An article in the national section of today's New York Times runs under the headline, "Bush Is Choosing Industry Insiders to Fill Several Environmental Positions." The article reports, "Many of these candidates share a pro-property rights philosophy as well as a libertarian leaning." The December 31, 2000, issue of Smartertimes.com asked, "Have the Times and its liberal allies really come to the point where they believe that merely advocating property rights is enough to make a person's fitness for government service a matter of contention?"
And the Times's own weekly internal critique picked up the point, citing the newspaper's December 31 usage in addition to one on January 3, 2001, and writing, "To say that someone is an 'advocate of property rights' probably has some special insider meaning in Washington. But to the general reader, it doesn't make much sense without explanation. We are ALL advocates of property rights, presumably."
What's amazing is that the Times continues to use this "pro-property rights" phrase to assail Bush nominees, even after that memo from the Times news desk. Why bother sending these memos around if the reporters and editors are going to disregard them and adhere to their previous practices? Maybe the presumption that "We are ALL advocates of property rights" turns out to be mistaken.
Popular: An article in the international section of today's New York Times reports on President Bush's plans for funding of AIDS treatment. The article reports that under Mr. Bush's budget, "some popular AIDS treatment programs, such as the $1.8 billion Ryan White project, will not be increased." Well, it may be "popular" with the federal contractors and grantees who are using Ryan White Act money to pay for things like shopping sprees to Neiman Marcus, home appliances, psychic phone-line calls, jet skis, and conferences at the Marriott Frenchman's Reef Resort Hotel in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. But as Wayne Turner reported in a cover story in the April issue of the Washington Monthly, "Lawmakers and the administration have done little to ensure that the money actually helps patients."
Spelling in India: A dispatch from Moscow in the international section of today's New York Times refers once to "New Delhi" and then to "New Dehli." At least the front-page article in today's Times about a New York murder manages to spell correctly the Carnegie Deli.