New York Times

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…

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…

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd revved up the Hillary for President bandwagon on the front of the Sunday Review in "Can We Get Hillary Without the Foolery?" Of course Hillary is running. I’ve never met a man who was told he could be president who didn’t want to be president. So naturally, a woman who’s told she can be the first commandress in chief wants to be.

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…

Your daily dose of inadvertent humor comes from an article by Annie Lowrey at the New York Times on Sunday evening ("Lew to Press for European Policy Changes"; also in today's print edition). In "covering" (from Washington?) Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's four-day European trip for meetings with EU leaders encouraging them to pursue "growth" policies -- which in Keynesians' fevered minds…

I guess Byron Tau thought he had to make it look like Big Labor is really, really mad at President Barack Obama and the White House so he could make Obama look like he's a moderate on economic and fiscal issues. Thus his Sunday morning post's headline: "Labor targets Obama over proposed benefit cuts." Of course, they aren't "cuts" at all, though they are being portrayed as such. All Obama has…

The deck of headlines over Friday's lead New York Times story by White House reporter Jackie Calmes illustrated how hard it will be for conservatives to actually reduce the national debt: "Social Programs Facing A Cutback In Obama Budget -- Smaller Increase Seen -- Show of Compromise Is Aimed at Reviving Deficit Deal." The Times actually contradicted itself within its headline, announcing…

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,…

Will New York Times environmental reporter Justin Gillis offer an addendum to his alarmist March 8 report, "Global Temperatures Highest in 4,000 Years," in the face of new information that discredits the underlying data? In that story Gillis summarized a report (whose lead author is Oregon State University earth scientist Shaun Marcott) to declare without hesitation:

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…

The New York Times's Michael Shear passed along the Obama administration's unsubstantiated claim that 40% of gun purchases take place without a background check, in Wednesday's "Background Checks Are Still Stumbling Block in Gun Law Overhaul." Since the existing background-check system began, in 1994, officials have screened more than 108 million people before they could buy a gun, according…

The New York Times's politically correct evolution on immigration issues continues apace. Public editor Margaret Sullivan blogged Tuesday afternoon on the paper reconsidering the use of term "illegal immigrant," in the wake of the Associated Press's announcement that it would cease using it. The Associated Press made a bold move on Tuesday in dropping the term “illegal immigrant” from its…

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was giddy over a triumph of the liberal vision in the supposedly resurgent California economy in Monday's "Lessons From A Comeback." The state has overcome a "fanatical conservative minority" to push through "desperately needed tax increases." But is California really back? ....California has been solidly Democratic since the late 1990s. And ever since…

New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel visited the "white, ethnic...stronghold" of Hazleton, Pennsylvania on Monday and cast it as reactionary under the headline "New Attitude on Immigration Skips an Old Coal Town." Before Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, before “self-deportation” became the Republican presidential platform in 2012, there was Hazleton. This working-class city in the…