The lead news story in this morning's New York Times is about a congressional vote easing sanctions on food sales from America to Cuba. The article says that George W. Bush "condemned" the Senate vote , and the article quotes a Bush spokesman saying, "Governor Bush opposes changing the sanctions against Cuba until Fidel Castro or the Cuban government allow free elections, free speech and freedom for political prisoners."

This position seems to contradict what Mr. Bush said in Tuesday night's presidential debate, when he said, "I don't want to use food as a diplomatic weapon from this point forward. We shouldn't be using food. It hurts the farmers. It's not the right thing to do."

If Mr. Bush's spokesman is walking back the candidate's remarks from the debate, that is newsworthy. If the remarks from the debate still stand, then the spokesman's remarks don't accurately represent the candidate's views, and the Times is doing readers a disservice by presenting the spokesman's views as those of the candidate. And if Mr. Bush, by using the phrase "from this point forward," intends to defend existing American sanctions that use food "as a diplomatic weapon" but oppose any additional sanctions of that sort, well, then he's making a distinction so subtle that it's worth explaining in a news story. Anyway, the Times story this morning relies on the remarks of the spokesman without making any mention of Mr. Bush's comment in the debate.

Subway Series: The Times runs a front-page, above the-fold article about the Subway Series in baseball, along with five full pages of coverage inside the paper. In all of that, the only mention of how the average reader can get a ticket to one of the games appears to be some agate type that gives the phone numbers of the ballparks and of Ticketmaster. Does the Times, with its vast reportorial resources, not have a reporter to spare to call those numbers and find out when tickets go on sale and how many are available? Or to check with some of the city's ticket brokers and hotel concierges to find out what the free-market price is for seats?

A column on the education page of today's New York Times offers the newspaper's preferred alternative to school vouchers. "What is needed is a different kind of voucher, a housing voucher that helps poor families move to the suburbs, as middle class families do, in search of better school environments," the column says. Vouchers are an inadequate solution to the problem of failing urban public schools, according to the columnist, because "poor children do not generally get better educations at parochial or other neighborhood private schools." The Times column comes out in favor of "equalizing neighborhoods" and favoring a move to "relocate large numbers of poor families to the suburbs."

Some questions. If "poor children do not generally get better educations at parochial or other neighborhood private schools," then why are so many parents of poor children entering lotteries for privately funded scholarships that would allow their children to attend just those schools? Are they not acting in the best interest of their own children?

And does the Times columnist really believe that it is impossible to run a successful school for poor children in a city, that there is something about the air in the suburbs that makes it easier for students to learn? What does the Times have against cities? If the Times likes the suburbs so much, why doesn't it stop lobbying for a tax break on its new headquarters tower near Times Square and pick up and move to the suburbs itself, the way it wants poor parents to do? And why stop at the suburbs? Why not set the poor students up in apartments on New York's Fifth Avenue and send them to the Dalton School?

There are plenty of crummy suburban public schools out there, even in wealthy suburbs, a fact that the Times column conveniently ignores. It's almost enough to make a reader think that the Times' drive in favor of "equalizing neighborhoods" has little to do with the substance of educational policy but is of a piece with its support for higher taxes on the rich. The Times preference is consistently for "equalizing" rather than for liberty. It just genuinely seems to bother the newspaper that some people end up richer than others, that some schools end up better than others. But that is an unavoidable side effect of a system that encourages individual initiative; the alternative is to enforce mediocrity. A school voucher system -- and, by the way, most voucher plans would allow the voucher to be spent at another public school -- would create competition and choice that would encourage excellence. (Though frankly, Smartertimes.com has doubts about the corrosive effect of government money and regulations on the private and parochial schools that would receive the voucher money.) Deporting poor students from cities to monopoly public schools in the suburbs -- a suggestion that the Times columnist is making in all apparent seriousness -- would create no competition and would be a recipe for mediocrity.

Correction Correction: The Times runs a correction today of an error that Smartertimes.com pointed out on Sunday about the name of a Washington think-tank. In the correction, the Times gets the name of the think-tank wrong a second time, this time in a slightly different way. The name of the institution is the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, not, as the Times refers to it in today's correction, the "Washington Institute for Near Eastern Policy."

In a generally admiring obituary of a genuinely evil person, the New York Times today pays its final respects to Gus Hall, the leader of the American Communist Party. It tells of Hall's "hearty, unpretentious manner." It describes Hall as an "unmistakably American comrade, an authentic product of the working class, nearer in spirit to Joe Sixpack, it seemed, than to Joe Stalin." It describes Hall as "rock-jawed and barrel-chested," as having "the powerful hands of the lumberjack and steelworker he had been in his youth." It says Hall was "simple in his tastes and habits."

The Times lets Hall off way too easily. He was a Soviet Communist agent who took orders directly from Moscow, and the American Communist Party was a front for an enemy regime that allowed no freedom of religion or of the press and that either murdered political dissidents or shipped them off to work camps in Siberia. The Times takes an agnostic position on Hall's ties to the Soviet regime, writing that "Although Mr. Hall insisted that the American Communist Party was an independent organization, in 1992 the Moscow daily Izvestia reported that Mr. Hall had been the recipient of $40 million in Soviet assistance between 1971 and 1990." This is almost comical: The Times relying on Izvestia, rather than on independent American scholars or the Venona papers, for information on the ties between Hall and the Soviet regime.

As for Hall's allegedly simple tastes, the Times omits any reference to the lawsuit against the American Communist Party filed by Angela Davis and Herbert Aptheker seeking part of the Communist party's property in America, which consisted mainly of various summer camps valued at about $60 million. Davis lost because the deeds to the properties were mainly in Hall's name, an astute Smartertimes.com reader recalls, wondering who owns those properties now.

Gays in the Department of Defense: An article in the metro section of today's Times mis-states the Department of Defense's policy on hiring gays. The article reports on a protest of the appearance at New York University Law School of a recruiter from the Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps. The Times article says that "the law school has barred military recruiters because the Defense Department refuses to employ men or women who are openly gay." Similarly, a photo cutline that runs alongside the article reports that "The law school had barred recruiters for 22 years because the Defense Department will not hire openly gay students." In fact, the ban on gays in the military applies only to the uniformed services, of which the Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps are a part. The ban does not apply to civilian employees of the Defense Department. The Navy, which is part of the Defense Department, even has a formal policy prohibiting discrimination against civilian employees on the basis of sexual orientation.

