An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on yesterday's Salute to Israel parade. The Times reports, "A group of about 30 demonstrators, angry over what they consider Israel's excessive reliance on force to combat Palestinian dissent, held a small rally near the start of the parade route." Even attributing the sentiment to the demonstrators, describing the controversy as being over "Israel's excessive reliance on force to combat Palestinian dissent" is absurd. The force, excessive or not, isn't being used to combat Palestinian "dissent," but Palestinian mortar attacks, small arms fire and suicide bombing attacks on cities and civilians in Israel.

A cutline in the international section of today's New York Times runs under a photograph of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "Some vocal critics suggest Mr. Sharon is becoming militaristic," the cutline says. This is pretty humorous, even to those of us who are sympathetic to Mr. Sharon and who believe he seeks peace. Ariel Sharon, who made his career as a general in the Israeli army and whose autobiography was titled "Warrior," is becoming militaristic?

Race and Income: The lead editorial in this morning's New York Times, about education legislation making its way through Congress, reports, "The administration has specifically argued for a testing plan that would break out test scores by race and ethnicity, so that states could be held accountable for closing the achievement gap between rich and poor children." Talk about your soft bigotry of low expectations. If the Times, or the Bush administration, wants to hold states "accountable for closing the achievement gap between rich and poor children," the way to do it would be to break out test scores by family income. It's unsettling that the Times or the Bush administration would consider "race and ethnicity" to be the most convenient and fail-safe proxy for determining whether a child is rich or poor.

Page Three: A New York Times reader in Massachusetts reported early this morning that in his copy of the New England edition of today's Times, page three has been reproduced from Saturday's paper, right down to the word "Saturday" at the top of the page. Guess if those New England readers really want that scintillating update on the Lori Berenson case, they will have to check the Times Web site or write to the Times production department.

The "Economic View" column in the business section of today's New York Times begins: "Go back through all the writings on capitalism, back to Adam Smith, and a bedrock principle asserts itself repeatedly. It is that government provides services the private sector cannot provide as well or will not provide at all. Building airports and putting satellites into space are obvious examples."

Oh, so the Times columnist considers it "obvious" that government can do better than the private sector at building airports and putting satellites into space. That isn't so obvious to everyone else. It's not even obvious to many people who work in government. When the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey recently began a $9.3 billion renovation of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, it hired a private company, Bechtel, to manage much of the project. When the city-run Denver International Airport finally opened in 1995, it was 16 months behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, and its automated baggage-mangling system was the subject of jokes on late-night television. When it comes to satellite launches, too, the U.S. government has always relied heavily on private contractors like Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, and it is doing so even more now. A June 1998 report from the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, that analyzed the space-launch needs of the Department of Defense said, "commercial interests are expected to dominate the worldwide space launch service market."

The same Times column goes on to complain that the nation "is being locked into a $1.35 trillion tax cut over the next decade without ever hearing a discussion in Congress of how the government might have spent that money if there were no tax cut." No one is being "locked" into anything. If the Democrats take control of the Congress in 2002 or win the White House in 2004 and want to raise taxes, there is nothing stopping them from trying.

The same Times column goes on to refer to "the conservative Cato Institute." Cato would be more accurately described as libertarian.

The Reign in Spain: The article in the business section of today's New York Times about Amazon.com reports "In other cases, the computer recommended keeping tighter reign on inventory, pressing the vendor for more discounts, or raising prices." The word the Times was looking for there is rein, not reign. You keep a tight rein on a horse; a king reigns.

Late Again: The New York Times waddles in this morning with a front-page news article on the Hindus upset about beef flavoring in McDonald's French fries. The Seattle Times reported this story on May 2. Overlawyered.com had it on May 4, linking to May 3 stories on Reuters and in the Times of India. The Wall Street Journal had an editorial about the case that ran in American editions on May 14. The fact that it took the New York Times until May 20 to come in on it is telling. The fact that it is on the front page is even more telling; it's as if the Times really does assume that its readers live in a vacuum and that the Times is the only news source that exists.

Late Again: The Sunday Styles section of the New York Times waddles in today with a brief article on how bamboo is "the floral pick of the month." That's old news to readers of the Wall Street Journal, which had a better article on the trend in Friday's paper under the headline "'Lucky' Bamboo Has Florists Seeing Green."

Today's New York Times includes a front-page news article claiming that low taxes and less government are dangerous to your health.

