NY Times Defines Social Moderation

Today’s New York Times reports on the latest candidate who thinks he can beat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

It’s Dan Senor, whose main claims to fame is his service as the Bush administrator’s chief liar in Iraq and that he is very lucky in love.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/fashion/weddings/09vows.html

I don’t think we have a Senator Senor in our future but one sentence in the story stood out as it either reflects on either how lazy the Times has become in reporting on politicians or gives us a rather loose definition of a social moderate..

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/25/nyregion/unwanted-aid-for-d-amato-in-a-sly-ad-on-abortion.html?pagewanted=1

He is known as fiscally conservative and socially moderate, a combination that eventually defined Alfonse M. D’Amato’s time in the United States Senate from New York.

If Michael Barbaro, the Times reporter who wrote those words took a minute to Google the words Al D’Amato Right to Life, he could have the following FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES!

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/25/nyregion/unwanted-aid-for-d-amato-in-a-sly-ad-on-abortion.html?pagewanted=1

Mr. D'Amato has voted with the Right to Life Party 100 percent of the time on abortion-related legislation during his 18 years in the Senate.

The abortion rights league's scorecard shows that in 18 years, Mr. D'Amato opposed the league's position in 92 out of 101 votes, or 91 percent of the time. Those included votes for a constitutional amendment to allow states to ban abortion, for a ban on a procedure that opponents call partial birth abortion, against legislation protecting abortion clinics from blockades and against financing abortion and other family planning services in foreign countries.