The same Times article reports that at NYU, "If there was any dissension from the protest, it was not visible yesterday." This sets a new low for the Times as far as balance goes. In order to have their views expressed in a news article, opponents of banning representatives of the American military from college campuses must be "visible." Agree or disagree with the ban on gays in the military, refusing to let recruiters on campus seems an extreme response. We're sure that the law school allows in recruiters for law firms who represent all sorts of clients more loathsome than the U.S. military: criminal defendants, foreign dictatorships, corporate polluters, etc. And since when is agreement with a company's policies a requirement for allowing a representative of the company to appear on campus? NYU students are going to live a pretty sheltered existence if this policy is taken to its logical conclusion. Again, you get none of these free-speech arguments or worse-evil arguments from the Times article, just a lot of fulminating from self-righteous law professors and a male law student who is described as wearing "a golden tiara and a black feather boa." Maybe the arguments weren't included because they weren't "visible." Well, certainly they weren't as visible as the guy in the tiara and the black feather boa.

"Everyone Knows": In a news headline today, the Times corrects its editorial of October 13. The October 13 editorial said, "Mr. Barak seems prepared to do what he can to halt the bloodshed. Mr. Arafat has shown no such inclination in recent days, even though everyone knows he can break the cycle of conflict." The Times headline today in the international section is "Can Arafat Turn It Off? That's an Open Question." Oh really, it's an open question. Well, someone ought to get word over to the Times editorial writers, who seem to think it is a question that "everyone knows" the answer to.

Million Family March: A story in the national section of today's Times reports on a rally in Washington held by Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Which treatment do you think the Times gives to the Farrakhan rally? Was it the treatment it gave last Thursday's pro-Israel rally in New York, in which three paragraphs of the story are reserved for balancing comments from a person with an opposing point of view? Or was it the treatment is gave last Friday's anti-Israel rally in New York, in which no balancing comments were included? You guessed it, today's dispatch from Washington includes no one to suggest that Daniel Ortega, who appeared at the rally, is an evil Communist like Gus Hall, or that the Jews that Rev. Farrakhan trotted out at the rally do not represent the views of the mainstream of the American Jewish community. With the exception of a phrase or two, the Times dispatch could have come from the Nation of Islam's own organ, the Final Call.

Wrong Name: A dispatch from Lebanon that runs in the international section of today's Times misspells the name of an Israeli electronics company. The firm's name is Tadiran, not, as the Times renders it, "Tadrian."

Thirteen days after Al Gore's debate whopper about the student who had to stand in her class at Sarasota High School, the New York Times finally waddles in with a dispatch from Sarasota about the issue. The result is a Times whopper that is right up there with Mr. Gore's. The Times news story refers in the Times' own words to "a legitimate overcrowding problem in a system facing budget problems." So let's have a look at Sarasota High School, the Times-Gore-campaign poster school for the need to solve the "overcrowding problem," which is just a fancy way of saying the need to spend more taxpayer money on government-run schools. As OpinionJournal.com (Disclosure: the editor of Smartertimes.com is a part-time paid independent consultant to OpinionJournal.com) has reported, and as Sarasota High School's own Web site makes clear, the school is hardly hurting for dollars. It has its own "media center," including a TV studio "rivaling any commercial network facility." It has athletic facilities that "rival any high school in the nation" -- facilities that include a football complex with an air-conditioned press box that seats 60 to 70 persons. "Plans are underway for the construction of an Olympic size swimming pool." For the Times to go down to Florida and write a story about Mr. Gore's debate comment and the school's supposed budget woes without mentioning these luxuries raises the very topic that the Times labels its article with today: "The Credibility Issue."

Tax Break: The metro section of today's Times features a front-page report about a new tower in Times Square to be occupied by Arthur Andersen, the accounting firm. The deal is dependent, the Times reports, on Arthur Andersen receiving $10 million in tax breaks from the city of New York; if the firm doesn't get the tax breaks, the article reports, "Andersen has threatened to move some workers to Roseland, N.J., where it has offices." Well, Smartertimes.com is all for lower taxes, but not when the reductions are doled out to big companies on an ad hoc basis. It will be interesting to see if the Times, which has been pontificating in its editorial columns against George W. Bush's tax plan on the grounds that it is slanted toward the rich, will come out with an editorial opposing the Arthur Andersen subsidy. Such an editorial would be unlikely, because the Times Company is itself seeking a similar tax break for its own new headquarters tower near Times Square. What would the city say to an ordinary taxpayer who showed up at City Hall demanding a $10 million tax break and who threatened to move to a low-tax state such as New Hampshire if the request were turned down? "Go ahead, buddy," would be the probable answer. Why should Arthur Andersen (most recently reported annual revenues, $8.4 billion) or the Times Company get special tax breaks while millions of hardworking New Yorkers and tens of thousands of small businesses struggle under the city's unreasonably high tax burden? The Times article doesn't exactly throw this issue into sharp relief, but enough of the key facts are there to show this scheme for what it is.

Enlightened Role: The lead editorial in today's New York Times praises the king of Jordan for assisting in Middle East "peacemaking efforts." The editorial says that the "peacemaking efforts have been aided by King Abdullah of Jordan, who has been quick to assume the enlightened role played by his father, King Hussein." Oh. We wonder what "enlightened role" and aid to the "peacemaking efforts" the Times is talking about. Maybe it has in mind the joint communique issued by King Abdullah and by Muammar Gadhafi, the Libyan terrorist tyrant, after Gadhafi's official visit to Jordan from October 3 to October 7. That communique said that "the talks held by the two leaders reflected an identity of views on various issues of common interest," and it stressed "that Arab Jerusalem was an indivisible part of the occupied Palestinian lands, thus the Israelis must withdraw from it and from all the Palestinian and Arab occupied lands." Soon, no doubt, the Times editorialists will be praising Gadhafi for his "enlightened role" in the Middle East "peacemaking effort."

Wifebeater: The Times metro section today displays a front-page story about "A Movement to Confront Hidden Abuses in Immigrant Families." The lead anecdote is about a woman whose "husband tried to force her to turn over money, then beat her, she said." The anecdote is also used to conclude the article; readers learn that the husband was arrested and that his "case is pending." There's no indication in the article of whether the husband admits or denies the allegation that he beat his wife or of whether the Times made any effort to contact him or his lawyer for his response to the charges. Fairness would indicate that such an effort be made, and that readers be told of the outcome.

This morning's New York Times indicates that the newspaper has come up with a solution to its problem of not being able to spell last names correctly: it has started either leaving out the last names entirely or using only the first initials of the last names. So, the newspaper's "City" section, distributed to readers in New York City, features a lengthy profile of a recovering crack addict who is identified only as "Maria." And the New York Times magazine includes articles about an actress and comedian identified only as "Angela M.," about a currency counterfeiter identified only as "Fabio," about a man named "Eddie B." who is being released from the Suffolk County Jail, about a compulsive shopper identified only as "Barbara G.," about a Honduran man living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who is identified only as "Jose" and about a graphic designer with family money who is identified only as "Paul." Well, this does make spelling the names easier, but it comes with the cost of a reduction in the credibility of the articles. Sure, there are some cases, like that of the Colombian currency counterfeiter, in which it would be extremely difficult to find someone willing to use his or her real full name, and in which the tradeoff between the information gained by granting a source anonymity and the credibility that is lost for the article is an exchange worth making on behalf of readers. On the other hand, agreeing not to print a full name is often simply an excuse for laziness. Do the editors really expect us to believe that the New York Times, with its vast reportorial resources, would be unable, if it mounted a serious effort, to find a single compulsive shopper or child of rich parents who would be willing to be quoted by name? Without the full names, the characters seem less genuine and the entire report takes on the cornball feel of a high-school newspaper or a glossy magazine aimed at teenage girls.