Here's how the Times puts it: "In Nevada, these experts say, a long legacy of low-tax, libertarian government, rural isolation and a steely tradition of self-reliance have combined with a population growth of more than 60 percent in the last decade that has left little sense of community to create huge challenges to the state's mental and physical health."

And, lower down, here's the obligatory paragraph thrown in to give the appearance of balance: "Conservatives are quick to argue that social pathologies like suicide and smoking are not caused by low taxes or limited government, and that government's ability to solve them may be limited, too."

This is the nature of the tax debate in the pages of the New York Times: "experts say" that low taxes "create huge challenges" to "mental and physical health," while "Conservatives are quick to argue" that low taxes do not cause social pathologies.

To many readers, the statements that "social pathologies like suicide and smoking are not caused by low taxes or limited government," and that "government's ability to solve them may be limited, too" are not matters that "conservatives are quick to argue," but truths that are pretty obvious to anyone who gets information from outside the news columns of the New York Times and its "experts."

Let's take the case of smoking. The Times article reports that "Nevada has the highest adult smoking rate and the highest death rate from smoking." Well, interesting coincidence, that. One wonders how, exactly, the "death rate from smoking" is measured. After all, everyone dies, eventually, and when one does, the cause of death is usually listed as heart disease or lung cancer or emphysema, not "smoking." Well, from what Smartertimes.com can tell, the "death rate from smoking" was derived by plugging the number of smokers in a state into a government computer program that "estimates the number of smoking-related deaths" by "using attributable risk formulas based on smoking prevalence." In other words, the fact that Nevada has "the highest death rate from smoking" is based on plugging Nevada's high number of smokers into a computer program that says the more you smoke the more likely you are to die. Smartertimes.com isn't denying that smoking is bad for your health. But the idea of using the facts that "Nevada has the highest adult smoking rate and the highest death rate from smoking" as two independent statistics to hammer away at the state's low taxes -- when in fact the second statistic is an estimate derived from plugging the first statistic into a computer program -- seems tendentious. Have a look at the short government study that the smoking-related deaths statistic is based on and see for yourself if you want: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00031998.htm

Besides, the notion that smoking is caused by "low-tax, libertarian government" is just utterly contradicted by the facts. The smoking prevalence in Nevada is 38 percent for men aged 35-64, 15 percent for men 65 or over, according to the 1989 census numbers cited in that Centers for Disease Control study. In contrast, the highest male smoking prevalence in the world is in Communist Vietnam, where 72.8 percent of men smoke, according to the World Health Organization. In Communist China, according to the World Health Organization, 63 percent of adult males smoke and 61 percent of the male physicians smoke. Neither China nor Vietnam is known for its "low-tax, libertarian government."

Correction Correction: The lead item in the correction column of today's New York Times is almost word-for-word the same as the lead item in the correction column of Friday's New York Times. The correction relates to the reason that U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq. It's not as if the Times repeated the error twice, as it sometimes does; these two corrections refer back to the same Thursday news article. Maybe complaining Iraqi officials browbeat the Times into agreeing to run the correction two days in a row? We'll see if the correction runs a third time in tomorrow's paper.

The lead, front-page news article in this morning's New York Times, about President Bush's energy plan, says, "The report is far less tentative in the area regulations it identifies as hindering the oil, gas, nuclear and utility industries. It mentions about a dozen areas -- including land-use restrictions in the Rockies, lease stipulations on offshore areas attractive to oil companies, the vetting of locations for nuclear plants, environmental reviews to upgrade power plants and refineries -- that could be streamlined or eliminated to help industry find more oil and gas and produce more electricity and gasoline."

The front page "news analysis" reports, "Except for repeating a call to go forward with oil and gas exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a plan that Congress is not likely to approve, the Bush report offers little guide to where the administration might aim in seeking to accelerate energy development. Among the leading targets, though, have been the gas-rich public lands in the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf of Mexico."

Which article is a Times reader supposed to believe? The front-page article that says the report was "far less tentative" on this topic and mentioned "about a dozen areas" including "the Rockies" and "offshore"? Or the front-page article that says the report "offers little guide to where the administration might aim in seeking to accelerate energy development"? The two seem hard to reconcile.

Just For Fund: The New York Times front-page news analysis of the Bush energy plan makes reference to "a Seattle lawyer for the Earthjustice Legal Defense Fun." Those environmental lawyers have all the fun.

