The international section of today's New York Times features a photograph of Syrians reading newspapers. The cutline under the photo says: "Syria Gets an Independent Newspaper: Syrians reading the first issue of a bimonthly Syrian Communist Party newspaper, Sawt al Shaab, or The Voice of the People, in Damascus on Thursday. The newspaper is the first to be published in the country without government control since the ruling Baath Arab Socialist Party came to power in 1963."

If the newspaper is a "Syrian Communist Party newspaper," it's not an independent newspaper. This is not a difficult concept. The Times would never describe a newspaper operated by the Democratic Party or the Republican Party in America as "independent." Why the lower standard for Syria? It's not exactly as if Communist parties anywhere are known for their friendliness to independent journalism.

The claim that the newspaper is being published "without government control" is also questionable. Syria is a police state. Any newspaper that emerged with a full-throated critique of the regime might publish an issue or two "without government control," but its editors would soon find themselves killed, tortured or languishing in a dungeon.

Finally, the use of the term "bimonthly" is a near-violation of Times style. As the Times' own stylebook puts it, "bimonthly means every two months; semimonthly means twice a month. For comprehension, use every two months or twice a month." If this newspaper is only going to be published every two months -- that is, six times a year -- then what is the big deal? Do the Times editors really think that the launch of a Communist Party organ to be published six times a year in Syria is a newsworthy development in and of itself?

Late Again: An above-the-fold front-page story in today's New York Times about the Tiananmen Papers reports that the documents "will be published Monday." That makes it sound like the Times has a scoop and is coming in ahead of the curve with this news article on Saturday. In fact, the editor of Smartertimes.com picked up a copy of the journal Foreign Affairs on December 31. That copy of the journal, the January/February issue, published the Tiananmen documents, and that issue has been out on the streets since at least December 31, 2000. (Smartertimes.com picked up a free copy at the USAirways Shuttle terminal at La Guardia airport.) In any case, the Tiananmen Papers are old news to readers of Foreign Affairs.

Likewise, the controversy that is the subject of the "NYC" column in the metro section of today's New York Times is old news to readers of the New York Post. The Times columnist remarks on the choice of the president of the National Rifle Association to receive an award at the annual dinner of the Congress of Racial Equality. The dinner is held in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. The Times columnist asks, "Isn't the country's most famous gun advocate perhaps an odd choice for honors at a dinner named for a national hero killed in 1968 by a gun?"

The New York Post's Neal Travis wrote yesterday in his column item titled "CORE off target?": "The big award is going to none other than National Rifle Association head Charlton Heston, despite the fact that Dr. King was assassinated by one of those guns that actor Chuck insists we all should be allowed to own."

Well, Mr. Travis was a day ahead of the Times on this one, but he and the Times are both wrong in suggesting that King was killed by "a gun." King was felled by an assassin. There's nothing inherently good or evil about a gun. The law enforcement officers who ultimately enforced integration bore guns. The police and FBI agents who are responsible for hunting down racist murderers bear guns. To suggest that the NRA is somehow culpable in the assassination of King is just flaky, as flaky as suggesting the organization deserves credit for integrating Southern schools.

Jesus: The "neediest cases" article in the Times metro section is particularly interesting today. It relates the story of a man who was born Jewish in Nazi Germany and who then converted to Christianity and who now attributes his well-being to "Jesus Christ, his church," and an agency of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York.

The lead editorial in today's New York Times cheers the newfound support by Senator Cochran, a Republican from Mississippi, for campaign finance "reform." The Times praises this as a "remarkably important development for the cause of clean elections," and it refers to "the McCain-Feingold bill." But as the Times news article makes clear, there is no bill at the moment. The news article reports that there have been "several different versions" of the McCain-Feingold legislation in recent years. "The senators said they had yet to decide which version they would introduce," the news article reports.

So intense and irrational is the Times's lust for any legislation that would restrict political speech in this country that the newspaper's editorialists are able to praise such legislation without even knowing what is in it, and, in fact, before the legislation has even been written or introduced. The news article at least raises the concern that some versions of the legislation would "reign in spending by independent issues advocacy groups." (The correct usage there would be "rein in," by the way.) But the Times editorialists don't care about free speech -- in the U.S. Senate race, they backed a "soft money" ban that prohibited television ads by groups like the Sierra Club, the National Abortion Rights Action League, the Christian Coalition, the National Rifle Association and the AFL-CIO. How our democracy would be made healthier or our elections more "clean" by silencing these citizens' groups, the Times never really explains.

The less money the political parties can legally raise and spend on television commercials that get their message across directly, the more powerful the role of the New York Times becomes. So it's no wonder the Times supports the restrictions on free speech that are parading about under the guise of campaign finance "reform."

Friedman: In his "Foreign Affairs" column in today's New York Times, Thomas Friedman manages to get three facts wrong in a single sentence. He writes, "Mr. Bush favors building a national missile defense system -- but for now that is an idea for which there is no workable technology, no immediate enemy and no supportive allies." There's plenty of workable missile defense technology out there now, starting with the Patriot and including the Aegis cruiser, which with some modifications could be a workable missile defense platform. There are plenty of enemies -- Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Communist China, Russia. And there are some supportive allies. Taiwan, for one. And Israel, for another. Funny how those supportive allies seem less concerned about the workability of the technology than Mr. Friedman does. Perhaps because they are located so much closer to the immediate enemies.

The Friedman column also claims of Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Condi Rice that "none of them have wrestled closely with these issues for years." (The usage should be none of them "has.") That is certainly not true of Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been quite involved in foreign policy issues, particularly missile defense.

Lower Echelon: An article on the New York Times op-ed page today about the Cuban missile crisis refers to "lower-eschelon staff people like myself." Well, one reason she was a lower-echelon staff person may have been that she couldn't spell the word echelon.

