The lead editorial in this morning's New York Times praises, on freedom of speech grounds, a 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned a congressional ban on Legal Services lawsuits challenging welfare reform. After going on for a while praising the "free-speech stance" of Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in the Legal Services case, the Times writes, "Justice Kennedy was unconvincing in trying to explain why the First Amendment prohibits muzzling government-paid lawyers but somehow allows the muzzling of doctor-employees in the family planning program."
So, according to the Times, the First Amendment freedom of speech requires that Congress fund lawyers to sue to overturn welfare reform and that Congress fund doctors to advise on abortions. The Times also interprets that same First Amendment to require the city of New York to fund anti-Catholic art exhibits at the Brooklyn Museum. How, possibly, then, can the Times endorse the McCain-Feingold campaign finance "reform," as it has been doing, even to the point of condemning the AFL-CIO for daring to point out that the labor federation's own free speech rights would be violated by the McCain-Feingold provision preventing unions from airing political commercials in the months before an election? The McCain-Feingold restrictions, remember, are arguably even a worse violation of the First Amendment than the welfare-lawyer, abortion-doctor and anti-Catholic-art cases, because they would impose a ban on privately funded activities rather than simply withdrawing public funds from an activity that could still take place legally with private funds.
One of the Times' own columnists acknowledges today that "Part of McCain-Feingold is very possibly going to be tossed out by the Supreme Court." It is enough to make one suspect that the agenda the Times is promoting isn't really about free speech, but about opposition to welfare reform, support for abortion rights and support for anti-Catholic art.
Anyone: A "political memo" that runs in the metro section of today's New York Times reports, "No matter whether Mrs. Clinton is being the dutiful junior senator from New York, offering a prescription for the ailing upstate economy, or inveighing against President Bush's tax cut, all anyone seems to want to talk about is her husband's scandal-plagued presidency." This is gutsy. The Times devotes acres of front-page space and editorials to Bill Clinton's "scandal-plagued presidency," then soberly observes that it is "all anyone seems to want to talk about." Smartertimes.com thinks there are plenty of people who want to talk about other things, but they are not getting much help from the Times' unseemly fixation on Mr. Clinton's exercise of what was, after all, his constitutional authority to issue pardons.