A dispatch from Cairo in the international section of this morning's New York Times misspells the name of the American ambassador to Egypt. The Times calls him "Daniel Kurzer." In fact, as the State Department's web site makes clear, his name is "Daniel Kurtzer." He's pretty well known in Middle East policy circles, and certainly you'd think the foreign desk editors at the Times and its correspondents in Egypt would be able to spell his name correctly if they put some effort into it. We'll see if they run a correction.
Jewish "Church": Check out this gem from a story on the front of the Times metro section about efforts by a religious group in New Jersey to spend more money on electricity:
"Other church efforts have moved forward on their own tracks."
"The New Jersey region chapter on the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism has formed its own energy-buying consortium separate from Partners for Environmental Quality and will present two choices to its 60 members this fall: one with a cheaper traditional energy mix, and one with a higher proportion of cleaner-burning fuels like natural gas and renewable resources."
While the dictionary definition may leave some wiggle room here, we'd venture to say that most Conservative Jews who read that story will bristle at having their synagogue effort being described as a "church" effort. "Church" generally refers to something Christian; a better, more neutral phrase to introduce the section of the article about the synagogue effort would have been something like: "Efforts by other religious groups have moved forward on their own tracks."
Missile Defense Misadventure: The Times' lead editorial today calls for a delay in building a system for protecting America from enemy missile attack. The editorial says there is "no compelling reason for ordering construction other than the perception that doing so might shield Al Gore from Republican attack. Partisan political considerations should not drive such an important defense decision." But wait a minute. Why shouldn't defense decisions be motivated, in the broadest sense, by political considerations? This is a democracy, after all. If the voters want to be protected against enemy missile attacks, why shouldn't the elected politicians take that into account and move to deploy a shield? Under the Constitution, the Congress has the power to authorize and appropriate defense spending and to declare war, and the founders clearly intended that the Congress would be responsive to the popular will. There's no reason that missile defense, of all issues, should be above politics. If the Times thinks its arguments against deploying a missile defense are so strong, it should encourage Mr. Gore to attack George W. Bush for wanting to recklessly spend billions of taxpayer dollars on an unnecessary and unworkable Star Wars plan. That's what elections are for, to air out and decide big issues like this.
If the Times editorials are marketing opinions as hare-brained as its views on missile defense, it's almost enough to make a reader grateful that the paper devotes an entire editorial today to a tennis game in England. It's hard to see what the policy point or opinion is in the Wimbledon editorial that makes it worth running in the editorial column rather than in the sports section. But again, the Times can probably do less damage to the republic by musing on the sports results than it can by editorializing on serious topics, so we're probably better off.