The NYT Liberal? Where Did You Get That Idea?

in the Supreme Court's decision inRicci v. DeStefano, which ruled that New Haven had acted illegally when it threw out a promotion test on which minority firefighters had done poorly.

Jennifer Steinhauer in Sacramento covering California's budget crisis, June 22.

TV critic Ginia Bellafante, June 24 review of the reality show "Jon & Kate Plus 8."



From a June 28 Week in Review story by section editor Sam Tanenhaus.


This is what patriotism looks like in the age of Barack Obama." - Book Review editor Barry Gewen, June 10 on Simon Schama's new big-think book, "The American Future - A History."

Great Minds Think Alike

"White supremacist groups are vastly expanding. And right-wing TV rhetoric, thoughtless in its cruelty and ratings-hungry demagoguery, is helping feed the paranoia and rage that for some Americans now bubbles just beneath the surface." - Online columnist Judith Warner, June 11.
"Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions resemble those in the early 1990s - a time marked by an upsurge of right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing. Conservatives were outraged. The chairman of the Republican National Committee denounced the report as an attempt to 'segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration' and label them as terrorists. But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient. There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn't say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment." - Columnist Paul Krugman, June 12.
"This kind of rhetoric, with its pseudo-Scriptural call to action, is toxic. It is getting louder each day of the Obama presidency. No one, not even Fox News viewers, can say they weren't warned." - Frank Rich, June 14.



Another Conservative Movie Stephen Holden Hates
"'The Stoning of Soraya M.,'a true story of religiously sanctioned misogyny and mob violence in an Iranian village, thoroughly blurs the line between high-minded outrage and lurid torture-porn.... Mr. Negahban's Ali, who resembles a younger, bearded Philip Roth, suggests an Islamic fundamentalist equivalent of a Nazi anti-Semitic caricature ." - Movie critic Stephen Holden, June 26.

Obama Had Experience During Campaign, but Sarah Palin Still Has None?
"By stepping down before finishing her term, she cannot claim to be even a one-term governor." - Chief political reporter Adam Nagourney in a July 5 analysis of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's surprise resignation.
Reporter Patrick Healy praising Obama as a "man of experience" on August 29, 2008, after Obama's speech to the Democratic Convention. Barack Obama was a full-time senator for two years before launching his presidential campaign in January 2007.

What Did Milton Friedman Ever Do to Ginia Bellafante?
"One of [Niall] Ferguson's hallmarks is the statement made ex cathedra, delivered as if no counterargument could exist to upend it.In thrall to the Chicago School's free-market philosophy, he blames the welfare state in Britain and much of the Western world in the 1970s for the stagflation of the time....In Chile he indulges in a similar whitewashing, tracing the origins of the country's impressive economic expansion during the '80s and '90s almost entirely to its privatization of retirement accounts in 1981, a system criticized in recent years for high management fees and low participation rates. The reforms came about through collaboration between the dictatorAugusto PinochetandMilton Friedmanand his conservative economist acolytes. Mr. Ferguson's relativism leaves him with little to condemn in the union." - TV critic Ginia Bellafante in a July 8 review of the new PBS series "The Ascent of Money," hosted by Niall Ferguson. Bellafante had previously chided Friedman in the past for having opposed the military draft (!).