Here is an excerpt from a news article in today's New York Times about President Bush's tax cut plans: "Many economists doubt that the tax relief can be enacted quickly enough to make much difference to the economy this year. Republican leaders in Congress say they probably cannot send a tax bill to Mr. Bush before this summer, suggesting that any changes in withholdings would take effect in late summer or early fall. History suggests that the economy is likely to be recovering by then, especially since the Federal Reserve is already cutting interest rates and is considered likely to continue doing so in coming months."

If this New York Times news reporter really has a direct line to what "history suggests" will happen quarter-by-quarter in the U.S. economy, he ought to be off making a killing in the stock market. As it is, the Times just looks silly passing off economic guesswork as news reporting.

Day and Vanunu: The New York Times today runs an obituary of Samuel H. Day Jr. The obituary omits a significant fact about Day's later life: He was coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu. Vanunu is the Israeli imprisoned for publicly exposing Israel's nuclear secrets.

Anti-Macintosh Bias: Of all the insidious slants in the news coverage of the New York Times, perhaps the worst is the newspaper's slighting of those who use Apple Macintosh computers. The Times seems to think everyone is using an IBM-compatible machine running Windows software. An example of this comes in the lead article in the business section of today's New York Times, which says, "To figure out whether a message is HTML or text, a user can right-click on the message body." Mac users can't "right-click" anywhere; their mice have just one button. In any event, the verb "right-click" probably should be explained for those readers not steeped in computer jargon. Another example of anti-Mac slant came in a review in yesterday's Times of two books about the Microsoft trial. "Though Microsoft denied it, there can be little serious question that it possesses a monopoly in the market for personal computer operating systems," the reviewer wrote.

Late Again: The New York Times this morning discovers "The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook." An article about the book runs on the front of the Times business section. The book and the story of its authors, David Borgenicht and Joshua Piven, however, are old news to readers of the Forward, which on May 26, 2000, published an article by Ellen Umansky on the topic that ran under the headline "Killer Bees and Other Catastrophes." It was the final issue of the Forward published before the newspaper's management (which at the time included the person who now edits Smartertimes.com) changed.

The Week in Review section of today's New York Times gives a big plug to a new book that is a compilation of George W. Bush's supposed "gaffes." But the real gaffe is the tendency of the Times and its ideological allies mistakenly to characterize Mr. Bush as some kind of half-wit. Here is the first example of a "Bushism" that the Times provides: "Last week, he said, 'I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors as well.'" In the context, this was a perfectly reasonable response; the president was asked whether he would try to prevent President Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich from going into effect, under a legal theory that the Justice Department had come up with. Mr. Clinton is Mr. Bush's predecessor, and it was exactly his presidential powers that were being preserved. There's no gaffe.

The second example of a Bush gaffe that the Times provides is this: "He has dismissed the idea that Social Security is 'some kind of federal program.'" This statement, too, was reasonable in its context; he was trying to draw a contrast between the Gore Social Security plan, which treated Social Security like it was some kind of federal program, and the Bush plan, which recognized that Social Security consisted of money paid in by individual taxpayers, and which sought to give those taxpayers more control over how their money was invested by partially privatizing Social Security accounts. Again, not a gaffe but a legitimate way of illuminating a policy distinction.

Pregnant Pause: A column about the subway, in the City section of this morning's New York Times, asks, "How many times a day does this scene unfold: a pregnant woman gets on a crowded car, and nobody gets up? It's not that it never happened in the past; it's just that the practice seems to have made the leap to the commonplace." The editor of Smartertimes.com sees subway riders giving up their seats to pregnant women all the time. If the Times wanted to check this out, it could have a pregnant reporter, or one posing as one, ride the subway for a while and see what happens. Smartertimes.com has a vague recollection that a Times columnist actually did this a few years ago and was treated with the utmost courtesy by subway riders, but Smartertimes.com couldn't find the column in the Times archive.

Late Again: The cover story of this morning's New York Times magazine, about human cloning, is old news to anyone who read Anna Van Lenten's article in the November 29, 2000, Praxis Post.

The New York Times today offers an editorial on the death tax that runs under the headline "Estate Tax Folly." The editorial itself is an example of folly, in so many ways that it's hard to know where to start.

To begin with, there's the Times' warning that without the death tax, "bequests to universities and other charitable institutions could dry up." Well, a charitable institution is either a charity or the beneficiary of a quirk in the tax laws, but not both. In other words, if the donors to these charities are giving the money not for the purpose of helping the charity but for the purpose of avoiding taxes, maybe the best policy step would be lower the tax rate and let the charities compete on level ground with other expenditures. In fact, hardly anyone is talking about ending income-tax deductions for charities, and President Bush is actually proposing to expand that deduction to taxpayers who take the standard deduction and do not itemize. And it's not as though the universities are exactly hurting for cash -- many of them are already sitting on multi-billion-dollar endowments. If there's any charity around that can't exist without the death tax working in its favor, the charity probably deserves to wither. Some of the charities formed partly because of estate tax considerations, such as the Ford Foundation, have turned into left-wing front groups that have done so much harm over the years that the world would be better off without them, anyway. (This is not meant to cast any aspersions on the current president of the Ford Foundation, Susan Berresford, a likeable woman whom the editor of Smartertimes.com has found to be a gracious luncheon host.)

Then there is the Times' assertion, "We continue to believe that the surpluses are not so dependable that they should be dedicated to a tax cut." Left unexplained is how the dependability of the surplus makes tax cuts less desirable than the new spending proposed by the Times.

