In a story in the national section today that is flagged with a front-page summary, the New York Times today reports on an interview that President Clinton granted to Rolling Stone magazine. The Times reports that, in the interview, Mr. Clinton blames the Republicans for outmaneuvering him on the issue of gays in the military.

"The Republicans 'didn't want me to have a honeymoon' in his first days in office, Mr. Clinton said, and so forced the issue of his campaign promise to allow gays to serve openly, knowing they had the votes in Congress to defeat it," the Times reports.

This is just ridiculous. It's not the Republicans in Congress who forced the issue of gays in the military; it was Mr. Clinton, his aides and gay Democrats in Congress. Consider an Associated Press dispatch that appeared on January 21, 1993 -- Mr. Clinton's first full day in office. The dispatch began, "President Clinton will act quickly to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military, ordering the Pentagon to stop asking recruits about their sexual orientation or discharging members of the armed services found to be gay, a congressman said today."

Who is this "congressman"? Was it a Republican eager to deny Mr. Clinton a honeymoon? No, it was a liberal, openly gay Massachusetts Democrat, Rep. Barney Frank, who told the AP, "Immediately, the policy of kicking people out of the military because they're gay will be out."

The AP story also quoted another source -- not a congressional Republican but Mr. Clinton's own White House press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, who said, "The president has said he will end discrimination against gays in the military and we'll announce the policy on that within a week."

It would have been a better article in the Times if, rather than simply parroting Mr. Clinton's strange recollection of events, the newspaper had provided its readers with some context with which to judge the accuracy of Mr. Clinton's recollections. The Times article also fails to note that the journalist who conducted the interview with Mr. Clinton for Rolling Stone, Jann Wenner, is a major donor to Democratic Party candidates and committees.

A Sound Conscience: An editorial in today's New York Times says that by disclosing on the Internet the provenance of paintings, art museums will gain "clear title to a sound conscience." It's just galling to see the Times pontificate on the topic of how art museums can have a "sound conscience" on the matter of art stolen by the Nazis. After all, the Times' former publisher, Arthur O. Sulzberger, when he was chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sent the district attorney of New York County a "Dear Bob. . .Sincerely, Punch" letter complaining that the Metropolitan's board, staff, donors and lenders were all "deeply disturbed" by the D.A.'s efforts to prevent two allegedly looted Egon Schiele paintings from being returned to Austria by the Museum of Modern Art. A "sound conscience," indeed.

We Print, You Decide: The New York Times today prints two different versions of a quote from a Florida state representative, Lois Frankel. In the lead front-page news article, she is quoted as saying of a Republican proclamation, "the only thing missing on the proclamation is the postmark from Austin, Tex." An article in the national section quotes her as saying, "The only thing missing from the proclamation today was a postmark from Austin, Tex." In the second version of the quote, the word "on" becomes "from," the word "today" is introduced, the word "is" becomes "was," and the word "the" becomes "a." If it was the Times that introduced these variations, the newspaper should be thanked; without the changes, readers might be bored by the redundancy.

In its lead editorial today, the New York Times is unusually critical of Vice President Gore in connection with Mr. Gore's stance on two lawsuits that seek to throw out absentee votes in Florida's Seminole and Martin counties. The Times says that Mr. Gore's "refusal to forcefully call on his local supporters to drop the suit, or to rule out benefiting from its outcome, represents a failure of statesmanship on his part."

Whoa. Smartertimes.com doesn't think very much of the merit of these lawsuits, and Smartertimes.com thinks Mr. Gore should have conceded the election long ago. But last we checked, this is still a country where there is rule of law. And if the law, as interpreted by the Florida and federal courts, says those absentee ballots in Seminole and Martin should be thrown out, then how does it qualify as "statesmanship" for Mr. Gore to refuse to benefit from the result dictated by the law?

The Times definition of statesmanship seems to be allowing as many votes as possible to count, no matter what the law says. So you haven't seen the Times, in an editorial, urging Mr. Gore to renounce the votes cast for him in Florida by convicted felons, who, under Florida law, are not ordinarily allowed to vote. That would be statesmanlike, but the Times wants to count as many votes as possible. You would never see the Times urging Mr. Gore to renounce winning the election on the basis of "dimpled chads." That would be statesmanlike, but the Times wants to count as many votes as possible.

Remember, it isn't Mr. Gore himself who is seeking to throw out those votes in Martin and Seminole counties, it is his supporters. They probably don't have much of a case. But if the Florida and federal courts decide that they do, it wouldn't be "statesmanship" by Mr. Gore to arrogate to himself the power to overrule those courts and award the election to George W. Bush; it would be stupidity.

St. Albans: The "Liberties" column on the New York Times op-ed page today refers to Mr. Gore's high school as "St. Alban's." The school spells it St. Albans, with no apostrophe.