The New York Times this morning reports as follows in a news article in the national section about the opening of Congress. "Some of the day's most poignant moments belonged to Mr. Gore, who was gracious, funny and impassioned as he swore in new members of the Congressional Black Caucus and called them the 'conscience of the Congress.'"

The descriptions "gracious" and "funny" seem like subjective judgments more suited to an editorial than a news article, especially when you look down the page at another story reporting what Vice President Gore actually said to the Congressional Black Caucus.

"The next time you see a crumbling school with desks crowded into hallways and rain dripping through the roof, vote C.B.C.," Mr. Gore said, according to the Times. "The next time anyone argues that even the most vicious and violent hate crimes are just like any other crimes, or that racial profiling is just a price that has to be paid, vote C.B.C."

These remarks, at least, strike Smartertimes.com as not "gracious" or "funny" but bizarre, misguided and verging on cynical demagoguery. For one thing, no one votes "C.B.C." The Congressional Black Caucus isn't a political party; it's a group of overwhelmingly liberal congressmen who happen to be black. A voter could get the same policy results by voting for white liberal Democrats like Rep. Barney Frank or Rep. Rosa DeLauro. Another irony is that many members of the Congressional Black Caucus, by voting against school vouchers even though their constituents support vouchers, are actually keeping poor black children trapped in those very crumbling schools that Mr. Gore is speaking about. And the idea that "anyone" argues that the most vicious and violent hate crimes are just like any other crimes is just a straw man. The argument isn't about whether the crimes are alike, but over the wisdom of laws that further toughen the penalties for crimes, like murder, for which criminals in states like Texas already face the death penalty. Mr. Gore seemed to be alluding to an NAACP ad aired during the presidential campaign that associated George W. Bush with a brutal racist murder in Texas. That hardly counts as "gracious" or "funny."

Golda and Minner: An article in the national section of today's New York Times reports on the swearing-in of the new governor of Delaware, Ruth Ann Minner. Ms. Minner is quoted in the Times as saying, "A lot of people say to me that when I was first elected in 1974, it was before women even started to make a move into politics. But I point out to them that in that very year, Golda Meir was retiring in Israel after 50 years' public service to her country. Now that's really something, 50 years -- I'm only approaching 30 years of public service myself." As astute Smartertimes.com reader Michael Globetti points out in an email this morning, Meir could hardly have contributed 50 years of service to Israel, since the country only won its independence in 1948. And, as he puts it, Golda Meir hardly "was retiring" but was unable to form a government in 1974 and resigned.

Tax Cut: The New York Times can't seem to get its figures straight on the cost of President-elect Bush's proposed tax cut. The front-page lead news story today refers to "his $1.6 trillion tax cut proposal," while the editorial refers to "the proposed 10-year, $1.3 trillion tax cut." The truth is, it's difficult to project the costs or revenue gains of a tax cut 10 years out; it depends on the assumptions made about economic growth and the effects of the tax cut on growth.

Stroking Saddam: The New York Times today deals with the possibility that Saddam Hussein has had a stroke by reprinting a Reuters dispatch from Baghdad that quotes Iraqi government officials dismissing the possibility. The dispatch quotes no opposition figures or American officials, only an Iraqi government official and the official Iraqi News Agency. The government official is quoted as saying that Saddam "fired more than 140 shots one-handed, something that most young people are unable to do -- this alone is enough as a reply to this absurd news." The Reuters doesn't mention the possibility that the one-handed firing -- also depicted in a Reuters photograph that runs alongside the dispatch -- could support the notion that Saddam had a stroke and that his other arm is immobilized as a result. The Reuters dispatch also reports that the U.N. sanctions on Iraq "ruined Iraq's infrastructure and caused a plunge in living standards." In fact what has caused the plunge in living standards and ruined the infrastructure is Saddam's refusal to comply with U.N. weapons inspections and his decision to spend the country's oil revenues on constructing castles for himself and his cronies rather than on benefits for the people of Iraq. Iraq restricts freedom of the press, but the Times makes no disclosure to its readers of the fact that the Reuters reporter in Baghdad was probably operating under either Iraqi censorship or threat of violence.

Largest: An article in the New York Times metro section today about Orthodox women in the working world reports, "The largest Zionist women's group in the United States, Americans for Israel and Torah, is a 75-year-old charity that operates largely on volunteer help from its 82,000 members." In fact, the largest Zionist women's group in the United States is Hadassah, the Women's Zionist Organization of America, which claims more than 300,000 members.

Note: Smartertimes.com is having some difficulties with the unit of the Microsoft Corporation that handles delivery of Smartertimes to e-mail subscribers. E-mail delivery may be temporarily suspended, and readers attempting to subscribe to the e-mail delivery may get a message saying the list is "locked."

The New York Times today gives President-elect Bush's choice for labor secretary, Linda Chavez, the same nasty treatment it has given to other Bush nominees such as John Ashcroft and Tommy Thompson. A front-page news analysis refers to Ms. Chavez as a "polarizing figure," and a profile claims she "has taken polarizing positions in the debates about affirmative action, bilingual education and immigration."

But Ms. Chavez's positions on affirmative action (she's for outreach, but against racial preferences or quotas); on bilingual education (she thinks public schools should teach English), and immigration (she favors it) aren't polarizing; they are unifying. She's not a "polarizing figure"; she's a unifying figure. The true polarizing figures are the ones who have, as the Times profile reports, "vilified" Ms. Chavez, physically threatened her and termed her, as the Times puts it, "a traitor to her people." Of course, the Times doesn't call those critics of Ms. Chavez "polarizing" figures or polarizing groups. No, the Times article describes those critics -- the real polarizers -- as "civil rights groups."

Sexual Diversity: A front-page news article in today's New York Times reports that President-elect Bush has assembled a government "notable for its sexual and ethnic diversity." A lot of Times readers will no doubt be puzzling this morning over what the Times means by sexual diversity. The guess here is that it is just a somewhat awkward way of saying there are more women in Mr. Bush's team than in the usual administration.