Name That Think Tank: While it may have come up with a solution to the problem of spelling the names of persons, the New York Times can't seem to manage this morning to get the right name for a think tank in Washington. A dispatch from Jordan that runs in the international section of this morning's Times refers to "Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Affairs, a pro-Israeli policy group." The name of Mr. Satloff's operation is in fact the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; the think tank is also mentioned, with its name rendered correctly, in a front-page news analysis from Washington about the recent developments in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Provocation: That same front-page news analysis contains the following gem: "Mr. Sharon's provocative visit to Muslim holy sites atop Jerusalem's Old City, the destruction of the Jewish shrine known as Joseph's Tomb in Nablus by Palestinian demonstrators last week and the burning of an ancient synagogue in Jericho on Thursday night have challenged the very notion of respect for and sovereignty over religious sites." This is wrongheaded for several reasons. First, it equates Ariel Sharon's walking around with a tour guide on the Temple Mount plaza to the destruction of the two Jewish shrines. Mr. Sharon didn't destroy or burn anything; he didn't even go into the Al Aksa Mosque or the Dome of the Rock. He just walked around outside them. The Times "news analysis" defines Mr. Sharon's visit, as the PLO did, as a "provocative visit to Muslim holy sites," but it could just as easily have been described as a visit to a Jewish holy site. And as to whether it was provocative, remember that even Mr. Sharon's political adversary, the prime minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, when asked if Mr. Sharon's visit had provoked the Arab riots, said, "No, it had nothing to do with it." Uri Dan of the New York Post has reported on Israeli intelligence assessments that the Arabs were planning riots weeks before Mr. Sharon went to the Temple Mount.

Equal Time: The Times magazine lets one half of a broken-up marriage tell his side of "Why We Split" in an article that puts all sorts of words in the mouth of the writer's ex-wife. The ex-wife isn't named, but she's easily identifiable from the details in the article, not least of which is the name of her ex-husband, who wrote the piece. (Disclosure: The ex-wife is an acquaintance of the editor of Smartertimes.com.) This is surely a delicate situation, but it seems to us that in fairness to the ex-wife, the Times shouldn't have given this man a forum to vent unchallenged about her. She doesn't get any chance in the article, or elsewhere in the magazine, to give her side of the story. It's bad enough that this guy spent down their joint savings account, as he himself recounts in the article; now he has to bare the details of their break-up for a national audience?

Sowing Seeds: A front-page news article about the close presidential race in America quotes the governor of Michigan as saying, "If something goes completely haywire, it may be that the seeds were sewn long ago." Seams are sewn, but seeds, in the English language, are "sown."

Note: Smartertimes.com is operating off the bulldog edition of the Times, which is the version of the Sunday paper that hits the streets on Saturday evening.

An "NYC" column on the front of the metro section of today's New York Times runs under the headline, "The World, As Filtered By the City." A better headline might have been "The World, as Filtered by the New York Times."

The column is riddled with whoppers. It claims: "There is not much that any senator can do about the Middle East." Oh? A single determined senator could have placed a hold on the nomination of Martin Indyk as ambassador to Israel or later as assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can at will block delivery of all foreign aid to any country in the Middle East. The senators on the foreign operations subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee can insert riders in appropriations bills, making State Department funding contingent on adherence to certain policies. Senators like Robert Dole, Jon Kyl and Daniel Patrick Moynihan passed a law in 1995 recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Senator D'Amato championed a law imposing trade sanctions on companies investing in the Iranian and Libyan oil and gas industries, a law that probably has had the effect of delaying for several years Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons. It is just flat-out ridiculous to claim that there is "not much that any senator can do about the Middle East." If that were true, why would the American Israel Public Affairs Committee pay several full-time lobbyists to work the Senate side of Capitol Hill, and why would Israeli prime ministers devote so much time to cultivating relationships with senators like Mitch McConnell, Jesse Helms and Joseph Lieberman?

The column also asks, "name a politician of Irish origin in today's New York who has citywide, or even borough-wide, power." The implication is that there aren't any. This, too, is just flat-out ridiculous. How about Assemblyman Brian McLaughlin, who also serves as president of the New York Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO? How about the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles "Joe" Hynes?

Finally, check out the columnist's crowd counts for Thursday's pro-Israel rally and Friday's Muslim rally. "The Israel demonstration seemed bigger than the march by Arabs and other Muslims. But it wasn't much bigger." This is another example of the Times printing two accounts of the same event and letting readers decide which account to believe. A news story elsewhere in the metro section about the Muslim rally reports that that protest was by "an estimated 15,000 people," and it said the Friday Muslim rally presented a counterpoint to the Thursday pro-Israel rally, which had drawn "about 15,000 people." OK, Times columnist, if both rallies drew 15,000 people, why is it that the pro-Israel one "seemed bigger"? (By the way, it sure would be nice if when telling us that the rally drew "an estimated 15,000 people," the Times would let us know who is doing the estimating. Is it the police? The organizers of the rally? The reporters themselves?)

And while we're on the topic of the coverage of those two rallies, it is interesting to note that the Thursday story about the pro-Israel rally included three paragraphs of balancing material from a spokesman offering a Muslim perspective. The report today on the Muslim rally includes no reaction or balancing paragraphs from a spokesman for the pro-Israel position. That seems unfair.

Senseless: An editorial in today's New York Times runs under the headline "A Senseless Health Deduction." It criticizes a Republican plan to make health insurance premiums tax-deductable for individuals. The Times criticizes the plan on the grounds that it would be "stacked in favor of high-income families" and that it would not help the poorest who need insurance the most. But the Times has been criticizing George W. Bush's plan on drugs for the elderly on exactly the opposite grounds, arguing that it concentrates too narrowly on the poor at the expense of everyone else, especially in comparison to Al Gore's plan on drugs for the elderly, which spreads the medicine money around to more prosperous seniors. It's this kind of stuff that gives readers the idea that the Times doesn't really care much about the substantive issue of whether federal health care subsidies should be concentrated on the poor or should become a universal entitlement. It could even give readers the idea that what is driving the Times' editorial stance is a reflexive opposition to any health-care policy ideas being pressed by Republicans, no matter what the substance of the ideas.

With the destruction of Joseph's Tomb, the murder of Hillel Lieberman, and the PLO-police-facilitated lynching yesterday of two Israeli soldiers, one might expect a reckoning from the most ardent enthusiasts of the Arab-Israeli "peace process" here in the American elite. Foremost among those enthusiasts are the New York Times editorialists and the newspaper's foreign affairs columnist, Thomas Friedman.

