A correction in this morning's New York Times reports: "An article yesterday about the indictments of 13 Saudis and a Lebanese man in a truck bombing at the Khobar Towers apartment building in Saudi Arabia in 1993 misidentified the country to which the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Louis J. Freeh, traveled during the investigation. It was Saudi Arabia, not Iran."
As the Times itself reports on its front page today, the Khobar Towers bombing took place in 1996. Not 1993. It takes a special skill to introduce a new factual error in the course of correcting an earlier factual error.
Wishful Thinking: An editorial in today's New York Times discusses a series of votes in the House of Representatives about environmental issues. The editorial declares that "In a series of votes on Thursday, an impressive bipartisan majority blocked administration plans for oil and gas exploration in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and in national monument lands, upheld important mining law reforms that Mr. Bush had opposed and restored millions of dollars for land protection and energy conservation programs that he had tried to cut."
"Impressive bipartisan majority?" Well, the Times editorialists must not be paying much attention to the reporting of their own newspaper's Washington bureau, which reports on the front page of today's Times, "The votes on Thursday showed that there was no solid environmental coalition."
The editorial declares that the House votes "send two unmistakable messages. The House is clearly eager to restore balance to Mr. Bush's energy strategy, which is weighted toward exploration for fossil fuels. It also wants Mr. Bush to know that his administration's dismissive approach to the nation's natural resources reflects a grievous misreading of the public temper."
Not so, according to the front-page news article in today's New York Times. The news article quotes Rep. Peter Hoekstra, who voted against drilling for oil off Florida, as saying, "This was not a bellwether vote. I wouldn't read all that much into it." The news article also reports that "Jeff Deist, a spokesman for Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, said Mr. Paul voted against the offshore drilling bill as a protest of federal involvement in what he sees as local decisions." The messages these congressmen are sending, according to the Times news article, are different from the "unmistakable" message that the Times editorialists are hearing.
Note: Smartertimes.com is in Maine this weekend and is operating off the online edition of the New York Times.