Highly Partisan: A profile in today's New York Times of Mr. Bush's pick to be commerce secretary makes a glancing reference to Rep. Newt Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich, the article says, was "later known as a highly partisan Republican speaker of the House." Watch out when the Times slips into that passive voice. Known by whom? By highly partisan Democrats editing the New York Times, who can hardly ever be seen referring to Democrats as "highly partisan"?

Republican Orthodoxy: A profile in today's New York Times of Mr. Bush's pick to be energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, reports that he has "occasionally challenged the Republican orthodoxy, particularly in successfully fighting Republican colleagues' efforts to restrict legal immigration." This portrays the Republicans as the anti-immigrant party and Mr. Abraham as a maverick on the immigration issue. That's just not true. Mr. Abraham was the chairman of the immigration subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee. Republican business interests have long been pro-immigrant because they want to increase the pool of available labor. It's true that some Republicans like Senator Alan Simpson and Rep. Lamar Smith have been anti-immigrant, but so have some Democratic constituencies such as blacks and labor unions. The Republicans, like the Democrats, are split on the immigration issue. The Wall Street Journal editorial page is for open borders, while the National Review wants to shut the gates. There's no "orthodoxy" to challenge.

Tax Cut: A front-page "News Analysis" in today's New York Times reports that Mr. Bush's proposed tax cut is "a sum that even many Republicans on Capitol Hill have called too large." This is just false. Unless the Times definition of "many Republicans on Capitol Hill " is two aides to Senator McCain speaking off the record, the facts just don't support that claim. Even Speaker Hastert's much ballyhooed remarks calling for movement on the estate tax and marriage penalty before going ahead with rate reductions never called the entire Bush package too large.

Norman Siegel: The New York Times can't seem to figure out this morning the status of Norman Siegel, one of Mayor Giuliani's most relentless and automatic critics. A brief item in today's metro section reports that Mr. Siegel, "the longtime executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, has temporarily stepped down from the group to consider running for the public advocate post being vacated by Mark Green." Another story, elsewhere in today's metro section, reports, "Norman Siegel, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the mayor was 'legally incorrect in his analysis.'" Well, folks, is he "the executive director," or is it true that he "has temporarily stepped down"? The New York Times seems content to let readers make up their own minds.

Michael Stanley Dukakis: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports that Hillary Clinton's new Senate chief of staff has experience that "includes work on the presidential campaigns of Michael M. Dukakis and Walter F. Mondale." If the Times feels the need to include Mr. Dukakis's middle initial, it could at least take the trouble to get it right. It is "S," for Stanley.

Times Tower: The NYC column in today's New York Times metro section pushes the envelope about as far as a columnist can get away with, and it is worth reading. The column defends Mrs. Clinton's book deal, as Smartertimes.com has also been doing. Particularly amusing is the sentence, "Reports have it that a New York newspaper will need city and state help to build its new headquarters. Yet no one has seriously suggested that because of this it will inevitably pull its punches in assessing the mayor or the governor." The reference is to the enormous special tax break that the New York Times Company is seeking for its Manhattan headquarters tower -- at the same time the newspaper is opposing across-the board tax relief for average New Yorkers.

An editorial and a news story in today's New York Times both take Republicans to task for, as the editorial puts it, "keeping black nominees off the federal bench." The news story refers to the fact that President-elect Bush's nominee for the position of attorney general, Senator Ashcroft, "led the successful fight to block a black nominee for a federal appeals court seat."

It's just strange the way the Times constantly brands opponents of the appointment of liberal judical activists as racists. Or reports on the appointments as though the skin color of the candidates is the most noteworthy thing about them. The Times editorials and news stories at the time of the fight over the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court never referred to the controversy matter-of-factly as an effort "to block a black nominee" to the Supreme Court. If the Times has some evidence that Senator Ashcroft is a racist, it should come forward with it. But if the new definition of the term is having ever opposed a judicial nominee who happens to be black, all those liberal senators who voted against putting Mr. Thomas on the high court should beware.

Potato Chips: A front-page news article in today's New York Times reports that "A supermarket-size sack of Lay's potato chips has lost an ounce in the last month, or about 7.5 percent of its previous weight, but still costs $2.99." This is weird phrasing. No sack of potato chips that Smartertimes.com has ever seen -- and Smartertimes.com has been on the factory tour at Cape Cod Potato Chips -- is the size of a supermarket. The supermarket frequented by Smartertimes.com stocks plenty of bags of potato chips in the 99 cent to $1.79 range, with about 6 or 7 ounces of chips. The notion that you have to look at how much food is in the package rather than simply the price of the package is one of those basic consumer concepts that it seems that most Times readers would have already been aware of even before reading today's front-page dispatch alerting the world to that stunning news development.

Friedman: New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman declares today that "Jewish colonialism was no different than any other. It involved the brutal suppression of another people and the stealing of their land." Stealing? The Arabs closed the Straits of Tiran to all Israeli ships and announced plans to enter into a "battle of annihilation" against Israel. In the ensuing war, Israel retook land, such as Jerusalem and Hebron, in which there had been a continuous Jewish presence for thousands of years. This is "stealing"? It's just bizarre to use the language of colonialism to condemn Israel. The West Bank is not a far-off colony that Israel is somehow exploiting for mercantile purposes; it is a buffer zone that provides Israel's narrow coastal strip with some strategic depth against the hostile Arab armies, such as that of Iraq, that could attack from the East. With his rant against "Jewish colonialism," Mr. Friedman sounds like some Marxist campus radical from the 1970s. And it's funny how Mr. Friedman seems to pay a lot less attention to the "brutal suppression of another people" when it is, say, genuine, as in Saddam Hussein suppressing the Iraqi Shiites or Kurds, or the Chinese Communists oppressing their minorities.

