The front-page lead story in this morning's New York Times reports on Al Gore's speech to the Democratic National Convention. "Again and again, he spoke of unspecified 'powerful forces' and 'powerful interests,' which he implicitly identified with the Republicans, standing in the way of working men and women," the Times article reports.

Did anyone from the Times actually listen to Mr. Gore's speech? The "powerful" were hardly "unspecified": Mr. Gore was clear as could be. He specified them in full specificity. He spoke of "Big tobacco, big oil, the big polluters, the pharmaceutical companies, the H.M.O.'s." He spoke of the "bean-counters at H.M.O.'s." He spoke of "big drug companies" that "run up record profits" while seniors "have to choose between food and medicine."

In other words, the unspecified "powerful interests" that Mr. Gore is aligning himself against include a hefty chunk of the American economy, including the same chunk that Hillary Clinton attempted a government takeover of with her health care plan early in the first term of the Clinton-Gore administration. Many of those working men and women that Mr. Gore says he is for actually own stock in those "powerful forces" through their union pension funds or individual retirement accounts. Some discussion of what all this means -- does Gore want to limit the profits of drug companies? How would he set such limits and what effect would they have on research and development spending by the drug industry? -- would be interesting, but it's hard to find any of it in this morning's Times.

Cheney's Stock Options: The Times runs another news story today pondering the question of whether Richard Cheney's Halliburton stock options would pose a conflict of interest for him as vice president. Yesterday's Times article on the same topic had asserted, "There do not appear to be any directly comparable situations in recent history," a claim that Smartertimes.com differed with, citing Mr. Gore's status as the sole trustee of his father's estate, which holds between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of Occcidental Petroleum stock, according to the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps responding to the Smartertimes.com criticism, today's Times article includes the sentences: "Mr. Cheney is by no means the only politician whose public life has been complicated by his or his family's investments. Vice President Al Gore has become the subject of environmentalists' wrath for his mother's stake in the Occidental Petroleum Corporation -- a holding worth between $250,000 and $500,000, according to government filings."

An astute Smartertimes.com reader pointed out in an email to us yesterday that it would be easy enough to create a derivative contract that would disentangle Mr. Cheney from the Halliburton stock price. The reader wrote that a creative financial institution could create a contract (for a price to be determined the day after election day or January 20, 2001 or some day in between) that would exactly offset the gain that Cheney would get from the options as a result of any price swings during his vice presidency. This would mean that Cheney would realize the value of the options on that date, and would be completely unaffected by any price change in Halliburton while Cheney was in office. The analog is 'selling short against the box,' the process by which someone who has shares in a company that are tied up for some reason (say a Mr. Gore who has 50K shares of Oxy Pete in a trust) sells them short, collecting the cash now. Then Mr. Gore, in a year or two, delivers the shares that he owns that are locked up until Ms. Pauline dies to the party to whom he sold short today. The future price movements of Oxy Pete are irrelevant to him, since he has sold out at today's price, the Smartertimes.com reader wrote. The Times article today doesn't explore this possibility.

Eating Kosher: An item in the "Los Angeles Diary" of today's New York Times contains the following two sentences: "Some Orthodox Jews, like the Liebermans, either avoid restaurants at any cost, or even bring their own plates out of concern that restaurant dishes, however clean, had been used in the past for nonkosher food. But the Connecticut Democrat has eaten at numerous receptions here and dines at trendy places in Washington, like I Ricci." This would be much clearer if the phrase "like the Liebermans" were omitted from the first sentence, because what the writers are really trying to say is that those Orthodox Jews are unlike the Liebermans. And, by the way, the correct spelling of the restaurant's name is "I Ricchi."

News Blackout: Not a word in today's Times about the Democratic National Committee's decision to abruptly cut ties to a fundraising firm that is partially owned by a figure in the 1996 Teamsters-DNC scandal. After the figure, Michael Ansara, plead guilty to a role in the conspiracy to embezzle money from the Teamsters, the Democrats and the Gore campaign continued to use his firm for more than $1 million dollars, until reporters asked about it this week. This has been all over Newsweek, ABC News and the Associated Press this week, but the Times for some reason is keeping a lid on it. Maybe it ran out of space, what with all those column inches devoted to Senator Lieberman's approach to the Jewish dietary laws.

Eating Crow: The Times runs a correction today of its spelling of the name of the singer Sheryl Crow. Smartertimes.com pointed the error out on Tuesday.

This morning's New York Times gives prominent display to a story that runs under the headline "Legal Firms Cutting Back on Free Services for Poor." The article quotes one woman "frustrated by the lack of free legal representation" in her effort to stop the city of San Francisco from demolishing and rebuilding her public housing project.

This is a front-page story? No, this is chutzpah. Not only does this woman want taxpayer-subsidized housing for herself in one of the most expensive cities to live in in the nation, but on top of that, she wants free legal assistance.

Beyond the lack of skepticism, this article is marred throughout by a failure to disclose some of the facts of pro bono representation. The legal work is referred to throughout as "free" or "volunteer." But in fact, when law firms win pro bono cases, they are often awarded legal fees by the court in addition to damages. Moreover, the lawyers try to claim public credit for their "pro bono" work at the same time that their trade associations are furiously lobbying to stop the use of alternative dispute resolution methods that are cheaper and easier than hiring a lawyer. The article points out that divorces and tenant-landlord disputes are mainstays of pro bono work. Yet in Florida, the bar association tried to stop paralegals from handling divorces at low cost using simple, mass-produced forms. There are plenty of potentially paying clients that high-end law firms are turning away these days, too, because of a lack of attorney time. All of this would have put the information on pro bono hours in a more useful context.

This Is How New Yorkers Speak: This is how a middle-class person in Brooklyn sounds, to the ear of a New York Times reporter: "'Hey Vinnie, kommen sie her,' Officer Keane called out to his partner, Vincent Morris, who was posted at the X-ray machine. 'You got any good antidotes about how slow it is today?'" The Times would be doing working-class Brooklynites a big favor if the newspaper refrained from sneeringly mocking their accents and malapropisms in news articles, as in this example from page B4 of today's New York editions. (We assume this is an attempt at mockery rather than the reporter's own misspelling and malapropism.) This is the classic, limousine liberalism of the Times at its worst; a handwringing news story today about the decline in pro-bono hours; a windy editorial about "a metropolis of poor children" -- but when the Times actually ventures into the city and comes across a working man with a Brooklyn accent, it makes fun of his speech patterns and fails to correct his grammar. Imagine the furor if the Times started rendering the speech of some African Americans or Chinese Americans in this kind of dialect.

Cheney and Big Oil: The Times makes a front-page story this morning about the potential conflict of interest for Richard Cheney as vice president and as owner of stock in an oil-related industry. The Times writes that Mr. Cheney "would stand to profit if oil prices rose, a factor that the administration's energy policies could affect." The article goes on to say, "There do not appear to be any directly comparable situations in recent history." Well, we guess it depends on what you would consider "recent history." Would the Clinton-Gore administration count? Vice President Gore, after all, is the sole trustee of his father's estate, which holds between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of Occcidental Petroleum stock, according to the Wall Street Journal. And Occidental Petroleum could also be affected by the administration's energy policy decisions. The Times may argue that Gore's Occidental stake is worth less than Cheney's Halliburton options, but it's still a pretty large chunk for someone with Mr. Gore's net worth.

Late Again: The Times waddles in this morning with a news story and a column mentioning the flap over an allegedly anti-Semitic editorial in the Amsterdam News. Both the New York Daily News and the New York Post had the story about the Amsterdam News editorial in yesterday's editions. The Times column credits the News.

An editorial in this morning's New York Times calls on federal regulators to force Rupert Murdoch to sell either his New York newspaper or a television station in New York. It says "the proposed purchase would create a troubling concentration of media outlets" and that "eliminating competition between two independent sources of news and entertainment, would not serve the public interest."

Well, since the Times has brought up the subject of a "troubling concentration of media outlets," and of "eliminating competition," let's think about that for a moment. Take, for example, the New York Times Company's purchase of the Boston Globe, which, one could certainly argue, eliminated competition between two major Northeastern newspapers, and which also created a troubling concentration of "media outlets." Or, to take an even more egregious example, take the Times company's recent purchase of the Worcester, Mass., Telegram & Gazette, which now gives the Times company ownership of the newspapers in the two largest cities in Massachusetts. Or take the Times company's ownership of a radio station, WQXR, in New York City, where the Times company also owns a newspaper. Or take the Times company's ownership of a newspaper distributor, City & Suburban, which has been bouncing smaller newspapers from its distribution network in order to make more room for the Times. Or take the Times' reaction to the attempt in the late 1970s to start a new newspaper in New York City, the Trib. The Times greeted the Trib with a lawsuit trying to shut it down.

No, the idea that the Times really stands against "troubling concentration" and against "eliminating competition" is contradicted by the facts of its own corporate behavior. In fact, while pontificating in favor of competition, the real effect of the policy outcome this editorial calls for would be eliminating competition. The Times wants to get the government to force Murdoch to sell the New York Post. The money-losing Post might then either be weakened editorially, go out of business, or be sold to a more liberal owner who would not provide the Times with the feisty, politically conservative competition that the Post is now providing.

And beyond the hypocrisy issue, there's the First Amendment issue. Isn't it a blatant interference with freedom of the press for the government to force a newspaper magnate to sell a newspaper? Of course -- but then, the Times has already shown it doesn't care much for the First Amendment, because it backs campaign finance "reform."

Late Again: The Times this morning discovers, in its front page lead story, that some black politicians are upset by the choice of Senator Lieberman as Al Gore's running mate. That's old news to readers of the Washington Post. Thomas Edsall and Hamil Harris of The Washington Post were all over this story yesterday. So was kausfiles.com. No mention of either of them in today's Times, though.

The business section in this morning's New York Times leads with a story that runs under the headline "Inquiries Find Little Abuse by Tax Agents." The inside headline says, "Data Shows Few Instances of Harassment by I.R.S.," and that is the gist of the story. As the article quotes one Democratic congressman as saying, reports of overzealous Internal Revenue Service auditors and laws trying to stop the abuse are just "another example of the Republican priority of demonizing the I.R.S. and limiting its resources to fulfill its responsibilities."

You have to read pretty deep into the Times article to find some astonishing facts. In one case, an auditor who was arrested for drunken driving told a police officer that he would "find out" about him and have "a good time" with him. The article also reports that one in 33 I.R.S. workers either did not file tax returns or owed back taxes.

The article reports excuses for both the drunken auditor and the non-compliant I.R.S. workers. But it would seem to Smartertimes.com that the headline and story should emphasize that the tax collectors aren't paying taxes and that they are getting drunk and threatening to audit police officers, not that there is "little abuse." When the New York Police Department accidentally shoots an innocent person, the Times doesn't write a story under the headline, "little abuse," even though the statistics may bear that out. It writes about the abuse and headlines it, giving the statistical context lower down in the story. It's enough to give a reader the impression that, somehow, the Times likes tax collectors better than it likes police officers. The article quotes representatives from the I.R.S. and from its employees union, but there is not a single quote from a conservative anti-tax group. Can you imagine the Times running a story on police abuse without the obligatory quotes from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Rev. Al Sharpton? Of course not. But try to find Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform quoted in today's story. Not there.

News Blackout: No mention in either yesterday's Times or today's of Senator Lieberman's announced willingness to meet with the Rev. Louis Farrakhan or of Mr. Lieberman's announcement that Pat Buchanan has been misunderstood and is not an anti-Semite. The Times was all over George W. Bush for not adequately distancing himself from Rev. Farrakhan and Mr. Buchanan, but if you want to find out where Mr. Lieberman is on this stuff, you've got to read Sidney Zion's column in today's New York Post.