Then there is the Times' suggestion, "If there is to be an adjustment in the estate tax, it would be better to provide some relief to owners of small farms and family businesses." What is the policy argument for giving death tax relief to a family business owner, but not to a man who used to own a family business but sold it the year before he died and whose holdings are now liquid? There is none. The Times proposal would chain the second and subsequent generations of family businessmen to businesses that might be more efficiently operated by large corporations. And it would lock capital in place that, without the regulatory barriers, could more productively be invested elsewhere. What is the policy argument for giving death tax relief to a family-business owner but not to a law-firm partner who has been representing family-owned businesses for years while prudently saving and investing his own assets? Why should the family-owned businesses be passed along to children tax-free, but not the mutual-fund holdings of the lawyer? Why should the lawyer be penalized by the government's tax policies for saving and investing his money rather than squandering it?

The biggest folly of the editorial, though, is that it is written in a newspaper that is controlled --and has been for years -- by an elaborate series of trusts and special stock classes established for the express purpose of avoiding estate taxes. Those with vast wealth, such as the Ochs and Sulzberger families, can afford to create such trusts and essentially avoid the brunt of the estate tax and its consequences. This, remember, is a tax that the Times lectures us this morning "is one of the most progressive and fair because it places its burden on those Americans who can best afford to pay it."

Here's what the Ochs and Sulzberger families -- who surely rank among those "who can best afford to pay it" -- did in order to avoid paying this progressive and fair tax, according to the 1999 quasi-authorized biography of the families, "The Trust":

"From 1934 through 1957 the common stock of The New York Times paid no dividends, the reason being that, under the intricate provisions of the Ochs Trust, common dividends were effectively a charge against the trust. Only the 8 percent preferred stock, held by Arthur, Iphigene, the Sulzberger children, and various Times associates and their heirs, generated cash. It was from these holdings that the family's income was largely derived, in addition to salaries and income from U.S. Treasury bills. Needs over and above that amount were usually met by the Ochs Trust, which owned several of the Sulzbergers' houses and even the cars they drove."

"This unwieldy arrangement worked for many years and the family had little concern about inheritance problems: When Iphigene died, the Ochs Trust would dissolve and the children would inherit the stock without further tax. But no provision had been made for payment of taxes upon the deaths of Punch and his sisters, nor was there a financial structure to ensure that the family could retain control of the New York Times Company into another generation. Under a recapitalization scheme conceived of by board member George Woods and approved by shareholders in May 1957, two classes of common stock were created, Class A nonvoting and Class B voting. The Ochs Trust and the Sulzbergers got the majority of Class B stock, and for the first time in over twenty years, the common stock began to pay dividends. When the Sulzberger children died, their heirs would retain control through the class B voting stock while selling as much of the Class A common stock as necessary to pay death duties."

Hara-Kiri: A New York Times op-ed page columnist writes this morning that George W. Bush "is, for starters, the first Republican leader who has figured out that it is an act of political hara-kiri to crusade against the Clintons." This is a questionable assessment, considering that Mr. Bush was elected partly on the strength of his repeated campaign pledge to, as he put it, "restore honor and dignity" to the White House.

Speaking Truth to Power: Another New York Times op-ed piece today is by a critic of welfare reform who says the 1996 legislation "lacked crucial supports single mothers and their children need to escape poverty." The writer says, "in the biblical tradition of prophets like Isaiah, the religious community is called to speak truth to power." Not even Bill Clinton -- not even Hillary Clinton -- says welfare reform was a mistake, and the statistics show that millions of persons have moved from welfare to work under the reform. Yet the Times op-ed page is still reliably offering space to those who cloak themselves in the language of religion to defend a failed welfare system. That failed system offered perverse incentives -- paying persons not to work and not to get married -- that had the effect of trapping millions in poverty.

Blacks, Whites and Hispanics: The New York Times metro section today reports the results of a poll on how the New York City police are doing their job. The article and an accompanying chart break out the statistics by "whites," "blacks" and "Hispanics." The U.S. census bureau counts Hispanics separately, and the Times' own stylebook notes "Hispanics can be of any race." But it is left totally unclear from the Times article how the poll on policing handled this issue. Could Hispanics vote in the poll also as whites or blacks? Or did they get to vote only once, as Hispanics? That could significantly affect poll results.

Billions and Trillions: An article in the national section of today's New York Times reports on a meeting between President Bush and Senate Democrats. The article refers to "the $1.6 billion tax cut he proposed in the campaign." That should say "trillion," not "billion."

The New York Times just doesn't seem to be able to write about crime and prisons without slipping into its familiar fallacy. Today's front-page article about the prison population in New York reports, "Despite the sharp drop in violent crime in the state, there has been a 9 percent rise in the number of violent offenders in prison between 1994 and 2000."

The Times has been repeatedly challenged on this point, in the August 10, 2000, issue of Smartertimes.com, in the Summer 2000 issue of City Journal, in the scrapbook section of the Weekly Standard. As City Journal put it, "crime was falling in part because more people were serving more time." Yet the Times persists in asserting that a falling violent crime rate and an increase in the prison population are somehow contradictory trends that happen "despite" each other.

