Randal Archibold

On Sunday, New York Times reporter Randal Archibold offered up more of his slanted reporting on Arizona's pending new immigration enforcement law, suggesting that supporters of tough immigration enforcement are fostering fear by exaggerating the problem of violent crime on the border with Mexico: "On Border Violence, Truth Pales Compared to Ideas."

But does his evidence stand up? Two conservative writers say no, pointing to FBI statistics that show crime has increased substantially in towns outside major metropolitan areas and rural counties.

When Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Democrat of Arizona, announced that the Obama administration would send as many as 1,200 additional National Guard troops to bolster security at the Mexican border, she held up a photograph of Robert Krentz, a mild-mannered rancher who was shot to death this year on his vast property. The authorities suspected that the culprit was linked to smuggling.

"Robert Krentz really is the face behind the violence at the U.S.-Mexico border," Ms. Giffords said.

It is a connection that those who support stronger enforcement of immigration laws and tighter borders often make: rising crime at the border necessitates tougher enforcement.

But the rate of violent crime at the border, and indeed across Arizona, has been declining, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as has illegal immigration, according to the Border Patrol. While thousands have been killed in Mexico's drug wars, raising anxiety that the violence will spread to the United States, F.B.I. statistics show that Arizona is relatively safe.

Byron York of the Washington Examiner found the media elite tried and failed to goad the public into opposing the new Arizona immigration-enforcement law. A new CBS/New York Times poll discovered 51 percent found it "about right," and only 34 percent checked the media's strongly preferred answer of goes "too far." York suggested the stories on the poll hinted heavily that the questions were loaded. Check out how Brian Montopoli at CBS reported its findings:

Despite their expectation that it will burden police departments and disproportionately affect certain ethnic groups, a slim majority of Americans believe the controversial illegal immigration measure recently signed into law in Arizona is “about right” in its approach, according to a newly-released CBS News/New York Times poll.

Randal Archibold and Megan Thee-Brenan of the Times reported the story this way:

[D]espite protests against Arizona’s stringent new immigration enforcement law, a majority of Americans support it, even though they say it may lead to racial profiling.

The New York Times sometimes takes its politically correct blandishments to humorous extremes, as in Randal Archibold's lead story Saturday, “Arizona Enacts Stringent Law On Immigration.” Check the curious way Archibold referred to a protest against Arizona's new anti-immigration law, then try to imagine how the paper would react if such things had happened at a Tea Party rally:

As hundreds of demonstrators massed, mostly peacefully, at the capitol plaza, the governor, speaking at a state building a few miles away, said the law “represents another tool for our state to use as we work to solve a crisis we did not create and the federal government has refused to fix.”

Achibold didn't go into why he felt obliged to include the modifier “mostly.” For that, one had to check out a local report filed Friday night that included details the Times left out:

Three people were arrested during the immigration rally at the state capitol Friday afternoon.

Two were arrested after they were seen throwing water bottles at police, according to a news release from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the state police agency.

Evidently, “mostly peacefully” means “somewhat violently” at the New York Times.

This local news clip is even more dramatic, showing a police officer being nailed with a water bottle, one of many hurled in the semi-chaotic "march" that the headline terms a "small riot."

Over the weekend, the New York Times covered the fallout from Bush's failed amnesty-for-illegal immigration bill, finding that the GOP has doomed itself among Hispanics by its harsh talk radio rhetoric, while devoting space to the disappointment of illegal immigrants and Mexicans who want to be, and interviewing two of the few conservative activists that actually supported the bill, apparently without interviewing the myriad conservative activists aligned against it.

Jennifer Steinhauer's Sunday piece "After Bill’s Fall, G.O.P. May Pay in Latino Votes" argued:

"But the bill's demise may have greatly damaged the party's ability to meet its enduring goal of attracting a large percentage of the growing number of Hispanic voters -- thousands of whom are ostensibly in line with the party on a host of other issues, said many Republican lawmakers, consultants and Hispanic voters."

Reporter Randal Archibold gets a full story out of Kevin Tillman, brother of former NFL player Pat Tillman, who died by friendly fire after quitting pro football to go into service in Afghanistan. Kevin Tillman lashes out at the Bush administration in an article published on the Truthdig website on October 19. (Truthdig is run by Robert Scheer, the left-wing former columnist for the L.A. Times.)

The same bias against Rep. Helen Chenoweth that Amy Ridenour recognized in the late Congresswoman's obituary in the Washington Post and by Michael Bates in the Chicago Tribune was also evident in New York Times reporter Randal Archibold's notice.

"Former Representative Helen P. Chenoweth-Hage of Idaho, an archconservative who ridiculed the Endangered Species Act and the protection of salmon in her own state and called for disbanding large parts of the federal government, died on Monday in a car accident in Nevada. She was 68....She said she did not condone violence against the federal government, which militias and racial separatists in her largely rural district called for, but she had a reputation as a sagebrush rebel who sometimes sympathized with their causes....As much as liberals and environmentalists loathed her -- 'Can Helen, Not Salmon' went one bumper sticker -- supporters admired what they considered a principled, call-it-as-I-see-it manner."