More Name Trouble: The Times today runs a correction rectifying its misspelling of the name of Walter Olson, the editor of overlawyered.com. The misspelling was pointed out in yesterday's Smartertimes.com item on John Stossel, which also pointed out that the Times had made the same spelling error, and corrected it, in June. But the Times today also manages to get the spelling wrong on another well-known name, that of the singer Sheryl Crow. A report from the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles reports that "BellSouth, US West, Echo-Star Communications and United Parcel Service are paying for a concert by Cheryl Crow on behalf of Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont."

The business section of this morning's New York Times carries a front page story attacking John Stossel, a correspondent for ABC News who dares to question the big-government view that is otherwise dominant in the mainstream press. The story claims that Mr. Stossel "is given the sort of freedom no other ABC reporter has: though not labeled a commentator, he is allowed to take a point of view and report stories based on that point of view." This is, of course, ridiculous: plenty of other stories on ABC News express a point of view.

But since the Times has raised the subject of "point of view," let's have a look at the Times' own story and see if we can detect a point of view there. Take this sentence describing Mr. Stossel, for example: "An unabashed libertarian, he has argued that greed is good for the economy; that environmentalists are 'scaremongers' with vastly overblown fears of global warming and pollution, and, even, that seat belts in school buses are a waste of money." The use of the word "unabashed" is a classic, reminiscent of the Times story a few weeks ago that described a rent-raising Park Slope landlord as "unrepentant." The use of the word unabashed suggests that, from the point of view of those writing the article, Mr. Stossel should be abashed. Then there is the phrase "he has argued that greed is good for the economy." This is like saying a geography professor "has argued that the Earth is round." Of course greed is good for the economy; the whole capitalist system is based on the idea that people want to make more money. Then there is the use of the word "even" before the phrase about seat belts and school buses. "Even" is almost always a word that reporters use to nudge readers with the effect of saying "wow, catch this, this guy is really an extremist." Smartertimes.com rode to school and even summer camp in buses without seat belts -- even without lap belts, let alone shoulder harnesses -- and we even emerged into adulthood unscathed.

And there's even more evidence of the Times's point of view on this story. Here's additional description of Mr. Stossel: "He evolved into a true believer in the free market and came to believe that advocates and the media were unnecessarily scaring consumers." There you have it: not just a believer in the free market, but a "true believer," in the words of Eric Hoffer, author of the 1951 book by that name -- a fanatic.

Mr. Stossel's great crime is to have made a mistake on the air, a mistake he has since corrected. Of course, the Times makes mistakes, too. Like, back in June, it misspelled Walter Olson's name, and had to run a correction in the June 7 issue of the newspaper. The correction said: "An article on Sunday about Fred Baron, the incoming president of the Association of Trial Lawyers and a fund-raiser for Vice President Al Gore, misspelled the surname of Gov. George W. Bush's adviser on tort reform, who has criticized Mr. Baron. He is Walter Olson, not Olsen."

Yet today's Times article about Mr. Stossel's allegedly careless reporting makes the same spelling error that the Times already corrected once in June, referring to "Walter Olsen, of the libertarian-oriented Manhattan Institute." And while Mr. Olson has a libertarian streak, it would be an overstatement to call the Manhattan Institute "libertarian-oriented." While the Institute has a healthy respect for civil liberties, it has been an engine behind and supporter of the sorts of police order-maintenance activities -- such as crackdowns on fireworks, gangs and people sleeping on sidewalks -- that drive libertarians crazy.

Wrong on California: A New York Times editorial this morning about California is so wrong in so many ways that it's hard to know where to start. "Along with other Republican-backed measures aimed at overturning bilingual education and affirmative action, Proposition 187 drove a whole generation of Hispanics into the Democratic fold," the editorial claims. Yet grassroots Hispanics -- not the education and civil rights industry -- overwhelmingly opposed bilingual education the way it was being implemented in California before the referendum to change the system was passed. As Ron Unz wrote in his November 1999 Commentary article, the anti-bilingual education ballot measure started in Los Angeles when a small group of Latino parents began a public boycott of their local elementary school because they wanted their children to learn English. Polls showed overwhelming Hispanic support for having their children learn in English, and the ballot measure was supported by teacher Jaime Escalante of "Stand and Deliver" fame.

The editorial also blames the Republicans for allegedly "anti-immigrant" sentiments: "Where once Ronald Reagan rhapsodized about America being a shining city on a hill, Pete Wilson now wanted to build a moat around it." As the Unz article points out, the California Democrats have had just as bad a record on immigration issues: Senator Boxer called for the construction of a border fence between America and Mexico, to be patrolled by the California National Guard, while Senator Feinstein called for massive cuts in legal immigration, along with annual fingerprinting of American citizens and mandatory national identity cards.

Rockland's Identity Crisis: A feature in the metro section of today's New York Times discusses the "identity crisis" of Rockland County, New York. "Upstate New Yorkers think of Rockland County as downstate, while downstate New Yorkers think about it as upstate, if they think about it at all. Many know it simply as the first rest stop after crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge: Rockland, New Jersey." Well, in that last camp, put the New York Times company. While today's article doesn't mention it, the Times on Sundays delivers to its Rockland County subscribers its weekly New Jersey section, even though the county is situated in New York state.

In an editorial this morning, the New York Times again chalks up Al Gore's lag in the polls to deficiency in his personality and showmanship. This, despite the newspaper's own poll showing that voters are making their decisions based on issues.

That's hardly the only time today's editorial contradicts the paper's news coverage. Consider these words from today's editorial: "A Crisp Agenda. Anyone who paid even marginal attention to the Republican convention came away with a clear idea of what Mr. Bush plans to do if elected." And compare that to these words from a news report in the Times on August 3 from the Philadelphia convention: "It is all so murky, the rhetoric here. . . . The speeches have been vague even by the lax standards of convention oratory, an art-form that was tailor-made for bloviation. . . . .'No specifics, no nuance,' said the historian Michael Beschloss. 'I think the lack of content may be unprecedented.'"

Well, make up your mind, which was it, "crisp" or "vague"?

