest bracket makes the tax benefit of the giving greater than if he were in a lower bracket, because he has to pay the government a bigger share of every dollar that he doesn't give away.

Almost: A front-page dispatch from Jerusalem in today's New York Times reports that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "has given almost no interviews since forming his center-right coalition government seven months ago." The Times reporter must be paying almost no attention to what is going on around him, because there is almost no truth to this claim. Mr. Sharon granted an interview to editors of the Wall Street Journal in March. He granted an interview to Newsweek's Lally Weymouth for the March 19, 2001 issue of Newsweek, and he granted her another interview for the July 2, 2001 issue of Newsweek. He gave an interview to the Jerusalem Post in April. The New York Post's Uri Dan interviews Ariel Sharon so often that Mr. Sharon probably qualifies to be put on the Post payroll as a news stringer. In the New York Times itself, columnist William Safire reported on September 6, 2001, about a phone interview he had with Mr. Sharon.

Unemployment: An editorial in today's Times claims that "Just a year ago, America's labor market was the envy of the world. The unemployment rate was hovering at 30-year lows." The editorial goes on about the "sad story" and "bad news" of the recently announced uptick in the unemployment rate. In fact, a year ago, news articles in the Times were bemoaning the crisis faced by employers encountering shortages of qualified personnel -- not a situation anyone would "envy." And while the increased unemployment is bad news for those who are out of a job, it's good news for employers, who are now having an easier time hiring well-qualified workers at reasonable wages. The Times editorial identifies with the out-of-work person but not with the employer.

Today: An article in the national section of today's New York Times reports on a dispute over seats on the governing board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. The article says the librarian of Congress, who sits on the Kennedy Center board, "said in a telephone interview today" that he knew nothing about the dispute. What's "today"? The article has no dateline, so one would assume that "today" means the day at the top of the page. Was the Times reporter really on the phone with the librarian of Congress about this matter in the early morning hours of Saturday?

A dispatch from San Diego in the national section of today's New York Times reports on a hearing by President Bush's commission on Social Security reform.

"In substance, the six hours of testimony did not produce anything new or surprising," the Times reports. If nothing new or surprising happened, why kill trees to put this article in the newspaper at all? And why waste the time of readers by continuing on about the subject for 14 more paragraphs following the announcement that nothing new or exciting happened?

The same article reports, "There were dueling news conferences and demonstrations; reams of position papers and news releases -- and a sense of deja vu, with many of the same Washington people making the same arguments about what to do, or not do, about one of the government's most successful programs."

Oh. So now it is the position of the New York Times news department that Social Security is "one of the government's most successful programs."

Well, now that the Times has taken that position, it is going to be interesting to watch the newspaper pretend to be fair in its coverage of those who argue that Social Security isn't really that successful at all. It is financed by a hugely regressive payroll tax. It pays a return on that tax that is much less than the return that could be achieved by investing the money privately in even the least risky investments. It is in most cases not transferable to children as an inheritance in the case of death, the way a private retirement account would be. It is subject to fraud and abuse: The Associated Press reported this week that "Social Security paid $31 million through the end of last year to deceased beneficiaries who were listed as dead in the agency's own electronic files, auditors estimate. . . . One woman who died in November 1993 was still receiving benefit checks in May 2000, and auditors said more than $100,000 in benefits had been paid after her death."

Anyway, the subject that the Times is supposed to be covering is whether Social Security is one of the government's most successful programs or whether it needs an overhaul. For a news article to take a position that it is successful -- without stating the definition of success, giving any evidence of success, or even disposing of the arguments of those who say it is not a success -- is just a blatant example of the Times crossing the line from reporting the news to taking sides in a political dispute.

Herbert Matthews, Phone Home: A photography review in the weekend section of today's New York Times reports adoringly on the Cuban Communists and their leader, Fidel Castro, without even a passing acknowledgement that the regime in Havana is engaged in brutal human rights abuses and is an economic failure. "Even the moralizing political liberation of the 1950's and 1960's had its glamour. The revolutionary troops, with their scruffy-chic beards and berets, were popular international heroes for a time. And they were led by two genuine superstars: the baby-faced Fidel Castro and the Byronic Che Guevara," the Times says.

One propagandist, "Korda," is described by the Times as "Mr. Castro's official photographer." "Whether depicting Mr. Castro as a magnetic orator, a military leader or just folks, Korda paid shrewd attention to camera angle, facial expression, composition and backdrop. The idea was to create the image of a great man of action IN action, an illusion of Olympian spontaneity, and he got what he was after," the Times asserts.

The Times review asserts that these photos partly answer the question, "What does Cuba look like from the inside, to people born there and defined by its shores?" It's sure not how Cuba looks to those rotting in the dungeons of the dictator the Times calls a baby-faced superstar.

Reagan Revisionist: Thomas Friedman's column on the New York Times op-ed page today manages to assert that what made Ronald Reagan popular was that he "engaged in sweeping arms control" with the Soviet Union. Un-be-lievable. His source for this is an anonymous "European diplomat." Amazing how Mr. Friedman and this diplomat have discovered this phenomenon that apparently eluded all the journalists and historians and political analysts that have so far studied the matter -- the huge silent majority of arms control enthusiasts who were the little-known core of Reagan's political support. Un-be-lievable.