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Drudge: NY Times Prepares To Front Expose on Palin's Baby...Developing...

In an astonishing stroke of irony, the New York Times has outed the name of the CIA operative who interrogated 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, over the objections of CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and a lawyer representing the operative. Agency officials and legal counsel told the Times that publishing the agent's name would "invade his privacy and put him at risk of retaliation from terrorists or harassment from critics of the agency." In an Editor's Note linked from the story on KSM's interrogation, the Times defended its decision by stating that "other government employees" had been "named publicly in...

It was late on a rainy fall day, and a college freshman named Rey was showing me the new tattoo on his arm. It commemorated his 500-mile hike through Europe the previous summer, which happened also to be, he said, the last time he was happy. We sat together for a while in his room talking, his tattoo of a piece with his spiky brown hair, oversize tribal earrings and very baggy jeans. He showed me a photo of himself and his girlfriend kissing, pointed out his small drum kit, a bass guitar that lay next to his rumpled clothes...

The New York Times has endorsed John McCain and Hillary Clinton for the GOP and Democratic presidential nominations, respectively.

<p>Congressional leaders, who have disappointed frequently this year, have done it again. This time, the House leadership has failed to find a way to get a bipartisan law against hate crimes passed and signed into law. Racial, religious, sexual and other minorities have waited long enough. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has to do more than just express her support for the bill; she must find a way to make it the law.</p>

snip Their streamlined glass-and-steel forms proclaimed a faith in machine-age efficiency and an open, honest, democratic society. Newspaper journalism, too, is part of that history. Transparency, independence, the free flow of information, moral clarity, objective truth — these notions took hold and flourished in the last century at papers like The Times. To many this idealism reached its pinnacle in the period stretching from the civil rights movement to the Vietnam War to Watergate, when journalists grew accustomed to speaking truth to power, and the public could still accept reporters as impartial observers. snip Maybe this accounts for the tower’s...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 — The House on Wednesday approved a bill granting broad protections against discrimination in the workplace for gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, a measure that supporters praised as the most important civil rights legislation since the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 but that opponents said would result in unnecessary lawsuits. The bill, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, is the latest version of legislation that Democrats have pursued since 1974. Representatives Edward I. Koch and Bella Abzug of New York then sought to protect gay men and lesbians with a measure they introduced on the fifth anniversary of...

Once the Paper of Record, the Newspaper Now has Investors Bailing. Why? Boom! And down goes the biggest newspaper name of all. As you may have read, yesterday brokerage giant Morgan Stanley dumped its entire stake -- $183 million worth -- in the New York Times, in which it was the second largest shareholder. Not surprisingly, Times stock immediately slumped, bottoming at a nearly 3 percent drop to $18.28 -- the lowest it has been in a decade. The actual damage is probably even larger than that. The Morgan Stanley sell-off has been expected for some time now. Ever since...

Even now, at 81 and with her memory beginning to fade, Gloria Donadello recalls her painful brush with bigotry at an assisted-living center in Santa Fe, N.M. Sitting with those she considered friends, “people were laughing and making certain kinds of comments, and I told them, ‘Please don’t do that, because I’m gay.’” The result of her outspokenness, Ms. Donadello said, was swift and merciless. “Everyone looked horrified,” she said. No longer included in conversation or welcome at meals, she plunged into depression. Medication did not help. With her emotional health deteriorating, Ms. Donadello moved into an adult community nearby...

Senator Barack Obama will propose on Tuesday setting a goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons in the world, saying the United States should greatly reduce its stockpiles to lower the threat of nuclear terrorism, aides say. In a speech at DePaul University in Chicago, Mr. Obama will add his voice to a plan endorsed earlier this year by a bipartisan group of former government officials from the cold war era who say the United States must begin building a global consensus to reverse a reliance on nuclear weapons that have become “increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.” Mr. Obama, according to...

On Monday, New York Times Arts writer George Gene Gustines profiled gay novelist Perry Moore, a fervent supporter of gay rights -- for fictional comic book characters. "Novelist's Superhero Is Out to Right Wrongs" began: "Perry Moore has the sinewy physique and golden looks of a California surfer, but get him talking about comics, and he can out-geek the biggest fanatic. He also has the fervor of an activist when discussing the dearth -- and occasional shoddy treatment -- of gay superheroes in mainstream comic books." Now there's a vital cause we can all rally behind! "It is an issue...