The editorial also contains the ritualistic reference to "Reagan-style deficits," which, if the Times were fair, it would call "Tip O'Neill-style deficits," in reference to the Democratic speaker who bears responsibility for the deficits because he presided over that branch of the Congress -- the House -- where the Constitution rests responsibility for spending.

The Oak 'Crisis': The latest environmental scare to have the New York Times worked up into a lather is the death of some tanbark-oak trees in California. The Times runs this story out this morning under the front-page headline "Puzzling Disease Devastating California Oaks,' and gives it the full treatment, complete with "scrambling" and "alarmed" scientists uttering quotes like "We've never seen anything like this."

But the story doesn't explain some basic facts about tan-bark oak trees (Lithocarpus densiflorus) that would help put the scare in perspective. For one thing, despite their name, the trees aren't usually considered oaks at all, but rather part of the Beech family. Moreover, the tanoaks are widely regarded as weeds, useful for not much more than pulp. Foresters have been trying for years to figure out how to get rid of the tanoaks and promote the growth of the redwoods and Douglas fir, which are more valuable and useful for lumber and furniture. The coastal live oaks are the beautiful oak trees for which California is known, and, if, as reported, the disease is spreading to them from the tanoaks, that could be a serious problem. But at the moment, most of the damage seems to have been to the tanoaks, which makes the Times headline and coverage about as sensible as a headline reading "Puzzling Disease Devastating New England Mosquitos," complete with an article quoting "alarmed" scientists.

Late Again: The Sunday Styles section in this morning's Times carries an article on the increasing popularity of thong underwear, complete with a scene from Kmart and statistics showing that "Victoria's Secret sold nearly 20 million thongs in 1999. Thongs and their even briefer counterpart, the G-string, now account for 40 percent of the underpants sold by the chain."

Sound familiar? The thong boom is old news to readers of the Wall Street Journal. The Journal published a front-page dispatch on the phenomenon back on June 8, 1999 -- complete with a scene from Wal-Mart and, yep, statistics from Victoria's Secret reporting that the retailer "sold 14 million thongs last year -- a whopping 40% of its total panty sales." The Times article, of course, doesn't bother to credit the Journal. And the Times also manages to mangle a fact related to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, asking "Was it only three years ago that Monica Lewinsky shocked the nation by flashing her thong at the president?" Well, actually, no, it was five years ago, and the nation was only shocked when it heard about it a few years later from the special prosecutor.

Late Again: The Times Sunday Styles section also swipes a Wall Street Journal story about how hospitals are getting more like hotels. Here's how the Times treats the story this morning: "A smiling concierge in the lobby directed Debra Paget toward the eighth-floor lounge, a sumptuous room, where she plunged into a cushy banquette. Sitting with a friend amid fountains, pink orchids and filigreed screens, she might have been at the Four Seasons Hotel, waiting for a waiter to bring her a cocktail. In fact, Mr. Paget was waiting to see her gynecologist, whose office was tucked at the rear of the lounge. . ."

Here's how the Wall Street Journal treated the story back on September 16, 1996: "The late-afternoon sun tries to push past the ornate curtains in the suite of Princess al-thani of Qatar as she prepares for a spot of 'high tea.' A waiter in a tuxedo wheels in a table carrying a silver tray of scones, strawberries, truffles and an assortment of fine teas. With a regal nod, the princess motions for her guests to be served first.

The Ritz of London? The Al-Rayyan Palace of Qatar? Actually, it is the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., where the princess, recuperating from a kidney transplant, is being pampered in a private room in the new Deluxe Suites Pavilion."

You've got a waiter, a luxury hotel, a hospital. The Times uses the phrase "actually" instead of "in fact," but, essentially, it's the same story -- just four years behind the curve. And of course, with no credit to the Journal. At least with the thong story the Times was only one year behind.

Anonymous Letters to the Editor: Most respectable newspapers make a habit of only running letters to the editor that are signed and verified. The New York Times starts moving away from that practice today in its magazine section, publishing a selection of responses from a web site that is owned by the Times. The responses are signed only with initials or nicknames.

Minor Stuff: A story in the city section of this morning's Times refers to "City Comptroller Allan Hevesi." In fact, the comptroller spells his first name "Alan." . . . A wedding announcement refers to "Dechert, Price & Rhoads, a Manhattan law firm." Dechert, Price & Rhoads has a New York office, but the firm's headquarters is at Philadelphia; in such cases the Times would usually describe someone as working in "the Manhattan office of Dechert, Price & Rhoads, a Philadelphia law firm."

Those pesky campaign aides to Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader sure are giving the bigfoot political reporter of the New York Times a tough time. They won't tell him where Mr. Nader's television commercials are running. So, in a "political memo" that begins on the front page of this morning's New York Times, the reporter writes: "This week, Mr. Nader started showing a television commercial (with an authentic old politics touch, his staff refused to say where the modest buy was taking place or how much was spent)."

Yet, in the same newspaper, on the same day, on page A10 of New York editions, a box about "The Ad Campaign" reports that Mr. Nader's commercial "is running on cable and on local broadcast stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento and Santa Barbara, Calif.; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; New York; and Washington."

If the writer of the "political memo" couldn't manage to figure out where Mr. Nader's ads were running, how did the writer of the "Ad Campaign" box manage to find out? And isn't there any editor reading all these stories before they go in the paper, in an effort to smooth over the obvious contradictions?

Late Again: The lead story in this morning's New York Times, in the top righthand corner of the front page, reports on new developments in the investigation of EgyptAir Flight 990. In the second paragraph, the story refers to FBI reports "that the co-pilot had been accused of a variety of sexual improprieties at a Manhattan hotel during visits there in the year before the crash." This is a major development, and the Times gets into more detail about the co-pilot's behavior in the rest of the story. But to readers of USA Today, this is old news. It was on the front page of yesterday's USA Today, under the headline "EgyptAir co-pilot linked to lewd acts; Suggestive behavior led up to crash that killed 217, FBI reports say." The Times story doesn't mention or credit the USA Today scoop.

