While the Washington Post ran a full news story by Philip Rucker on the conservative Capitol Hill rally on page 4 on Friday, The New York Times buried it with just six paragraphs – smack dab in in the middle of a story on A-15 headlined "House Democrats Seek Allies for Health Care Vote."

The story by Times reporters Carl Hulse and David M. Herszenhorn focused mostly on how Democrats were organizing their own caucus and gaining endorsements from the AARP, the American Medical Association, and the American Cancer Society.

In paragraph eight, the Times duo finally devoted some 230 words to the conservative rally that drew thousands of Americans from across the country:

While Democrats sought to build support, Republicans engaged in an equally determined effort to block the measure, with House Republicans lining up to address thousands of conservatives gathered at the West Front of the Capitol. No House Republican is expected to vote for the measure, meaning its entire support has to come from within the 258-member Democrat caucus.

Obama victory on health care reform is just around the corner! Once again.

Monday's collaboration in the New York Times by health reporter Robert Pear and White House correspondent Sheryl Gay Stolberg was headlined "Obama Strategy on Health Care Legislation Appears to Be Paying Off."

After months of plodding work by five Congressional committees and weeks of back-room bargaining by Democratic leaders, President Obama's arms-length strategy on health care appears to be paying dividends, with the House and the Senate poised to take up legislation to insure nearly all Americans.

Debate in the House is expected to begin this week, and the Senate will soon take up its version. Democratic leaders and senior White House officials are sounding increasingly confident that Mr. Obama will sign legislation overhauling the nation's health care system -- a goal that has eluded American presidents for decades.

Pear and Stolberg aren't the first Times reporters to declare an Obama victory on the health "reform" front. David Herszenhorn did the same back on September 10, calling Obama's joint address to Congress on health reform "a clear turning point in the health care debate."

Not quite.

Prospects for Obama-care just keep getting better and better. At least they are in the rather over-excitable world of New York Times health reporter David Herszenhorn. After Obama's address to Congress last month he confidently proclaimed the speech to be a "clear turning-point in the health care debate."

And then nothing continued to happen.

Yet Herszenhorn remains undaunted. On Tuesday morning he posted this story on the nytimes.com "Prescriptions" blog, "Obama Adds Schwarzenegger to His Republican Chorus for Health Care." The original headline, judging by the title of the URL, was even more triumphant: "Obama Adds Schwarzenegger to His Republican Trophy Case."

The New York Times's health care priorities were on display in Wednesday's paper. While a parody ad by liberal comedian Will Ferrell and left-wing MoveOn.org was considered newsworthy, suppression of free speech by the Obama administration was left out.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky went on the Senate floor Tuesday and called out the Obama administration for using a federal agency to squelch mailings by insurance company Humana. The mailings to beneficiaries warned them of possible cuts to the Medicare Advantage program under Obama-care.

A post on the New York Times's health care blog "Prescriptions" Tuesday afternoon by David Herszenhorn, "Senate Republican Leader Accuses Democrats of Muzzling Critics," quoted McConnell extensively on this suppression of free speech. Still Herszenhorn couldn't help getting in a political dig:

In a sign of escalating tension on Capitol Hill, the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, accused Democrats and the Obama administration on Tuesday of trying to muzzle critics of their proposed health care legislation.

In his Wednesday brief, "Senator Says He Had Affair With An Aide," New York Times reporter David Herszenhorn let us know by the fourth word that U.S. Senator John Ensign of Nevada, the senator who confessed to the extramarital affair, is a Republican. In paragraph four, Herszenhorn poured on the salt, bringing up Ensign's former membership in Promise Keepers, a Christian ministry that promotes marriage.

Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, admitted Tuesday that he had an extramarital affair with a member of his campaign staff.

President Obama’s decision to reverse himself and oppose the release of photographs depicting "detainee abuse" by the U.S. military might be wildly controversial on the left, but the Times story by Jeff Zeleny and Thom Shanker on Thursday’s front page was very slow to feature opposing voices. ACLU chief Anthony Romero surfaced in paragraph 11, and even then he was complaining about how the photos would expose the last administration.

However, on the other side of the front page, on the far left, appropriately enough, was a story by David Herszenhorn headlined "Unease Grows for Democrats Over Security." No one in this story denounced Obama’s reversal on the detainee photos, but they did question Obama’s plans for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. Will the networks dare to find divisions between Democrats?

The political correctness of the New York Times oozed between the lines of a front-page article Tuesday on Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a "master of the one-liner, a self-described ‘left-handed gay Jew.’" The headline was "A Liberal Wit Builds Bridges To the G.O.P.," and reporter David M. Herszenhorn celebrated the "trademark wit" that compared conservatives’ lack of enthusiasm for government intervention to his lack of enthusiasm for the Miss America pageant.

In a sidebar headlined "A Way With Words," the Times celebrates Frank’s wit in lobbying for the gay agenda, like a 2006 quote that "same-sex marriage is the V-8 juice of America," mocking the opposition of the religious right as if straight married men would greet the court-mandated legalization of "gay marriage" in Massachusetts with the declaration "Wow, I could have married a guy."

David Herszenhorn's front-page "Political Memo" for Wednesday's New York Times was devoted to the fight over Graeme Frost, the boy pushed forward by the Democrats to deliver the response to Bush's weekly radio address on the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP).

The inimitable Mark Steyn is one of several conservative writers unhappy with Democrats "desperate enough to send a boy to do a man's job."

Herszenhorn accused Republicans and "conservative bloggers" of attacking the boy and his family. While not as bad as the local coverage in the Baltimore Sun as outlined earlier by Ken Shepherd, there is a hostile tone: