TimesWatch

New York Times reporters Scott Shane and Michael Shear found "right-wing conspiracy" mongering in the aftermath of the unusual 12-hour filibuster by Republican Sen. Rand Paul protesting the White House's failing to rule out the use of drone strikes on American soil or against U.S. citizens: "Visions of Drones Swarming the Skies Touch Bipartisan Nerve." That slightly dismissive headline on the…

The sequestration may have fizzled out as a national crisis, but it's still killing jobs, apparently. Saturday's New York Times lead story by Nelson Schwartz and Binyamin Appelbaum strongly insisted that last Friday's surprisingly good job numbers from the Labor Department are endangered by the 2.4% federal spending cuts known as sequestration, "Jobless Rate Dips to Four-Year Low – 236,000 Jobs…

Republican Sen. Rand Paul's filibuster on Attorney General Eric Holder's refusal to rule out drone strikes against U.S. citizens, which ended early Thursday morning, was absent from the front page of Thursday's New York Times. The Times buried its coverage of Paul's striking "talking" filibuster, in which he held the floor for nearly 13 hours, ostensibly in opposition to Obama's choice of John…

No good deed goes unpunished? In a compromise move, North Carolina officials will issue drivers licenses to young illegal immigrants who have won deferrals from deportation, but with a distinguishing colored marking on the licenses – a pink stripe. New York Times Atlanta bureau chief Kim Severson likened the stripe to "a modern-day scarlet letter" in "North Carolina to Give Some Immigrants…

Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez is dead of cancer at age 58, the end of a bizarre odyssey that took him to Communist Cuba in a failed attempt at a cure. William Neuman's off-lead story in Wednesday's New York Times credited the left-wing dictator for having "changed Venezuela in fundamental ways, empowering and energizing millions of poor people who had felt marginalized and excluded." The…

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is no fan of the Vatican; that's clear from her column on the front of the latest Sunday Review, "How Mary Feels About Being a Virgin." Dowd paid tribute to Colm Toibin, a gay Irish ex-Catholic and author of the theologically controversial novella "The Testament of Mary." Author Mary Gordon gave it a positive review in the Times last year, and it made the…

Are bitter conservatives "clinging" to spending cuts? That's the tone of New York Times political editor Richard Stevenson's front-page "Political Memo" Monday, "G.O.P. Clings to One Thing It Agrees On: Spending Cuts," which contained a whopping 13 "conservative" labels (and a couple of "liberals" as well). Conservative governors are signing on to provisions of what they once derisively…

On Sunday, New York Times military affairs reporter James Dao filed from Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan on the Marine Corps leaving the country, "As Marines Exit Afghan Province, a Feeling That a Campaign Was Worth It." Yet when a Marine wrote a letter, found after his death, that his Iraq service had been worth it, a 2005 story by Dao clipped the letter to instead emphasize the Marine's…

The perils and victims of the round of the mandatory federal spending cuts known as sequestration led the New York Times' weekend coverage, with the 2.4% cut in annual federal spending that went into effect starting Friday labeled "austerity" and ushered in with headlines warning that "Poor May Be Hit Particularly Hard." Also: those who still approve of Congress tend to be "Obama haters,"…

Pope Benedict XVI served his final day as pontiff on Thursday, and the New York Times' Rome bureau chief Rachel Donadio sent him on his way from Vatican City under a dark cloud: "As Pope Departs, Discord Remains at Vatican." As the sun set on Rome and on his turbulent eight-year papacy, Pope Benedict XVI, a shy theologian who never seemed entirely at home in the limelight, was whisked by…

The New York Times finally noticed what Washington has obsessed over the last few days -- the dust-up between veteran Washington Post investigative reporter Bob Woodward and the Obama White House over an email from a White House aide (apparently Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council) who emailedhis disagreement with Woodward's characterization that the White House had moved…

In "G.O.P.'s Ideological Split Appears in Virginia Governor's Race," New York Times reporter Trip Gabriel saw a controversial candidate on one side of the Virginia governor's race -- Republican candidate Kenneth Cuccinelli, Virginia's attorney general, who has support in the Tea Party and social conservative wings of the party. His likely Democratic opponent? Terry McAuliffe, former chairman…

Spinning the sequester in the New York Times. After weeks of cringing over the supposedly damaging federal cuts due to take effect tomorrow (even as the public shrugs them off) Jonathan Weisman made an 180-degree turn on the front of Thursday's paper: "Parties Focus On the Positive As Cuts Near." The text box: "An onerous possibility turns out to be not quite so onerous." Suddenly the Times…

New York Times reporter Kirk Johnson, hypersensitive to conservative defeat and retreat in the Western states, using an upcoming Supreme Court case as an excuse to lead more cheers for gay rights in "deeply conservative" Idaho in Wednesday's "Gay Couples Are Navigating A New Geography of Marriage." He sympathetically profiled a couple living in Idaho, a state they consider backward: "For them…