Late Again: A story in the national section of this morning's Times runs under the headline "As Fires Rage in West, Administration Is Given Blame for Not Acting to Prevent Them." This is old news to readers of the Washington Post, which on Wednesday, August 9 ran an opinion piece by Robert H. Nelson under the headline "Fires by Design," making the case that the fires are the result of Washington policy decisions that backfired, including the Clinton administration's aversion to logging on public lands. The Times story doesn't mention or credit the Washington Post article.

Welfare Cadillac: More evidence of the Times's unreformed view of welfare comes in a front-page dispatch this morning on state efforts to reduce fraud in the food stamp program. The article reports on the use of "parking-lot espionage" in which Tennessee investigators check parking lots for the cars of food stamp applicants. "That's crazy," the article quotes the head of a Nashville food pantry as saying. "It's like, come on, people!" another welfare administrator is quoted as saying, ridiculing the parking lot program. Of course, there isn't a single quote in the story from a single center-right welfare-reform expert, such as Mickey Kaus of Kausfiles.com or Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation or even Jason Turner of New York City. Just quotes from human services bureaucrats and the hunger industry and some poor people, one of whom is anonymous. The truth is, the "welfare Cadillac" (or BMW or Mercedes) image is so well-entrenched in American lore and policy debate that by now it is almost a cliche. As kausfiles.com pointed out in a December 18, 1999 dispatch, "food stamps are welfare." So there's no reason the same approach that has been successful in implementing welfare reform should not be applied to food stamps.

A Catch on Online Car Sales: A story on the front of the business section of this morning's New York Times reports on plans by General Motors to start selling its cars on the Internet. The story ignores a key regulatory obstacle that complicates the plan: laws in 40 states preventing car manufacturers from selling cars directly to the public. In Texas, state regulators threatened to shut down a Ford web site that included used-car prices. The obstacles were detailed in a Cato Institute study by Solveig Singleton. The Times story seems oblivious to the legal issue.

A story in the international section of this morning's New York Times advances the notion that the Republican-led Congress is the world's "rudest" because it refuses to play along with some U.N. body called the Inter-Parliamentary Union. This is interpreted in the article at length by a Geneva-based, Swedish-born U.N. bureaucrat as a snub of the worldwide movement toward democracy. But the Times article notes that the Inter-Parliamentary Union is meeting next year at Havana. Which is a sign of just what this union is about. Though the Inter-Parliamentary Union purports to advance human rights and democracy, its members include "parliaments" from countries including Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Libya, Syria and North Korea. The idea that American congressmen elected in a free system should sit as equals with representatives of these despot states is strange. Even stranger is the notion that American taxpayers should subsidize conferences in Havana for representatives of Iraq and North Korea. Typically, instead of making this case on principle, a spokesman for the Republican congressional leadership attributes the American absence from an Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting to the fact that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert "is going to be spending most of his time campaigning."

Friedman on Jerusalem: On the op-ed page of today's Times, columnist Thomas Friedman presses his plan for dividing Jerusalem. In an Orwellian twist, Mr. Friedman argues that Jerusalem must be divided in order to be united. The Friedman column places the Muslim and Jewish claims to Jerusalem on equal planes, while basically ignoring the Christian claim. In fact, as the Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes wrote in the Jerusalem Post of July 19, Jerusalem is of "minor importance" to Muslims. Mohammed flirted with the city for a time as part of an effort to convert Jews to Islam by incorporating Jewish rituals into Islam, but the effort faded when most Jews refused to convert. Friedman also claims that Jerusalem has been divided "since 1967." In fact, it was divided from 1948 to 1967, when the eastern part of the city was under Jordanian rule and the Jordanians desecrated synagogues, refused to allow Jews access to the Western Wall, and used centuries-old Jewish tombstones to construct Jordanian army latrines.

Mr. Friedman writes that a deal between Israel and the Arabs "requires a wrenching compromise on Jerusalem." In saying that, he is going against the words of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister who was assassinated after beginning the Oslo process. "In Israel, we all agree on one notion," Rabin said on October 25, 1995, at a Jerusalem 3000 ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda. "There are no 'two Jerusalems.' There is only one Jerusalem. For us, Jerusalem is not a subject for compromise."

The following is an actual headline from the national section of this morning's New York Times: "Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction."

Unbelievable. The last time the Times did this, we recall, it was ridiculed in the scrapbook section of The Weekly Standard. The Standard realizes that the Times is putting things backward; in fact, crime is being reduced because the criminals are locked up and not out committing crimes. But even after being mocked, the Times persists in asserting in its headline that a falling crime rate and a rising prison population are somehow contradictory trends that happen "despite" each other.

The current summer issue of City Journal also criticizes the Times on this point, writing that the reporter who wrote today's story, Fox Butterfield, "is nothing if not efficient. In September 1997, in an article titled 'Punitive Damages: Crime Keeps Falling but Prisons Keep on Filling,' he asked the mind-bending riddle: If the crime rate keeps falling, 'why is the number of inmates in prisons and jails around the nation still going up?' Over the next year, apparently no one at the Times was able to point out to Butterfield the obvious answer: that crime was falling in part because more people were serving more time. In August 1998, the same Butterfield puzzle appeared on page one: 'Prison Population Growing Although Crime Rate Drops.' Eight months later, in 'Prison Nation,' he pointed out the same insuperable paradox."

Today's story deals with the same issue, apparently for the fourth time. While the headline is stuck in the old Times paradigm, the last two paragraphs of the news article at least attempt to deal with the policy objection raised by City Journal and the Standard: The Times article today says: "One major issue that the Justice Department's study did not address was whether there was any relationship between growth in the incarceration rate and the drop in crime. Advocates of tougher prosecution and sentencing say the huge growth in imprisonment, with the incarceration rate tripling since 1980, has been largely responsible for the decrease in crime." So why the headline?

Bush and Buchanan: An editorial in today's New York Times claims that when Pat "Buchanan walked out of the Republican Party last fall, Governor Bush lamented his loss to the G.O.P."