Mrs. Clinton's "Beanie": A headline on the front of the metro section of today's New York Times about Senator-elect Hillary Clinton's activities on Capitol Hill says, "Beanie in Place, Mrs. Clinton Starts Freshman Orientation." An inside headline reports, "Beanie On, Mrs. Clinton Starts Her Orientation." What's with the beanie references? Mrs. Clinton appears bareheaded in the front-page photograph. The reference to beanies once worn by college freshmen has worn pretty thin. Anyway, she's a senator from New York; if she were wearing that sort of headgear, it wouldn't be a beanie, but a yarmulke.

Wrong Name: An article in the metro section of today's Times about a high school football player charged with third-degree assault for his on-the-field conduct names the player throughout the story as Robert Mammone. All of a sudden, at one point in the story, his last name morphs into "Mamdoes."

Wrong Place: An article in the metro section of today's Times quotes a critic of the New York City schools chancellor, Harold Levy, referring to Mr. Levy as "this appointed hack in Manhattan." As the Times well knows, Mr. Levy operates not from Manhattan but from the Board of Education headquarters in downtown Brooklyn. It's strange for the paper to let this quote pass without comment.

A dispatch from Los Angeles in the national section of today's New York Times runs under the headline "Concern Rising Over Use of Juvenile Prisons to 'Warehouse' the Mentally Ill." The article, complete with a touching photograph of a young woman lawyer clutching a client's teddy bear, speaks of "the plight of an increasing number of young people suffering from mental illness or mental retardation or both, who, because of cutbacks in the mental health system and reduced mental health coverage by insurance companies, are falling into the juvenile justice system."

The article quotes one estimate that "50 percent to 75 percent of teenagers in the juvenile justice system nationwide have a diagnosable mental disorder."

And the article says the trend is "alarming," quoting a judge bemoaning the fact that America is "criminalizing mental illness."

Well, maybe. Mental illness is a real thing, and the story of "Sheila M.," the 16-year-old represented by the teddy-bear toting lawyer, is genuinely sad. But blaming juvenile delinquency on "cutbacks in the mental health system" and "reduced mental health coverage by insurance companies" is a classic example of how the Times coverage of crime finds every possible excuse to excuse criminals from responsibility for their own behavior. There are plenty of mentally ill -- or, as the Times puts it at one point, "emotionally troubled" --persons who do not commit crimes. And there are plenty of criminals, who, despite the best wishes of the Times and their defense lawyers to make it appear otherwise, are not mentally ill.

Some of what the Times describes is not "criminalizing mental illness," but "medicalizing crime." It has the consequence of excusing criminal behavior that should not be excused.

Can't Count: A front-page story from Washington in today's New York Times refers to the U.S. Supreme Court's "six-page opinion" in the Florida election case. The opinion was seven pages long. The first page is numbered with a "1." The last page, which is not entirely full, is numbered with a "7."

We Print, You Decide: The New York Times this morning offers readers two choices of a quote from a lawyer for George W. Bush, Barry Richard. A front-page Times article quotes Mr. Richard as saying, "Judge Sauls got every point, even one I didn't think of." An article inside the national section quotes Mr. Richard as saying, "Judge Sauls hit every point. He even got one that I didn't think of." The difference doesn't affect the meaning, so maybe the Times should be thanked for injecting a little variety into its readers' mornings. Putting in the same quote twice in exactly the same way might risk redundancy.

Late Again: The Times metro section today carries a story about Online Journalism Awards that were announced Friday by Columbia University. If the Times really thinks these awards are worth covering at all, why does it take the paper until Tuesday to print an article about an event that happened on Friday?

What is it with the New York Times that it can't spell names correctly? The lead front-page news story in today's Times refers to "Benjamin L. Ginsberg, Mr. Bush's general counsel." A "reporter's notebook" column that appears inside the national section of today's Times refers to "Ben Ginsburg, a lawyer for Mr. Bush," and makes a second reference to "Mr. Ginsburg." The Bush campaign Web site goes with Ginsberg, with an "e," not a "u."

Readers of yesterday's Smartertimes.com will recall that the Times made a similar error yesterday, referring to a lawyer for Vice President Gore once as "Stephen Zack" and elsewhere as "Steve Zach."

This is the sort of carelessness that would annoy readers of a small-town weekly or a high-school newspaper. But the Times, which fancies itself the world's greatest newspaper and which employs scads of highly paid copy editors, seems unable to root out these errors, even after the newspaper's executive editor made a speech at a staff retreat emphasizing the need to fix the name-spelling problem. No one is expecting the editors at the New York Times to know off the top of their heads how to spell these lawyers' names; all they have to be able to do is notice that the names are spelled two different ways in the same day's newspaper. That's a task that even a machine could handle.