The metro section of today's New York Times carries a full news article on the fact that three left-wing Yale professors are protesting the university's decision to grant an honorary degree to President George W. Bush. The article doesn't mention the controversy and protest over the selection of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as Class Day speaker at Yale. That controversy has been reported in William F. Buckley's syndicated column, in National Review Online, and in the Yale Daily News. But, unless Smartertimes.com missed it (and also missed it in a double-check of the Times online archives), the New York Times has imposed a news blackout on the Yale-Hillary flap. It's hard to figure out why the Times would consider it newsworthy that liberals are protesting a commencement honor for Mr. Bush, but consider it not newsworthy that conservatives are protesting a commencement honor for Ms. Clinton.

Sin of Omission: A flattering profile in the House and Home section of today's New York Times describes Harding and Mary Lawrence and a house they owned in the South of France. Given that the article goes on at such length and makes reference to "the Lawrences' spirit, a combination of American energy and European refinement," you would think the Times might have found room to mention the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence have formally renounced their American citizenship.

What's a Subsidy?: The lead, front-page news article in today's New York Times, about Mr. Bush's energy policy, reports "There are no credits or other tax breaks for oil or gas producers, or electric utilities -- a reflection of the sensitivity of the White House to criticism that Mr. Cheney and other top officials spent their private-sector years in the energy industry. But the tone of deregulation, reassessment of the merits of the Clean Air Act and the emphasis on opening of federal land to more energy production -- everything from wind power to oil and gas drilling -- provides those industries with effective subsidies totaling in the billions of dollars." It's not quite clear how deregulation amounts to a "subsidy." The complaint against subsidies is that they distort the efficiencies of free markets. So do regulations. In that sense, deregulation is more like removing a subsidy than providing one. A better word than subsidies might be "advantages." It's also unclear how a mere "tone" can be worth billions of dollars. Doesn't there have to be actual deregulation, and not just the tone of it, before there's any change in the earnings of the energy companies?

The national section of today's New York Times includes an article that runs under the headline "Lott Rebuked for Delaying Campaign Bill." It reports that "The lone Democrat opposing the measure, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, did so because the resolution was added to education legislation that he was trying to protect from unrelated amendments." How can the New York Times, without actually being inside Senator Kennedy's brain, be so sure of what motivated his opposition? It would be more careful to say Senator Kennedy "said he did so," or an aide to Senator Kennedy "said he did so," or to somehow otherwise explain to Times readers how the newspaper is able to so thoroughly assess the senator's motivations and state of mind.

Cash and Carry: An article in the "Dining In, Dining Out" section of today's New York Times reports on restaurants that accept cash only. The Times passes along unchallenged the claim of one restaurant owner that, "If I sell a piece of fish with a credit card, I have to charge $21.95. If I cut out the processing companies and the credit card companies, I can charge $16.95." This really calls for comment from a representative of a credit card company, who could point out that the percentage that such companies take from a purchase is not nearly as large as that fishy anecdote suggests.

Understatement of the Day: A New York Times editorial on electricity in California says, "The link between capping prices and increasing supply is not self-evident." This, in an editorial in favor of imposing a cap on wholesale electricity prices in California.

Blaming the Mayor: Another editorial in today's New York Times, about Mayor Giuliani, says, "The downside of the Giuliani years could be linked to his personal qualities: his temper, his tense relations with the minority communities and his bullying of public officials who have crossed him." How is "tense relations with the minority communities" a personal quality of the mayor? Is the Times claiming that the mayor's "tense relations" with minority communities are entirely the fault of the mayor's personality and not at all related to his policies or to the shrill irresponsibility of some minority "leaders"? What exactly does the Times mean by "minority communities," anyway? The Jews are a minority and they like the mayor quite fine, for the most part. Why would minority communities react differently to the mayor's personal qualities than any other communities would? The Times editorial doesn't explain any of this, instead setting up a dichotomy between the mayor's "accomplishments" and his "personality," as if the two were unrelated.

The lead article in the arts section of today's New York Times is a cheap hit at the Alvin Ailey dance troupe for hiring the son-in-law of the chairwoman of the dance troupe's board as the architect to design a new, $47.5 million headquarters for the group.