In fact, while Mr. Bush may be criticized for trying to stop Mr. Buchanan from leaving the party, once Mr. Buchanan walked out, Mr. Bush's statement can hardly be characterized fairly as a lament. Here is that October 25, 1999 statement: "Pat Buchanan is leaving the Republican Party because Republicans rejected his views during his three failed attempts to earn the Republican Party's presidential nomination. Pat sees an America that retreats within her borders; Republicans see an America that is strong and confident and exports freedom throughout the world. Pat sees an America unable and unwilling to compete in the free market; Republicans welcome competition because we know America's best is the best in the world. Pat sees an America that should have stayed home while Hitler overran Europe and perpetrated the Holocaust. Republicans are proud of America's role in defeating Nazi Germany and know that freedom still depends on an America that is strong and engaged. Pat's message was rejected by Republicans across America, so he is choosing to leave the party of Lincoln and Reagan. I am confident that the vast majority of conservatives will stay with the party that represents conservative ideals: the Republican Party."

Bush and the Environment: An opinion piece in today's Times attacks Mr. Bush's "famously abysmal environmental record," noting that "Houston has now surpasssed long-suffering Los Angeles as the smoggiest city." Well, if we're going to blame Mr. Bush for that, it's probably just as fair to blame Houston's Democratic mayor, Lee Brown. In fact, Mr. Bush has compiled a respectable environmental record in Texas. Under his administration, the state cleaned up more than 450 contaminated brownfields. And Texas ranked first in the nation in a state-by-state EPA study of pollution reduction from 1995 to 1998.

A story in the national section of today's Times runs under the headline "Fuel Bills Empty Poor Pockets, Left Unfilled by Boom." The story purports to describe a "crisis" of "millions of low-income Americans, the rural and urban poor alike, who are untouched by the flourishing economy and, as a result, unprotected from the effects of rising fuel and utility prices."

This story line starts falling apart almost immediately. First, by way of comparison, the article claims that "The middle class and the affluent -- despite significant increases in the cost of gasoline, heating fuels and electricity after years of relatively low prices -- in the main have not changed their driving habits or let their homes become uncomfortably warm." This sentence stops the reader for a minute, until it dawns that the energy "crisis" for the poor at issue here involves not heating homes in the winter but air-conditioning them in the summer.

So, for instance, we hear about the "vulnerable" poor folks in San Diego, where electric bills have more than doubled this summer. The truth is, San Diego is on the beach and has a relatively moderate climate as a result of the ocean breezes. Even the Northeast is having one of the mildest summers on record. Why should taxes from hardworking people go to people who don't work but want to live in air-conditioned comfort? Smartertimes.com grew up in a house without air conditioning, and when it got hot, we opened the windows and we sweated. Or we had a cold drink. We didn't go running to the government for assistance in solving our "crisis."

Now, sure, there are some climates, like South Florida, where the summer heat is oppressive and there are lots of elderly persons who are too frail to work or to withstand the heat. It might make sense for the government, or energy companies, to help them out a bit with their electric bills.

The story concedes that there is already a $1.1 billion a year federal program to help poor people with their heating bills, but it's not clear whether the program covers air conditioning, which seems to be the crisis of the moment. Also unclear is whether there is anyone who is eligible for the program but who is not being served; there is no mention of a waiting list for the program. The story says the budget for the program has shrunk, but that may just be because fewer people need the help in the midst of an economic boom.

The article is accompanied by a picture of an Iowa couple that claims it will starve to pay for gas and heating oil. "We can't get all the food we want," the man is quoted as saying. "We will probably cut back more on food." This is undeniably sad, but there is a food stamp program in America that prevents people from starving. The man is receiving a $1,300-a-month disability check from the government, and he got $300 last year from the federal fuel assistance program. He owns land and is building a house on it, spending $300 a month on "building materials," the article tells us at the very end. Why should the taxes of hardworking Americans go to subsidize this guy's air conditioning bill so that he can instead spend the money on building himself a new house? The Times story doesn't even come close to providing an answer; it doesn't even quote anyone who might raise that question. Instead, it relies on sob stories from poor people who want more government help, and it adds some quotes from the government officials who are making the case for expanding the budgets of their welfare programs.

Gore, Undershirtless: This, from today's lead news story: "Despite sweltering 97-degree heat that left Mr. Gore's drenched shirt stuck to his back (Mr. Lieberman wore an undershirt), the Democratic team got exactly the images of family and rectitude that it wanted out of today's event." This is a sort of roundabout way of suggesting that Al Gore was not wearing an undershirt. Maybe for the next hot-weather event he could borrow one from Mr. Lieberman to promote that image of rectitude.

Gore, Cynical: When the Republicans had black and Hispanic speakers at their convention, the Times derided it as a parade of props. Much less of a fuss is being made over Mr. Gore's use of identity politics. This fascinating anecdote, for instance, is buried midway through the inside section of a story in today's Times: "Last week, as interest was peaking over Mr. Gore's progress, his campaign let it be known that one of his finalists was a woman, Gov. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, even though she had already said she would turn down the job, and even though one person involved in Mr. Gore's screening process said that she had not been under serious consideration for some time."

Mr. Gore is playing the same double-edged game with Mr. Lieberman on the Jewish issue. On one hand, the Times reports, Mr. Gore ordered that "no steps were to be taken to gauge public reaction to Mr. Lieberman's religion. "That's not part of my thinking. I exclude that," Mr. Gore is reported to have said. Yet at the same time, the Gore-Lieberman team is clearly exploiting the vice presidential candidate's religion in an attempt to create a John F. Kennedy- or Jackie Robinson-like historic excitement. "Senator's faith becomes part of strategy," the Times subheadline aptly puts it today.

Safir the Jew: In the Lieberman Jew-phoria yesterday, the Times got carried away and, in a story on the resignation of police commissioner Howard Safir, noted on the front page that Safir was New York's first Jewish police commissioner. Today's story on Safir's resignation appropriately omits any reference to his religious background. Perhaps the Times is belatedly remembering its 1986 editor's note stating that "the race, religion or ethnic background of a person in the news, under the Times' policies, may be specified only if it is pertinent to the news, and in such a case, the relevance must be demonstrated in the article."