Iraq is a long way to go for a photo op, but not for President Bush, who is pulling out all the stops to divert public attention from his failed Iraq policies and to keep Congress from demanding that he bring the troops home. As Americans and Iraqis continue to die — and Iraqi politicians refuse to reconcile — Mr. Bush stubbornly refuses to recognize that what both countries need is a responsible exit strategy for the United States, not more photo ops and disingenuous claims of success. With Congress launching a series of pivotal hearings this week, Mr. Bush’s...

When the Larry Craig case broke, I noted the New York Times' unusual diffidence in reporting it. Senator, Arrested at Airport, Pleads Guilty was all the Times headline told us, giving no indication of Craig's name, party affiliation, or the crime for which he had not merely been "arrested" but pleaded guilty. At the time I surmised that the Times' shyness could have been "the triumph of political correctness on matters gay over the paper's partisan impulse." That theory is borne out by the paper's editorial of today, Disowning Senator Craig. The Times' bottom line on the matter: Being stupid...

According to records from Arent Fox, the law firm based in Washington where Mr. Thompson worked part-time from 1991 to 1994, he charged the organization, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, about $5,000 for work he did in 1991 and 1992. The records show that Mr. Thompson, a probable Republican candidate for president in 2008, spent much of that time in telephone conferences with the president of the group, and on three occasions he reported lobbying administration officials on its behalf... From the time he was elected to the Senate from Tennessee in 1994 until he left office...

The Senate Health Committee will have to dig beneath the surface on Thursday to consider the nomination of Dr. James Holsinger to be surgeon general. Dr. Holsinger has high-level experience as a health administrator, but there are disturbing indications that he is prejudiced against homosexuals. Though routinely called “the nation’s top doctor,” the surgeon general is a midlevel official who oversees the 6,000 uniformed professionals in the Public Health Service. His main mission is to serve as “America’s chief health educator,” with potentially enormous capacity to shape public opinion. Dr. Holsinger served for 26 years in the Department of Veterans...

ut for all the talk about warming, leading politicians have yet to educate their constituents (and their colleagues) about an unpleasant and inescapable truth: any serious effort to fight warming will require everyone to pay more for energy. According to most scientists, the long-term costs of doing nothing — flooding, famine, drought — would be even higher than the costs of acting now. But unless Americans understand and accept the trade-off — higher prices today to avoid calamity later — the requisite public support for real change is unlikely to build. Energy is currently underpriced in part because its cost...

New Poll Finds That Young Americans Are Leaning Left By ADAM NAGOURNEY and MEGAN THEE Young Americans are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system, an open-door policy on immigration and the legalization of gay marriage, according to a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll. The poll also found that they are more likely to say the war in Iraq is heading to a successful conclusion. The poll offers a snapshot of a group whose energy and idealism have always been as alluring to politicians as its scattered focus and shifting interests have...

IN New York and elsewhere a “Messiah Sing-In” — a performance of Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” with the audience joining in the choruses — is a musical highlight of the Christmas season. Christians, Jews and others come together to delight in one of the consummate masterpieces of Western music. The high point, inevitably, is the “Hallelujah” chorus, all too familiar from its use in strange surroundings, from Mel Brooks’s “History of the World, Part 1,” where it signified the origins of music among cavemen, to television advertising for behemoth all-terrain vehicles. So “Messiah” lovers may be surprised to learn that the...

No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials. More than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated, cartoonlike vein that was intended to be humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous.

Maybe the pivotal moment came when Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in physics, warned that “the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief,” or when a Nobelist in chemistry, Sir Harold Kroto, called for the John Templeton Foundation to give its next $1.5 million prize for “progress in spiritual discoveries” to an atheist — Richard Dawkins, the Oxford evolutionary biologist whose book “The God Delusion” is a national best-seller. Or perhaps the turning point occurred at a more solemn moment, when Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and an...

Close friends of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton are always saying that she has a great sense of humor — witty, sarcastic, playful — and that skeptical voters would come around if they saw that part of her personality. Well, skeptical voters, take note: Mrs. Clinton has had some pretty amusing moments on the campaign trail this fall, wearing her personality on her sleeve more than she has in the past. This campaign season has been something of a dress rehearsal for Mrs. Clinton, as she considers auditioning for a bigger role in 2008. Her political issues, campaign advertisements and public...