The lead news story in today's New York Times reports that, "Acting on an executive order issued by President Clinton, the federal government will begin today to offer its nine million employees improved mental health benefits equal to those for physical ailments."

There was no such executive order. At least, not in the sense that the phrase executive order is commonly understood by those in government and by those journalists who closely track the White House. An executive order means a formal, numbered policy statement from the president. The action the Times is writing about was a simple instruction that Mr. Clinton gave to the Office of Personnel Management in June of 1999.

Unconditional Acceptance: A front-page dispatch from Bethlehem in today's New York Times reports, "The Palestinians, in turn, say, Mr. Barak appears to be backpedaling from his unconditional acceptance of Mr. Clinton's proposal." Even though this statement is attributed to "the Palestinians," its premise is so obviously false that the Times shouldn't let it pass unchallenged. Prime Minister Barak never issued an "unconditional acceptance" of Mr. Clinton's proposal. He identified some areas where further clarification was necessary but said he would agree to negotiate on the basis of the proposal if the Palestinian Arabs would also do so. The Times itself reported it that way at the time. That is not an "unconditional acceptance."

Sexist Interviews: In an article about discrimination against women in the hiring practices of Japanese businesses, today's New York Times quotes a 23-year-old Japanese woman job applicant. "One recruiter even asked me if I knew how many convenience stores there are in Japan," the woman tells the Times.

This woman may have been discriminated against, but the fact that this question was asked in a job interview is pretty thin evidence. Those sorts of questions are standard fare in recruiting interviews for entry-level business analyst or brand manager jobs at many American consumer products companies and management consulting firms. Such questions are designed to measure not a candidate's knowledge of trivia but the candidate's ability to think on his or her feet and make quick numerical estimates. Such questions in America are asked of both men and women.

New State Laws: An article in the national section of today's Times reports on new state laws. "About a dozen states nationwide have passed laws against racial profiling, many of them including anti-bias training and the gathering of statistics on every driver who is stopped," the Times reports. "Massachusetts's new law, which takes effect today, requires police to record the race and gender of each person issued a traffic citation."

That sounds like a law not "against racial profiling," but requiring racial profiling. The offensive thing about racial profiling, after all, was that police were paying undue attention to race. The new law apparently requires the police to take race into account. The Times, naturally, sees nothing strange in this.

The same Times article on new state laws refers to the possibility that states will move to ban new automotive technologies "that can distract a driver," like "mapping systems." The Times gives no indication that this might be seen as odd. After all, the whole point of these onboard computerized mapping systems in cars is that they are safer and easier and less distracting than driving around with an open paper map in one's lap. The next thing, no doubt, will be a state law banning a driver from consulting a paper map while driving.

Abortion: An editorial in today's New York Times reports that "the majority of Americans favor women's right to choose without government interference." All of a sudden, the Times discovers an aversion to government interference. There are plenty of arguments to be made for or against abortion rights, but there's a whiff of hypocrisy about the Times, which favors just about every big government scheme imaginable, grounding its rhetorical case for abortion rights on the grounds of opposition to "government interference."

Counting Schools: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times about Edison Schools reports that critics of the privately operated schools accuse Edison of double-counting the number of schools it now runs. "Because those 113 schools are housed in 90 buildings and employ only 88 principals, the actual number of schools is far less than the company claims," the Times reports. But the New York public schools do the same thing, counting schools separately even if they are housed in the same building. The only difference is that the New York public schools would never try to economize on non-classroom administrative personnel like principals. But no one ever accuses the New York public schools of double-counting the number of schools the system operates. It makes it look like what these Edison "detractors" the Times so diligently records the objections of are really against isn't double-counting, but any challenge to New York's government-run public schools.

Infinitive: An article on the front of the "Business Day" section of today's New York Times reports, "Too get rid of their 'dogs,' publishers often resort to paying booksellers a few dollars extra for each copy they move out the door at a discount." There's one too many "o"s in what should be a "to."

Opera Premier: An opera review in the arts section of today's New York Times reports that a director was booed when he appeared on stage after the "premier" of his new production. The word the Times is looking for is "premiere"; the noun "premier" means a prime minister. Ehud Barak is a premier; the director took a bow at the conclusion of the premiere.

Note: Smartertimes.com is in Boston and is operating off the New England Final edition.

A review in today's New York Times discusses a collection of the letters of Joseph P. Kennedy. The review reports that The Boston Globe "effectively ended Joseph Kennedy's career" by printing some controversial remarks Kennedy made in an interview. The review goes on to note parenthetically, "The paper has more than made it up to the family since."

Whoa. The New York Times Company owns the Boston Globe. If the Times ownership thinks the Globe has been unfairly biased toward the Kennedys, it should run a correction in the Globe, or change the management at the Globe, or run an editorial in the Globe adjusting that newspaper's course. Handling the issue with a catty remark tucked away in the Times book review doesn't fix the problem and just exacerbates the feeling in Boston that the New York ownership has no respect for the Globe other than as a cash cow.

Refugee Inflation: The lead article in the Week in Review section of today's New York Times puts at "some 750,000" the number of Palestinian Arab "refugees" who "fled the fighting that commenced with the Arab attack on the newly created state of Israel in 1948." This is progress; at least the Times is now acknowledging the "refugee" issue is at least in part the result of Arab aggression. Still, the number of 750,000 is inflated. As the book "Myths and Facts" notes, a 1948 report by the U.N. mediator for Palestine put the number of "refugees" at 472,000. The last pre-1948 census of the Arab population in the area that became Israel was in 1945, and it counted 756,000 permanent Arab residents. A 1949 government of Israel census counted 160,000 Arabs living in Israel after the war. The Times cites no source for its claim that there were "some 750,000" refugees.

