New York Times Liberal

In case you ever have occasion to wonder:  Yes, the New York Times is definitely part of the liberal news media.  Just take it from their own 2003-2005 “public editor” (“The public editor serves as the readers’ representative. His opinions and conclusions are his own”), Daniel Okrent:

Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper?

Of course it is.

. . . the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others[—]if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you’ve been reading the paper with your eyes closed.

‘One reason the western world is sliding off the cliff is because of an excess of “conventional wisdom”’

Great line from Mark Steyn:

One reason the western world is sliding off the cliff is because of an excess of “conventional wisdom” on everything from unsustainable welfare programs to climate change to Islam. Yet, at precisely the moment when we need to be broadening the bounds of public discourse, in Britain, Canada, Australia, Europe and elsewhere the same ideologically insecure political class that got us into this mess is growing ever more comfortable in regulating what the citizenry is allowed to say, read, listen to — and, indeed, think. I say nuts to that.

Lights Out

Did you know that Congress has already banned incandescent light bulbs in the future?  Neither do most Americans.  The law was passed in 2007; the phase-out begins with the 100-watt bulb in 2012.  (You can also read more about it at a Web site created for the movement to repeal the ban.)

Practically speaking, like most overweening big-government schemes, this will have unintended consequences.  In this case, we already know what some of them will be: 

1 — Scientists find that the main alternative, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), should be used sparingly and not left on for very long, because they are poisonous and may give you cancer: 

Case Closed

As someone who has more than once wondered what is true and whether (and with how much certainty) it is even possible to know, I was interested to learn that three factual claims I had heard Mark Steyn and other commentators make in the past have now been confirmed by longtime liberal bastion The New York Times and more-or-less liberal “newsmagazine” Time:

1 —

Two Thoughts on Tabloids

Recently I was in a group discussing a New York Times article about the fruit of John Edwards’s affair.  I was struck by The National Enquirer‘s cameo in the article:

Mr. Edwards dismissed an initial report in The National Enquirer in 2007 that he was having an affair, and the matter was largely ignored by the mainstream news media. But in July 2008, The Enquirer published an article with photographs of a clandestine meeting Mr. Edwards had with Ms. Hunter and her daughter in a Los Angeles hotel. Days later, Mr. Edwards acknowledged the affair to “Nightline” on ABC, offering contrition but insisting that the child could not be his because of the timing and brevity of their intimacy.