There's a gotcha, accusatory tone that runs through the entire article. If the Times wants to complain that the building is ugly, or, once it is erected, that the roof leaks, that is one thing. But to lodge such a prominently placed objection to the choice of an architect merely because the architect's mother-in-law happens to be Joan Weill, the chairwoman of the dance troupe, seems unjustified.

It would be like someone objecting to the New York Times Company's choice of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. as publisher of the Times and chairman of the Times company merely because his father, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, held the same jobs. If someone wants to complain that young Mr. Sulzberger is not qualified for the job, or that he puts out a paper that is often slow, inaccurate and biased, that would be one thing. But the Times this morning goes after Alvin Ailey for lacking "written guidelines" to cover "conflict-of-interest issues," and for failing to interview other candidates or hold a formal competition. Imagine if the same standards the Times wants to apply to Alvin Ailey's choice of architects were applied to the Times company's choice of a publisher. (Or, for that matter, the company's choice of any of the other Ochs-Sulzberger family relatives salted away throughout the company as executives.)

The Times article this morning makes a faint effort to draw a distinction on the grounds that "nonprofits are held in the public trust." But the Times has made a claim that its journalistic responsibilities amount to a public trust, and, in any case, as a publicly traded company, it has responsibilities to its public shareholders. The Times article today doesn't quote or mention a single Alvin Ailey donor or board member who is upset about the situation. There is, arguably, a public interest in the Alvin Ailey situation because the group is tax-exempt. Still, the notion of the New York Times working itself into a lather about a low-grade case that seems to involve the mere appearance of nepotism, if that, is pretty hypocritical.

The New York Times has finally discovered a federal subsidy it opposes: the one for farmers. On its front page today, the Times runs an article under the headline, "Far From Dead, Subsidies Fuel Big Farms." The article is full of skeptical quotes from economists and politicians critical of the taxpayer support for big agriculture. Senator Lugar calls it, honestly, "a transfer payment from taxpayers to the agricultural sector." An economist at the Department of Agriculture calls the subsidies "an income supplement from the government" and says, "The cost of this program is astonishing. Any person engaged in small business in America would be amazed looking at this. Their jaws would drop at the money farmers receive."

All the more silly, then, is an article elsewhere on the front page of today's Times, this one under the headline, "A Broad Alliance Tries to Head Off Cuts in Medicare; Loss of Billions is Seen; Union Leaders and Politicians Cite an Expanding Threat to Teaching Hospitals." A reader of that article looking for references to "a transfer payment from taxpayers to the medical sector" or "an income supplement from the government" would be searching in vain. Instead, this Times article swallows the line of the teaching-hospital lobbyists hook, line and sinker, devoting paragraph after paragraph to hospital administrators and politicians bemoaning the woes that will supposedly befall New York's academic hospitals if the hardworking taxpayers in the rest of the country stop subsidizing them (though the word "subsidizing," of course, is never used).

In the article about hospitals, the case against the subsidy is reduced to one paragraph in a 23-paragraph story. That paragraph says, "New York's hospitals are not completely without blame, however. Managed care companies and government officials have long complained that the state's hospital industry is still very inefficient and that hospital executives are too quick to rely on the federal and state governments to bail them out." That phrase "have long complained" is a signal to readers that the Times isn't going to bother actually to go interview any of those managed care companies or government officials and quote them in this story. The heads of the academic hospitals and the politicians who want to preserve the subsidies all get interviewed and quoted freshly in the Times article, however, even though they, too, have long complained that they aren't getting enough money from the government.

To get a sense of the tenor of the complaints made by the heads of the teaching hospitals, check out the comments by "Peter A. Kelly, the chief executive of the company that runs Beth Israel Medical Center, St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center and the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary in Manhattan, as well as Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn." The Times paraphrased Mr. Kelly as warning that "Medicare funding losses could mean staff reductions across the board, from primary care programs to inpatient critical care units." "We've all gone as far as we can in terms of reductions that will not impact critical care," Mr. Kelly tells the Times.

But while the Times and the hospital lobbyists make the case that the patients are going to be hit by these cuts, it never mentions the fact that the subsidies are also paying the salaries of doctors and hospital executives who drive to work in Mercedeses and BMWs paid for by, in essence, the Medicare taxes of working stiffs. (Nor that those same subsidies are paying for lots of feel-good ads the hospitals place in the New York Times.) The 1998 tax returns of Mr. Kelly's "non-profit" health care company, for instance, show that the company's CEO earned $1.4 million that year, and that Mr. Kelly, then a lower-level executive, earned $985,000. Now, when you are getting wheeled into the operating room, you want the best doctor that money can buy. And Smartertimes.com acknowledges that health care is in some ways different from farming. Still, the Times health care policy coverage would be improved if a little of the skepticism applied to farm subsidies were applied as well to the government subsidies to the health-care industry.