In the Tank: A particularly nasty and ill-informed Paul Krugman column in the New York Times on December 13, 2000, had sniped at conservative and libertarian think tanks in Washington. "Since the policy recommendations that come out of Heritage, or the Cato Institute, or even the American Enterprise Institute, are so predictable, what purpose do these organizations serve? Good question," Mr. Krugman wrote.

A front-page news article in today's Times makes it clear that even the Times' own Washington bureau thinks Mr. Krugman's attack on the American Enterprise Institute, at least, was unjustified. The news article describes AEI, together with Rand, as "organizations with mildly conservative slants that often dissect government programs and national security issues and take stands that sometimes defy easy partisan labels."

Property Rights: A brief item in the Week in Review section reports that the nomination of Gale Norton to be interior secretary in the Bush administration is likely to be contentious because Ms. Norton is "an advocate of property rights." 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?

Vivienne Tam, Twice: Readers of today's New York Times are treated to not one but two profiles of fashion designer Vivienne Tam. It's puzzling that, for all its vaunted concern for the environment, the Times still felt it necessary to kill trees to tell this story twice. One profile appears in the business section, another in the Sunday Styles section. One benefit of having two profiles appear of the same person is that it provides readers and editors with a chance to see which Times writer does a better job of reporting out the basic facts that readers look for in a profile. The business section article reports that Ms. Tam is 43; the Sunday Styles article reports that Ms. Tam "is in her 40's." Was it really too taxing for the Sunday Styles reporter to ferret out Ms. Tam's exact age? After all, the reporter for the business section story managed to do so.

Nuisance: An article in the city section of today's New York Times reports on a flurry of legislation in the New York City Council. The Times reports, "One bill, offered by Councilman John D. Sabini from Queens, would require that live chickens be kept in backyard pens, apparently a common nuisance in his district." What is the Times trying to say here? That backyard pens are apparently a common nuisance in Mr. Sabini's district? That live chickens kept in backyard pens are apparently a common nuisance in Mr. Sabini's district? That the councilman's legislation would require each New Yorker with a backyard to keep a live chicken in a pen, and that such legislation is commonly considered a nuisance? Logic would dictate that the nuisance is the live chickens that are roaming unpenned. So the Times could have more comprehensibly written something like, "Councilman John D. Sabini is offering a bill to address the apparently common nuisance of live chickens roaming free in backyards. His bill would require New Yorkers with live chickens to confine the animals to pens."

Ribat, Rubat: A dispatch from Yemen in the international section of today's New York Times is datelined Al-Ribat. A cutline beneath the locator map accompanying the article also spells the village Al-Ribat. But on the Times locator map itself, the village's name is spelled "Al-Rubat."

The New York Times today in its national section runs a profile of the governor of Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson, that misstates his record on welfare reform. President-elect Bush yesterday announced his intention to nominate Mr. Thompson as secretary of health and human services, and the Times' treatment of Mr. Thompson is symptomatic not only of the newspaper's attitude toward welfare reform but of its treatment of Mr. Bush's conservative nominees, which has been hostile.

The Times today tells us that although Mr. Thompson's welfare reform in Wisconsin "has won him a national audience," "the program's impact on the poor remains the subject of some dispute."

"The most extensive study of the program, by researchers at the University of Wisconsin, found the average family leaving welfare fell deeper into poverty," the Times reports. Smartertimes.com is not sure exactly which study the Times is referring to, but Smartertimes.com spent some time this morning reading several evaluations of welfare reform in Wisconsin that were conducted by the university's Institute for Research on Poverty. And those studies don't purport to show what the Times claims they do.

One of the studies, issued on July 30, 1999, contains a lengthy passage quoting an article by a New York Times reporter on the welfare beat. Talk about your circular reasoning: the Times sends a reporter out to write about the problems with welfare reform, gets the Times article quoted in an academic study, and then prints another article in the Times by a different reporter, this time quoting the academic study as evidence that welfare reform doesn't work.

Another University of Wisconsin report, "Post-Exit Earning and Benefit Receipt Among Those Who Left AFDC in Wisconsin," issued in January 1999, made clear, "We have no measures for individuals who moved out of state, no measures of earnings for those who remained in the state but were self-employed or in other non-covered employment, and no measures of a spouse or partner's earnings or other income." The study also says it does not take into account the effect of the earned income tax credit.

In other words, contrary to what the Times claims, the University of Wisconsin study doesn't study "family" poverty; it studies the income of the mostly single parents who were getting welfare checks before they started working. To do that without taking into account the earned income tax credit or the income of a spouse or partner may be interesting to academics, but it is misleading for someone -- say, a Times reader -- trying to judge how Mr. Thompson's policies have actually worked.

Married His Wife: A profile of Mr. Bush's pick to be secretary of veterans affairs reports that "he married his wife in 1971." This could be redundant, because the woman a man marries is generally assumed to be his wife. Or it could be mistaken -- the woman wasn't his wife until after he married her. Either way, it's awkward.

The Cost of Competition: A front page article in today's New York Times about competition among abortion clinics quotes a Las Vegas doctor as saying "In the entire state of Nevada, there is only one Lexus dealer and only one Acura dealer." This is an easily checkable fact that should have set off the lie-detector of any decent editor. The Times passes along this quote wholesale. It turns out to be false. Nevada has at least two Lexus dealers: Fletcher Jones Lexus in Las Vegas and Lexus of Reno in Reno, Nevada.

Seven Shot To Death: A story in the national section of today's New York Times reports on the shooting deaths of seven persons in a Philadelphia row house. One can understand, perhaps, from the perspective of newsworthiness, why the Times pretty much buries this story and gave much greater space and front-page prominence to a shooting spree at an Internet company in Massachusetts earlier this week in which seven persons were also killed. But, remember, the New York Times is constantly denouncing other corporations, tax cut plans and other government policies for supposedly giving short shrift to poor minorities. It is instructive to see how the New York Times itself gives different treatment to a crime with poor minorities as victims, compared to a crime with white professionals as victims.