Such a reckoning took place among the American and British pro-German types and isolationists when it became clear at some point at the middle of the past century that Hitler's appetite for aggression had no bounds. And such a reckoning took place after the Cold War, when it became clear that Reagan's rollback strategy, which so many warned would lead the world to nuclear annihilation, in fact led to a vast expansion of freedom.

But today's New York Times makes it clear that no such reckoning is taking place among the advocates of the appeasement strategy toward the Arab dictators. No, rather than pressing a war to liberate the Arab peoples from their oppressors and to spread the blessings of liberty, the Times and Mr. Friedman are clinging determinedly to their now-discredited approach of relying upon and treating with the very despots who are the source of the violence.

Consider the stirring peroration to the Times' lead editorial this morning: "Mr. Barak seems prepared to do what he can to halt the bloodshed. Mr. Arafat has shown no such inclination in recent days, even though everyone knows he can break the cycle of conflict."

"Everyone knows"?

"Everyone knows"?

If anything has become clear over the past weeks, it is that Mr. Arafat can't break the cycle of conflict. It is not within him. He is a corrupt terrorist gangster. He is not a man of peace. Even if he were a man of peace -- a big if -- his proto-country is not set up in a way that promotes peace. It is a centralized, non-democratic kleptocracy with no rule of law. In such circumstances, the inhabitants of a country inevitably become restless and seek an outlet for their aggression.

The Times editorial suggests that "Moderate Arab leaders, concerned about the spreading violence, should press for a truce." Which "moderate" Arab leaders is the Times referring to? Is it Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who has ruled with an iron fist since 1981? Is it Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, a monarch in a kingdom where the human rights standards that hold sway are primitive? Is it King Abdullah of Jordan, another leader who rules only by the accident of his birth and the maneuvering in the court of his cancer-stricken predecessor? The only leader with a democratic mandate in the Middle East at the moment is Ehud Barak of Israel.

Mr. Friedman also ends his column with a stirring conclusion of dubious wisdom. "Mourn the dead and pray that after this explosion of hatred is over, the parties will find a way to live apart." This is now the progressive, American Jewish left-wing, New York Times-driven, conventional solution to the Middle East conflict: separation. "Live apart." In Kosovo, this sort of thinking is called ethnic cleansing. In America, it is called segregation. In the Middle East, and among the American foreign policy elite represented in the Times, it is called a peace process. What Mr. Friedman calls Ariel Sharon's "peace-destroying provocation" was in fact an expression of what used to be called American liberalism: Sharon was quoted afterward saying "Arabs have the right to visit everywhere in the Land of Israel, and Jews have the right to visit every place in the Land of Israel." In the Friedman-Times worldview, this is defined as a "peace-destroying provocation," while the desired end result that readers should "pray " for is that "the parties will find a way to live apart."

Take Your Pick: "The Middle East was pushed to the brink of an open war," the New York Times writes today in a page-one news story. Hold on, though: "Few Arab officials or independent experts said they thought that the violence would lead to a new Arab-Israeli war. 'The Arabs are too weak to go to war,' said a senior Jordanian official," the New York Times reports today in a dispatch from Jordan that runs in the paper's international section. Take your pick of which story to believe.

Term Limits: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports that Mayor Giuliani would consider backing an effort to overturn the term limits on members of the New York City Council. The article goes on for 13 paragraphs and quotes three politicians, but it doesn't include a single quote or reaction from a person who is in favor of term limits. This is despite the fact that a referendum showed that a majority of the city's voters approved of term limits on the council. In contrast, a story on a pro-Israel rally in Manhattan included three paragraphs from an Arab leader that the Times apparently called to add some balance to the article. A reader who didn't know any better might get the idea that the Times included both sides on the Israel story but not on the term-limit story because it has editorial positions against Israel and against term limits. But we would never suggest that as a reason.

Christmas Parties: A story in the metro section of today's Times runs under the headline "New Questions for the First Lady on Donations." The headline could just as well be "New Questions for the Press on Christmas Parties.' The story takes Mrs. Clinton to task for using a guest list for a White House Christmas party to raise money for her campaign. This supposedly blurs the line between official business and politics. But as the Times story itself points out, the Christmas parties "are customarily paid for by the political party that controls the presidency." So they are political events to start with. What's the foul here? Well, the Times has an interest in maintaining the fiction that these are official events, because otherwise its reporters have been dining on eggnog and enjoying free pictures with the president courtesy of that same Democratic National Committee soft-money operation that the Times editorial page has been trying through its support of campaign finance "reform" to get out of politics. Among the 400 Christmas guests now purged from Mrs. Clinton's campaign direct-mail rolls, the Times reports, "were people with White House press credentials, including journalists from ABC News and The New York Times."

A "cranky" executive editor of the New York Times is urging his top editors to "pay attention to persistent accuracy problems" at the paper, comparing the mistakes to "carpenter ants nibbling at the beams that hold the thing together."

Sounding themes that will be familiar to regular readers of Smartertimes.com, the executive editor, Joseph Lelyveld, made his remarks during a gathering of more than 80 Times editors at Tarrytown, N.Y. last month. For a full text of the remarks, a copy of which was obtained by Smartertimes.com, click here.

Mr. Lelyveld's speech is a signal that he is determined to improve the accuracy of the paper. To be sure, he claims the current newspaper is "the best New York Times ever." But the paper could still stand some improvement, to judge by the litany of errors Mr. Lelyveld cited in his speech. And, to judge by the same speech -- in which Mr. Lelyveld warned that "the attitude sometimes seems to be that accuracy is a preoccupation of petty minds, and that any highlighting of failure is a relapse to the bad old days" -- the curmudgeonly executive editor has his work cut out for him in asserting authority over an entrenched layer of mid-ranking editors who needed a lecture from their boss on journalism basics.

Mr. Lelyveld said in the remarks that he was worried about "tiny but persistent signs that we sometimes don't take the small stuff seriously enough; that we sometimes don't take the small stuff seriously at all."

He asked his staff: "Did you know we've misspelled Katharine Graham's name 14 times? Or that we've misspelled the Madeleine in Madeleine Albright 49 times -- even while running three corrections on each?"

Mr. Lelyveld said that the Times had printed 1,739 corrections in the first 255 days of this year, up a total of 173 corrections from the year before. He said there have been 198 corrections this year for misspelled given names and surnames, "the overwhelming majority easily checkable on the Internet."

He said the newspaper had run corrections three times in recent months on the provisions of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, a basis of Arab-Israeli negotiations.

