No Roll Call Hyperlink

A Times news article about a 400-to-20 vote in the House of Representatives for tighter economic sanctions on Iran includes no hyperlink to the actual roll call vote. The vote is useful information and the Times would do its online readers a service by routinely including it in these sorts of articles. In the olden days the newspaper used to print the actual roll calls in agate type, which was one of the more useful things it did. Print space that used to be devoted to those sort of watchdog-in-a-democracy type functions is now devoted instead to topics such as coverage of men's perfume. It costs no ink or paper to link to the roll call in the online version of a news article, yet the Times is typically reluctant to do so. Smartertimes is happy to provide that service to readers; the link is here, and the minority of 20 includes some congressmen, such as Virginia Democrat Jim Moran, who make a habit of crossing the pro-Israel lobby.