A story in the national section about Governor George W. Bush's position on immigration bashes the Republicans as anti-immigrant. "The point was to distinguish him from the more strident Republican immigration policies of yore," the article says. "The Bush campaign has been working to live down the reputation the party gained in 1996 when some prominent Republicans, including Pete Wilson, then the governor of California, backed Proposition 187 in California to deny medical and education services to children of illegal immigrants."
Unfortunately for immigrants and for companies struggling to find workers in today's tight labor market, the Democrats have been anti-immigrant, too. Catering to labor unions fearful of downward wage pressure, blacks who don't want more competition for jobs and environmental groups who think there are too many people in America already, there are plenty of Democrats who want to reduce levels of legal immigration to America. The Clinton-Gore administration regularly sends its Coast Guard to turn back boats of immigrants from Haiti and Cuba who are seeking freedom and a better life on our shores. Senator Feinstein of California, a Democrat, has called for a national identity card and increases in the border patrol to keep out illegal immigrants; Senator Boxer, another Democrat from California, urged the construction of a border fence with Mexico, according to an account by Ron Unz in the November 1999 issue of Commentary. But according to the Times account today, it's just the Republicans who are "strident" on the immigration issue.
Radical Environmentalists: Catch this from an editorial in today's Times about a bill in Congress that would let government buy more land for the purposes of "conservation": "The coastal provision, meanwhile, is flawed by loose language that could actually allow states to build the kind of infrastructure projects like roads and port facilities that ruined the coastlines in the first place. This is exactly what the bill should not allow." Oh yes, those roads and port facilities that ruined the coastlines. Like the port at New York, without which the very metropolis the Times is based in wouldn't probably have ever become more than a village. Or the FDR Drive, West Side Highway and Belt Parkway, without which the newspaper's readers would stand little chance of getting to work each morning. "Ruined the coastlines," they did. Oh.
Hillary on the Iran Jews: A story in the metro section about Chelsea Clinton's appearance with her mother on the campaign trail describes Malcolm Hoenlein, who was also at the campaign event, as the "conservative and influential Jewish leader" who is executive vice chairman of the "Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations," The correct name of the group is the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The article offers no evidence that he is "conservative"; I know him from my days at the Forward, and only by the Times's warped standard could he be considered a conservative. The article lets Mrs. Clinton off with a quote calling the trial of 13 Jews in Iran on espionage charges a "miscarriage of justice." But with all the space devoted to Chelsea, the article doesn't have room, apparently, to seriously question Mrs. Clinton's views on whether she agrees with her husband's decision to relax American sanctions on Iranian carpets, pistachios and caviar while the 13 Jews are jailed. Or whether she would criticize the president for failing to get the World Bank to stop funding multimillion dollar projects in Iran while the show trial of the 13 Jews continues.
Improvement on 'Sharanksy': The lead item in Saturday's Smartertimes was devoted to the problems the Times has in spelling correctly the name of Israel's interior minister. Saturday's story misspelled it four times. It looks like things have improved slightly. Today's front-page story on the minister, whose name is Natan Sharansky, manages to spell his name correctly in the headline. This time, the name is misspelled as "Sharanksy" only twice in the story. That's a 50 percent reduction in the number of misspellings compared to Saturday's article. Still, the fact that one of today's misspellings is on the front page means that the copy editors over on West 43rd Street still have some more work to do on the Sharansky issue.
Anderson Cottage: The Times today runs a correction of the map of Washington D.C. that it ran yesterday alongside an article on President Lincoln's retreat, Anderson Cottage. Smartertimes pointed out the error yesterday morning.