"Ladles" Who Lunch: The "Writers on Writing" column in the arts section of today's New York Times says that William Faulkner "famously claimed that if he had to rob his mother, he would not hesitate, and that 'the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is worth any number of old ladles.'"

The Times column goes on to say, "We might wonder today if it is worth any number of young men, but let's not."

"Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" renders the Faulkner quote as referring to "old ladies," not, as the Times has it, old "ladles." Which makes the next line about young men make more sense. As Smartertimes.com reader Bill Schweber pointed out in an email this morning, with "ladles," it's incomprehensible.

The lead article in the Arts & Leisure section of this morning's New York Times is a harsh critique of art museums. Singled out for particular derision is the Guggenheim in New York.

The Times writes that "This fall has brought the spectacle of a major New York museum acting like the world's longest store window. That would be the Guggenheim, with its overproduced, undercurated 'Armani' exhibition spiraling down the ramp. Although the show was sponsored by In Style magazine, it coincides with a reported $15 million donation -- read rental fee -- from Mr. Armani, a gift that the museum claims is completely unrelated."

The Arts & Leisure article is interesting in the context of a November 29 Times editorial on the plans for a new, $678 million Guggenheim museum along the Manhattan waterfront south of the Brooklyn Bridge. That editorial praised the "enormous" "symbolic value" of Mayor Giuliani's endorsement of the plan, which includes more than $60 million in funding for the museum by the city's taxpayers.

One bad exhibit may or may not be a reason to pull a museum's taxpayer funding. But if, as the Times Arts & Leisure article asserts, the Guggenheim is indeed acting as "the world's longest store window," then the city's mayor and taxpayers -- and the Times editorial writers -- may want to reconsider whether, at a moment when there are many other pressing needs, it makes sense to grant that "store window" a taxpayer subsidy of more than $60 million.

Impersonation: An article in today's New York Times magazine about corporate espionage is co-authored by one Marc Barry. The article reports that Mr. Barry "phoned the Sussex Chamber of Commerce and posed as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal." This raises some interesting questions of journalistic ethics. How, we wonder, would the editors at the New York Times feel if a paid writer for the Wall Street Journal had gone out and "posed" as a reporter for the New York Times. They would probably be miffed, and they would be justified. (Disclosure: The editor of Smartertimes.com is a part-time freelance contributor to a web site of the Wall Street Journal.)

Wrong Name: What is it about the New York Times that it can't spell names correctly? Today's example comes in coverage of the legal proceedings in Tallahassee, Fla., stemming from Vice President Gore's challenge to the results of the election in Florida. A news article about the matter refers to "Stephen Zack, a lawyer for Mr. Gore." A photo cutline on the same page refers to "Steve Zach, left, a lawyer for Vice President Al Gore." Which is it, "Stephen Zack" or "Steve Zach"? Rather than figuring it out before publishing the newspaper, the Times editors print both names and leave it up to the readers to decide.

An article in the metro section of today's New York Times discusses the lives of the students at St. Thomas Choir School, "one of the few residential all-boy chorister training schools in the country." The article reports that "for all their ties to Anglican tradition, the school's 41 students are still 21st-century children who read 'Lord of the Flies,' study fluid dynamics, work on computers and, as everywhere, tend toward high spirits."

"Lord of the Flies" was published in 1954. Archimedes, a pioneer in the study of fluid dynamics, is thought to have lived from 298 to 212 BCE. This is evidence that these are "21st-century children"?

Wrong Spelling: What is it with the New York Times that it can't spell names correctly? The Times today reprints an Associated Press dispatch about a Miami Herald report that "at least 445 Florida felons voted illegally on Nov. 7." The AP article quotes the Democratic Party chairman in Palm Beach County, "Monty Friedkin," reacting to the news. Mr. Friedkin in fact spells his first name Monte, with an "e," not a "y."

Late Again: Two of the stories on the front of the metro section of today's New York Times are old news to readers of the city's tabloids. One article discusses the possibility that Bill Clinton will run for mayor of New York City, a possibility that has already been thoroughly aired by the New York Post. Another article reports on plans for a new New York subway line to be known as the V train. That plan was reported earlier by the Daily News. The Times is generous enough to credit both tabloids for breaking the ground on these stories, but the situation sort of makes a reader wonder why the Times, a more prestigious paper with more resources, is so often a day or two behind the tabloids on local news stories.

We already know the New York Times can't spell. Today, the newspaper demonstrates it can't add.

The lead story on today's Times front page refers in its second paragraph to "the 1.16 million" ballots "that began arriving by truck in the state capital this afternoon." Later on, the article refers to the Republicans persuading a judge "to order all 1.16 million ballots" to be brought to Tallahassee from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties.