The view here is that Mr. Lelyveld deserves credit for illuminating this problem and for expressing a desire to fix it. That takes some courage, particularly given the natural tendency of top-ranking leaders of any enterprise to insist that all is well, and particularly given the ever-present legal risks of the out-of-control American tort law system. Imagine the attorney for a plaintiff suing the Times in a libel case: "So, Mr. Lelyveld, just when was it that you realized that there were 'persistent accuracy problems' at the Times?"

But even given the boldness of Mr. Lelyveld's move, we're not terribly sanguine about his chances for success. Consider the structural obstacles: the Tarrytown retreat, according to the internal Times report obtained by Smartertimes.com, was attended by "more than 80 senior newsroom editors." Even for a newspaper as big as the Times, this is almost comical. If there are more than 80 "senior newsroom editors," imagine how many non-senior "newsroom editors" there are. And imagine how many senior non-newsroom editors there are, hard at work in their senior editorial positions at locations like, well, like where other than a newsroom would a senior editor get much work done anyway? This, combined with the grand gesture of flying in an actor specially from Norway (as Mr Lelyveld himself said, "I'm not making that up.") to perform at the retreat, convey the image of the Times as a massive, bloated, unmaneuverable bureaucracy like General Motors or IBM before their falls.

Also working against Mr. Lelyveld's chances of success would appear to be his own apparent curiously spectator-like stance with respect to the errors at a newspaper where he is, after all, the top-ranking news executive. In his speech, Mr. Lelyveld exhorted his subordinates to take up the accuracy issue "in face-to-face conversations and, where such discussions fail to do the trick, in the evaluations you write." In one case, he said, he himself nixed a publisher's award that had been suggested for "a correspondent whose stories had given rise to four corrections in two weeks." Call us cranky, but our view is that this isn't the sort of thing that would set most grizzled newsroom veterans to quaking in their reporter shoes -- a mention in an evaluation, getting passed over for the publisher's award. A harder-edged approach would be to say to whichever editor or reporter is responsible for getting Resolution 242 wrong three times or spelling Ms. Albright's name wrong 49 times: "Look, either you figure out a way to get this right or I'm going to find someone else to do your job who can get it right." This might be considered a return to what Mr. Lelyveld termed in his speech "the bad old days," but it is the way many small businesses are run in competitive industries in which quality really matters. Again, one drawback is that, with more than 80 "senior newsroom editors," it's hard to pin down accountability. There could have been a different editor responsible for each of the 49 misspellings of Ms. Albright's name, and the Times would still have more than 31 senior newsroom editors to spare, not to mention the junior newsroom editors and all those senior non-newsroom editors.

Mr. Lelyveld's accuracy push could also create some perverse incentives. If reporters and editors are going to be penalized for corrections, there's a greater likelihood that they will let errors slide by uncorrected that are caught only after the newspaper is printed. After all, the increased number of corrections that Mr. Lelyveld bemoaned in his speech doesn't necessarily indicate a plummeting level of accuracy; it could just indicate a greater willingness to correct mistakes. A greater willingness to correct mistakes is something that it makes sense to encourage.

One suggestion that Mr. Lelyveld made on the craft of getting names spelled correctly can itself be a dangerous technique in the wrong hands. He said in his speech that the paper "misspelled Stendhal and attached a nonexistent first name to that nom de plume. A visit to Amazon.com, just a couple of clicks away, could have cleared up the confusion." Never mind the politically incorrect plug for Amazon. (The Times has a corporate partnership with Amazon's competitor, Barnes & Noble.com.) It would be easy for some thickheaded copy editor to type the wrong spelling of an author's name into Amazon, come up with some book listings misspelled by an equally thickheaded copy editor employed by Amazon, and proceed blissfully under the incorrect assumption that the spelling of the name has been verified. You can go to Amazon.com yourself and check this out: plug in the misspelled author name Stendahl and you get plenty of hits, not just for the eminent theologian Krister Stendahl but for the author whose name the Times was trying to spell. This is especially true for authors with easily misspelled names: one incorrect spelling for the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, using the last name "Weisel," will turn up four books in the Amazon.com listings. Amazon.com can be useful for checking names if you carefully check the spelling on the image of the book cover, but if the Times has in mind subcontracting its process for correctly spelling names to some dot-com e-commerce company, it might want to rethink the idea.

Finally, Mr. Lelyveld's focus on the "small stuff," and his comment about the errors on Resolution 242 -- he said the corrections provided "great cheer and sustenance to those readers who are convinced we are opinionated and not well informed on Middle East issues" -- suggest that a fix on the "big stuff" that is wrong with the Times is a long way from coming. As one of those readers who is convinced the Times is opinionated and not well informed on Middle East issues, we can say that we are not at all cheered or sustained when the Times publishes corrections on those issues. We'd much prefer that the paper got it right the first time. And in fact, the Times is opinionated on the matters of a negotiated settlement in the Middle East, tax cuts, abortion rights, the death penalty and a host of other issues. That is nothing to be ashamed of; many Times readers doubtless agree with many of the newspaper's opinions. But those readers who don't are often frustrated. The Times could spell Ms. Albright's name correctly 1,000 times out of 1,000, but so long as it is cheerleading for her policy of moral equivalency aimed at pressuring Israel into more unilateral concessions, the newspaper is still going to be problematic for its readers who have a different opinion. Responsibility for that rests in the final analysis not with Mr. Lelyveld. Bright and dedicated and courageous though he is, he is a hired hand of the newspaper's owning family.

A story in the metro section of today's Times reports in detail on a hearing at which a New Jersey government panel approved an increase in natural gas rates. The article also looks at the situation in New York and Connecticut. "After the three-member regulatory board voted unanimously today to approve the increases, all the parties seemed pleased," the Times reports about the New Jersey meeting. The article reports that "Although the natural gas industry has been deregulated for commercial customers in Connecticut, rates for residential gas service are still controlled by the state." It would be great if the Times would go interview some experts who think that maybe residential gas prices shouldn't be set by the state and who think that the introduction of free-market competition in this area would actually lead to a decline in prices for consumers. Instead, the Times seems to take it for granted that energy costs should be set by a government bureaucracy.

"Perhaps": As we've noted before, the appearance of the word "perhaps" in a news story is a sure sign for readers to beware what comes next. Take this reference in the metro section of today's Times to a former mayor of New York, Edward Koch: "Mr. Koch, perhaps Mrs. Clinton's most prominent Jewish supporter." Yeah, well, perhaps. Like, perhaps after Joe Lieberman and Elie Wiesel and Edgar Bronfman and Steven Spielberg and Ehud Barak.

Deep Pessimism: A story in the international section of today's Times about reaction among American Jews to the recent violence in the Middle East runs under the headline "Among U.S. Jews, a Deep Pessimism Takes Hold." If, as now seems clear, the "peace process" is really a process by which Yasser Arafat is extracting concessions from Israel by violence while at the same time building a corrupt and dictatorial regime to subjugate his fellow Arabs, shouldn't the Times -- and American Jews -- be optimistic that it is all breaking down now before even more concessions are made and Mr. Arafat is even more powerful?

