Anyone who read the New York Times editorial board’s defense of the pork-barrel spending contained in the current war supplemental had to be hoping for some sort of cosmic retribution for such shameless partisan hackery. The editorial board even stooped to defend the $25 million for spinach growers:

… Mr. Bush invariably chooses to mock $25 million allotted for spinach growers in California. But that money is intended to mitigate growers’ losses from their voluntary recall of spinach during a bacterial contamination last September, which is the type of emergency that supplemental spending bills are supposed to address.

Let’s take a good hard look at what the Times is defending here. One person died and nearly 100 were sickened from e-coli-contaminated spinach last year. Citizens Against Government Waste put it best:

Spinach growers deserve no special reward for pulling a deadly product from store shelves. The growers can plan for and survive temporary slumps just like any other business. Non-subsidized businesses must constantly adjust to unforeseeable events to stay profitable in the free market. Spinach growers are using lobbyists and Rep. [Sam] Farr to obtain special privileges at taxpayers’ expense.

So, having defended this shameless sop to spinach growers, which in reality was nothing more than the price of Sam Farr’s vote for the war funding bill, imagine the looks on the NYT edit board’s members’ faces when the Democrats pulled the spinach money from the final version of the bill. From the New York Times:

The measure would also provide $3.5 billion to the nation’s farmers, but the Democratic negotiators dropped other farm aid in the wake of accusations from Mr. Bush and Republicans that the bill had been larded with special interest provisions to attract enough votes for passage. Among the spending eliminated was money for spinach growers, Christmas tree farmers, shrimp fisherman and sugar cane growers.

Even the Democrats decided that the spinach subsidy was indefensible and dropped it. Which wouldn’t make the NYT edit board look so bad, if they were consistent defenders of agricultural subsidies. Naturally, they’re not.