When it comes to political labels to describe public figures, the New York Times has a vocabulary all its own -- pejorative adjectives for conservatives; soft, deferential adjectives for liberals. It's all part and parcel of a left-wing bias in what purport to be the paper's "news" articles.

To wit, the latest example:

In its May 20 edition, the Times runs an article by Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren about the ups and downs of Yair Lapid, a charismatic newcomer to Israeli politics, whose political star crested when voters made his party the second largest in the Knesset, but whose star more recently has been on a precipitous decline ("Fresh Israeli Face Plays Down Dimming of Political Star" page A4).

Why has Lapid's popularity gone south, aside from the fact that as finance minister in the governing coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he is pushing an austerity drive of raising taxes while cutting spending?
"One of the things that led some people to turn on Mr. Lapid was the revelation that he met in April with Sheldon Adelson, the ultraconservative financier who backs Mr. Netanyahu and owns the Israeli Hayom newspaper that loyally supports him," Rudoren tells Times readers.

In this single sentence, intentionally or not, Rudoren reveals the depth of the Times' anti-conservative, anti-Zionist intrusion into its news sections.

Lapid meeting with Adelson? Talk about guilt by association. Because, as far as Rudoren is concerned, Adelson doesn't belong in polite society. After all, horror of horrors, Adelson is an "ultra-conservative."

Would the Times ever refer to billionaire George Soros who finances leftist causes as an "ultra-liberal? Of course not. At most, progressives or liberals are "left-leaning" in the Times, not even "left-wing" or "leftist." No such restraint, however, obtains when conservatives enter the picture -- as per Adelson, a billionaire Las Vegas mogul whose extensive philanthropy includes pro-Israel causes. That, in itself, makes Adelson suspect in the eyes of Rudoren and the Times.

Still, Rudoren doesn't even leave it at that in her fierce indictment of Adelson. Not only does he offend the Times with his political views, but to make matters even worse, he's a supporter of Netanyahu -- the Times' bête noire in Israeli politics.

Yet, still not content with tarring Adelson and pumping up her conspiratorial suspicions, Rudoren explains why Adelson would meet with Lapid, the finance minister. What did they try to concoct? What are they up to? Well, "Mr. Lapid said that Mr. Adelson requested the meeting to ensure that the government would continue its matching grant of about $40 million to Birthright, a program that brings young Jews to Israel,'' Rudoren reports.

And that may be Adelson's biggest sin, in the anti-Zionist eyes of the Times. Birthright is perhaps the most successful antidote to a rising tide of assimilation among young American Jews. Adelson has contributed tens of millions of dollars to Birthright so as to give young Jews who have never visited Israel a chance to see the Jewish state for themselves.

But that's anathema to Rudoren and the Times, steeped as they are in secularism, assimilationism and thus anti-Zionism. A slanderous swamp that engulfs "all the news that's fit to print."

Leo Rennert is a former White House correspondent and Washington bureau chief of McClatchy Newspapers