Can't Spell: That same front-page article on cuts to teaching hospitals manages to misspell the name of the junior senator from Texas. The New York Times refers to her as "Kay Bailey Hutchinson" and again as "Ms. Hutchinson"; in fact, her last name is "Hutchison." Smartertimes.com caught the Times in this same exact spelling error on February 17, 2001, and the Times corrected it on February 19, 2001. Now the paper has repeated the same error.

Lost in California: A front-page article in today's New York Times is datelined Irvine, Calif. The article refers to "Ventura, just north of here." Ventura isn't "just" north of Irvine. It's 109 miles away -- a two-hour drive, depending on traffic.

An article in the real estate section of today's New York Times reports on a neighborhood the Times calls NoLIta, for "North of Little Italy." The Times reports on one food shop on Mott Street and says, "Although the store has a bright, pleasant appearance today, Ms. Consolo said, the space required major renovation. The previous tenant was a fish store specializing in Asian customers. 'The landlord had to put in a completely new storefront,' she said."

Unpack the layers of racially charged stereotypes in that little New York Times-provided anecdote. Does the Times really believe that "a fish store specializing in Asian customers" must be incompatible with "a bright, pleasant appearance"? "A fish store specializing in Asian customers" could be anything: a high-end sushi bar catering to wealthy Japanese tourists, a stand in Chinatown that displays fresh fish on ice, a pet store that sells live tropical fish for display in tanks. How was the fact that the customers were Asian related to the appearance of the store? On a hot day, the fishy smell of the Fulton Fish Market carries for blocks, and its customers are predominantly non-Asian. Anyway, the phrase "a fish store specializing in Asian customers" makes it sound like the store sold Asian customers in addition to fish. If the Times feels it must mention the Asian customers, it could say the store catered to Asian customers, or specialized in selling to Asian customers. But mentioning the race of the customers at all seems like a pretty clear violation of the policy stated in the Times's own stylebook: "race should be cited only when it is pertinent and its pertinence is clear to the reader."

An article in the national section of today's New York Times runs under the headline, "Bush Is Choosing Industry Insiders to Fill Several Environmental Positions." The article reports, "Many of these candidates share a pro-property rights philosophy as well as a libertarian leaning." The December 31, 2000, issue of Smartertimes.com asked, "Have the Times and its liberal allies really come to the point where they believe that merely advocating property rights is enough to make a person's fitness for government service a matter of contention?"

And the Times's own weekly internal critique picked up the point, citing the newspaper's December 31 usage in addition to one on January 3, 2001, and writing, "To say that someone is an 'advocate of property rights' probably has some special insider meaning in Washington. But to the general reader, it doesn't make much sense without explanation. We are ALL advocates of property rights, presumably."

What's amazing is that the Times continues to use this "pro-property rights" phrase to assail Bush nominees, even after that memo from the Times news desk. Why bother sending these memos around if the reporters and editors are going to disregard them and adhere to their previous practices? Maybe the presumption that "We are ALL advocates of property rights" turns out to be mistaken.

Popular: An article in the international section of today's New York Times reports on President Bush's plans for funding of AIDS treatment. The article reports that under Mr. Bush's budget, "some popular AIDS treatment programs, such as the $1.8 billion Ryan White project, will not be increased." Well, it may be "popular" with the federal contractors and grantees who are using Ryan White Act money to pay for things like shopping sprees to Neiman Marcus, home appliances, psychic phone-line calls, jet skis, and conferences at the Marriott Frenchman's Reef Resort Hotel in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. But as Wayne Turner reported in a cover story in the April issue of the Washington Monthly, "Lawmakers and the administration have done little to ensure that the money actually helps patients."

Spelling in India: A dispatch from Moscow in the international section of today's New York Times refers once to "New Delhi" and then to "New Dehli." At least the front-page article in today's Times about a New York murder manages to spell correctly the Carnegie Deli.

An article in the national section of today's New York Times reports that "Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were the first two employees at the White House to take a drug test. But White House officials declined to say if anyone on Mr. Bush's staff had failed the mandatory test."