But the same article refers to "463,000" Palm Beach County ballots and "654,000" Miami-Dade ballots. 463,000 plus 654,000 equals 1,117,000. That's 1.117 million, not, as the Times would have it, "1.16 million." (Note also that, without any explanation, the Times has added 1,000 ballots to its count of those in Palm Beach County; yesterday's Times article put the number at 462,000.)

A Times graphic today is more exact about the Palm Beach and Miami-Dade vote totals, claiming there were 654,044 votes cast in Miami-Dade County and 462,888 votes cast in Palm Beach County. 654,044 plus 462,888 equals 1,116,932. Again, that is not the same as "1.16 million." If you wanted to round it off to three places, you could call it 1.12 million. This isn't calculus; it's basic, elementary math.

If this complaint sounds familiar, you are right; the Times made the same error yesterday, and Smartertimes.com pointed it out yesterday, too. What's more, today's error occurs in the article that runs in the top right-hand corner of the front page -- the most prominent lead position in the whole paper. You would think some pretty important editors over at the Times would read the story that goes in that position pretty carefully before it goes into the paper. Those editors don't seem to have read and understood yesterday's Smartertimes.com, which said, "1.116 million is not the same as 1.16 million." If the Times editors had read and understood yesterday's Smartertimes.com, maybe they would not have repeated the math error again today.

A dispatch from Washington in the "Counting the Vote" section of this morning's New York Times runs under the headline, "What the House and Senate Could Do, or Not Do, in Picking the President." Discussing the prospect that the presidential election will be decided by Congress, the article says, "In the temper of the times, it is quite likely that no one in Congress will break party ranks." Later on the article says, "Whatever the Constitution, whatever the law and whatever the logic, the prevailing view around Congress is that this kind of dispute would be dealt with in purely partisan terms -- the Republicans backing Mr. Bush and the Democrats Mr. Gore. That is simply how Congress operates these days."

Readers should beware when they read vague phrases like "it is quite likely" and "the prevailing view around Congress." In this case, the "quite likely" scenario offered up by this Times story is flat-out contradicted by another article in today's Times. That article reports that George W. Bush "had called Representative Gene Taylor of Mississippi, a Democrat who was quoted in news reports as saying that if the election were thrown to the House, he would support Mr. Bush." In addition, an article in yesterday's New York Post reported that Rep. Connie Morella, a Republican from Maryland, would support Gore if the election were thrown to the House.

So, far from it being "quite likely that no one in Congress will break party ranks," two members of Congress have already announced their intention to break party ranks. One of those cases was mentioned in another article in today's New York Times. As Smartertimes.com has wondered before, does anyone read all these articles before they go in the paper to try to make sure they don't contradict each other?

Math Problem: A news article on the front page of this morning's New York Times reports on an order by a Florida judge to move to Tallahassee every ballot cast in Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties. The article first refers to "1.1 million ballots," and it does so again later in the story. At another point, however, it refers to 462,000 Palm Beach County ballots and 654,000 Miami-Dade County Ballots. And at another point, the article refers to "all 1.16 million ballots." If the totals for the two individual counties are correct, they add up to 1,116,000. If the Times wants to round this off to 1.1 million, it's a little bit lax for Smartertimes.com's taste, but we wouldn't complain about it. But 1.116 million is not the same as 1.16 million. To refer, as the Times does, to "1.16 million ballots" mysteriously introduces another 44,000 ballots in an election where the margin of victory is in the hundreds.

Note: Smartertimes.com is in Washington this morning and operating off the Washington Final edition.

What is it with the New York Times that it can't get names right? Today's glaring error comes in the lead, front-page story about action in the Florida Legislature. The article reports that one of the legislature's legal experts "acknowledged the political risks of a special session in a Nov. 25 op-ed article in The New York Times." The news article goes on to quote from that Nov. 25 op-ed article and to attribute the quote to "Robert Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley." Professor Yoo, in fact, is named John C. Yoo, as the Times might realize if it checked the byline of that November 25 op-ed piece. He's a relatively well-known law professor. It's just mind-boggling that the Times editors can't get Mr. Yoo's first name right in a Times news story when quoting from an op-ed piece that Mr. Yoo himself wrote a few days before in their own newspaper.

'Givson, Dunn': Another article in today's Times about the election-related legal maneuvering reports on the briefs filed in the U.S. Supreme Court. The Times article reports that "The Bush brief was signed by 14 lawyers led by Theodore B. Olson of Givson, Dunn & Crutcher." The law firm's name is Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, not "Givson." With a "b," not a "v."

