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The Times has yet another story on Monday about a parental notification case that Texas Supreme Court Justice Owen and then-Justice Alberto Gonzales participated in five years ago. The Times says:

Mr. Gonzales, a Texas Supreme Court justice at the time, was in the majority and wrote that the position of the three dissenters was "an unconscionable act of judicial activism" because it would create obstacles to abortion that the Legislature did not enact. Mr. Gonzales, in interviews with The New York Times, acknowledged that his words were directed at her dissent but said that he remained enthusiastic about her nomination to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

However, the Washington Post quoted Attorney General Gonzales on May 10, 2005 as saying, “I’ve never accused her of being an activist judge.

What Gonzales actually wrote in the case was that construing Texas law in a particular way "would be an unconscionable act of judicial activism."

The New York Times has managed to leave out those two words "would be" again and again.

On the following dates the New York Times has omitted the words "would be" when quoting this alleged accusation by then-Justice Gonzales against Justice Owen:

May 16, 2005; April 28, 2005; April 22, 2005; April 21, 2005; December 24, 2004; May 2, 2003; March 14, 2003; September 6, 2002; August 11, 2002; July 22, 2002; and April 7, 2002.

The New York Times has also been unwilling to print the statement by then-Justice Gonzales (in the very same case) that each of the dissenters “agrees that the duty of a judge is to follow the law as written by the legislature.

Below the fold is the full paragraph that Gonzales wrote, containing the "judicial activism" language.

The dissenting opinions suggest that the exceptions to the general rule of notification should be very rare and require a high standard of proof. I respectfully submit that these are policy decisions for the Legislature. And I find nothing in this statute to directly show that the Legislature intended such a narrow construction. As the Court demonstrates, the Legislature certainly could have written Section 33.033(i) to make it harder to bypass a parent’s right to be involved in decisions affecting their daughters. But it did not. Likewise, parts of the statute’s legislative history directly contradict the suggestion that the legislature intended bypasses to be very rare. Thus, to construe the Parental Notification Act so narrowly as to eliminate bypasses, or to create hurdles that simply are not to be found in the words of the statute, would be an unconscionable act of judicial activism. As a judge, I hold the rights of parents to protect and guide the education, safety, health, and development of their children as one of the most important rights in our society. But I cannot rewrite the statute to make parental rights absolute, or virtually absolute, particularly when, as here, the Legislature has elected not to do so. (citations omitted)