At least they're honest about it. So avid is the New York Times for a Dem House majority that in an editorial of this morning, it's decided to throw Chris Shays [R-CT] to the wolves, under the bus, or wherever it is that liberal Republican congressmen go when the Times won't endorse them anymore.Although they came to bury him, the Times does throw in some praise of Shays [rhymes!]: Referring to him as "a good representative." Noting that it has "admired his independence and respected his leadership."Describing him as "a rare voice for moderation within [the] Republican caucus."Calling him "a...

CHICAGO The New York Times Co. reported Thursday that its third-quarter 2006 profit from continuing operations plunged 39.2% on costs related to its job cuts and a loss on its sale of its 50% stake in the Discovery Times Channel. Meanwhile, Belo, publisher of The Dallas Morning News, said net income for the quarter fell to $19.2 million, or 19 cents per share, compared to $22.1 million, or 20 cents per share, during the same period last year. At the New York Times Co., 3Q operating profit was down 48% from the same period in 2005 to $20.5 million on...

Hillary Clinton is running in a phantom race for the Senate, pitted against an unknown, unqualified opponent. In the unlikely event that New Yorkers ever learn what John Spencer’s views are, most would find them far too conservative. It’s a measure of the haplessness of Mr. Spencer’s campaign that the Republican nominee has been dogged by rumors that his real aim is to prepare the ground for an attempt to regain his old job as mayor of Yonkers.

The New York Times has put an ironic twist on the 8th Commandment: “Thou shalt not steal.” It’s accused churches nationwide of fleecing taxpayers and local governments using the First Amendment. The Times devoted more than 17,000 words and a four-day series indicting religious groups for what it argued was essentially cheating taxpayers across the country. The pro-government, pro-regulation treatise by business reporter Diana B. Henriques was titled "In God's Name." Churches “enjoy an abundance of exemptions from regulations and taxes” and the result is “religious organizations of all faiths stand in a position that American businesses – and the...

When it comes to sexual scandal, American voters tend to be more rational than American politicians. The House Republicans raced to impeach President Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky episode. But the people, shocked as they were, showed no desire to punish him by upending the national government. Conservative politicians frequently try to score political points by railing against homosexuality, but voters from very conservative areas often support politicians who are living out their private — and often not particularly secret — lives as gay men and women. Lawmakers from both parties have announced they were gay over the last generation,...

For the Times' editors, sexual perversion in political Washington is always a sideline issue. Nothing has changed at the Times; they will run with a sex scandal only if they can run over a Republican. This morning, they glance over Congressman Foley's alleged behavior, move on to their target, and totally ignore that a watchdog group and members of the media may have let children remain at risk. As well as determining if anyone withheld information to prevent a scandal, we also need to know if someone deliberately delayed this becoming news in order to influence an election. Here is...

by Mark Finkelstein September 29, 2006 - 06:54 Rejection is painful. Spurned suitors often-if-contradictorily condemn the very object of their affection, while reserving a good measure of bile for their successful rivals. Democrats have suffered a lot unrequited political desire in recent years, and the strain is really starting to show. We all know about Bush Derangement Syndrome. Yesterday I described a new strain, Gas Price Derangement Syndrome, and mentioned an even more insidious disease afflicting many on the left - Controlled Demolition Dementia. Today comes more evidence of the left's painful struggle to deal with its diminished standing and...

NYT SPLASH THURSDAY: SENATE IN PLAY; DEM CHANCE FOR CONTROL IMPROVES Wed Sep 27 2006 18:24:35 NEW YORK TIMES editors have set a Page One Splash on Thursday claiming: Democrats suddenly face a map with new and unexpected opportunities to regain control of the Senate! "We are leading the paper with it," a newsroom source tells the DRUDGE REPORT.

A reader has kindly forwarded us the unpublished letter to the editor of the New York Times by Assistant Secretary of Defense Dorrance Smith. The letter addresses the New York Times editorial "A sudden sense of urgency" (behind the TimesSelect wall). The Times editorial was also published in the International Herald Tribune and is accessible ( here). Assistant Secretary Smith responded to the editorial as follows:September 7, 2006 Letter To The New York Times To the Editor: Your September 7, 2006 editorial, "A Sudden Sense of Urgency," asserts that the recent transfer of 14 CIA prisoners means that "President Bush...

