A Times article about the Club for Growth, a group of economic conservatives, includes a description of a Republican Congressman who is being challenged by the Club in part for, as the Times describes it, " going along with the bipartisan agreement in 2011 to raise the federal debt ceiling and voting with Speaker John A. Boehner to ratify the deal at the beginning of this year to raise taxes on the wealthy but avert tax increases for the middle class."

That deal, of course, did not "avert tax increases for the middle class." Rather, by allowing the payroll tax cut to expire, it included a tax increase for the middle class.

"New Pontiff Has Common Touch, but Is a Theological Conservative," is the print headline over the continuation of a Times profile of Pope Francis. This is a case where the use of the word "but" rather than "and" is a clue about the point of view of the editor who wrote the headline. That view seems to be that a common touch and theological conservatism are somehow contradictory.

Sometimes the flaw with the Times is the unasked question. For example, today's paper features a front-page article that appears under the headline, "F.D.A. Plans to Loosen Rules on Alzheimer's Drug Approval." There's no voice in the story saying, "If the FDA is going to loosen the rules for Alzheimer's drug approval, why doesn't it go the logical next step and loosen its approval rules for all drugs?"

A dispatch from Washington previewing the itinerary of President Obama's upcoming trip to Israel includes a reference to "Bethlehem, in the Palestinian controlled West Bank." Last month a dispatch from a different Times reporter referred to Bethlehem as being "in the Israeli-occupied West Bank."

Maybe the Times could adopt a consistently accurate description on this point rather than varying it depending on what political point is being advanced by the paragraph or article in question?

It's a disappointing issue of the New York Times today for those who appreciate the occasions when the paper strays outside its usual ideological rut.

There's an "economic scene" column by Eduardo Porter that appears under the headline "Blessings of Low Taxes Remain Unproved." At the New York Sun we had a rule that you couldn't use the word "remain" as a verb in a headline or the opening paragraph of an article, because it suggested not news but olds. It's a strange column, because on one hand it concedes some points: "Indeed, higher tax rates can reduce economic output because they change the decisions of workers, employers and investors. Income taxes reduce the rewards of work, potentially blunting the incentive to take a job. They can discourage paying for a costly higher education by reducing lucrative professions' take home pay." Elsewhere, it mentions a study that "concluded that a tax cut that reduced top rates by 5 percent and revenues by 2.5 percent of gross domestic product would add roughly 0.2 to 0.3 percent to annual economic growth." Yet the Times column concludes with the rhetorical question (seemingly contradicted by the previous passages), "if lower taxes do not deliver higher growth, why should the nation pursue them?"

As if that weren't enough on the tax issue, there's an editorial suggesting that Mayor Bloomberg respond to the court ruling striking down his ban on large portions of sugary beverages by pushing instead for "a penny-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks." Why stop at a penny-per-ounce? Why not a dollar-an-ounce, indexed to inflation (or to average weight)? And how about adding border police at the bridges and tunnels from New Jersey to prevent New Yorkers from sneaking in bottles purchased out-of-state where the tax does not apply? The Times' support for this new tax brings to seventeen the number of different tax increases supported by Times editorial writers. The previous 16 are listed here.

Also on the soda tax issue, the Times carries a front-page article about the soda "industry's steadfast, if surprising, allies: advocacy groups representing the very communities hit hardest by the obesity epidemic." Maybe the Times finds it surprising that people who drink large portions of sugary beverages would oppose a ban on them, but others might find it totally understandable. Still others might prefer that their newspaper simply report the news rather than instruct readers on whether they should feel surprised by it.

On the question of a balanced budget, the Times carries a "news analysis" by Annie Lowrey questioning the value of the balanced federal budget that Republicans proclaim as a goal. She writes, "As sensible as a balanced budget might sound — much like a balanced checkbook for a family — countries are generally able to run modest deficits for years on end while still keeping debt stable as a share of economic output. One year's deficit is effectively paid off by later economic growth, especially if a government is investing in public goods like roads and schools." It's funny how the Times all of a sudden decides a balanced budget is a silly goal the moment Paul Ryan decides to aim for it. When President Obama was pledging to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office, or when President George W. Bush was running deficits after cutting taxes and running wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or even when President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich were running a surplus, the Times wasn't running news analysis columns deriding the idea of a balanced budget.

