A dispatch from Jerusalem in this morning's New York Times reports on mortar attacks launched by Palestinian Arabs against Israeli targets. "Some 65 homemade mortars have been fired in the last couple of months," the Times reports. A "homemade mortar" sounds like a "homemade chocolate-chip cookie" or a "homemade loaf of bread." How does the New York Times know that all 65 of these mortars were made in homes and not, say, smuggled in from Egypt or Lebanon, or manufactured in factories established by the Palestinian Authority or Hamas? Has the Times sent a correspondent to inspect the mortars and certify that they were "homemade"? A mortar is, as Webster's Second puts it, "a short-barreled cannon with a low muzzle velocity, which throws shells in a high trajectory." It's possible to make a mortar and shells in a home, but the likelihood that these 65 Palestinian Arabs did so independently with no central coordination or instruction or distribution of materiel seems pretty low to Smartertertimes.com.
With a Slammer!: Here's the headline on an article in today's New York Times about Passover food inspections in Israel: "Here Come Israel's Passover Police!" What's with the slammer! What is this, the New York Post! Try to control yourself!
Late Again: Today's New York Times carries a front-page article about a Bush administration plan to stop citizen lawsuits against the government on behalf of endangered species. That's old news to readers of the New York Times Company's local newspaper in Boston, the Globe, which yesterday carried on its front page an article by Robert Schlesinger reporting the same news. The Globe's story quoted Senator Kerry, Rep. George Radanovich, and an Interior Department spokeswoman named Stephanie Hanna; the Times article quotes -- you guessed it -- Mr. Kerry, Mr. Radanovich and Ms. Hanna. The Times Company could save some money on its Washington bureau and get its New York readers the news a day sooner if it just picked up the Globe-provided coverage directly. At the very least, the New York Times could have done its Boston subsidiary the courtesy of mentioning the Boston paper's story in today's Times follow-up.
Tax and Spend: To get an idea of why the New York Times so opposes President Bush's tax cuts, check out today's editorial page. One editorial supports raising the hourly fee for court-assigned lawyers who defend poor criminal defendants to $75 or $60 from $40 or $25. (That would work out to more than prosecutors make and would also establish a pattern of a huge percentage increase that could then be followed up by all the other workers whose wages are set by the government.) Another editorial says that "the Center for Science in the Public Interest sensibly also argues for more money to improve the F.D.A's enforcement capacity." This is the same Center for Science in the Public Interest that an article in the March 21 "Dining In, Dining Out" section of the New York Times identified as "usual suspects," "food police" and "movie popcorn equals death." The point is, the reason the Times is against the tax cut is that it wants the government to spend more money.