Disparate Impact: The New York Times takes victimology to new levels today, applying the troubling legal doctrine of "disparate impact" to punch-card ballots and gym classes. An article in the national section runs under the headline, "Racial Pattern in Demographics of Error-Prone Ballots." The first paragraph of the story reports that in Florida, "the majority of the state's black voters, Vice President Al Gore's most reliable voters, stalwart supporters, cast their ballots on punch cards that are more prone to voter error and miscounts." Never mind the redundancy of "reliable voters, stalwart supporters." It turns out, if you read further in the story, that the majority of white voters also live in counties that use punch-card ballots. The Times manufactures a civil rights violation out of the fact that slightly more blacks live in those punch-card counties than an even distribution of blacks across the state would dictate. The newspaper paraphrases a history professor as saying the racial variations "could violate federal law, even if the variations were not intentional or politically motivated."

The logical extension of this reasoning can be seen in the "Lessons" column on the Times education page. The column is about a decline in the number of schools requiring students to take daily physical education classes. The article also reports that more schools are installing vending machines that sell candy, salty snacks and soda. "Such trends hurt minority pupils the most," the Times claims. "Black and Hispanic youths have the lowest rates of participation in physical activity, both inside and outside the school, contributing to a disparity in obesity: while 24 percent of white adolescents are obese, the rate is 31 percent for blacks and 30 percent for Hispanics. This places minority children most at risk for health problems when they become adults, with higher death rates from inactivity."

There you have it, according to the Times: using punch-card ballots discriminates against blacks. Discontinuing gym classes and installing vending machines in schools discriminates against not only blacks but also Hispanics. Combine the trends and you could end up with a novel legal theory that, under the Voting Rights Act, would allow dead blacks to vote for Al Gore as president; after all, if it weren't for the discriminatory discontinuation of gym classes, they might still be healthy enough to be alive and voting. And, as the Times expert in the punch-card ballot reminds us, "If minorities have less of an opportunity to participate fully in the process, that's a direct violation of the Voting Rights Act."

What is it with the New York Times that it can't spell names correctly? Today's error comes in a story on the front of the metro section about an effort to develop part of the Queens waterfront. The Times refers to the chief executive of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center as "Harold Varmis." The correct spelling of the name is "Varmus," and it's hardly obscure -- the man has a Nobel Prize and was director of the National Institutes of Health before coming to Sloan-Kettering.

The Death Tax in Action: Another article on the front of the metro section in today's Times reports on the impending sale of a house in Hyde Park, N.Y, that once belonged to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Times seems upset at the prospect that the house may be demolished, but you have to read down to the 24th paragraph of the article to figure out why the house is suddenly for sale. The current owner, the Times reports, "said he had to sell the mansion to settle his late brother's estate." Sure looks like a case of the death tax in action, but the Times skips over any details that would shed more light on the policy underlying the threat to the Roosevelt house. Of course, the Times in its editorials and news coverage about the death tax has stood athwart genuine relief.

The New York Times this morning kicks off its annual "Neediest Cases" campaign with an editorial and with an article on the front of the metro section. The editorial tells us, in a stroke of candor, that "the percentage of people living in poverty, nationwide" has dropped to the lowest percentage in 21 years.

This may account for the Times' decision to choose as the kickoff example of its "Neediest Cases" Pierre Blain. Mr. Blain is pictured in a photograph in today's Times in his apartment, posed in front of a television set with a screen larger than those found in many suburban multiplex movie theaters. It's really almost comical: this guy, with his large-screen TV, his telephone bill and his $193.12 electric bill, is the "neediest" case the Times can come up with? The Times photo cut-line tells us that Mr. Blain's television, "bought before he lost his feet, does not work." But still. Why did this guy buy a large-screen TV instead of health insurance? Why doesn't he try to sell the monster set to someone who can fix it?

The Times article further makes the claim that Mr. Blain "is part of a population of poor people that is expanding despite the continuing economic boom." This is just flat-out not true. The population of poor people in New York and in America is not expanding. Even the Times editorial acknowledges this, but the Times news story for some reason feels constrained to deny it.

The evidence the Times news article offers up for the supposed increase in poverty in New York is "a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington." That study, the Times says, shows that "the poverty rate for New York State increased to 16.6 percent in 1997-98, from 13 percent nine years earlier." The Times doesn't mention that the Economic Policy Institute is a left-wing, labor-backed think tank that supports bigger government and higher taxes. The Times doesn't explain why it is choosing to use statistics from 1997-98 rather than more recent statistics. It doesn't explain why it chooses to compare the current statistics with those of "nine years earlier," when America was at the peak of an economic boom that resulted from the economic policies of President Reagan. Why nine years earlier and not six years earlier or 70 years earlier or one year earlier? And the Times doesn't explain why it is relying on statistics from a cornball study by a left-wing think tank rather than those from the U.S. Census Bureau, which is in the business of estimating state and county poverty levels based on surveys, census data, income tax returns and information about food stamp recipients and Supplemental Security Income recipients.