You read our headline correctly. Right there on the New York Times' online front page, under TV critic Alessandra Stanley's byline is this headline: Laying Blame and Passing the Buck, Dramatized. Here is the screen shot:Mr. Stanley is not the Times' foreign policy expert. He watches TV for a living. Yet with one click of your mouse (or on Mr. Stanley's remote control), you get his "expert" opinion: All mini-series Photoshop the facts. “The Path to 9/11” is not a documentary, or even a docu-drama; it is a fictionalized account of what took place. It relies on the report of...

COPENHAGEN, Sept. 5 — The Danish security police arrested nine suspects on Tuesday on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack after surveillance showed that several of the men had collected bomb-making material, Justice Minister Lene Espersen said. An antiterror squad carried out a raid in Vollsmose, a poor immigrant district in Odense, at 2 a.m. The suspects appeared at a closed hearing on Tuesday, where two were released and the others were charged with plotting acts of terrorism. No details of a plot were released. Investigators said it was too early to know how far the suspects’ plans had progressed....

NY TIMES NUMBER IN NEW YORK: 212-556-1234 I dialed the above number and went through the menu button pushing to get the international desk. I had a question for the NEW YORK TIMES that I thought was reasonable. LADY AT NEWS DESK: Hello, news desk DFU: Hello, I was inquiring so I could write a piece on FreeRepublic. Are you guys unhappy that you didn't get the information in time to be able to run a story and warn the airplane bomb plot terrorists that they were about to be arrested? LADY AT NEWS DESK: What kind of question is...

The Times report says “Children in public schools generally performed as well or better in reading and mathematics than comparable children in private schools.” The actual study says, “In..both reading and mathematics, students in private schools achieved at higher levels than students in public schools.” The only point at which parity is reached is in comparing poor children in public schools with poor children in private schools. Which is hilarious because thanks to the Times’s hatred of school choice, there are no poor kids in private schools.

On the evening of July 17, The New York Times announced plans to cut the width of its pages by one and a half inches, or 11 percent. On July 18, New York Times stock dropped from 23.18 cents a share to 22.67 cents--a decline of 2.2 percent. In joint memos announcing the page shrinkage, executive editor Bill Keller and Times president Scott Heekin-Canedy both described the smaller format as “reader-friendly.” Mr. Keller also described it as the emerging “industry norm,” which was true: Whatever readers may or may not think of the floppy (or generous) old broadsheet size, the...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times Co. plans to make the size of its flagship newspaper narrower and close a printing plant, resulting in the loss of 1,050 jobs, the company said in a story posted on its Web site late on Monday. The changes, set to take place in April 2008, include the closure of a printing plant in Edison, N.J. The company will sub-let the plant and consolidate its regional printing facilities at a plant in Queens, resulting in the loss of 800 jobs, the paper said.

he Right-Wing Assault on the New York Times A major, very serious, and significant right-wing assault has been unleashed against the New York Times, a key pillar of the liberal imperialist establishment, and a frequent critic of Bush Administration policies. This fascistic firestorm was unleashed after the Times published, against the Bush Administration’s wishes, a June 22 story revealing a secret government program, nicknamed Swift, which gave U.S. officials “access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States.” According to the Times, the Bush administration claimed...

There was the expected wailing and gnashing of teeth from the left when New York's state Court of Appeals ruled against installing so-called "gay marriage" by judicial fiat, as they had in the People's Republic of Massachusetts. The New York Times, as expected, was stunned that the judges could find a "rational basis" for traditional marriage, and that judges would defer to elected legislators. This outrage was plastered at the top of the Times with two "news" stories. One was a front-page editorial (they call it a "news analysis") by Patrick Healy, who focused on the "gay-rights advocates" and their...

Some formerly Communist countries that eagerly joined the European Union are balking at the social policies that come with democracy. They are led by the union's largest new member, Poland, which is now run by a right-wing nationalist government that seems intent on violating the rights of minority groups, beginning with an attack on gays. The government is led by the conservative Law and Justice Party, founded by the identical twin brothers who now run Poland: Lech Kaczynski, the country's president, and his brother Jaroslaw, who leads the party. Law and Justice got its parliamentary majority by aligning itself with...