The lead editorial in today's New York Times cheers the newfound support by Senator Cochran, a Republican from Mississippi, for campaign finance "reform." The Times praises this as a "remarkably important development for the cause of clean elections," and it refers to "the McCain-Feingold bill." But as the Times news article makes clear, there is no bill at the moment. The news article reports that there have been "several different versions" of the McCain-Feingold legislation in recent years. "The senators said they had yet to decide which version they would introduce," the news article reports.
So intense and irrational is the Times's lust for any legislation that would restrict political speech in this country that the newspaper's editorialists are able to praise such legislation without even knowing what is in it, and, in fact, before the legislation has even been written or introduced. The news article at least raises the concern that some versions of the legislation would "reign in spending by independent issues advocacy groups." (The correct usage there would be "rein in," by the way.) But the Times editorialists don't care about free speech -- in the U.S. Senate race, they backed a "soft money" ban that prohibited television ads by groups like the Sierra Club, the National Abortion Rights Action League, the Christian Coalition, the National Rifle Association and the AFL-CIO. How our democracy would be made healthier or our elections more "clean" by silencing these citizens' groups, the Times never really explains.
The less money the political parties can legally raise and spend on television commercials that get their message across directly, the more powerful the role of the New York Times becomes. So it's no wonder the Times supports the restrictions on free speech that are parading about under the guise of campaign finance "reform."
Friedman: In his "Foreign Affairs" column in today's New York Times, Thomas Friedman manages to get three facts wrong in a single sentence. He writes, "Mr. Bush favors building a national missile defense system -- but for now that is an idea for which there is no workable technology, no immediate enemy and no supportive allies." There's plenty of workable missile defense technology out there now, starting with the Patriot and including the Aegis cruiser, which with some modifications could be a workable missile defense platform. There are plenty of enemies -- Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Communist China, Russia. And there are some supportive allies. Taiwan, for one. And Israel, for another. Funny how those supportive allies seem less concerned about the workability of the technology than Mr. Friedman does. Perhaps because they are located so much closer to the immediate enemies.
The Friedman column also claims of Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld and Condi Rice that "none of them have wrestled closely with these issues for years." (The usage should be none of them "has.") That is certainly not true of Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been quite involved in foreign policy issues, particularly missile defense.
Lower Echelon: An article on the New York Times op-ed page today about the Cuban missile crisis refers to "lower-eschelon staff people like myself." Well, one reason she was a lower-echelon staff person may have been that she couldn't spell the word echelon.