If the Times had bothered to check that U.S. Census data, it would have found that in New York State, the most recent poverty statistic is a 15.7 percent poverty rate, which represents a three-year average from 1997 to 1999. That is down from the 16.6 percent poverty rate for New York State from 1996 to 1998. It is down from the 16.6 percent poverty rate in New York for 1995 to 1997. It is down from the 16.7 percent poverty rate in New York from 1994 to 1996. It is down from the 16.6 percent poverty rate in New York from 1993 to 1995. It is down from the 16.4 percent poverty rate in New York from 1992 to 1994. In other words, these rolling averages just plain contradict the notion that the Times news story is promoting, that the population of poor people is "expanding."

Another batch of U.S. Census estimates also undermines the claim made in the Times news story. These statistics estimate the number of poor persons in Mr. Blain's home borough of Brooklyn, N.Y., or, as the census bureau refers to it, Kings County. In 1997, the most recent year for which the census has estimates by county available on its web site, there were 605, 959 poor persons in Brooklyn. In 1995, there were 665,680. In 1993, there were 729,236. In other words, though the Times news story claims the "population of poor people" is "expanding," in Brooklyn alone there are about 125,000 fewer poor persons than there were in 1993.

Even those numbers vastly overstate the poverty level, because they count only monetary income before taxes and they exclude capital gains. By this measure, home equity is excluded, as is the earned income tax credit and the value of food stamps, federally subsidized public housing, Medicare, Medicaid and subsidized school lunches. A 1999 analysis by the census bureau that took into account the earned income tax credit and other means-tested government transfers decreased the number of persons below poverty level nationwide to 18.9 million from 28.9 million.

As a result, those in the poverty business have invented a new category called the "near poor." This allows them to claim, disingenuously, that the numbers of the poor and near poor are growing, when what is really happening is that poor people are getting jobs because of welfare reform and as a result are no longer poor. So, for instance, the New York Times article today quotes the chief executive of the UJA-Federation of New York, John Ruskay, as saying that "the number of New Yorkers living at or within 25 percent of the federal poverty level are growing at an alarming rate." Mr. Ruskay asks, dramatically, "Are we going to turn our backs on these people?"

No one wants to turn their backs on these people, but it does them no service to exaggerate their plight in a way that is unsupported by the facts. There's nothing alarming about the decline in the number of the poor that New York has seen recently because of the strong economy and because of welfare reform and even, to give credit where credit is due, because of some of the job-training and rehabilitation programs supported by the Times Neediest Cases Fund and its beneficiary agencies. If there has been an increase in the number of those "within 25 percent of the federal poverty level," it is likely the result of those who have climbed out of poverty because they have gotten jobs. That's not "alarming"; it's encouraging.

In addition to the strange choice of Mr. Big-Screen TV as the "neediest" case and the unsupported claim that the ranks of the poor are "expanding," today's Neediest Cases news story also makes the claim that "The Times does not solicit contributions" to the Neediest Cases fund. The same issue has a graphic stating "Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to P.O. Box. . ." and an editorial saying, "Your contributions, which are deductible on federal, state and city income taxes to the extent permitted by law, are warmly encouraged and appreciated." If this doesn't constitute a solicitation, what does?

Dog Days: The Times magazine today prints in its "Lives" column an article with the subheadline, "As a kid, I swindled unsuspecting pet owners on the Upper East Side. I have no regrets." It's a classic example of the Times view of race, class and crime in New York, and of everything that is wrong with that view.

The Arts & Ideas section of the New York Times today features a headline, "Rethinking Negotiation With Hitler." Really, that's the headline. The debate over Winston Churchill, the Time tells us, is "part of another, wider and even more acrimonious one among British historians and political figures: Should Churchill have negotiated a compromise peace with Germany?" The article suggests at one point that "the idea of an armed truce with Germany" carries a "moral odium," but this is mentioned in passing, almost as an afterthought, amid a serious, straight-faced discussion of the virtues of appeasement. When Patrick Buchanan makes arguments like this in books he is denounced, as he should be. When the New York Times does, though, hardly anyone seems to bat an eylash. Remember, this follows the November 12 New York Times article on fascist chic in the fashion world. That article asserted that "the ponderous style identified with tyranny retains an allure," and it quoted another fashion authority as saying, "Fascism -- I hate to say it, but it's sexy."

Shopping in Albuquerque: The New York Times business section today features a big display article on the Christmas shopping rush that began yesterday. The article begins with a scene from that famous Christmas shopping destination, Albuquerque. The article proceeds to discuss the crowds at a Target store in Houston, a factory outlet mall in Gurney, Ill., and a mall in Columbus, Ohio. Finally, in the 15th paragraph, the Times gets around to mentioning New York City. Well, Smartertimes.com has nothing against Albuquerque. The one time the editor of Smartertimes.com visited there, he had a perfectly pleasant stay. But it says something about the Times' priorities, and the way it puts its national audience ahead of its New York readers, that the newspaper based in the shopping capital of America, Manhattan, chooses to basically ignore its local readers and advertisers and shoppers and instead focus on Albuquerque.