The Times and Cars: Today's Times includes a 34-page special section on cars. Who has time to wade through this on a weekday morning, we have no idea. Funny how, even with 34 pages backed by all those ads for Lincoln and BMW, there's no room for reprinting those two September 25 editorials, the one that called for keeping Governors Island "blissfully free of private automobiles" and the one that said of a new West Side football stadium, "to avoid traffic congestion and air pollution, the project has to be served primarily by mass transit rather than automobiles." And it's funny how these stand-alone 34-page special sections on weekdays always seem to be about some ad-friendly topic, rather than about, say, child poverty in the Bronx.

What is it with the New York Times that it can't spell names correctly?

One of today's victims is a Michigan Republican businessman who is leading a school voucher campaign, Richard DeVos. In a story in the national section, the Times misspells his name "DeVoss."

Another victim is the leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Nasrallah. In a story in today's international section, the Times spells his name "Nasrulluh." Transliterating Arab names is the sort of thing where fair play would dictate giving the Times the benefit of the doubt, but a quick search of the archives on the Times web site shows that the Times itself has spelled the man's name "Nasrallah" in at least 41 articles in the past four years, and never before as "Nasrullah." Why the sudden change?

The third name the Times screws up in this morning's paper is that of a Texas judge who is the subject of an item in the newspaper's "Campaign Briefing" section. The Times twice spells the judge's last name as "Keller" and once as "Kelley."

Finally, in the national section, the Times gives the name of a former United States attorney in Alaska as "Wev Mr. Shea."

The Times and Homework: A front-page story in this morning's Times hails as a hero a school district superintendent who has "discouraged" teachers from assigning homework on the weekends and has prohibited teachers from grading homework. The story goes through the motions of quoting a parent or two who disagree with the new anti-homework policy, but the Times' treatment of the anti-homework policy is generally to laud it. It lets go unchallenged, for instance, the school superintendent's statement "that he was worried about the inequities that homework caused." The school district in question, the Times informs us, "is notable for its economic and racial diversity -- the district is about one-third black, one-third white, and 25 percent Asian, with 75 languages spoken in the schools. Some students cannot afford tutors." The story goes on to say that one study "found higher standardized test scores among Chinese-American students whose parents demanded they spend more time studying."

Maybe if the Times editors had more open minds about the value of homework, they would have learned at some point during their own school careers how to spell names correctly. Or maybe the Times should decide to just throw out any standards on the spelling of names, because it is "worried about the inequities" such standards might cause. After all, the Times staff is surely "notable" for its "racial diversity" -- and who knows, enforcing standards on the spelling of names might give an unfair advantage to those editors and reporters with hard-driving Chinese-American parents who demanded they learn how to spell and to check facts.

Deadly Errors: An op-ed piece in today's Times about the violence in the Middle East runs under the headline "Israel's Deadly Errors." The article claims: "Historically, Israel enjoyed peace and stability when it stopped occupying Arab lands and instead applied standards of moral equity and international legality to its relations with its Arab neighbors." This is preposterous. For one thing, Israel has never enjoyed peace. Its Arab neighbors have been at war with it since it was founded in 1948 on a tiny sliver of land that included none of the territory that could by any reasonable standard now be considered occupied "Arab lands." The problem is that for political purposes, the Arabs consider all of Israel, from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to Haifa, to be "Arab lands." In other words, the way for Israel to enjoy peace and stability, according to this article, is for the nation to cease to exist. Given the article's definition of peace, however, even that step may not be enough. The article claims, for instance, that "Peace has reigned along the Lebanese border since Israel withdrew from most of southern Lebanon." This, too, is preposterous. As the Times itself reports in its international section this morning, three Israeli soldiers were captured by Hezbollah terrorists on Saturday after the Hezbollah fighters "cut their way through the border fence and grabbed the three Israelis from a patrol vehicle mounted with a machine gun." The news article reports that the Israeli soldiers had been distracted "by Hezbollah shelling nearby." The maximalist demands of the Arabs are clear even from the not-so-subtle phrasing of the Times op-ed article's claim that Israel withdrew from "most of Southern Lebanon." This, too, is preposterous. Israel has withdrawn from all of Southern Lebanon and has been certified as having done so even by the consistently anti-Israel United Nations. The problem is that the Arabs consider all of Israel -- from Haifa to Tel Aviv to Jerusalem -- to be Southern Lebanon or Southern Syria or Northern Egypt or Western Jordan. They do not consider it to be Israel. Why the Times would run this sort of stuff is an open question. We find it illuminating, but probably not for the reasons that the Times editors intended.

Late Again: The Times waddles in this morning with a story about conservative reaction to a remark about gay marriage made by Richard Cheney during last Thursday's vice-presidential debate. The story runs under the headline, "Cheney's Marriage Remark Irks Conservatives." It's almost comical that it has taken the Times this long to get something about this remark into its news columns. The New York Post had it on Friday, the morning after the debate, as Smartertimes.com noted on Friday morning.

Note: Smartertimes.com is on the road this morning and is operating off the New England edition of the Times.

The Arts & Leisure section of today's New York Times carries an article that runs under the headline "The Blunt Appeal of Being Stupid." The article purports to be about something called "post-comedy comedy," which, according to the Times, includes such phenomena as "Doodie.com, a much-attended Web site that features 15-second cartoons in which simple animated figures defecate." Also an example of "post-comedy comedy," according to the Times, is a new MTV series called "Jackass," which features the show's host, Johnny Knoxville, being strapped into a used portable toilet that is then turned "upside down, ensuring that the contents pour all over Mr. Knoxville." The MTV program also features, the Times tells us, a "segment in which Mr. Knoxville puts a rubber penis in his pants and proceeds to traverse the highways and byways of greater Los Angeles in a happy-go-lucky way, and in what appears to be a tumescent state."

What is the Times' reaction to this phenomenon? The newspaper essentially excuses it, and practically endorses it, as a reasonable rebellion against the real problem: parents that want their children to achieve academic success. In fact, the Times writes that running around with a rubber penis or drenched in the effluvia of a portable toilet is comparable to the heroic civil-rights protests of the 1960s in the American South. Here is the Times: "You can see how burning a draft card was, rightly or wrongly, a relevant rebellion against a war, how having sex was a rebellion against confining cultural norms, how staging a sit-in at a lunch counter was a rebellion against segregation, how taking drugs was a rebellion against a restrictive culture. What is being stupid a rebellion against?"

The Times answers its own question: "Maybe the answer is not so obscure. Our children are being scheduled to death, pushed by their loving Bobo parents into an array of stimulating, educational, skill-enhancing classes, programs and activities that often leave them frazzled. Maybe watching a show in which people revel in being irredeemably stupid is a way of sending a message to achievement-obsessed parents. In that case, it's not a program's level of stupidity, or how unfunny it is, that we should pay attention to. It's the anger."