It's odd that the New York Times reports that "White House officials declined to say if anyone on Mr. Bush's staff had failed the mandatory test."

Other newspapers this morning report the opposite. The Washington Post, for instance, says, "Officials said 650 people were tested as a condition of employment, and 127 have been randomly tested since then. A senior administration official said no one has failed."

The New York Post reports, "President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- followed by 650 White House staffers -- took drug tests their first week in office, and everyone was clean, officials said yesterday."

The White House Web site carries a transcript of yesterday's briefing by the press secretary, and it quotes the press secretary, Ari Fleischer, as saying, "I'm not going to get into anybody did or did not pass. That's going to be treated as a private personnel matter. I would suggest to you that in its entirety, this White House is a very professional operation, and there are no problems that have been brought to anybody's attention. Let me say that. In the event that something -- somebody were to be tested positive, the White House policy is to treat this on an individual, case-by-case matter, to sit down and talk with the person whose test may have come back positive, to work with them to determine whether it was some type of casual usage or if there is a more serious problem, to determine what drugs were involved, and to work with that person and to help that person seek treatment and counseling. And if the situation is not resolved, the consequences could be anywhere from a letter of reprimand to firing."

That prompted a follow-up question:

Q. Ari, when you said that no problem has been brought to anybody's attention, are you suggesting that nobody failed the test?

MR. FLEISCHER: I'm suggesting from this podium -- I'm not going to get into counts and numbers on something that may involve counseling of employees. But the fact of the matter is that there are no problems.

Mr. Fleischer's comments could be interpreted in a variety of ways. It may be that the Washington Post pursued the matter on background, while the New York Times did not. Still, reporting that "White House officials declined to say if anyone on Mr. Bush's staff had failed the mandatory test" without also reporting Mr. Fleischer's claim that "there are no problems" seems to be giving Times readers less than the full picture.

A headline in the Circuits section of this morning's New York Times reports in all seriousness, "Ban on Nazi Items Upsets Collectors." That's the entire headline. The article reports on bans by Internet auction sites on trading in Nazi flags and uniforms. "The bans make no distinction between legitimate collectors like Mr. Peters and Nazi sympathizers looking for props to promote their cause," the Times reports. Smartertimes.com doesn't support a government ban on trade in these items, but the notion that the whining of "legitimate collectors" about the decision of private businesses not to deal with them merits a full news story with such a sympathetic tone is questionable. This Mr. Peters, recognized by the Times as a "legitimate collector," has an entire room of his house devoted to World War II memorabilia; the Times reports that "flags, most of them with bold swastikas, are pinned to the walls." This is obviously a subjective judgment call, but the way the Times handles this one strikes Smartertimes.com as slightly creepy, or at least naive. Why write the entire story from the point of view of the "collectors"?

Truncated Quote: This morning's New York Times carries an Associated Press report of a speech by Al Gore in Florida (the Times apparently didn't have the resources or the advance notice necessary to staff the event itself). The AP report manages to clean up Al Gore's humor, reporting that Mr. Gore said, "I often get asked the question, is there anything I would have done differently? I say, 'Yeah there is. If I had to do it over again, I would kiss Tipper much longer.'" This rendition leaves out the self-deprecatory and edgy (too edgy?) punch line. To get the full quote, check out the Orlando Sentinel, in which Mr. Gore is quoted as saying, "I would have kissed Tipper much longer at the convention. But she was struggling."

New York Mythology: The Times architecture critic, writing in the arts section of today's New York Times, claims that the Philippe Starck-designed interiors of the Royalton and Paramount Hotels are "the only environments that fully embody the mythology that people hope to find in New York." Guess he's never been on the Brooklyn Bridge or inside Grand Central Station or to Ellis Island.

Gift Tax in the Mouth: An article in the national section of today's New York Times reports, "If the gift tax is retained, the revenue raised would presumably make much more money available for repealing the estate tax." This is a classic: static analysis at its most dunderheaded. The estate tax and the gift tax are two sides of essentially the same coin. If the estate tax is repealed and the gift tax is not, gift tax revenue will decline sharply because instead of giving taxable gifts, people will wait and will their assets away tax-free. Similarly, if the gift tax is repealed but the estate tax is not, estate tax revenue will decline because people will give their money away tax-free before dying.