Now They Tell Us: A brief "Topics of the Times" editorial in today's New York Times describes Terry McAuliffe as "a walking symbol of the wretched excess of the Clinton years." Here's how the Times news department handled a news story on June 9, 2000, reporting that Mr. McAuliffe had been named chairman of the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles: The article described him as "the Democratic Party's most prodigious fund-raiser." It included a quote from the convention's chief executive saying, "Terry's commitment to the Democratic Party is unprecedented. Time and again he has demonstrated his deep devotion to our party's goals and efforts." It included a quote from James Carville saying "His stock is trading at an all-time high. He brings some panache and a lot of enthusiasm to the convention." And it included a quote from Mr. McAuliffe saying, "I'm happy to be joining a terrific convention team. And I'm looking forward to working with them to make this the greatest convention in the history of American politics."

Funny how, back when the presidential campaign was still on and Al Gore had a shot at winning, the Times hadn't yet decided to share with its readers the notion that Mr. McAuliffe is "a walking symbol of the wretched excess of the Clinton years." Or even that his selection as convention chairman might have been greeted anywhere with anything other than acclaim.

Spelling Gadhafi: American newspapers have all sorts of different ways of spelling the name of the Libyan dictator. Once a newspaper chooses a preferred spelling, though, it usually attempts to stick with it. The New York Times fails at this in an article on the Pan Am 103 verdict that runs in the international section of today's paper. The article alternates between "Qadaffi" and "Qaddafi."

An article in the international section of today's New York Times runs under the headline, "Unpersuaded By Verdict, Bush Backs Sanctions." It quotes, as an expert on the issue of sanctions against Libya, "Ambassador Robert Pelletreau, a former State Department official for Near Eastern affairs." The Times might have been wise to disclose to its readers that Mr. Pelletreau, since leaving the State Department, has been earning a living as a Washington lawyer representing, among other clients, at least one businessman with interests in Libya, according to Time magazine. Mr. Pelletreau has also, since leaving government service, functioned as a registered foreign agent paid by Egypt and Tunisia, according to filings with the Department of Justice.

Mr. Pelletreau's relationship with the Swiss-based Arab businessman, Kamel Ghribi, was reported by Time magazine on March 27, 2000. The Forward newspaper, in a September, 10, 1999, dispatch by Seth Gitell, also reported that, according to a memo by an American trade executive, Stephen Hayes, Mr. Pelletreau "suggested to Ghribi that Libya would be better served by staying out of the Kosovo matters. Pelletreau and I both suggested to Ghribi that if Libya did want to be viewed more positively, they should accept Kosovar refugees."

Susan Cohen, the mother of a Pan Am 103 victim, told the Forward in 1999 that she wanted to know why Mr. Pelletreau "is giving advice on how Gadhafi can make himself acceptable."

Now, a year and a half later, the Times is quoting Mr. Pelletreau as an expert on Libya sanctions without any disclosure to readers that he has interests in the matter other than as a former U.S. government official.

Lost in D.C.: An article in the business section of today's New York Times reports on the fact that Bertelsmann has now hired the former head of the antitrust division of the Justice Department, Joel Klein. "They began meeting for breakfast about twice a year at downtown Washington restaurants like the Four Seasons," the New York Times reports. The Four Seasons restaurant is in New York. There is a Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, and one can get breakfast there, but it is in Georgetown, not in "downtown" Washington.

Rattner Watch: The same article contains this quote about Mr. Klein from Steven Rattner, who is described as "an investment banker who knows him": "Joel has developed pretty good insights into the businesses he was regulating and a point of view on them, and I am pretty sure he will offer those up."

The New York Times is in danger of becoming overly reliant on Mr. Rattner. He was quoted at length on Tuesday in a special report in the Times arts section about the capital campaigns of New York cultural institutions. "I got involved in the Met because I moved across the street from it," Mr. Rattner was quoted as saying in that article, identified as "the investment banker and former deputy chairman of Lazard Freres & Company." He also happens to be a former reporter for the Times and, according to published reports, a friend of the publisher. Smartertimes.com isn't saying he shouldn't be quoted in the paper, or that his Times connections must be disclosed to readers, but it is slightly odd to see him quoted twice in three days on stories that the Times could just as easily have quoted someone else in.

Off the Marc: A New York Times op-ed columnist, in his "Essay" this morning, misspells the name of pardoned fugitive financier Marc Rich. The Times columnist refers to "Mark" Rich.

Late Again: Another op-ed piece in today's New York Times suggests, "Instead of a Tax Cut, Send Out Dividends." You could have read about a similar idea yesterday in David Broder's column on the Washington Post op-ed page.

'Fiscal Discipline': The lead editorial in today's New York Times twice invokes "fiscal discipline" as an argument against a tax cut. Then the editorial concludes by saying it would be reckless of Congress to approve a tax cut "before Congress begins to address the host of important issues that will require new spending."

The lead, front-page news article in this morning's New York Times reports that Senator Feingold "questioned Mr. Ashcroft's sensitivity to racial issues, citing an interview he gave to Southern Partisan, a magzine often described as a neo-Confederate, in which he said it was important to let future generations know that the South did not fight the Civil War for 'some perverted agenda.'"

Here's what Senator Ashcroft actually said in the Southern Partisan interview: "Revisionism is a threat to the respect that Americans have for their freedoms and liberty that was at the core of those who founded this country, and when we see George Washington, the founder of this country, called a racist, that is just total revisionist nonsense, a diatribe against the values of America. Have you read Thomas West's book 'Vindicating the Founders'?"

Southern Partisan: "I've met Professor West, and I read one of his earlier books, but not that one."