You don't have to be a hard-core Bible-thumping cultural critic like William Bennett or like Joseph Lieberman before Mr. Lieberman abandoned his principles to find something tasteless about a television show that features a man running around with a rubber penis or drenched in human excrement. But the critical judgment of the New York Times is not to consider the program beneath commenting upon, not even to condemn the program as tasteless. No, the Times' response is to liken the television programs to sit-ins at segregated lunch-counters in the South, and then to say that the real problem isn't tasteless television programs but the hard-driving achievement-oriented parents whose children are potential viewers of these programs.

Late Again: The "hit parade" at www.kausfiles.com has already done a fine job today of criticizing the Times' front-page story using car metaphors to discuss the gender gap between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Kausfiles.com points out that the Times is late to both the car metaphors and the gender gap story. So rather than re-hoe that territory, I'd suggest that Smartertimes.com readers check out what Mr. Kaus has to say. Kausfiles.com also criticizes the Times for letting Mr. Gore off too easily on the embellishment issue.

Note: In observance of Yom Kippur, Smartertimes.com will not appear on Monday, October 9. The next update will be Tuesday morning October 10.

The New York Times today runs two editorials about free speech. The first, headlined "Mr. Lazio's Refund," expresses support for the restrictions that the two candidates for U.S. Senate from New York, Hillary Clinton and Rep. Rick Lazio, have placed on groups such as the Sierra Club and the National Rifle Association. Without these restrictions, such groups might buy television commercials expressing opinions about political issues and about the records of the candidates. But because of these restrictions, the voices of these groups are silenced. The Times says that these voluntary, candidate-imposed restrictions on free speech are good, and the Times even has called for laws that would go further and mandate a silencing, or at the least a quieting, of the voices of these groups and the political parties. "The clear winners here are the voters and the political system as a whole," The Times writes in its editorial. "Although it is no substitute for the sort of campaign finance reform legislation that both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Lazio have pledged to support if elected to the Senate, their agreement is nonetheless an important symbol that candidates are beginning to respond to the public's hunger for clean campaigns." In the view of the Times, apparently, there is something not quite "clean" about individuals -- whether they are members of the Sierra Club, a labor union, the Christian Coalition or the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League -- getting together and buying ads that express their political views.

What's breathtaking is that on the same page, in the same column, is an editorial headlined "In Defense of Free Speech." This editorial defends on free-speech grounds the right of the poor to have taxpayer-funded lawyers sue to overturn welfare-reform laws. This Times editorial quotes Justice David Souter as having "suggested that by silencing disagreement with government policy, Congress had struck at 'the molten core' of the First Amendment." This editorial goes on to say, "Congress trampled on free speech and the principle of equal justice under the law when it sought to muzzle Legal Services lawyers, and the court's ultimate ruling should mince no words in saying so."

Put these two editorials together, and the position that emerges is a strange one: A defense of free speech, by the Times' interpretation, requires that Congress pay the bill for a legal challenge to the welfare-reform law the Congress itself passed. But it also requires that the Congress place restrictions, or even bans, on privately funded television advertisements about political issues that might influence an election. It's hard to construct a logical basis related to free speech that would support both these stances at once. It's enough to make one think that what is really driving the opinion of the Times, in both instances, is not a concern for free speech, but some other political agenda. For instance, both of the Times positions are consistent with a desire to expand the role of the federal government. The campaign finance restrictions would expand the power of the federal bureaucracy, the Federal Election Commission, that monitors and regulates political speech. The Times' desired outcome in the debate over taxpayer-funded anti-welfare-reform lawyers would expand the role of another government-funded bureaucracy, the Legal Services Corporation, and it could also lead to a rollback of welfare reform and, with that, an expansion of the government welfare-providing bureaucracy.

In a "Public Lives" profile that appears on page B2 of today's New York editions of the New York Times, the Times subjects Rebecca Lieberman to the treatment that it reserves for powerful women, and particularly for powerful Jewish women. That treatment is a detailed analysis of her appearance.

So, we learn of Ms. Lieberman's "pea-soup eyes" and "tight jeans," and that "Despite a description of her in The New York Observer as a 'bleached blonde,' she does not look the least bit artificial. ('I spent a lot of money on this,' she protested.)"

The last person whose dye-job got this much attention in the Times was the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Sandra Feldman, who had a Times education reporter writing about her hair color in the July 8 issue of the Times. Now the Times has sent another one of its education reporters out to write about Ms. Lieberman's hair.

The Times editors doubtless consider the newspapers whose stock-in-trade is this sort of coverage -- the New York Post, the New York Observer -- to be gossipy publications whose dignity is far beneath that of the Times. But with this business about the "tight jeans," the Times is playing exactly the same game as those more lively papers. It's entertaining, but it's also got a whiff of tawdriness about it. It reinforces the idea that women in public life should be judged by their appearance, while men are judged solely on substance. And it makes the Times look fluffy in comparison to a newspaper like Newsday, which has been seriously covering the issue of just how and why Ms. Lieberman -- who is the daughter of the Democratic vice presidential candidate -- got a $75,000 job working for the New York City Board of Education.

Isolationist on Yugoslavia: Here's a gem from an editorial in today's Times headlined "Liberating Yugoslavia": "It is appropriate that Mr. Milosevic's downfall is being engineered by his own people, not his many foreign foes. The Clinton administration and other Western governments are right to offer verbal encouragement but otherwise stand aside." This sort of timidity is the hallmark of the Times' stance toward foreign dictators of every stripe. It is the Times' favorite foreign policy solution: "offer verbal encouragement but otherwise stand aside." And they criticize the Republicans in Congress for isolationism?

News Blackout on Gay Marriage: In the debate last night between Mr. Lieberman and Richard Cheney, both candidates were asked about gay rights. Mr. Lieberman said he was rethinking his traditional opposition to gay marriage. Mr. Cheney said, "like Joe, I also wrestle with the extent to which there ought to be legal sanction of those relationships. I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into." The Times transcript of excerpts from the debate omitted this question and the answers. The two news stories the paper ran about the debate and the newspaper's editorial about the debate made no reference to the exchange. The New York Post, which has a surer sense about the newsworthiness of cultural issues, ran out a column under the headline "GOP gay bombshell stuns conservatives." The Times not only doesn't consider it a bombshell, it doesn't even consider Mr. Cheney's position worth including in its newspaper. We realize that the debate took place late for the Times' deadlines, but the news stories quoted comments in the debate that were made even later in the night than were the comments about gay marriages.

