An item in the national briefing column in today's New York Times reports, "Milwaukee's homeless shelters its only operating overflow shelter have exceeded their capacity, the chairman of the Milwaukee Emergency Shelter Task Force, Joseph Volk, said." Never mind the mangled English that makes that sentence incomprehensible. The Times is late again. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on December 26, 2001: "The overflow facility that helps ease the population crunch at Milwaukee's homeless shelters now seems to need a rescue. For the first time it, too, is full." The Wall Street Journal's online Best of the Web Today column linked to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article yesterday.
Two days behind the local paper, a day behind the Wall Street Journal, and in mangled English, at that. And today's Times gives no credit to the local paper. Not exactly the New York Times at its best.
What About China?: An editorial in today's New York Times runs through a list of countries that are using the American war against terrorism as an excuse to justify internal repression. The Times names Russia, Egypt, Guatemala and Zimbabwe as examples of such countries. Mysteriously omitted is China, which, as the Times news department reported in a compelling front-page dispatch on December 16, 2001, is engaged in a harsh crackdown against Uighur Muslims. In a September 14, 2001, editorial, the Times wrote, "China fears a spillover of Islamic terrorism into its own western province of Xinjiang, where Muslims make up about half the population." The Times editorialists seem to suggest that the Chinese repression and fears are warranted, while the repression and fears of the leaders of Russia, Egypt, Guatemala and Zimbabwe are not warranted. If there's a reason the Chinese case is different, the Times should say so. Otherwise it just looks like the paper is going easy on the Communists.