A new Chinese accord

STOP THE PRESSES: Today is the day the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times finally agree on something. Of course, they had to go all the way to China to find it.

Both editorial boards are saddened, even angry, over the congressional outcry that forced CNOOC, the Chinese oil company, to withdraw its takeover bid for Unocal. (On the page opposite, the editor of this page also discusses the issue.)

See if you can match the statement to the editorial: “Congressional hysteria over the CNOOC bid ... is a sad example of self-interested pandering for votes and contributions.” Times or Journal? “A zero-sum neurosis has taken hold on Capitol Hill.... There are still too many mercantilists in Washington.” Journal or Times? (Answer below).

Meanwhile, just north and just south of Manhattan, both the Boston Globe and the Washington Post editorialize about President Bush’s views on Darwinian science. They both must have gotten the memo from the Liberal Media Establishment. Either that or the East Coast is in an agreeable mood this morning.

By saying that “both sides” of the evolution debate be properly taught, the Post says, the president is “indulging quackery,” which is not something a president should do -- especially not a president “who claims, at least some of the time, that he cares about education.”

The Globe sniffs that the president “should leave the teaching of science to those who are committed to the word’s Latin root: scientia, knowledge.”

(Answer to quiz: the first quote is from the Times editorial, the second from the Journal’s.)

MICHAEL NEWMAN