More strange new respect for religion on the front page of the New York Times – at least when it comes to the economically liberal Pope Francis. Jim Yardley is the latest: "A Humble Pope, Challenging the World – First Latin American Pontiff Attracts Fans and Stirs Anxiety in Push for Change." Yardley tried to mainstream the left-wing Pope: "But he is hardly a left-winger, either -- at least in the political context of the United States," while portraying conservatives as fearful: "Many conservatives project their fears onto him."

New York Times' food writer and leftist ranter Mark Bittman is retiring, and sent himself off in the paper's Sunday Review with a seven-course feast of his usual Krugman-esque pomposity and shameless left-wing inanities under the guise of food writing. NewsBusters has long documented Bittman's limitless appetite for intrusive government in the name of safety. Bittman's self-send-off in the Sunday Review regurgitated many of his hard-to-swallow premises, like limiting the speech of food marketers and pushing for a $15 minimum wage.

Like a Monty Python skit gone tragic, the New York Times actually ran a chart labeling Democratic lawmakers against Obama's controversial nuclear deal with Iran as "Jewish?" or not (the "Jewish?" part was removed online after outcry). The four chart headings read: "Democrats against the deal – Jewish? – District and estimated Jewish population – Vote with party." Under "Democrats against the deal," the names were arranged out of alphabetical order solely to enable the Times to stack all the "Yes" names that qualified as "Jewish?" at the top of the chart.

New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal appeared on a nytimes.com podcast and insulted every Republican candidate in nasty, personal terms, throwing around the words "idiot" and "xenophobic" and insulting Justice Clarence Thomas in a racially loaded fashion. Rosenthal then accused the 1988 George H.W. Bush using the Pledge of Allegiance as an issue "deliberately and specifically intended to remind Americans that Michael Dukakis was of Greek descent and therefore suspect."

New York Times reporter Patrick Healy portrayed the Republican candidates for president as bumblers blowing their chances against Hillary Clinton with their harsh attacks and right-wing obsessions, in Thursday's "Clinton Uses G.O.P.’s Words to Aid Her Arguments." (No factual backup was provided.) Even former independent prosecutor Ken Starr made an appearance, under spin straight from Bill Clinton's White House: "When White House controversies dogged Mrs. Clinton as first lady, the independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr made her sympathetic with his Javert-like investigations...."

The front page of Tuesday's New York Times featured labor reporter Noam Scheiber celebrating Obama as (finally!) the champion of workers' rights, belatedly beating back the retrograde efforts by Ronald Reagan and free-market conservatives to "roll them back," with Schreiber portraying all of the administration's new regulatory burdens on emerging jobs as wholly positive developments. The online headline was celebratory: "As His Term Wanes, Obama Champions Workers’ Rights."

Ginia Bellafante's "Big City" column in Sunday's New York Times smacked of a particular brand of star-struck, fact-allergic old-style liberalism in which Bellafante, metro columnist and occasional reporter for the Times, went after an old enemy, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani: "The Dark Ages of Giuliani." Some urban liberals will apparently never forgive Giuliani for cleaning up the city and getting crime under control. After Giuliani made a common-sense observation about the homeless, Bellafante was so outraged she compared him to....Donald Trump.

New York Times reporter Jackie Calmes has been playing aggressive defense for Planned Parenthood. So when the organization commissioned its own report accusing the Center for Medical Progress of manipulating its videos via selective editing, Calmes treated the stunt as news. But she left out vital information from Planned Parenthood's supposed exoneration -- that it came courtesy of a firm that engaged in pro-Obama opposition research against conservatives.

New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman on Tuesday made gratuitous (dare we use the lazy liberal term "problematic"?) references to the Jewish religion of some Democratic congressional opponents of the Obama administration's controversial nuclear deal with Iran. Weisman's usual slant was accompanied by explicit religious identification of a particular group, a practice a liberal paper like the Times would take pains to avoid in any other context.