From the New York Times’s Sabrina Tavernise and Ethan Bronner, a worthy follow-up to the thoroughly execrable and now unavailable “10 Reported Killed” story with which the New York Times began its Gaza Flotilla coverage. That one was Isabel Kershner’s handiwork, and the very end of this gem notes that she contributed here as well. Heartwarming teamwork at the Paper of Record:

The attempted takeover turned into an armed assault, with angry Israeli commandos opening fire. Within an hour, the commandos had taken control of the ship, and nine Turks, including one who also had American citizenship, were dead. Dozens of interviews in Israel and Turkey suggest that Israel’s decision to stop the flotilla at all costs collided with the intention of a small group of Islamic activists from Turkey, turning a raid on a ship of protesters in international waters into a bloodbath — and a major international event.

It’s particularly charming how the IHH-backed jihadists are described as a “small group of Islamic activists,” the IHH being the Hamas supporting group of Turkey-acknowledged terrorists which literally sponsored the boat. Merely calling them “activists” is something that any liberal apologist could have done. But that the lynch mob was an unrepresentative “small group” among the larger “ship of protesters” is why the NYT is virtually parody-proof.

The only thing left is to explain how the jihadists “misunderstood Islam” when they broke out into genocidal Islamic war songs celebrating Mohammed’s mass murder and enslavement of Jews. Then, later in the article, there’s this:

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California has long had the reputation of being trend-setter to the nation. The Golden State was practicing Obamanomics back when Barack was still called Barry. And now its ways are catching up to it like a hard partier who looks in the mirror one day and sees the portrait of Dorian Gray staring back at him.

Get ready America: California’s unsustainable path is echoed by the federal government. One will crash before the other, giving us all a preview of things to come.

Part of what is slowly destroying California is its move from a land of plenty to a land of locusts. The state taxes and regulates resident companies to such an extreme extent it has driven many of them, and many tax-paying citizens, to other states. For decades California was a place to migrate to. Now it’s suffering an exodus. The fault lies in a political shift from being a conservative, low- tax state to a statist, high-tax nanny state. Californians used to be the freest people in the United States and the world, and now? Not so much. (more…)