Senator Ashcroft: "I wish I had another copy: I'd send it to you. I gave it away to a newspaper editor. West actually disassembles all of these malicious attacks the revisionists have brought against our founders. Your magazine also helps set the record straight. You've got a heritage of defending that, of defending Southern patriots like Lee, Jackson and Davis. Traditionalists must do more. I've got to do more. We've all got to stand up and speak in this respect, or else we'll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda."

It's unclear whether the description of the Southern Partisan interview is Mr. Feingold's or the Times'. If it is Mr. Feingold's, the Times should not have let him get away with it. And if it is the Times', it's inaccurate. The reference to Washington and the reference to the West book makes it clear that Mr. Ashcroft's reference to "these people" refers to the American Revolutionary founders, not the Confederate Civil War traitors. If it wasn't clear enough, the reference to "lives. . . sacred fortunes. . .and their honor" is clearly a reference to the last line of the American Declaration of Independence, which says, "we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." Mr. Ashcroft was speaking out, reasonably, against tarring Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison as racists who were pursuing a "perverted agenda."

That said, it was a mistake for Mr. Ashcroft to grant an interview to Southern Partisan, which itself has a perverted agenda and whose editorial board includes such spewers of venom as Pat Buchanan, Joe Sobran and Sam Francis. And his description of Lee, Jackson and Davis as Southern patriots, while accurate, benignly omits the fact that they were traitors to America who were fighting to perpetuate an evil system of slavery. Still, the Times and Mr. Feingold undermine their case against Mr. Ashcroft when they misunderstand what he said, accusing him of saying things about the South when he was actually speaking about the American founders.

If the Times bothered to read the entire 1998 Ashcroft Southern Partisan interview, the newspaper might find some comments that are newsworthy even without being distorted. For instance, Mr. Ashcroft offers his views on federal education policy: "When they came along with the federalized testing system, I was the only person in the Senate to stand up and speak against it on the floor. I got 12 Senators to vote with me at the time, but since then we've fought back. The last time we took a vote on this, there were 52 votes and Jesse wasn't there, so it's safe to say that there are 53 votes to deny any federal funding for the development, implementation, deployment, or field testing of a national testing system. If you control and specify the tests, you're going to control and specify the curriculum. For me, education is far too important a thing to cede to faraway bureaucrats. . . .Being against federal intermeddling in education is perhaps one of the strongest things you can do in favor of student achievement in education."

Take that, George W. Bush.

'Incident': A locator map in the metro section of today's New York Times marks the site where police say five Brooklyn boys raped a 13-year-old girl. The map label says "site of incident." "Incident" is the wrong word. Too weak. Site of alleged assault or site of attack or site of rape (or, if the lawyers insist, site of alleged rape) would be more in keeping with a crime that goes far beyond a mere "incident."

Muslim Holy Sites: A dispatch from Cairo in the international section of today's New York Times paraphrases Arabs as saying, "the current heavy bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians began after Mr. Sharon visited Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem with a strong contingent of armed policemen." Smartertimes.com has made this point again and again, but here goes: Mr. Sharon walked around on the plaza outside Muslim holy sites. The plaza is also a Jewish holy site. Somehow the Times always refers to Israeli policemen as "armed policemen," but never notes it when other policemen are armed, as they usually are.

The New York Times today carries a special section on "Working" that includes an article that runs under the headline, "There Are Questions You Shouldn't Answer." The article informs Times readers, in all seriousness, that some job interview questions are "illegal."

For better or worse, some job interview questions are indeed illegal. But the Times list seems to take the most expansive possible view of anti-discrimination laws, to the point of absurdity. And the Times nowhere suggests that these laws may have gone a bit too far. Rather, it advises readers not to answer the "illegal" questions -- advice that may help advance the Times' maximalist view of anti-discrimination law, but that may stand in the way of the readers actually getting hired.

One question that the Times asserts is "illegal" is "When did you graduate from college?" While it is true that this question might be asked as a way of finding out a job candidate's age (which can be an illegal question), it also might be asked for perfectly defensible reasons.

Another question that the Times asserts is "illegal" is "How tall are you"? Does the Times really think that someone applying for a job as a professional basketball player "shouldn't answer" this question? The Times itself seems to think the information is relevant even for the purpose of writing a profile of a labor leader; a "Public Lives" profile of the president of Local 282 of the Teamsters that runs in the metro section of today's New York Times notes that he "is 6 feet 2 inches tall and weights 270 pounds."

Never Been Done Before: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times quotes the New York schools chancellor making excuses about a delay in privatizing the management of five New York schools. "No one's done this before," the chancellor claims. The Times lets the chancellor get away with this ridiculous remark unchallenged, even though a few paragraphs earlier the Times article reports that the private company, Edison Schools, already manages more than 100 schools in 45 cities.

Inherent Danger: An editorial in this morning's New York Times about President Bush's plan to deliver social services through religious groups says, "There is also an inherent danger in government's picking and choosing which groups to help." Smartertimes.com couldn't agree more. But it's funny how the Times pulls out this argument only when it is religious groups that the government is choosing to help, not when it is say, a newspaper company seeking a special tax break for a new headquarters tower in Times Square, or any of the special groups of taxpayers that Al Gore was promising little carve-out tax breaks to as part of his presidential campaign.

The other hilarious argument that the Times makes against the Bush plan is that "Involvement by churches, synagogues and other houses of worship in the civil rights movement and peace and antiwar movements flourished precisely because these groups were free of government involvement and thus free to criticize government policies." Talk about an instrumentalist view of religion. The main virtue of organized religion that is worth preserving, the Times seems to think, is its opposition to the Vietnam War. It's also great the way the Times takes care to distinguish between the "peace" movement and the "antiwar" movement. Sure would like to see an editorial explaining that distinction.

