TimesWatch

A tale of three presidential inaugurations during wartime and strife. The New York Times found it bad form for Republicans to spend $40 million on President Bush's second inauguration in January 2005, during a time of war. A January 11, 2005 editorial on Bush's second inauguration, "Victor's Spoils," sniffed: At the rate President Bush's supporters are giving money, his second inauguration…

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll, focused on gun control, showed gains for stricter gun laws and (coincidentally?) made the front page of the national edition, in a report by Michael Cooper and Dalia Sussman, under a wishful headline: "Massacre Sways Public In Way Others Did Not." But they buried findings in the same poll that show 74 percent of Americans support conservative ideas of…

The New York Times's Michael Cooper reported from the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington, capturing the effusive reaction to President Obama's gun-control proposals. In his report, "Recalling Pain Of Guns' Toll, Mayors Urge Bills' Passage – Heartened After Years Of Pushing for Laws," Cooper came off less a hard-bitten reporter than an emotionally over-involved storyteller, pushing…

New York Times movie critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis team up for next Sunday's edition (posted early online) to once again pour their peculiar brand of pretentiousness over the latest crop of innocent films: "Movies in the Age of Obama." In the summer of 2011, Dargis lamented "the symbolic phallus" present in the form of a rifle in a Western. Last July she managed to make a villain out…

New York Times reporter Peter Baker explored the metaphorical challenges of the gun debate: "In Debate Over Curbing Gun Violence, Even Language Can Be Loaded." It was a politically balanced, if perhaps oversensitive, analysis, until an unfair reference tying Sarah Palin, the former GOP vice presidential candidate, to the shooting by schizophrenic Jared Loughner of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. It's…

The New York Times continued to push its pet cause of immigration "reform," involving mass amnesty for illegals in the United States. In a twist, immigration reporter Julia Preston reported Tuesday on amnesty GOP-style, featuring the views of Fla. Republican Sen. Marco Rubio: "Rubio Pushes His Party On Immigration Changes." Rubio's favorable coverage (his "star is rising rapidly in his party…

Paul Krugman vs. Jon Stewart. The New York Times columnist and economist put his utter lack of humor on display in a Saturday afternoon blog post in which he attacked as lazy and unprofessional the host of the Daily Show. Stewart's sin? Daring to mock the trillion-dollar platinum coin as a solution to the debt ceiling crisis. Here's Krugman on "Lazy Jon Stewart": Oh, dear. Jon Stewart took on…

The New York Times made much of two small local liberal protests over the weekend, one at a New York State gun show, the other in the state capital protesting fracking. Vivian Yee's Saturday piece highlighted a scattering of protesters: "Despite Protests, Gun Show in Upstate New York Goes On and Draws Crowds." The show had not attracted so many people before, City Center staff members said.…

Sunday's New York Times lead story on immigration by Julia Preston,"Obama Will Seek Citizenship path In One Fast Push," seemed a strange choice -- unless you remembered how the Times has long been pushing for immigration "reform" that would include amnesty for illegal immigrants and a path to citizenship. Notice this is not breaking news; it's something "senior administration officials and…

New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse celebrates Occupy Wall Street ideas like the "Robin Hood tax" in his reporting, so it's no surprise his Sunday Review "news analysis," "Productivity Climbs, But Wages Stagnate," pushed unvarnished left-wing ideas from economists who want a much higher minimum wage, strengthening unions, and higher taxes (in Greenhouse's euphemism, "a more…

Paul Krugman's Friday column for the New York Times, "Coins Against Crazies," announced his support of a bizarre-sounding budget solution taken up mostly on the left: A trillion-dollar platinum coin that would supposedly avoid the looming problem of the debt ceiling. But more offensive than Krugman's nodding along with this unlikely idea is his referring to Republicans as terrorists. PIMCO…

The New York Times's starkly one-sided treatment of illegal immigration promises only to get worse in 2013. A preview: Thursday's edition of the paper's political podcast was solely devoted to immigration, or what the paper called "A Closer Look at Immigration Reform," in anticipation of amnesty proposals being pushed by illegal immigration activists.

On Thursday, New York Times reporter Sabrina Tavernise filed a report on death rates among the young in America and misleadingly equated it to a failure of America to achieve universal health care, in the badly titled "For Americans Under 50, Stark Findings on Health." The Times tretched the definition of poor "health" in America past the credibility breaking point, to include death rates…

The New York Times has taken the offensive on all fronts in support of Chuck Hagel, the "maverick" former Republican senator and President Obama's nominee for Secretary of Defense, recounting his Vietnam War heroics in a way that previous Republican presidential candidates John McCain and Bob Dole could only envy, while accusing his GOP opponents of "bullying" him with accusations of anti-…