Can't Spell: An article in today's New York Times about the purchase of a new home in Washington, D.C., by Senator-elect Clinton and her husband refers to "the White House spokesman, Jake Siewart." The correct spelling of the spokesman's last name is "Siewert."

Under the headline "Postmidnight 'Homecoming' for Arafat," the New York Times today reports on a brief visit by Yasser Arafat to Jerusalem. The Times reports, "There is no record that Mr. Arafat has been in Jerusalem, where, his official biography says, he was born, since Israel seized the Old City and East Jerusalem in the 1967 war."

No matter what Mr. Arafat's "official biography" claims, it's been pretty widely established by independent biographers that he was born and educated at Cairo, Egypt. But the Times, it seems, has no interest in letting the facts stand in the way of its mission of disseminating on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization the "official" propaganda line. The fact that the Times goes to the trouble of attributing the Jerusalem birth myth to Mr. Arafat's official biography would seem to indicate that the newspaper is aware that the matter is in dispute. Why give only the official Palestinian Arab version of the tale?

'Rashidi Khalidi': A front page "news analysis" in today's New York Times quotes "Rashidi Khalidi, professor of Middle East history at the University of Chicago." It's amazing how the Times is so bad at spelling names that the newspaper can even manage to misspell on December 29 the name of a professor who contributed an op-ed piece that the Times itself published on December 27. That op-ed piece was bylined "Rashid I. Khalidi." The news story mangles that into "Rashidi Khalidi."

Kurt Gdel: An obituary of the philosopher W.V. Quine in today's New York Times makes reference to the philosopher "Kurt Gdel." The more common rendering of the name in English, and one the Times has itself used in the past, is Godel.

A front-page news article in today's New York Times reports on President Clinton's decision to bypass Congress and make a "recess appointment" of a judge to the Fourth Circuit. The Times article reports that the Fourth Circuit "is also widely viewed as the most aggressively conservative of the appeals courts, often providing novel and cutting-edge rulings."

There they go with that passive voice again. "Widely viewed"? Widely viewed by whom? Couldn't the Times, with its vast reportorial resources, muster up even one law professor or lawyer to say this on the record? Otherwise, readers are left with the sneaking suspicion that this view is widely held only among the knee-jerk liberals with whom the Times associates. Never mind the contradiction between being "conservative" and providing "novel and cutting-edge rulings," a paradox that the Times doesn't even begin to explain.

The Times article goes on to report that the Fourth Circuit court "has blazed new trails in striking down laws that a majority of its judges say improperly enhance federal power at the expense of the states." Aha. The "novel" and "cutting edge" "new trails" to which the Times refers are in fact, then, not so new then at all, but an effort to restore the traditional constitutional interpretation of federal powers that was in place before it was thrown out of whack by liberal judges. Again, the Times makes no effort to explain any of this to its readers, instead leaving the false impression of a bunch of renegade "conservative" judges blazing "new trails." They aren't blazing new trails, they are trying to get the law back onto the old trail that it was on before it got lost.

This same Times article uses the "widely viewed" trick elsewhere, too. The article reports that, "Although the process by which senators block presidential nominations is partly secret, Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, is widely viewed as the main figure in foiling Mr. Clinton's efforts to name a black to the Fourth Circuit."

Again, "widely viewed" by whom? Readers would be better served if the Times named one person who held that view and described how the person arrived at that view.

The article doesn't quote a single person suggesting that "Mr. Clinton's efforts to name a black to the Fourth Circuit" have a whiff of racial tokenism about them. If a lawyer were so openly determined to name a black to a jury, or to strike one, it would be illegal. Smartertimes.com has no view on the judicial nominee's qualifications, and he may well be as qualified as Justice Thomas. But it seems like it would be widely viewed as an insult to any jurist to be selected because the president was determined to, as the Times puts it bluntly, "name a black to the Fourth Circuit."

An editorial in today's New York Times and an accompanying op-ed piece about the Arab-Israeli negotiations focus on Arab "refugees." The Times editorial declares "there are roughly four million such refugees living in camps in Gaza and the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and across the Arab world." This figure is laughably inflated with the children and grandchildren of the original "refugees," most of whom fled of their own accord and at the urging of Arab leaders who were launching a war aimed at destroying Israel. A 1948 report of the U.N. Mediator on Palestine put the number of Arab refugees at 472,000.

But neither the Times editorial nor the op-ed piece mentions the other refugees -- Jews who fled from Arab lands where they were oppressed. These Jews left behind valuable property. The book "Myths and Facts" estimates there were 820,000 such Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Mysteriously, the Times editorial calls for "an international compensation and resettlement package" for the Arab "refugees" -- but it makes not even a single reference to compensation for Jewish refugees.

The op-ed piece goes even further, referring to Israel's capital, Jerusalem, as an "Arab city" and demanding an "Israeli apology for the harm done to the Palestinians in 1948." Again, this is laughable. One can only hope that the reason the Times published it was to illustrate the unreasonableness of the Arab claims. Apology? They want an apology? The armies of Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq invaded Israel in 1948 in what the secretary-general of the Arab League at the time, Azzam Pasha, announced would be "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian Massacres and the Crusades," and now the Arabs want an apology? Unbelievable.

Recent Years: An article in today's New York Times about the League of Women Voters reports, "In recent years, as women became a larger percentage of the voting population, the national and state offices of the League of Women Voters stepped up their political profiles." What is the Times talking about? Women are about half the population, voting or otherwise, and they have had the absolute right to vote in America since the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1920. If there has indeed been a recent increase in women as a percentage of the voting population, it is probably a more interesting story than are the goings on at the local chapter of the League of Women Voters.