Okay, so Senator Lieberman is Jewish. And an Orthodox Jew, at that. We think the press is overreacting to that. Consider the front page of this morning's New York Times. Under a big, black headline reading "First Jew on a Major U.S. Ticket," the Times runs three separate front-page stories that each remind us that Mr. Lieberman is, yep, a Jew.

The lead news story makes it virtually the first fact readers learn about the Lieberman pick, writing that Gore is "putting a Jew on a national ticket of a major party for the first time." This Jew factor is unloaded before we hear about Lieberman's views of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and way before we hear about his views on campaign finance reform, school vouchers or taxes.

A "news analysis" also on the front page reports that "In picking the first Jewish running mate -- and one who is Orthodox at that -- Mr. Gore hopes to underscore his willingness to break the political rules and display a dash of daring that has largely been absent from his campaign. But while the choice could energize Jewish voters (though they are overwhelmingly Democratic anyway) it could alienate others who might not be comfortable with a Jew in the White House."

A "man in the news" profile, also on the front page, describes Mr. Lieberman as "the first Orthodox Jew to serve in the Senate." The profile reports that the selection of Mr. Lieberman "also carries a risk, for he would be the first Jew named to a major national ticket. The weeks to come may show whether Mr. Lieberman's faith will raise questions in the same way that John F. Kennedy's Catholicism became a focus in the 1960 presidential election: whether religion might affect his performance as vice president, for example, or the policies of a Gore -- or Lieberman -- administration toward the Middle East."

So we are told four separate times on the front page -- three articles and a headline -- that Mr. Lieberman is the first Jew on a major party ticket. But that's not all. There's also a sidebar inside the paper on Jewish community reaction to the choice, and there's an op-ed piece on what Mr. Lieberman means for American Jews. And, descending into self-parody, a fourth front-page story in today's Times, reporting on the fact that Howard Safir will resign as New York's police commissioner, says: "Spokesmen for Mr. Safir, the 39th man to hold the post of commissioner and the first Jewish one, refused to discuss his plans."

Our own view is that Mr. Lieberman's and Mr. Safir's policy views and public records are far more newsworthy than their faith. One note of sanity in the coverage was injected by a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, Clifford May, who, asked about Mr. Lieberman's Judaism, replied, "I think it's irrelevant."

Mr. May's views, not those of the Times editors, are the ones that the founders put in this nation's governing document, the Constitution. Right there in Article 6 -- not even in the Bill of Rights, but in the original text -- is the phrase: "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." No, ever, any.

Friedman's Old World: Thomas Friedman's column today tries to tell George W. Bush that the world has changed, but all it really shows is that Mr. Friedman is stuck in the past. Mr. Friedman writes: "If Governor Bush really did try to abrogate the ABM treaty unilaterally, and cram it down the throats of the Russians and Europeans, I believe it could trigger a Seattle-like, Internet-driven, mass-based, anti-nuclear protest against the U.S. -- identical to the popular movement in Europe today against America's genetically modified foods." Mr. Friedman had little sympathy -- in fact, he pretty much had contempt -- for the anti-globalization protesters in Seattle. So why should Mr. Bush take anti-missile-defense protesters seriously?

Mr. Friedman also writes: "America was a deficit country when President Bush left office, and now it is a surplus country. That means that the Republican ethos of steadily cutting back government, and the foreign affairs budget, is not only unnecessary, it's reckless, and it will be perceived by the world as increasingly selfish." This buys into the false idea that the surplus belongs to the government to spend rather than to the individuals who earned it and paid the money in taxes. But it also ignores the fact that back in the deficit days, it was the Democrats who had an ethos of steadily cutting back defense spending. Democrats who refuse to fund the CIA or an aircraft carrier have just as bad an effect, probably worse, on American influence abroad as Republicans who want to close American consulates overseas and cut spending on foreign aid.

The AP wire is reporting this morning that Vice President Gore has decided to choose Senator Lieberman of Connecticut as his running mate. This morning's New York Times has Lieberman as one of four contenders for the post, but doesn't report the final selection. The Times also fails to explore any of the interesting problems for Mr. Gore that the Lieberman pick presents. If the press is fair, these problems will create the same weeklong flap that ensued when George W. Bush picked Richard Cheney. Among them:

Mr. Lieberman has been a harsh critic of the administration's Middle East policy with respect to Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. He wrote to President Clinton in 1997: "our government's Mideast policy of evenhandedness, in contradiction to reality, continues. It is wrong. Evenhandedness has not been earned." The same letter, which was signed by Mr. Lieberman and four Republican senators, said Yasser Arafat is "the villain who is unwilling to stop the terror" and called for "no more concessions."

Mr. Lieberman has voted for school vouchers and spoken out in favor of them. In a 1998 press release, he said, "I've always felt that school choice programs such as vouchers are on firm ground constitutionally." He praised a Supreme Court decision to let a Wisconsin voucher program stand, saying, "This is an important step forward for those of us who feel there ought to be some scholarship choices for poor children who are trapped in schools that are not educating them. . . .Our greatest challenge is to break through the gridlock on this issue and build the popular support necessary to make school choice a national priority." Mr. Gore, on the other hand, attacked Bill Bradley during the primaries for supporting voucher experiments. In one primary debate, Mr. Gore said, according to an account in The Washington Post, "I have never been for vouchers. I have always opposed vouchers and always will."

Mr. Lieberman also has ties to Christian conservatives that the Democrats traditionally try to demonize. He is, for instance, the honorary chairman of something called the Center for Jewish and Christian Values, a group whose advisory board includes Ralph Reed, the former Christian Coalition executive director who is now a political consultant working for the campaign of George W. Bush. Also on that advisory board is Gary Bauer, who ran in the Republican primary on a family-values, anti-abortion rights platform. How is the Democratic base going to deal with a vice presidential candidate who works with Ralph Reed and Gary Bauer to, among other things, "protect religious expression in the public schools"?

None of this is to suggest that Mr. Lieberman wasn't Mr. Gore's best pick, or that he wouldn't make a fine vice president. It's just to suggest that some of these issues might have been explored in the pages of the Times over the past few days, while we've known that Mr. Lieberman has been a finalist for the vice presidential nomination, but before Mr. Gore made his final decision.

Socialized Medicine: If you thought the specter of socialized medicine in America had been defeated with the death of Hillary Clinton's health care plan early in the first term of the Clinton administration, think again. Check out the editorial on nursing home care in today's New York Times, which calls on Congress to establish a formula for how many workers should be in each nursing home. The editorial also calls on Congress to require "competitive wages" for nursing aides. Well, call us wild-eyed free market conservatives, but it seems to us that a more reasonable approach would be to mandate certain standards -- clean rooms and beds, adequate nutrition for patients -- and leave it to the nursing homes to meet such standards as efficiently as possible. If some nursing homes are able to meet the standards with fewer staff by making use of better technology and of more effective management practices, then why penalize them and increase health care costs by forcing them to hire employees that they don't need? (There's a case to be made that even the standards for conditions are unnecessary, but, given the vulnerable state that nursing home patients are in, we wouldn't go that far.) The idea that Congress should impose wage controls on the nursing home aide category is so absurd that it hardly merits a response. But let's simply note that the moment wages are set by Congress they are no longer "competitive," and that several labor unions are doing quite well in organizing nursing home aides into collective bargaining units and raising their wages the old-fashioned way, without the help of Congress or the editorial board of the New York Times.

This morning's New York Times book review carries a dismissive review of "State of a Union," the new book by Jerry Oppenheimer that alleges an enraged Hillary Clinton, in 1974, called an aide to her husband a "Jew bastard." The account by the campaign aide, Paul Fray, "looks highly suspect," the Times review says: "More damning, though Fray and his wife have been enthusiastic contributors to Clinton books and articles over the years, they had, inexplicably, never mentioned this incident to any other reporter."

Smartertimes.com doesn't have a view about whether Mrs. Clinton actually used the slur, and, in any case, is more interested in her present policy positions than her past private comments. Nevertheless, the Times review is misleading. Fray has claimed publicly that he did tell several other reporters over the years about the "Jew bastard" comment, but that the other reporters all ignored it at the time because what they were looking for wasn't Mrs. Clinton's alleged anti-Semitism but Bill Clinton's alleged philandering.

Dim: An article in the week in review section of this morning's New York Times serves up the dim conventional wisdom on the California power shortage: "Nearly everyone agrees that deregulation shoulders a significant amount of blame for the crisis." Well, nearly everyone quoted by the Times, that is. In fact, a report by William Kucewicz of geoinvestor.com makes a good case that the California problems aren't the effect of deregulation, but of price controls. (The Kucewicz report was linked Friday on the "Best of the Web Today" section of opinionjournal.com, the new Wall Street Journal editorial page site to which the editor of smartertimes.com is a paid contributor.)

County "police": The cover story in today's New York Times magazine makes reference to "a county police officer" in Los Angeles. In fact, Los Angeles County doesn't have police officers; it has sheriff's deputies.

Wrong chart: A story in the real estate section of today's Times about rising office rents in Manhattan is accompanied by two graphics. One of the graphics illustrates a decrease in rents, which is the opposite of what the story and headline report is happening.

The Gore campaign is in even worse shape than we thought if it is getting this kind of treatment in a front page news story from the New York Times, which is usually a reliable supporter:

"'When I was in Vietnam, I didn't do the most or run the greatest danger,' Mr. Gore said. 'But I volunteered and enlisted because I loved my country, and I knew that if I didn't go, I knew that someone else from my home town of Carthage, Tenn., would have to go in my place.'

"Left out of that explanation are two other possible reasons for his decision to volunteer: his desire to help insulate his father, an antiwar senator from Tennessee, from Republican criticism, and his own interest in broadening his resume for a possible career in politics."

The use of the word "possible" is a red flag that the reporter is injecting his own cynicism. There are any number of "possible" reasons that Mr. Gore went to Vietnam, ranging from a hunger for Army food to a feeling that he looked good in uniform. The Times manages to pick two that depict Mr. Gore as being motivated by political concerns rather than by patriotism or morality. If there's some evidence that his decision to enlist was motivated by politics -- if, for example, Mr. Gore told friends at the time that those were his motivations, or if he has spoken publicly on prior occasions of the decision being motivated by politics -- then, by all means, the Times should share the evidence with readers and try to find out the reason Mr. Gore has changed his account. But if there's no evidence, just a possibility, then there is no justification for the newspaper to suggest in its own voice, in a news story, that Mr. Gore was motivated by political concerns rather than the patriotic and moral ones he cites.

Late and thin: The New York Times waddles in this morning with a story on the NAACP's plan to spend $7 million on political activities in connection with this year's election. The Times is late on this story, which The Washington Post reported on Friday. The Times story is also not as good as the Post story. The Post story, for instance, reports that the NAACP effort will be headed by Heather Booth, a former operative of the Democratic National Committee; The Times story leaves that information out. The Post story also considers whether the NAACP's action is hypocritical considering that the organization has called for a law banning this sort of political spending; the Times story doesn't probe that irony.

The metro section of today's New York Times contains a dispatch from Jersey City reporting on a campground there that is scheduled to close. "The demise of the park will leave outdoorsmen with nowhere to pitch a tent in metropolitan New York," the article says. "The closest campground is in Newburgh, N.Y., about 60 miles north of Manhattan."

Well, the editors must not have heard of Heckscher State Park in East Islip, N.Y., which has 69 camp sites and is 50 miles from Manhattan. They must not be aware of Clarence Fahnestock State Park in Carmel, N.Y., which is about 55 miles from Manhattan. And, while they know about the privately owned campground in Jersey City, New Jersey, they are apparently ignorant of the opportunities for camping at Floyd Bennett Field in the Jamaica Bay area of Brooklyn. That campground, which is under the auspices of the Gateway National Recreation Area of the National Park Service, is open to organized groups and to the general public on a limited basis.