TimesWatch

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd went after the “uncharitable nasties” in the Republican field in her Sunday column, “Ghastly Outdated Party,” and for good measure accused Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida of stealing the election for his brother George in 2000. The contenders in the Hester Prynne primaries are tripping over one another trying to be the most radical, unreasonable and insane…

The lead story in Sunday’s New York Times National section, “Before Vote, Republicans Make Moves To the Right” by New York Times reporter Jonathan Weisman, focused on Republicans pressuring their candidates to “stampede to the right” before the elections. As the story’s original online headline unflatteringly put it: “Republicans Stampede to the Right Ahead of 2012 Election.” Weisman, who was…

Barack Obama, secret deficit hawk? New York Times White House reporter Jackie Calmes showed her usual pro-Obama sympathies in Monday’s enormous front page tick-tock story on the Obama team’s debate over a big deficit reduction plan the president has long promised but failed to deliver: “Obama’s Deficit Dilemma – Adopting a Panel’s Ideas, While Seeming Not To.” Calmes once again defended the…

The Chicago News Cooperative is -- or was -- a nonprofit journalistic entity that produces content for the Chicago edition of the New York Times. It will cease filing this weekend, having lost an expected grant. Among the delights Chicago readers will miss: Suggestions that the GOP is fueling anti-Muslim rhetoric and even hate crimes, under the label of objective reporting. David Lepeska…

Former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller confessed to liberal bias at the Times, especially on social issues like gay marriage and the recent contraception debate, but defended it, saying “if we somehow achieved absolute objectivity, it would be kind of tedious to read,” and that "Watching The New York Times try to be even-handed on some issues is like trying to watch somebody dance…

Andrew Revkin, former New York Times environmental reporter who now blogs at Dot Earth on nytimes.com, is in a spat with fellow global warming believers, over fraud committed by environmental ideologue Peter Gleick against the Heartland Institute, a skeptical group. Revkin’s initial coverage of the documents stolen from Heartland -- tax forms and donor lists, along with a “climate strategy”…

New York Times White House reporter Jackie Calmes habitually makes excuses for President Obama while praising his big-spending budgets as serious proposals, defending his "stimulus" as successful, and insisting against all history that Obama-care will actually save federal money. She gave out some more in the latest edition of the PBS talk show Washington Week, which aired last week on PBS,…

New York Times Editorial Page editor Andrew Rosenthal reliably delivers demonstrations of snugly (and smugly) cocooned leftism. His latest appeared on his "Loyal Opposition" blog Tuesday, “Government-Mandated Medical Procedures," on a Virginia bill that would require women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound the mother could then look at before making her decision. Rosenthal thinks he…

If Libya was considered a good war in New York Timesland, war with Iran would definitely be a bad one, reporter Scott Shane says, lumping any action against Iran’s nuclear threat to our long and costly involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Shane tried to dissipate the threatening “whiff of gunpowder in the air” in his front-page “news analysis” Wednesday, “In Din Over Iran, Rattling Sabers…

Tuesday’s lead New York Times editorial lambasting the GOP field as fringe and extremist on illegal immigration (“Immigration and the Campaign – President Obama is less than inspiring, but the Republicans have abandoned all principle”) sounded a bit like the paper’s supposedly objective news coverage of the issue, which it insists on calling “immigration,” not “illegal immigration.”

New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse’s “Congressional Memo” Tuesday was a late valentine to former Wisconsin senator and preening liberal hero Russ Feingold, “In New Book, Ex-Senator Says Fear Clouded Judgment After 9-11.” Hulse, who has a history of promoting Democrats while dismissing Republicans, portrayed Feingold as a brave maverick trying to thwart a rising tide of fear.

Veteran New York Times media reporter David Carr’s Monday column self-righteously attacked an unfortunate headline on an ESPN mobile website, “Chink in the Armor,” that was widely interpreted as a purposeful slur on the ethnicity of benchwarmer-turned-NBA-sensation Jeremy Lin: “Media Hype For Lin Stumbles On Race.” Giving no benefit of the doubt to the ESPN editor, who has since been fired,…

Sunday’s New York Times front page brought a rare focus on a trend favorable to the GOP, high gasoline prices under the Obama administration (and in the lead slot no less): Michael Shear’s “High Gas Prices Give GOP Issue To Attack Obama – New Peril To Recovery – Candidates and Boehner Plan to Capitalize on Anger at Pump.” The Times tends to soft-pedal such dangers during Democratic…

New York Times reporter Richard Oppel Jr. got emotional in defense of Obama while trailing GOP candidate Rick Santorum through the Midwest: “Santorum Questions Education And Obama.” Oppel pounced on a Santorum comment on Obama’s “phony theology,” and falsely conflated the remark with rumors that Obama was a Muslim or not American, saying that such talk “got so bad at one point” during the…