Finally, as if all that weren't enough to turn your stomach, the Times op-ed page features an article by a Columbia professor, Rashid Khalidi, that runs in print under the headline "Is Any Hope Left for Mideast Peace?" and online under the headline "Will Obama Let the Oppression of the Palestinians Continue?" At the New York Sun we had the same rule about the use of the word "continue" in a headline that we did about the use of the word "remain." Professor Khalidi rails against what he calls "the unending colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem," as if the Jews, who have lived in this land since the time of the Bible, were some sort of European invaders.

An editorial in today's Times, under the headline, "Toxic Threats to Grassland Birds," blames insecticides for a decline in "various sparrows, eastern and western meadowlarks, bobolinks, horned larks and at least two kinds of owl."

The Times' evidence, as often, is "a new study," though, as often, the newspaper doesn't provide a hyperlink to the study, doesn't say where it was published, and doesn't provide any information about its methodology or its funding. It doesn't even name the authors, though it does describe them as Canadian. The editorial says:

a new generation of nerve-agent insecticides called neonicotinoids could pose a further threat.

These insecticides are now under review by the Environmental Protection Agency. They have caused huge die-offs of honeybees in Europe and provoked an uproar among scientists, not least because the studies that purported to establish their safety were financed by pesticide manufacturers. We hope that the Canadian study, establishing a clear link between pesticides and grassland bird losses, will cause the E.P.A. to consider the next generation of insecticides in a more critical light.

Maybe I'm just a skeptic or a contrarian, but I'm not convinced. Maybe the bird population is diminishing not because of any toxic effect of the insecticides on the birds, but because the insecticides are actually working as intended to reduce the insect population, and as a result there are fewer bugs around for the birds to eat. How is it that these pesticides have such terrible effects on European honeybees but not on American honeybees?

Anyway, why not link to the study, so readers can have a look and judge for themselves. The New York Times, with its editorial staff of more than 1,000, can't be bothered to include it, but Smartertimes, with its significantly smaller editorial staff, was able to find it and is providing it to readers: The link is here.

Sometimes the bias in Times news articles isn't in what they say, but in what they leave out.

One example in today's paper is an article by Patrick McGeehan that appears under the headline "Critics Wait for the City To Rein In Bus Lines." The article features five paragraphs from a business owner complaining about intercity bus companies whose buses park in front of her businesses, and two paragraphs from a person who represents the businesses. There are two paragraphs from a "spokeswoman for several bus companies." But there's no representation at all of the point of view of the customers of the bus lines, which even the article concedes are "popular." The article complains about "clogged sidewalks." Well, welcome to New York City.

Likewise, Clyde Haberman's "Breaking Bread" column, about having a drink with the director of the Hayden Planetarium, Neil deGrasse Tyson, carries a couple of paragraphs lambasting a congressman, Paul Broun:

Here's the real problem, as he sees it: "You have people who are not scientifically literate who have risen to positions of power and control," whether on local school boards or in Congress. He mentioned Representative Paul C. Broun, a Georgia Republican (and doctor) who sits on the House Science Committee and who says the world is 9,000 years old and was literally created in six days.

Voters, Dr. Tyson said, need to grasp the consequences of their electoral choices, especially if they produce officials who "undermine the source of creativity for tomorrow's economy." Meddle with the citizenry's understanding of science and technology, he said, and people "will emerge on the other side incapable of making the discoveries and innovations that the nation requires in order to stay economically competitive."

The Times doesn't give Dr. Broun a chance to explain or defend himself from this charge of scientific illiteracy or undermining tomorrow's economy, it just shovels the charge along unchallenged. Maybe the "as he sees it" language is a clue to the reader that the idea is to convey Mr. Tyson's opinion. But usually to get your own opinion out unchallenged in the Times you need to buy an ad; the news columns are places where such "as he sees it" claims are supposed to be tested against how other people see it, so that readers can weigh a variety of opinions and reach their own conclusions.