Tufts President: The national section of today's New York Times carries a full article on the fact that Tufts University has named a new president. The 1999 book "The Trust," about the family that owns the Times, notes that in the early 1970s, "no fewer than four Sulzberger cousins," including the current Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., attended Tufts.

The metro section of today's New York Times features a profile of Herman Badillo, a likely candidate for mayor of New York. The article identifies Mr. Badillo as Puerto Rican, refers to Mr. Badillo's "childhood home" in Caguas, Puerto Rico, and says he lived there when he was 5 years old. Then the Times reports, "He came to America with an aunt when he was 12, settled in Harlem, worked as a dishwasher and a pin boy at a bowling alley, and graduated at the top of his class at City College."

Puerto Rico has been part of America since the Treaty of Paris in 1898. A more careful and accurate wording would say that Mr. Badillo "came to the mainland with an aunt when he was 12" or "came to New York with an aunt when he was 12."

Late Again: The New York Times carries today on its front page, above the fold, an article under the headline, "Blacks and Hispanics in House Balk on Campaign Finance Bill." That's old news to readers of USA Today, which yesterday carried a story on its front page reporting essentially the same thing. The first quote in yesterday's article by USA Today's Tom Squitieri came from Rep. Albert Wynn of Maryland; the first quote in today's New York Times article comes from, you guessed it, Mr. Wynn. The Times gives no credit to the USA Today article.

Air Fleischer: The lead, front-page news article in today's New York Times, about U.N. dues, identifies White House spokesman Ari Fleischer as "Air Fleischer." Sounds like a new line of sneakers from Nike.

Freedom Time: A dispatch from Hong Kong in the international section of today's New York Times includes the following gem of a sentence: "The editors of Time have been concerned about issues of freedom since early March, when the magazine stopped being available on newsstands in mainland China (it continues to be sold here)." Why write "issues of freedom" and not just "freedom"? Haven't the editors of Time been interested in freedom -- or, if you must, "issues of freedom" -- since Henry Luce started publishing it in the 1920s? Anyway, "issues of freedom" seems a pretty flossy way of describing what the Time honchos are concerned about, which is that their magazine isn't sold in mainland China. It seems like that would also involve some issues of lost revenue.

Friends of Israel know they are in trouble when they have to look to the New York Times editorials for more favorable treatment than the Times news columns are giving the Jewish state. So it's illuminating this morning to read the lead Times editorial, which says, "Yesterday the pope visited Quneitra, a city in the Golan Heights that Syria chose for political reasons. It maintains that the city was razed by Israel in 1974 before being returned to Syria, which Israel disputes."

Oh -- so it turns out that the razing of Quneitra is just something that Syria "maintains" and that Israel "disputes." That must come as news to those who rely on the news columns of the Times for their information.

Here is how a New York Times news article from Damascus on May 6, 2001, described Quneitra: "a city in the Golan Heights captured by Israel in the 1967 war and destroyed before it was returned in 1974, and which Syria has preserved as a museum of Israeli brutality." Nothing there about the facts of the matter being disputed. No attribution, even. The Syrian claim is stated as simple historical fact.

Here is how a New York Times news article from Damascus on May 7, 2001, described Quneitra: "a city on the Golan Heights that was captured by Israel during the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war and destroyed just before the area was returned under a 1974 agreement. Syria has left it ruined as a museum of Israeli aggression." Again, nothing about the facts of the matter being disputed. Again, no attribution.

The claim that Israel "razed" the town before returning it, in a demonstration of "aggression" or "brutality," is false. The town was destroyed by war, not by Israelis deliberately wrecking it before giving it back to Syria. As the book "Myths and Facts" notes, in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Quneitra "was shelled and captured by Syrian troops, retaken by Israelis, and then defended against intense Syrian counter attacks. Tanks roamed through the town, between and through buildings." The book also reports that Quneitra "also suffered damage from 81 days of artillery duels that preceded the disengagement." The book also cites a May 5, 1974, dispatch from Quneitra published in the Times of London, which reported the town "is in ruins and deserted after seven years of war and dereliction. It looks like a wild west town struck by an earthquake. . . Nearly every building is heavily damaged and scores have collapsed." That dispatch is dated weeks before the May 31, 1974 separation-of-forces agreement between Israel and Syria that provided for an Israeli withdrawal from Quneitra.

