The death at 87 of former British Prime Minister and Cold War conservative icon Margaret Thatcher was marked with a respectful obituary on Tuesday's New York Times front page by Joseph Gregory: "'Iron Lady' Who Set Britain on a New Course."

A front-page "news analysis" by reporters John Burns and Alan Cowell was more objectionable, "Hard Policies In Hard Times." The online headline picked a fight: "Thatcher Fiscal Policies Are Still a Tough Sell for Europe."

Two New York Times columnists embarrassed themselves over the weekend, betraying anti-gun ignorance in the paper's Sunday Review.

Frank Bruni went hunting for the first time (with the chef of a ritzy Manhattan restaurant), and remarked "what an unfair fight" hunting is, as if he was the first person to think that up. After lamenting "how thoroughly a weapon can be romanticized and fetishized," he pivoted to easy access to guns in "this country of ours."

The New York Times keeps harping on how the sequester-fueled budger cuts may make flying more dangerous, led by reporter Matthew Wald. On February 22 Wald warned "Airlines and airports across the country are preparing for across-the-board federal budget cuts due to hit next week as if they were a hurricane, although with even less certainty about how many flights they will have to cancel and how many passengers will be stranded."

On Saturday he wrote:

The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday that it would delay closing control towers at 149 airports until June to allow for safety analyses and “to attempt to resolve multiple legal challenges.”

The closings had been planned as part of a $637 million spending reduction at the agency required under the across-the-board budget cuts known as the sequester.

President Obama caused ruffles on a fundraising jaunt to San Francisco when he said in a speech at a fundraising house party that state Attorney General Kamala Harris (pictured) was "by far the best-looking attorney general in the country." The Washington Post made a full story out of it, using the throwaway line the same way the media has done so often against Republican politicians, suggesting it was part of a larger pattern of regrettable behavior: "Obama rekindles talk of a White House boys' club."

President Obama reopened the debate Thursday over whether his administration is too influenced by men after praising the looks of Kamala Harris, California’s attorney general and a possible future gubernatorial candidate....Obama’s remarks during a fundraising trip to the Bay Area buzzed through Twitter and other social media, where reaction ranged from appalled to leave-the-guy-alone.

There's another Republican backing gay marriage, and it's...Ronald Reagan? (Headline hat tip to New York magazine.)

The New York Times was the first news outlet to find newsworthy remarks made by Patti Davis, the liberal activist daughter of the late president, who said her father would have surely approved of gay marriage: "Daughter Speculates on Reagan's Gay-Rights Views." Somehow this speculation merited a full "news" story in Thursday's edition.