On the merits, Smartertimes.com actually agrees with the Times that there are dangers in the Bush plan and that religious groups would probably be better off keeping a distance from the government. One danger is that the Bush plan would also take an instrumentalist view of religion, albeit as a social-service provider rather than as an antiwar agitator. But it's funny how the Times' concerns about the corrosive influences of federal funding, justified though the concerns may be, only come into play when the institution getting the money is a religion, not an overseas abortion provider or a New York art museum or National Public Radio.

Price Hike: The Times buries inside its business section today the news that it is hiking its home-delivery prices by 12% for readers in Boston and Washington, 11% for readers in New York and 8% for subscribers to the national edition. You'd better believe that if an electricity company or home heating oil company or health insurer imposed those sorts of increases affecting that many users, it would be the subject of more than a four-paragraph brief on page two of the business section.

Concern about "overpopulation" seems like a relic from the 1970s, when alarmists were predicting that, by now, the world would have run out of food. Apparently, the danger of "overpopulation" still has the editorial board of the New York Times fretting, as it does today, that "waves of refugees could destabilize neighboring nations."

The Times editorial says, "Overpopulation and environmental devastation have already contributed to similar situations on a smaller scale. The Clinton administration intervened in Haiti largely to prevent a flood of new refugees in Florida. Haiti's criminal leadership was the immediate cause of the problem, but the country's rapid rates of population growth and deforestation contributed to its misery and the desire of Haitians to flee."

Some simple numbers make clear how bizarre is the New York Times' concern about overpopulation. Taiwan has 615 humans per square kilometer and no one is trying to flee there. Japan and Belgium each have 334 humans per square kilometer and no one is trying to flee there. Haiti, the Times' prime example of overpopulation, has only 248 persons per square kilometer. Rwanda, another example cited by the Times of the alleged evils of overpopulation, has 310 humans per square kilometer. New York City has about 23,000 persons per square mile.

The recent history of immigration in America and in the 20th century is largely that of individuals moving from less crowded places to more crowded places where there is more freedom and more money. The "waves of refugees" that have landed at, among other places, Ellis Island in New York Harbor, have had the effect not of "destabilizing" America but of immeasurably enriching it. It's no accident that New York and Tokyo and Hong Kong are some of the most densely populated cities in the world and also the richest. President Clinton would have been wise to welcome those immigrants from Haiti, as the president was counseled at the time by his best counsel.

The fact that the Times is still concerned about "overpopulation" in the face of these facts is almost enough to make one think the paper has an agenda about immigrants or abortion, not simply "overpopulation."

Musical Betrayal: The "In America" column on the New York Times op-ed page today is devoted to a denunciation of a rapper who operates under the name "Eminem." "What is the artistic value here? Trust me, it's not the music," the columnist writes. "Album of the year? Only a lunatic could think this was the finest album of the year."

Well, by that standard, the Times is employing a "lunatic" as one of its own pop music critics. The Times Arts and Leisure section's December 17, 2000, listing of its critics' choices of the top 10 albums of the year put the Eminem album at the top of one critic's list. "The best," the critic said. The album also appeared on the best-of-the-year list of another Times arts section critic, who offered by way of explanation, "the reason it's not higher on this list is that when Eminem runs out of ideas, he regularly reverts to homophobia."

One of the ways that newspapers deliver their opinions to readers in the guise of neutral news articles is to launder those opinions by putting them in the mouths of ostensibly neutral experts. This is one of those journalistic conventions that in principle is relatively harmless and may sometimes even be desirable. Problems arise, though, when the newspaper's selection of experts is so narrowly circumscribed that the readers end up getting a misleading account. The New York Times makes this error today in two front-page stories.

The first example runs under the headline "Bush's Transition Largely a Success, All Sides Suggest." It's the sort of headline that could cause jaws to drop among readers who had been convinced that the Times is out to get George W. Bush. It may be, however, that the Times' problem is not with Mr. Bush but with conservative policies. The Times says it relied on "independent academicians and analysts as well as politicians in both parties" for its judgment of Mr. Bush's supposed "success." Those analysts name Mr. Bush's selection of John Ashcroft as attorney general and Mr. Bush's order ending federal funding of groups promoting abortions abroad as the president's few "missteps."

Entirely absent from the Times article is any comment from a conservative critic of Mr. Bush, who might not view the Ashcroft appointment or the abortion order as missteps. Such a critic might, however, be upset that Mr. Bush has failed to abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Such a critic might be upset that that Mr. Bush's education plan would mandate new counting of racial and other victim groups. The plan says, "In keeping with current law, states will be required to report student assessment results to parents. In order to hold schools accountable for improving the performance of all students, these results must also be reported to the public disaggregated by race, gender, English language proficiency, disability and socio-economic status." Such a critic might be upset that Mr. Bush is sending signals that he is willing to give up on school vouchers. Such a critic might also be disappointed that Mr. Bush has not yet moved the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. In other words, the reference in the Times headline to "all sides suggest" isn't really accurate. The headline could say, "all sides within the liberal to moderate herd that the Times runs with."

The second example of the Times' reliance on a narrowly selected group of experts comes in another front-page story, about missile defense and China. The Times article says, "Without some accommodation, experts and Chinese officials warn, the American shield could poison relations, set off a dangerous arms race across Asia and even raise the chances of a war." The article paraphrases one "arms expert" as saying "A serious concern. . .is that if the American shield develops without a dialogue, then hard-liners on each side who describe 'worst-case' threats will be strengthened, promoting tensions and a race between offensive and defensive weapons."