Sophomoric: An article on the front of the metro section of today's Times runs under the headline, "On a Student Field Trip, With the Planet at Stake." The story tags along with a sophomore at Hunter College who apparently believes, as, apparently, does the Times, that "the fate of the planet was at stake," depending on whether America signs onto a flaky environmental treaty known as the Kyoto Protocol. If America signs onto the treaty, as the sophomore and the Times want it to do, the planet will apparently be saved. The Times describes one of the student environmentalists presenting an award to two Republican senators who opposed the treaty. "The award was five Barbie dolls buried upside down in a box of sand." The Times also describes a graduate student arguing with a Republican congressman, James Sensenbrenner Jr. In the entire extremely lengthy Times story, the Republicans are never given a chance to explain why they oppose the treaty. Readers are left to assume that they favor the destruction of the planet.

The metro section of today's New York Times carries a story about the death of a plan to reshape the city's skyline. The article runs under the headline, "Plan to Revise Zoning Laws Seems to Face an Early Death." Because the headline contains the phrase "Revise Zoning Laws," very few persons are likely actually to read the article, because the phrase "revise laws" suggests an incremental governmental process, which readers are bored by, and because the word "zoning" also bores readers. But if you read past the headline to the actual article, you get a sense of the importance of what's at stake -- the future of the built environment in New York City. That makes this a story worthy of front-page treatment, much more so than the tired tale of another failed dot-com company in North Carolina or the third story of the day about Florida chads.

The Times news report conveys some of the issues underlying the city's plan to reshape the skyline. The plan would impose more height limits while cutting back on the awful, bare, windswept urban plazas that are a feature of the "tower in a park" model dictated by the city's current building regulations. The news report favors the plan and complains that it was killed by politically powerful developers. The news report says the plan "began with so much promise" and "won early endorsements from community boards, good-government groups and newspaper editorial boards. They all favored overhauling the convoluted regulations that they said allowed developers to erect oversized towers and austere plazas that robbed neighborhoods of street life and resulted in chaos."

What the Times news article does not mention is that the plan got a scathing review from the Times' own architecture critic, who on May 14, 2000, wrote that the plan's "cultural pretensions" were "ludicrous" and that "city planning has reheated stale ideas and proposes to pass them into law." The architecture critic went so far as to question the motives of the public servant who proposed the new plan, writing, "With only two years remaining in his term as planning chairman, Joseph B. Rose wants to be remembered for doing Something. The Something could just as easily be Something Else. It happens to be this."

Smartertimes.com isn't a particularly big fan of height limits. Such limits are one of the reasons that downtown Washington D.C. is as grim as it is. Smartertimes.com isn't a particularly big fan of bleak, windswept urban plazas, either, or of government regulations telling private property owners how big to build and on what sort of footprint. But regardless of your views on city planning, it does seem a bit disingenuous of the Times to fetch up with a news story blaming politically "powerful developers" for killing a promising plan backed by newspaper editorialists and good-government groups -- while neglecting to mention that the Times' own architecture critic was among the plan's most dyspeptic opponents.

The New York Times today launches on the front of its metro section its 89th annual appeal for its Neediest Cases Fund. The article says the appeal will begin on Sunday, but in fact the appeal effectively begins today with the article on the metro front and with a box inside the metro section telling readers where they can send their donation checks.

On the surface, the Neediest Cases Fund sounds like a wonderful idea -- a newspaper rolling up its sleeves and doing something to help the poorest of the poor during the holiday season. What could be wrong with that?

Well, the best explanation came from Heather Mac Donald, in a wonderful article she wrote in City Journal a few years ago about the Times Neediest Cases Fund. The article is available on the Internet by clicking here, and it is worth taking some time to sit down and read in full. Ms. Mac Donald traces how the Times fund began as an appeal on behalf of the deserving poor and has been transformed into "an agnostic regarding individual responsibility and a strident advocate of the welfare state."

She writes: "The Neediest Cases Fund still accomplishes wonderful things: it rehabilitates the disabled, sends handicapped children to camp, and buys glasses for nearly blind widows. But its unwillingness to render judgment on self-destructive behavior is part of a moral climate that has done real and lasting harm to the poor. Elite opinion contributed to the creation of today's underclass and must take some responsibility for reforming it. It is not enough to change welfare programs, to let responsibilities devolve to states and localities, to emphasize work over entitlement. We must once again start to draw moral distinctions in our public discourse -- to praise virtue and blame vice. In this all-important task of cultural renewal, the Times continues to stand squarely in the way, stubbornly clinging to the destructive views it has done so much to disseminate."

