A front-page news article in today's New York Times reports on President Bush's plans with respect to a steel tariff. "Rarely has Mr. Bush faced such a delicate economic decision," the Times reports. "He is weighing the costs of keeping Americans employed -- one of his most impassioned current themes -- against the inevitable charges from conservatives that he is violating free-market ideals."
So in the delicate way the Times phrases this debate, free-market ideals work against keeping Americans employed. And conservatives are only interested in "ideals," not in jobs. One has to read far down into the Times article to find out about a study cited by Senator McCain "concluding that tariff increases could cost 86,000 American jobs in industries that use steel -- 13 times the number they would save." A little Web research shows that the study in question comes not from "conservatives" but from a senior fellow at the eminently center-left Brookings Institution. The study is available in PDF format at http://www.criterioneconomics.com/documents/crandall_report.pdf
Egyptian Peaceniks: A dispatch from Cairo in the international section of today's New York Times reports, "One of Egypt's major concerns is that a move by the United States against Iraq would torpedo any peace move in the Middle East." Talk about taking the Egyptians at their word. If the Egyptians were really concerned about peace in the Middle East, they could stop smuggling arms into Gaza, stop running the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in their government-controlled press, and send their ambassador back to Israel. And if the Egyptians were really concerned with peace in the Middle East, they would favor the immediate removal of Saddam Hussein, who is supporting the families of suicide bombers with "martyr" payments. The Times exhibits a breathtaking lack of skepticism in the face of the propaganda claims of the Egyptian dictatorship.