In this article, the Times' selection of "experts" includes not one who is unconcerned about poisoning relations with the Chinese Communist regime, which is, after all, a brutal dictatorship. Such an expert might point out that "tensions" between America and the Chinese Communists might actually be desirable, and that if the tensions are increased enough the forces of freedom might actually triumph. Of course, an American who made such a comment, in the view of the Times, wouldn't be an "expert" but a "hard-liner," morally equivalent, in the view of the Times China "experts," to the Chinese Communist hard-liners.

Anti-Competitive: Today's New York Times Book Review carries a review of a novel about Israel and Palestine under the British mandate. The reviewer writes, "Life is not a contest and neither is art. All writers deserve prizes, if only for trying." To get a sense of how silly this statement is, imagine if the Times applied it to something it actually cared about. Say, journalism. Can you imagine the newspaper writing in its annual news article about the Pulitzer Prizes or in the ads the New York Times runs congratulating its winners: "Life is not a contest and neither is newspaper journalism. All journalists deserve prizes, if only for trying."

This world-view leads directly to another judgment in the same review. The Times reviewer quotes a character in the novel assessing Jerusalem in the late 1990s: "If Mrs. Linz had her way, she'd evacuate all the inhabitants of the Old City, blow up everything -- the Wailing Wall, the churches, the Dome of the Rock -- and build something useful, like a hospital." The Times reviewer praises this as "inspired iconoclasm."

Cosmetics Heir: A news article in the metro section of today's New York Times identifies Nelson Warfield as "a public relations agent whose corporate clients include Ronald S. Lauder, the cosmetics heir." The Times could have identified Mr. Lauder as a businessman in his own right, as a former candidate for mayor of New York, as a leader of the Museum of Modern Art, as the chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Again, a useful test is whether the Times would treat itself this way. Can you imagine the newspaper referring to its own publisher as, "Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the newspaper heir"?

A front-page news article in today's New York Times reports on an agreement by the Senate majority leader, Trent Lott, to bring the McCain-Feingold free-speech-infringement legislation to the Senate floor for a debate. "Mr. Lott's commitment to a debate was significant because Republican leaders have previously used parliamentary tricks and filibusters to stop the bill from ever coming to a final vote," the Times reports.

Why is it that when conservatives outmaneuver the free-speech-infringement forces by using the procedures available under the Senate rules, the Times calls it trickery? When Democrats like Senator Kennedy use the same rules to block conservative maneuvers, the Times calls the maneuvers "tactics" and writes about how the actions demonstrate the impressive mastery of the Senate rules by the Democratic lawmakers.

The only trick here is the one the Times is playing on its readers.

Drowning in the L.A. River: A news article in the national section of today's New York Times reports on efforts to clean up the Los Angeles River. Addressing a related development issue, the Times says, "Joel Reynolds, a senior lawyer with the National Resources Defense Council, said the development, which is supported by the departing mayor, Richard J. Riordan, and the City Council, would not only deprive some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city of much needed parkland, but also become a magnate for diesel trucks, increasing pollution." There are two errors in that one sentence. First, the environmental organization's name is the Natural Resources Defense Council, not the "National" Resources Defense Council. The Times' own stylebook has an entry on this point. Second, the word the Times is looking for is magnet, not "magnate."

The lead headline in this morning's New York Times says, "In Policy Change, Greenspan Backs a Broad Tax Cut."

The news story says, "In a clear shift from his previous position that reducing the national debt should be the focus of fiscal policy," the Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, now supports a tax cut.

This is a Times cover-up. There's been no "shift" by Mr. Greenspan -- he's always been friendly to the idea of a tax cut in times of surplus. The Times has just been describing his views incorrectly.

Amity Shlaes wrote in her Financial Times column the first week of January that at times of surplus, "the chairman has not been hostile towards - and has even supported - tax cuts."

Miss Shlaes wrote: "In 1998, late in a decade that had seen two tax rises, he voiced his concern over the damage of higher taxes. 'I generally believe that over the longer run, if you raise marginal rates you will get a lower extension of long-term growth than you would otherwise,' he said. Last spring, Mr Greenspan laid out his position in more detail. 'I recognise that growing budget surpluses may be politically infeasible to defend. If this proves to be the case, as I have also testified previously, the likelihood of maintaining a still satisfactory overall budget position over the longer run is greater, I believe, if surpluses are used to lower tax rates rather than to embark on new spending programmes,' he told Congress."

If yesterday's testimony by Mr. Greenspan marks a "shift," how come Miss Shlaes was hearing him correctly on this more than three weeks ago, and how come Mr. Greenspan was saying these things in 1998 and last spring? The shift comes not in Mr. Greenspan's views but in the willingness of the Times, at long last, to hear what he has been saying.

No Minister: A front-page article in today's New York Times reports that Prime Minister Barak "did not appoint an Israeli Arab minister to his 22-member cabinet." In fact, the deputy foreign minister, Nawaf Massalha, is an Israeli Arab; the Times article ignores that appointment, which was significant. Any definition of the Israeli cabinet which puts its size at 22 members would have to include Mr. Massalha.

In its lead editorial today, the New York Times says, "President Fox would like to see unfettered labor movement across an open border with the United States. Though that is not realistic anytime soon, given the disparity between the two nations' living standards, a new guest-worker program is being considered that would allow more of the 350,000 Mexicans who cross the border each year to do so legally. The idea has merit, particularly if Mr. Fox agrees to help curtail illegal immigration."