Willing to Compromise: A photo cutline that runs in today's New York Times along with the long article on President Clinton's record says, "After Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, their leadership, including Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Senator Trent Lott and Representative Dick Armey, found that President Clinton was willing to compromise." Mr. Hastert was only part of the Republican leadership that gained control in 1994 by an extremely expansive definition of the word leadership; he only became speaker of the House in January of 1999. And the Republicans who took over in 1994 hardly found Mr. Clinton "willing to compromise." Mr. Clinton was so unwilling to compromise that he forced a shutdown of the entire government.

Lost in L.A.: The national section of today's New York Times has a photo and brief item about a fire in Thousand Oaks, Calif. "West of Los Angeles, firefighters were at work early in Thousand Oaks, where a desert wind with gusts up to 20 miles an hour drove a 600-acre wildfire within 100 feet of luxury homes," the Times reports. While, in some technical sense, Thousand Oaks may be situated to the west of parts of Los Angeles, it would be extremely rare for anyone who lives there to think or speak of it that way. West of Los Angeles is Santa Monica; Thousand Oaks is north of Los Angeles.

A front-page dispatch in today's New York Times reports on low morale in the New York Police Department. The article quotes one officer as saying "Every day in the papers, people were bashing the cops. It became very hard to do your job." The article goes on to report that "Reporters undermined public support for police," officers say, "by portraying isolated incidents of brutality as the norm."

Well, they got that right. Leave it to the Times to beat up on the cops, then write a long front-page article bemoaning the low morale in the police department.

The ringing conclusion to this article refers to "the sting of the last police contract, in which officers did not receive a raise in two of the pact's five years." The article quotes one officer as saying "to give us zeros, that was a slap in the face." The Times makes it sound like the double zeros were the fault of city officials who don't care about police morale. But that leaves out a huge aspect of the explanation for the double zeros. They were part of a pattern set by District Council 37, the large umbrella union of New York municipal employees. Some DC 37 leaders have since been indicted for stealing money from the union and for rigging the election that ratified double zeros for city employees. So the real "slap in the face" came not so much from a mayor who didn't care about his police officers, but from a corrupt union leadership.

Rampant Obesity: The Health and Fitness section of this morning's New York Times runs an article under the headline "Rampant Obesity, a Debilitating Reality for the Urban Poor." "Lower income minorities are at even greater risk, according to federal statistics," the article reports.

Remember, it was only two weeks ago, December 12, 2000, that the Times ran an article about an Urban Institute study purporting to show that "about one third of the women who are no longer on welfare say they have had to cut the size of meals in the past year because they did not have enough food, and about half report that either often, or sometimes, they do not have money for more food when it runs out."

There you have the Times view of American poverty in a nutshell. The poor are either starving themselves because they can't afford enough food, or they are so obese that their health is at risk. The common thread is that the poor are victims, never responsible for their own plight. In the case of the hungry, the Times article blamed welfare reform. In the case of the obese, the Times blames television broadcasts of "a continuing stream of commercials for candy, snacks and junk food." Also, the fact that "few stores nearby appear to have large stocks of fresh fruits and vegetables."

It's amazing how, according to the Times, television is to blame for both obesity and the eating disorders that make people too thin. Interspersed between all those junk food commercials, after all, are programs featuring extremely thin actresses.

Armed Policemen: An article on the front-page of today's New York Times about the Arab-Israeli negotiations reports that "The recent violence erupted in September after Mr. Sharon led a contingent of Jewish officials and armed policemen to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem." Does the metropolitan section of the Times make a habit of referring to New York's Finest as "armed policemen"? No, it's assumed that policemen are armed.

Does the national section of the Times make a point of mentioning that President Clinton is accompanied by "armed Secret Service agents"? No, it's assumed that when the president travels he will be accompanied by the appropriate security forces. So why the reference to Ariel Sharon's being accompanied by "armed policemen," other than to make the policemen and Mr. Sharon seem somehow menacing?

It's also amazing the way the headline in the Times frames the matter: "Clinton Presents a Broad New Plan for Mideast Peace." It would be just as fair to say "Clinton Presents a New Plan to Divide Jerusalem in Violation of American Law."

Race and the Florida Vote: An editorial in today's New York Times about "Race and the Florida Vote" says, "A higher percentage of black voters were required to use the cheaper, less efficient punch-card systems to register their choices, while whites tended to vote in more affluent districts with more reliable optical scanning systems." This reliability issue is a red herring. All the voting systems are reliable for voters who properly follow the instructions. The punch-card reading machines and optical scanners have no way of knowing what race the voters were. And an Orlando Sentinel examination of ballots in Lake County, which uses the optical scanning method, showed plenty of spoiled ballots there, many of them executed by voters who both filled in an oval next to a candidate's name and also wrote in the name of the same candidate on a write-in line.

In a Pickle: An article in the Times metro section today reports on Jewish-themed walking tours of the Lower East Side, a popular Christmas activity. The article refers to "where to find the best pickles (Gus's on Essex, of course)." Guss of pickle fame spells it like that. The extra "s" is for sour.

The lead, front-page story in today's New York Times runs under the headline "Worker Shortage in Health Fields Worst in Decades; Threat to Patients Seen; State's Nursing Homes, Private Agencies and Hospitals Lose Out to Other Employers."

Smartertimes.com isn't going to go so far as to call this story entirely bogus, but something doesn't quite add up. Read further into the story about the supposed "worker shortage" and the Times tells us that turnover among home health aides "is climbing, executives say, because there is not enough work to go around, and some are leaving the profession altogether, for jobs like being a clerk in the retail industry."

Well, hold on. Workers leaving an occupation "because there is not enough work to go around," doesn't quite seem like the sort of example the Times would want to back up a lead, front-page headline about a "worker shortage." That's a work shortage, not a worker shortage.