If the Times news department is going to pass along these groundless Syrian allegations of Israeli brutality and aggression, the least it could do is be as fair as the editorial writer (which is to say, minimally) and report that Israel disputes them.

Gore Campaign Continues: The lead, front-page news article in today's New York Times contains a quote from Michael O'Hanlon criticizing a Bush administration Pentagon outer-space initiative as "a badly premature idea." The Times identifies Mr. O'Hanlon as "a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a non-profit policy group." However, on September 4, 2000, the Times identified him as "a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington who has informally consulted for the Gore campaign." Now that George W. Bush is president and the Times is quoting Mr. O'Hanlon criticizing his policies, the newspaper apparently finds Mr. O'Hanlon's Gore connection not worth disclosing.

'The Right Direction': In an editorial today on Sunday's mayoral debate (the Times editorialists apparently couldn't be troubled to crank out a comment on it in time for Monday's paper), the New York Times asserts that the four major Democratic candidates for mayor of New York are "going in the right direction." Going in the left direction would be more like it. When the candidates were asked in the debate which of the last three mayors they would prefer, not one of them named Mayor Giuliani. The Times seems to consider this "the right direction," apparently hoping that the city returns to the Koch and Dinkins days.

'Advocates for the Poor': The lead news article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on a dispute over time limits and welfare. The Times twice describes the opponents of time limits as "advocates for the poor," and portrays them as opposing the Giuliani administration. Describing these opponents of welfare reform as "advocates for the poor" spins the article in their favor. They could just as easily be described as "advocates for welfare" or "opponents of welfare reform" or "opponents of time limits" or "opponents of work" or "advocates of poverty." The phrase "advocates for the poor" suggests that what the advocates in question are advocating is in the interests of the poor. In fact, that is the very issue under dispute. The Giuliani administration, welfare reformers, and other true "advocates for the poor" suggest that what would really help the poor is if they got jobs and became self-sufficient, thus getting themselves on the way to being less poor, or even not poor. When the Times sets up this false conflict between the Giuliani administration and "advocates for the poor," it obscures the real issues.

Skipping School: A dispatch from Albany in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on a demonstration by "about 1,000 students and parents" in opposition to new standards for high school graduation in the Empire State. The Times totally misses the angle that these students protesting the academic standards were skipping class. The New York Post has a more clever dispatch in today's editions that throws that issue into sharper relief.

The lead, front-page news article in today's New York Times concludes with the following quote from one of the Times's ever-reliable Harvard-Brookings experts: "This makes public transportation a double-edged sword for cities. One the one hand, it takes care of poor residents, which is admirable. But on the other hand, it attracts the poor who create a host of urban problems."

This is so silly it's hard to know where to start. Begin with the error in the phrase -- it should be "On the one hand," not "One the one hand." Then consider that the Times is published at New York and read by passengers on the Long Island Railroad, PATH and Metro-North. That's public transportation used frequently by middle-class, upper-middle-class and rich passengers commuting to New York from prosperous Long Island, New Jersey, Westchester and Connecticut suburbs. The stereotype about public transportation being used mainly by the poor may be true in other cities, but it doesn't ring true for New York. Anyone reading this quote while getting on a Metro-North train this morning in, say, Greenwich, Connecticut, is probably throwing down his or her paper in disgust. Finally, unpack the notion that the poor "create a host of urban problems." Smartertimes.com is as willing as anyone to hold the poor responsible for their behavior, but even Smartertimes.com wouldn't veer this far into elitist classism. It's not the poor that cause urban problems. Poverty is a problem, in cities and anywhere else it occurs, particularly for those stuck being poor. But when poor people come to American cities, they often don't cause "problems"; they are more likely to work hard and get rich. While they do that, they help the rest of the people who live in cities by working in jobs that the rich people don't want to have to do themselves. Poor people aren't problem-causers; they are a labor pool. Lots of them are immigrants, and their children won't be poor. It's unclear what "urban problems" the Times -- or the expert the newspaper gives an unchallenged platform to -- thinks "the poor" cause. Crime? Crime is caused by criminals, not by poor people. There are plenty of rich criminals out there. Disease? Disease is caused by germs and bacteria and by lack of health care, not by poor people. There are plenty of sick rich people and clean, healthy poor people.

Note: The "Letters About Smartertimes.com" and "Letters About the Times" sections were updated yesterday with new material about Senator McCain, the Oxford English Dictionary and the Football Hall of Fame.