For a case in point, check out today's Neediest Cases Fund story, which focuses on Randy Dillard, a father of five. The Times gives the ages of all of Mr. Dillard's children, but it doesn't tell readers how old Mr. Dillard is. In the photograph that runs alongside the story, he looks pretty young to be a father of five. The Times tells us that "Mr. Dillard and his wife separated for the last time in 1996." But the Times also tells us that Mr. Dillard's youngest child is 3 years old. Who is this child's mother, and why isn't the mother taking care of the child so that Mr. Dillard can be out working and supporting the family on his own instead of relying on taxpayers and generous New York Times readers?

An earlier Neediest Cases story about Mr. Dillard that ran on December 19, 1999 reported that he had stopped working in 1994, exhausted his savings in about a year, and then gone on "public assistance," which is the Times' fancy term for welfare. So, this guy has been on welfare since 1995, and he has a 3-year-old child? The article quotes Mr. Dillard saying he is ready "to begin pursuing work again." Fine -- a nod to the work ethic. But hold on a minute. The Times attributes Mr. Dillard's new readiness to work to the fact that "the children have grown older." But might it have something to do with the five-year limit imposed on benefits under the 1996 federal welfare reform act, a welfare reform that the Times hysterically opposed?

The Times tells us that those welfare payments to Mr. Dillard total $981 a month: "His income, he said, is barely enough for food, rent and clothing for the children."

In search of more information about Mr. Dillard -- about the mother, or mothers, of these children or about his age -- Smartertimes.com did a quick hunt through a New York Times online archival database. The 1999 Neediest Cases story came up, but it also didn't give Mr. Dillard's age or any information about the mother. The only other hit in the online archives came in a story from the Times metro section on July 1, 2000. The article, about the opening of a new, nine-screen multiplex "Magic Johnson Theaters" cinema in Harlem, quoted "Randy Dillard, an unemployed brick mason who has five young children." This is almost certainly the same man as the one in today's Neediest Cases article, which identifies Mr. Dillard as the father of five and as having "quit his job as a brick mason." The July 1 Times article quoted Mr. Dillard as complaining that ticket prices at the movie theater, $9.50, were "a little steep." It said that Mr. Dillard didn't expect to patronize the new theater "very often."

If Mr. Dillard wants to go to the movies "very often," or just "often" or even never, that is fine with Smartertimes.com. If he wants to have lots of children with mothers who don't stick around, that's fine too. If he wants to stay at home and take care of those children rather than working -- well, there's lots to be said for stay-at-home parenting, and if money were no object, lots more parents would probably choose that route. But Times readers and taxpayers might think about whether, even in the generous spirit of the holiday season, it makes sense to subsidize this sort of behavior.

An article in the "Counting the Vote" section in this morning's New York Times contains the following sentence describing Republican reaction to the decision by the Supreme Court of Florida to extend the vote-counting and relax the guidelines: "Some Bush advisers said they were surprised by the decision tonight -- and even suggested that it was tainted because the court was dominated by Democrats." The word "even" is a clear nudge from the Times to readers, a way of saying, "Gosh, can you believe those Republicans? Not only were they surprised, but they even stooped to smearing an honorable court as partisan." The sentence would be more fair without the word "even."

Beyond the fairness issue, though, there's a hypocrisy issue. The Democrats have spent the past several days attacking an honorable public servant, the secretary of state of Florida, Katherine Harris, as a partisan. Even the New York Times got into the act. A November 18 editorial in the New York Times referred to the "biased reasoning" of "Florida's partisan secretary of state," who, the Times noted, "is co-chairwoman of the Bush campaign in Florida." A Times columnist the same day referred to Ms. Harris as "that Sunshine State Evita, Katherine Harris -- a political gift who will keep on giving."

There's more than a whiff of sexism about the demonization of Ms. Harris -- male Democratic partisans such as James Carville or Ron Brown or Andrew Cuomo get a lot more slack. The fact that Ms. Harris's critics get off easily, while the critics of the Florida Supreme Court get the "even" treatment, is just another example of the double standards applied by the Times.

Bandwidth Giveaway: An article in the metro section of today's Times reports that the New York City schools chancellor wants to "turn over operation of the Board of Education's radio and television stations" to two existing non-profit networks in the city, WNYC and WNET. What is the city's public school system doing in the TV and radio business to begin with? The article reports that "the board's television station now turns over much of its program time to ethnic broadcasters." Why are the tax dollars New Yorkers pay to support the public schools being used instead to subsidize "ethnic broadcasters"? And why are the TV and radio stations, which could presumably be sold to for-profit companies for substantial sums, being instead turned over to non-profits? Is the city going to get any money in return? The Times story doesn't raise these questions, let alone answer them.