My jaw dropped on Sunday when I saw that the analysis of the president’s Social Security proposals in The New York Times Week in Review was written by Nicholas Confessore. I hadn’t realized that this utterly partisan liberal writer had been hired by the Times. Confessore has been an editor of the liberal Washington Monthly and a senior editor of the liberal American Prospect. He’s also written for The New Republic and Salon. Confessore’s piece on social security is a classic case of deep anti-Bush bias hiding behind a veneer of fairness. Jaded as I’ve become about the issue of bias at The New York Times, this absolutely floors me. Times ombudsman, Daniel Okrent, should answer for this. If the Times wants to hire partisans from both sides, that’s one thing. But they don’t. It’s one thing to have Confessore doing a magazine piece. But to have a prominent liberal political partisan writing the analysis of the president’s social security plan in the Week in Review is plain ridiculous. Even if it weren’t the partisan hit job that it is, you’d think the Times would at least want to avoid the appearance of this sort of bias.