The "worker shortage" headline is also contradicted by a dispatch that ran yesterday in the city section of the Times. That dispatch reports on the closing of a day care center in Coney Island, Brooklyn, that had been run by Metropolitan Jewish Health System. That city section article paraphrased a vice president of the health system as saying that the health system opened the day care center "about eight years ago, hoping to attract parents to work at the nursing home across the street, which Metropolitan also owns and which had a shortage of nurses. Metropolitan cannot afford to run the center anymore, she said. There is no longer a staff shortage at the nursing home."

While the Times headline reports that the "worker shortage" is the "worst in decades," if the Times city section dispatch from yesterday is to be believed, the worker shortage was worse eight years ago, at least for one nursing home in Coney Island.

The lead article in the Sunday Styles section of today's New York Times speculates about what the social scene in Washington, D.C., will be like in the new administration. It's painfully obvious from the story that the Times is lost in D.C.

To start with, there's the anachronistic reference to "the Jockey Club at the Ritz-Carlton." "Every four years," The Times reports, two Washington socialites "give a pre-Inaugural party at the Jockey Club in the Ritz-Carlton, and everybody who is anybody is invited."

Well, "everybody who is anybody" would know that, a few years ago, the Ritz-Carlton name came off the hotel that houses the Jockey Club. The hotel that houses the Jockey Club restaurant is now known as the Westin Fairfax, and there's a new Ritz-Carlton over in Washington's West End neighborhood.

The article goes on to refer to "Georgette Mosbacher, the New York businesswoman who spent much of the 1980's in Washington, when she was married to Robert Mosbacher, commerce secretary under Ronald Reagan." This is incorrect. Mr. Mosbacher was commerce secretary from 1989 to 1992, during the Bush administration. President Reagan's commerce secretaries were Malcolm Baldridge and C. William Verity.

Finally, the article refers to President-elect Bush's decision to stay at "the plain old Madison Hotel on 15th Street." The Madison isn't particularly old, as Washington hotels go. It opened in 1963. And it's hardly plain. It's a four-star hotel. Smartertimes.com was lucky enough to stay there the other night and the room had two televisions, three telephones (with two lines), a bathrobe, an umbrella, a heated towel rack, a bidet and Godiva chocolates on the pillows. The New York Times makes it sound like George W. checked into a Motel 6.

Minimum Wage: The "Economic View" column in the business section of today's New York Times reports that "Even stingy employers no longer balk at paying a minimum wage stuck at only $5.15 an hour, the present level." Oh? Maybe the Economic View columnist should check out the city section of today's New York Times, which carries a dispatch that runs under the headline "Union Calls for Boycott of 3 Delis, Saying Workers Are Exploited." The city section article reports that at one of the delis, "One clerk, an immigrant from Mexico who insisted on anonymity, said he earns $2.50 an hour, was working nearly 70 hours a week and not paid for sick days, holidays or overtime." Or maybe the city section reporter should check out the Economic View column. Smartertimes.com is all for having a diversity of views in the newspaper, but these two reports seem to offer not divergent opinions but conflicting descriptions of reality.

Attention Paid: The Metro Section of today's New York Times carries a news article about how little attention has been paid to the conviction of a brutal serial murderer and rapist. The article runs under the headline "Families of Victims Question Attention Paid to Killings." It reports on complaints that the crimes garnered less press attention because the victims were black and Hispanic residents of Harlem. What if one of those victims, the article asks rhetorically, "had been a young woman from Texas smashed in the head with a brick in Midtown Manhattan?"

Well, the Times answers that question today with its decisions on story placement. The article headlined "Families of Victims Question Attention Paid to Killings" runs inside the metro section. In the more prominent display spot, on the front of the section, is, sure enough, an interview with the white Texas woman who was hit with a brick.

The national section of today's New York Times carries a series of quotes from Senator Ashcroft under the headline "Ashcroft on the Issues." Under the subheading "On Abortion," the Times carries the following quote from Mr. Ashcroft, which the Times attributes to the St. Louis "Post Dispatch" of April 30, 1999: "The American people and a substantial majority of their elected representatives in Congress want to eliminate this gruesome procedure from our nation's hospitals and clinics. This procedure is never necessary to save the life and preserve the health of the unborn child's mother. No issue cuts to the core of our values as a people like the issue of abortion."

Go look at the April 30, 1999, St. Louis Post-Dispatch article (The Times omits the hyphen in the newspaper's name), and it becomes clear immediately that Mr. Ashcroft wasn't talking about abortion in general, but about a relatively rare and, indeed, gruesome, late-term procedure known as partial-birth abortion. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch article ran under the headline "Ashcroft Co-Sponsors Bill to Ban 'Partial Birth' Abortion Nationwide." The Post Dispatch article reported that even the American Medical Association, which traditionally opposes restrictions on abortion, endorsed a ban on partial-birth abortions.

It's irresponsible of the Times to make it look as if Mr. Ashcroft was speaking of all abortions when he was in fact speaking only of a specific kind of abortion. It's also strange that the Times took the Ashcroft quotes from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch rather than directly from his remarks on the Senate floor on April 29, 1999. It is those remarks that the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was quoting from. They are part of the Congressional Record, and they are easily accessible through electronic databases. And those remarks make clear how the senator's view on partial-birth abortion fits into his overall approach to the question of abortion rights. He said, "I realize, however, that not everyone agrees with my view on abortion. Indeed, I recognize that the American people remain deeply divided on this issue. But where there is common ground, we need to move forward and protect life."

One wonders how the New York Times found this St. Louis Post-Dispatch article, classified it as referring to all abortion rather than simply the partial-birth procedure, and at the same time disregarded Mr. Ashcroft's Senate speech. One might suspect the New York Times was spoon-fed the Ashcroft quote by some pro-abortion-rights group with an interest in borking President-elect Bush's nominee for the job of attorney general. Smartertimes.com would never suggest, however, that the Times would make such a journalistic error as accepting that kind of information from an advocacy group and passing it on to readers without labeling its source or independently checking it. It must have been just a case of innocent carelessness.