On Wednesday morning, the ACORN scandal finally blossomed into an actual print story from an actual New York Times reporter. Previously the Times had almost totally ignored the blossoming scandal, even as the Census Bureau cut ties with the controversial left-wing housing activist group and the Senate voted overwhelmingly to withdraw the group's funding.

Scott Shane's "Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn, Favored Foe " hit the high points but overplayed the ideological angle, as the headline hints. There are six conservative labels in the story, not including the headline, and Shane portrayed the scandal in pure political terms, with  "the right" as "gleeful" in claiming its "latest scalp," as opposed to expressing outrage over a tax-funded leftist organization with connections to the Census Bureau and IRS (!) encouraging tax evasion and child prostitution.

Shane couldn't even bring himself to call the housing activists at ACORN leftist; instead he said "the right" are trying to weaken Obama "by attacking allies and appointees they view as leftist." Yet he had no problem applying the "conservative" label to Fox News host Glenn Beck and others.

The New York Times's lead story Sunday was on a C.I.A. program allegedly concealed from Congress by Dick Cheney, and abruptly ended by new C.I.A. director Leon Panetta when he learned of it. The headline to intelligence reporter Scott Shane's story huffed: "Cheney Is Linked To Concealment Of C.I.A. Project." Democrats are of course calling for an investigation.

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency's director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

Sounds serious, yes? But the program that the conniving Cheney hid from Congress turns out to have been not much of a secret after all, as demonstrated but not acknowledged in Tuesday's follow-up story by Shane and Mark Mazzetti: "After 9-11, C.I.A. Had Plan To Kill Al Qaeda's Leaders." (Well, one would hope so!)

Here's the front-page headline from the December 15, 2002 Times (hat tip Andrew Breitbart): "Bush Has Widened Authority of C.I.A. to Kill Terrorists." Sound familiar?

The New York Times' Scott Shane has a history of slanted reporting on intelligence (most notoriously his credulous acceptance of everything said by anti-war huckster Joe Wilson). But a sentence in his Thursday "news analysis," "The C.I.A. and the Tapes: Sensing Support Shifting Away From Its Methods," was either clumsily written or just plain bizarre.

Shane began by likening the CIA to a group of grifters afraid their luck may finally be running out.

"For six years, Central Intelligence Agency officers have worried that someday the tide of post-Sept. 11 opinion would turn, and their harsh treatment of prisoners from Al Qaeda would be subjected to hostile scrutiny and possible criminal prosecution.

It was waterboard Wednesday in the New York Times, as Philip Shenon and Scott Shane filed separate articles on the issue of waterboarding and "torture" in general.

Shenon's article on the positive outlook for Michael Mukasey's attorney general nomination tsk-tsked:

"Even some of Mr. Mukasey's supporters said at the hearing to vote on the nomination that they were troubled by the way Mr. Mukasey handled questions about waterboarding, which the United States has fiercely condemned when carried out by other nations and had prosecuted as a war crime after World War II."

Sunday's New York Times led with Scott Shane and David Johnston's "Mining of Data Prompted Fight Over U.S. Spying," on what the intelligence reporters characterized as a fierce Justice Department debate over the use of "data mining" in the war on terror.

"A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency's secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program.

The New York Times generally keeps conservative blogs at arms length, treating them with either how-dare-you criticism, pat-on-the-head condescension or, most notoriously, accusations of CIA stoogery. But when it comes to liberal bloggers like the ones covering the Lewis Libby trial, The Times embraces them as they struggle side by side with the MSM, as shown in Scott Shane's front page story today, "For Liberal Bloggers, Libby Trial Is Fun and Fodder." (By contrast, Shane has written two condescending pieces on conservative bloggers.)

Firedoglake is one group blog covering the trial of Libby, the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney accused of lying to prosecutors during the investigation of who leaked CIA worker Valerie Plame's name to the press.

It's a convoluted trial in which everyone, government officials and journalists alike, seems to have a faulty memory -- no surprise, since it involves who may or may not have said what to whom in the summer of 2003. Tom Maguire, a must-read on all matters Plame-related who knows the ins and outs better than virtually any journalist, wonders if the Times is watching the same trial he is.

This week the New York Times took every opportunity to mislead on the nature of the terrorist-surveillance program, triggered by Wednesday's announcement by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) would have jurisdiction over the program that eavesdrops on international calls of people in the U.S. suspected of terrorist ties.

Thursday's lead story by intelligence reporters Eric Lichtblau and David Johnston is "Court To Oversee U.S. Wiretapping In Terror Cases -- Shift By The Government -- Justice Dept. Cites Accord Speeding Warrants for Domestic Listening."

Valerie who? The New York Times seems to need a reminder.

Judging by its sparse coverage, the Times is apparently trying to pretend the Valerie Plame "outing," (which for three years was a matter of national import on its editorial page, news pages, and among its stable of liberal columnists), is no longer even newsworthy, now that the inconvenient truth (Armitage?) is out.