One of the most illuminating things about the Times can be the comments section of the Web site. It offers some sometimes unattractive insights into the paper's readership. One recent sad example is a response to David Brooks' column about a kosher supermarket in Brooklyn, Pomegranate. The topmost reader comment, recommended by 71 Times readers and given a "NYT Pick" stamp of approval by the paper's editors, is one that blames the Orthodox Jews for contributing to global warming by having too many children. It reads:

This is published on the very same day as Timothy Egan's piece on global warming, which emphasizes the dramatic changes to our earth attributable not just to our greed for fossil energy but also to our greed for more and more babies. How can you respect a religion that keeps itself unresponsive to modern realities? I confess to being a German surnamed American of non-Jewish heritage; there are nevertheless many things about Judaism that I much admire. But slavish adherence to any powerful but narrow mindset is not admirable.

The commenter is admirably self-aware about his German surname but perhaps not quite self-aware enough.

An editorial in the Times under the headline "Arkansas's Attack on Abortion" repeatedly describes abortion as a women's right. "Republican-controlled legislatures have been working for many years to limit women's access to legal abortion care," the editorial says. "it is distressing in 2013 that a woman's right to make her own childbearing decisions is under such aggressive attack by far-right lawmakers. In some quarters of the country, Republicans seem unchastened by their party's lagging support among women. …threatening to women's rights and health."

A news article elsewhere in the same day's paper describes an alternative scenario in a case involving a man the Times describes as "a fast-rising politician with fashionably left-of-center views on social issues":

Pleading "marital coercion," a rarely used defense in British courts, her lawyer cast her as a deeply vulnerable woman, keen to protect her marriage and her five children. He said she was accustomed to yielding to the overbearing demands of Mr. Huhne, who she said demanded on two occasions that she have abortions so as not to disrupt his career with additional children.

This intrusion of a reality-based anecdote interrupts the Times's editorial conception in two ways. First, it suggests that contrary to the editorial's description of abortion as purely a women's right, men might have an interest in protecting access to it as well. Second, it suggests that there are at least some cases in which restricting access to abortion might actually help a woman in a situation where she wants to bear a child but the father wants to terminate the pregnancy.

I'm not suggesting that the situation described in the news article is typical, or admirable, or that it should dictate abortion law. But it never ceases to amaze me how the same liberals who want men to be doing 50 percent (or more) of the diaper-changing and dishwashing and carpooling talk about abortion using the language of "a woman's right to make her own childbearing decisions," as if it were a given that the decision on childbearing were that of "a woman" rather than that of two parents.

A Times news article reports on a successful campaign by the New York State Comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli, to convince Dunkin' Donuts to remove "environmentally destructive" palm oil from its doughnut recipe. The Times article reports that palm oil's production has "in some places" led "to the destruction of rainforests and increased greenhouse gas emissions."

The article further reports that Dunkin' Donuts began using the palm oil "in 2007 when it moved to rid its menu of trans fats."

Now why, one wonders, would Dunkin' Donuts have "moved to rid its menu of trans fats" in 2007? The Times article doesn't mention it, but that is when Mayor Bloomberg's ban on trans fats went into effect. Include that fact, and the story becomes one about the unintended consequences of government action, and how a trans fat ban intended to improve public health by reducing heart disease wound up wreaking environmental destruction and perhaps even death (if you think Sandy was a result of climate change) by increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

Instead, as presented by the Times, the story is about a government official intervening to protect the fragile rainforest from a corporation that would otherwise ravage it.

The Times today publishes a scathing editorial about John Brennan, who was confirmed by the Senate yesterday as director of the CIA. "At his Senate confirmation hearing in February, he appeared to be one of the few people (apart from maybe Dick Cheney and some other die-hard right-wingers) who thinks there is some doubt still about whether the Bush administration tortured prisoners, hid its actions from Congress and misled everyone about whether coerced testimony provided valuable intelligence," the Times editorial says.

You'd think maybe that the time for such an editorial would be before the Senate voted to confirm Mr. Brennan, not after. Maybe there was no room for it amid all the editorials calling for the confirmation of Chuck Hagel as defense secretary. It's almost as if the Times editorialists disapproved of Mr. Brennan, but not so much that they thought it was worth saying anything about it before the vote and thus risking having President Obama suffer the setback of having one of his nominees rejected by the Senate.

The New York Times has an editorial today in favor "free breakfast in all classrooms" of the city's public school system. The editorial says, "Mayor Michael Bloomberg has argued that providing free breakfast in the classroom might increase childhood obesity, a claim that most experts would vigorously dispute. Studies have shown that breakfast with fruit, yogurt and other nutritious foods can help fight obesity by cutting down on the urge for junk food later in the day."

Typically, the Times includes no hyperlink to these "studies," and does not give the author or the date or place the studies were published. Nor does the paper say how many students were in the sample group of these studies, or over how many years they were studied, or whether there was a randomly selected control group. The Times editorial describes yogurt as a "nutritious food," and prescribes it for breakfast. Yet a Times magazine cover story that appeared less than two weeks ago under the headline "The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food" reported about General Mills:

The company's Yoplait brand had transformed traditional unsweetened breakfast yogurt into a veritable dessert. It now had twice as much sugar per serving as General Mills' marshmallow cereal Lucky Charms. And yet, because of yogurt's well-tended image as a wholesome snack, sales of Yoplait were soaring, with annual revenue topping $500 million. Emboldened by the success, the company's development wing pushed even harder, inventing a Yoplait variation that came in a squeezable tube — perfect for kids

There's also often plenty of fat and cholesterol in cow's milk yogurt if it isn't nonfat or lowfat.

The Times editorial also doesn't have any information about how much it would cost to provide school breakfast to everyone, or any suggestions on how to pay for it, or any reason why childless taxpayers already burdened with the costs of educating other people's children should be taxed further to subsidize their breakfasts, or why parents who enjoy making and eating breakfast at home for their children should be taxed to subsidize the parents and children who don't. Would food stamp payments for families with school-aged children be reduced by the amount of the cost of the breakfast? Or are we talking about an overall increase in the amount of the food subsidy to a population, again, whose main problem is less hunger or malnutrition than it is obesity?

I'm not necessarily against a healthy breakfast being served at school, but all in all, it's not a particularly convincing editorial.

Toward the end of a Times news article by Michael D. Shear about whether President Obama and his family should keep golfing and going on vacations amid the sequester comes this: "And like Mr. Obama, the second President Bush was criticized for his frequent golf outings, which sometimes made him seem disconnected from the grim task of leading a nation in war."

This is misleading to the point of inaccuracy. George W. Bush stopped golfing as president in August 2003, as the Washington Post reported. The sentence in the Times, with its reference to "frequent golf outings" by a wartime President Bush, omits that highly relevant piece of information.

The Times has a past history of taking the position that the First Amendment protects a wide range of activities — "animal cruelty videos" depicting "animals being crushed or mutilated," "the sale of violent video games to minors," "material support" to terrorist groups — but does not protect the ability of an American to run a television commercial about a political issue without disclosing his identity or the identity of his funders. Today the paper has an editorial adding another activity (other than political speech) to the list of those it claims is protected by the First Amendment. This time around, it is the ability of illegal immigrant day laborers to solicit potential employers.

Just the latest example of how the Times editorialists are First Amendment absolutists regarding everything except for the political speech that the First Amendment was designed to protect in the first place.

That is quite a correction in today's Times to Mark Bittman's column the other day about sugar and diabetes. Here is the correction:

Mark Bittman's column on Thursday incorrectly described findings from a recent epidemiological study of the relationship of sugar consumption to diabetes. The study found that increased sugar in a population's food supply was linked to higher rates of diabetes — independent of obesity rates — but stopped short of stating that sugar caused diabetes. It did not find that "obesity doesn't cause diabetes: sugar does." Obesity is, in fact, a major risk factor for Type 2 diabetes, as the study noted.