The Gore campaign continues in today's New York Times profile of Ralph Nader. The article runs under a headline asserting that Mr. Nader is "Unrepentant," and it reports that Mr. Nader "has no regrets." This is news? No, this is spin: The Times is haranguing its readers and Mr. Nader with the underlying idea that Mr. Nader ought to have regrets and repent. Does anyone seriously expect Mr. Nader to repent? It's just funny that, more than five months after the election, the Times still is harboring hostility toward Mr. Nader for supposedly costing Al Gore the election. The Times would do better to get over it, already, and stop demanding in headlines that Mr. Nader repent.
One-Sided on Liberty: A news article in today's New York Times reports on a book that claims Israel deliberately attacked an American intelligence ship in 1967, killing 34 American sailors. While the Times article duly passes along the allegations in the book, it doesn't bother including any comment from the Israeli government reacting to the book. You'd think that if the Times were going to accuse a friendly foreign government of essentially murdering 34 Americans, it would make the effort of getting a fresh comment from the foreign government in question. There's no explanation given by the Times of why Israel would be so stupid as to risk alienating its most important military backer, the United States, by deliberately attacking one of its vessels.
'One of the Best': An editorial in this morning's New York Times about the New York mayoral race says, "Unfortunately, in this case the mayor's political gaming could erode not only Mr. Vallone's power base but also one of the best campaign finance systems in the country. Meanwhile, two other Democratic candidates, Borough President Fernando Ferrer of the Bronx and Public Advocate Mark Green, have been pursuing the venerable local practice of turning their public duties into campaign events." The reason that Mr. Ferrer and Mr. Green, and the other candidates, for that matter, have been turning their public duties into campaign events is because they don't want to spend precious campaign funds on such events. And the reason that campaign funds are so carefully hoarded is because of the unreasonably low limits on expenditures imposed by the system the Times calls "one of the best campaign finance systems in the country."
Note: Smartertimes.com is in California and operating off the online edition of the Times.