Talk about circular reasoning. The Times opposes the free movement of labor because there is a disparity of living standards between the U.S. and Mexico. Yet one of the main reasons that disparity of living standards exists is that there is no free movement of labor between the two countries.

One could almost suspect the Times is anti-immigrant.

The Bloomberg Subsidy: The New York Times has an editorial today urging Michael Bloomberg, a potential candidate for mayor, to join in the city's voluntary system of limits on campaign expenditures and taxpayer subsidies to the campaigns. The editorial, "Money and the Mayoral Race," notes that Mr. Bloomberg's supporters say "that he has plenty of money and does not want to use funds from taxpayers." The Times dismisses this argument, in keeping with its editorial policy that less political speech is better, more taxpayer expenditures are better, and the non-Sulzberger rich are suspect. If the Times were smart it would let Mr. Bloomberg spend his own money and lose; after all, being rich is no guarantee of electoral victory. Just ask Ronald Lauder, Ross Perot or Steve Forbes. But such an approach by the Times would be inconsistent with those three editorial principles.

The metro section of today's New York Times carries an article on how President Bush's education plan would affect New York City. The article has an oddly crimped view of the plan, considering it mainly not in terms of how it would affect students and their families, but in terms of how it would affect the government-run school monopoly.

"The city could lose tens of millions of dollars in federal education aid," the article warns. This is false. The city isn't going to lose any money. In the Bush plan, the money follows the student and would stay in the city. It could just get spent by the student's parents at a school run by someone outside the government school monopoly. It's not "the city" that could lose tens of millions of dollars, it's the government-run school monopoly.

What's amazing is how frank the city's edu-crats are in acknowledging that they are judging the Bush plan not by its effect on children but rather its effect on the government-run school monopoly in which the edu-crats are the prime stakeholders. "The remedy that he proposed has to actually help the system. We won't know that until we see the details," the New York schools chancellor tells the Times, which dutifully records his comments while showing no sign of understanding the significance of his remark.

Shocking: An editorial in the New York Times today denounces President Clinton for his pardon of financier Marc Rich, calling the action "a shocking abuse of presidential power" and "irresponsible." It's funny how the Times gets all worked up about the pardon of a rich person whose "crimes" probably more accurately fell into the category of civil infractions. The newspaper's editorialists haven't uttered a word of objection to the pardon of Susan Rosenberg, a former member of the Weather Underground who was serving a long sentence because of her suspected role in a 1981 robbery of a Brink's truck. Two police officers and a guard were killed in the robbery, according to the New York Post. For the New York Times, it seems, becoming rich in any way other than by inheriting a newspaper is an unpardonable offense.

Distortion: Another editorial in today's New York Times attacks President Bush for asserting that taxpayer funds shouldn't be used to pay for abortions. It accused Mr. Bush of committing a "distortion of the issue." The Times says, "Since 1973 federal law has barred American foreign aid money from being used to promote or pay for abortions. What is at stake is a Reagan-era ban, extended during the Bush years and lifted by President Clinton in 1993, on any aid to groups that use their own money to provide or promote abortions." The Times doesn't seem to recognize that money is fungible. Under the Times principle, America should start sending foreign aid to Iran, because, after all, the money the Iranians would be using to build nuclear missiles and launch terrorist attacks against Israeli and American targets wouldn't be American money, it would be "their own money."

Bloody: Today's New York Times metro section carries a "Public Lives" profile of an aide to Hillary Clinton, Tamera Luzatto. The article says, "To succeed, Mrs. Clinton must reach across party lines, and that, too, is something Ms. Luzzatto knows about, in the most personal way. Three years before her husband's death, he had open-heart surgery. One hundred and twenty of Ms. Luzzatto's Senate and staff colleagues, Republicans and Democrats, donated 56 pints of blood." These numbers don't make much sense. Blood donors usually give about a pint in a session, so it's strange that 120 donors would only yield 56 pints of blood. And a 150-pound man has only 11 or 12 pints of blood, so there's still a lot of donated blood unaccounted for beyond that needed for Ms Luzzatto's husband. There's a commercial blood supply in this country, and open-heart surgery is fairly common, so it's not entirely clear why a special blood drive would have been launched in advance of this surgical procedure. It is, as the Times puts it, a "personal" subject, but if the Times is going to go there, it would be better off doing it in a way that doesn't leave readers with all these unanswered questions.

When someone in politics starts talking about "wealthy special interests," it's time to watch out. Especially when the one doing the talking is itself a wealthy special interest.

Such is the case with the New York Times, which, in a stunning example of hypocritical disregard for the First Amendment, today runs an editorial in favor of a dangerous and unconstitutional attempt to limit free speech under the guise of campaign finance "reform." The Times editorial says the McCain-Feingold proposal "would end the hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions from wealthy special interests that have corrupted the election process."

Where's the corruption? The Times doesn't say. But from past Times editorials, Smartertimes.com has gathered that the Times seems to consider it corrupting whenever a group of citizens, whether it is the Sierra Club, the AFL-CIO, the National Rifle Association or the Christian Coalition, pitches in to buy a television commercial that makes that group's political case directly to the voters without a filter imposed by the editors at the New York Times.

The Times leaves out the fact that the new restrictions would apply, according to the McCain-Feingold bill, only to "any broadcast, cable or satellite communication which refers to a clearly identified candidate for federal office." In other words, the groups would be free to buy unregulated ads in newspapers, such as, say, the New York Times. And despite the onerous new restrictions on "electioneering communications" by individuals who don't own newspapers, the McCain-Feingold view contains no new restrictions on "electioneering communications" that take place in the news and editorial columns of the New York Times.