Israel Coverage: The Times finally moves a distinguished war correspondent, Chris Hedges, into the Middle East to cover the outbreak of violence there, and he turns in a fabulous dispatch that should be required reading for those trying to understand what is really going on there. The dispatch runs in the international section under the headline "A Brother Swept into a Cycle of Death." It is particularly refreshing when compared with the rest of the output from the Times about Israel and the Arabs -- the newspaper's regular correspondent there weighs in today with an article referring to "Kibbutz Stotyam," a reference that would seem to indicate a lack of familiarity with the Hebrew words for fields or for the sea, or even with a standard tourist map of Israel that would spell the place "Sdot Yam."

In an editorial headlined "Rewarding the Wealthiest," (That's what The Times accuses George W. Bush of wanting to do; the Times' own position would be more accurately headlined "Punishing the Most Productive") the Times today asserts that "public fervor for tax cuts, so prevalent in the 1980's, has given way to broader concerns with equity and fiscal responsibility." Opposing tax cuts that would "comfort the already comfortable," the Times editorial says, "is not just populism. It is common sense." Well, if the Times is so opposed to tax cuts for the rich, why is the New York Times Company asking the city of New York for a huge tax break for its new headquarters tower near Times Square? The Times Company, as Smartertimes.com wrote on June 20, last year posted operating profits of $586.7 million. Last year's authorized biography of the company's controlling family, the Sulzbergers, "The Trust," detailed the family's extravagant lifestyle -- at barbecues on the family's 277-acre Connecticut estate, a manservant would stand at attention holding the hamburger patties on a silver platter as Arthur Ochs Sulzberger prepared to place them on the grill. If you put the Times's editorial today together with the Times' request for a tax break on the new Times tower, the platform that emerges is that The Times Company wants a tax cut for itself, but not for any other rich folks. Talk about comforting the comfortable.

Today's editorial speaks of "the desire by most Americans for a fair-minded tax code that taxes those most able to pay at higher rates, without reducing the incentive for the rich to increase their wealth." This is like writing about "the desire by most Americans for the ability to eat unlimited amounts of chocolate without gaining a single pound." The higher you make the tax rate on the rich, or on anyone, for that matter, the more you reduce their incentive to "increase their wealth." There's a tradeoff, just like there is with eating candy and gaining weight. And while we're at it, what's with the phrase "increase their wealth"? It encapsulates the Times' attitude toward the rich of the non-Sulzberger variety. Economists or those not engaged in class warfare or even "most Americans" might speak of "the incentive of the rich to create economic growth" or "the incentive of the rich to create jobs" or "the incentive of the rich to work hard and create innovations that improve life in America and that expand economic opportunity for the non-rich, too." But the Times sees the economic activity of the non-Sulzberger rich, apparently, as devoted only to increasing "their wealth." It's also unclear what the Times editorial means by "higher rates." Higher than the rates currently imposed on the rich? Or higher than the rates imposed on the poor?

The Times editorial asserts that the "principle of progressivity has been around since the income tax was first enacted during the Civil War." We're not quite sure what they are talking about: The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the amendment giving Congress "power to lay and collect taxes on incomes," was adopted in 1913, nearly 50 years after the Civil War. (Update: A number of astute Smartertimes.com readers, including John Steele Gordon, have sent letters to the editor this morning noting that there was an income tax imposed from 1864 to 1872. The brackets were 0%, 3% and 5%. Another federal income tax on the rich, 2%, was enacted in 1894 and eventually struck down by the Supreme Court. These rates are much lower than the ones being debated today. And, in any event, the fact that something has been around since the Civil War isn't always a good argument for keeping it in place, as advocates of women's suffrage could tell you.)

Israeli "Posturing": The lead news story in today's New York Times, about diplomatic efforts to reach an end to the clashes between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, reports, "Diplomats said Wednesday's session had been taken up by considerable posturing. In his first meeting with the secretary this morning, Mr. Barak went into long descriptions of how the Palestinians were violating the agreements with Israel by acquiring illegal arms and shooting at Israeli soldiers." If "posturing" is the word being used by diplomats -- American diplomats? -- to describe dismissively Mr. Barak's legitimate complaints about the failure of the Arabs to adhere to prior agreements, then such rank insensitivity is probably worth a story in itself. If "posturing" is the word the Times is using on its own to describe Mr. Barak's position in the talks as it was described neutrally by diplomats, then such dismissiveness in a news story by the Times about Mr. Barak's legitimate complaints is way out of line.

If there were any doubts left that the New York Times is slanting its news coverage of the presidential race toward Al Gore and against George W. Bush, they should be allayed by this gem from the lead news story in today's Times, about the presidential debate: "Besides being the most watched single event of the campaign thus far, with an estimated audience of 75 million, the confrontation took on even greater significance because the contest is disturbingly close: just 35 days before the election, most polls show the race in a statistical dead heat."

"Disturbingly close"?

Why is it disturbing to the Times that the race is close? It is supposed to be a news organization. A close race is good for circulation. A close race is more fun. A close race is more likely to throw the issues into sharp relief. Why in the world would the Times, in its own voice and in a news article, refer to the race as "disturbingly close"?

The only logical explanation is that the newspaper thinks Mr. Gore should be ahead by a wide margin, and that it is disturbed that he is not.

(Update: An astute Smartertimes.com reader in New York reports that in later editions of the Times, the sentence was changed to report that the race was "disturbingly close for both candidates." At mid-day today, however, the Times web site was still carrying the original version that was in my printed New York edition.)

More on the Debate: The Times prints several articles about the debate, plus an editorial, and, if you compare them, it's clear that either the newspaper has a fuzzy grasp on reality or else that it doesn't bother with consistency.

Suppose you are a reader picking up the paper in the morning and want an answer to what seems like a pretty basic question: Which candidate did most of the attacking in the debate?

The Times main news story says, "Mr. Bush was on the attack from the outset and proved much more assertive about the vice president's vulnerabilities than Mr. Gore was about the governor's." That is contradicted by a "political memo" on the front page of the Times, reporting that "Mr. Gore attacked, firing the same bullet over and over. . . . Mr. Bush played the nice guy taken aback by such aggression." The Times editorial appears to agree with the political memo rather than the news story, reporting that "the vice president fired volley after volley of attacks on Mr. Bush's proposals, throwing his opponent on the defensive."

Or suppose a reader wants the answer to another pretty basic question: During the debate, did Mr. Bush misspeak or fumble his words, as he has sometimes done on the campaign trail? A "news analysis" reports that "Mr. Bush avoided stumbling over his own syntax or comically mispronouncing words as he had in the past." Yet the "political memo" contradicts this, reporting that a "stutter crept into many" of Mr. Bush's answers, and that "true to form, Mr. Bush mixed up some words."

It's as if the Times has just thrown up its hands and given up any pretense of accuracy, deciding instead to just print four accounts of the debate and let the readers decide for themselves which one to believe, if any. The effect is to downgrade the credibility of each of the reports.

Lost in Boston: An editorial in today's Times about the presidential debate says that it took place at "Boston University." In fact, it took place at U. Mass. Boston. As another astute Smartertimes.com reader pointed out, those are two entirely different universities.