In other words, the Times is backing a huge erosion of the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, while the First Amendment right to freedom of the press is untrammeled. That is in the newspaper's short-term financial interest. But in the long run, an erosion in any aspect of the First Amendment will threaten the Times and the freedom of all Americans.

Most Americans realize that. The Times editorial claims, "Mr. McCain is reflecting what voters said they wanted: a cleanup of the corruption that has stifled the democratic process in recent years." What voters said they wanted? Mr. McCain lost the presidential election. In fact, in the Republican primary, the Democratic primary and the general election, the candidate who more strongly favored additional McCain-style infringements on the First Amendment lost. Voters are concerned about corruption, but the corruption was the failure to comply with existing laws banning, for instance, contributions from Chinese Communist agents, not the imaginary New York Times-McCain style "corruption" that emanates from the lawful exercise by Americans of the free-speech rights they are guaranteed under the First Amendment.

Veterans: A front-page article in today's New York Times about education policy says, "In addition, poor children inspire more sympathy than other subjects of ambitious social programs, like welfare mothers, drug addicts, the unemployed, or veterans of the criminal justice system." What a fine euphemism that is, "veterans of the criminal justice system." The term "veterans," with its associations of military service, carries an air of rectitude with it. The phrase would seem to include retired prosecutors and judges. Instead of writing "veterans of the criminal justice system," the Times might have saved five words and just written "criminals" or "ex-convicts."

Unapologetic: An article about Senator Miller's decision to co-sponsor George W. Bush's tax plan runs in today's New York Times under the headline "Georgia Democratic Senator Unapologetic in Aiding Bush." Why should he apologize? No one in the article is quoted suggesting that Mr. Miller should apologize. The overly critical tone of the headline suggests the Times thinks a senator should have to apologize for supporting a tax cut.

Regulatory Bloat: The New York Times in its national section today prints a wonderful chart tracking the number of pages published each year in the Federal Register. The chart is shaded according to whether there is a Republican or Democratic president, and it is a neat quantitative indicator of the fact that, with the exceptions of Nixon and Ford, the Republicans are the party of less regulation. It's worth actually going out and buying a copy of the Times to clip and save this chart. Seriously. It's only rarely that Smartertimes.com actually praises the Times, but that chart is a gem.

In his speech back in September about "persistent accuracy problems" at the New York Times, the newspaper's executive editor, Joseph Lelyveld, made particular mention of the problem the Times has reporting what the U.N. resolutions say about Israel.

"Three times in recent months we've had to run corrections on the actual provisions of U.N. Resolution 242, providing great cheer and sustenance to those readers who are convinced we are opinionated and not well informed on Middle East issues," Mr. Lelyveld said then.

Well, Smartertimes.com is among those readers who are convinced that the Times is opinionated and not well informed on Middle East issues. Mr. Lelyveld's speech notwithstanding, the Times screws up this issue yet again in today's paper.

A dispatch from Taba, Egypt, in the international section of today's New York Times says, "The Palestinians, however, continue to assert the centrality of United Nations resolutions calling on Israel to dismantle settlements and to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders."

There is no binding U.N. resolution calling on Israel "to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders," no matter how many times the Arabs and the New York Times mistakenly assert that there is.

As Mr. Lelyveld's speech suggested, the key U.N. resolution on the subject is Security Council Resolution 242. As Smartertimes.com wrote on September 6, 2000, Resolution 242 "explicitly does not refer to 'all territory.' The key sentence in 242 speaks of 'Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.' That small three-letter word 'all' may seem like a minor point, but it has a long history, as anyone who knows anything about the Arab-Israeli conflict would understand. As the book 'Myths and Facts' recounts, when Resolution 242 was being debated, the Soviet Union's delegate at the U.N. and the Arab delegates wanted the key clause to say 'all the territories.' As the book records, the American ambassador to the U.N. at the time, Arthur Goldberg, explained, 'The notable omissions -- which were not accidental -- in regard to withdrawal are the words "the" and "all" . . . the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal.'"

In other words, the governing resolution explicitly does not call for Israel "to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders." America would have vetoed any such resolution that came to the Security Council. Resolution 242 further recognizes the right of "every State in the area" "to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force." The notion of "secure. . .boundaries" arguably precludes an Israeli withdrawal to the "pre-1967 borders," which leave an Israel so narrow that Abba Eban, no right-wing extremist, referred to them as the "Auschwitz borders."

It's remarkable that after running three corrections on this topic and having Mr. Lelyveld mention it prominently in a speech to the paper's top editors, the New York Times is still getting it wrong.

No Republicans Need Apply: The Arts section of today's New York Times features a warm profile of an architect, James Stewart Polshek. He has designed the Clinton presidential library that is planned for Little Rock, Ark. The Times notes parenthetically, about midway through the story, that Mr. Polshek "said he would never design a library for a Republican president." This isn't particularly troubling -- it's a free country, and architects should be able to choose their clients freely. What's weird is the way the Times lets this comment pass without further comment or explanation -- as if its readers would all understand completely the thinking of a distinguished architect who, just on the face of it, would refuse to accept a commission for a Republican presidential library. Would Mr. Polshek rule out even a building for Abraham Lincoln? The Times doesn't ask, though it does note that Mr. Polshek designed a printing plant for the New York Times.