This story, when it first came out, used this title: Donald Trump Used Legally Dubious Method to Avoid Paying Taxes.

The story, in the third paragraph, notes that Congress outlawed the tax maneuver Donald Trump used after he used it. Therefore, Trump did not break the law.

But on the front page of the New York Times’ website, the headline is the far more salacious “Trump’s Tax Dodge Stretched Law ‘Beyond Recognition’” as of this writing.

So Donald Trump used a “legally dubious” method to avoid paying taxes. He stretched the law “beyond recognition.” And it was so unlawful that Congress had to write a law to outlaw it after Trump had benefited from it.

Remind me again why Congress had to outlaw something that was already illegal? Oh, that’s right. Because it was not.

I’m no fan of Trump’s, but is this really the best the Clinton machine can throw at him? It takes five reporters to write a story making Donald Trump sound like a crook for using a tax maneuver that was legal and that other people used. That’s rather pathetic on the New York Times’s part.

Meanwhile, the alleged paper of record is running interference for Hillary Clinton doing the “legally dubious” things she did that “stretched the law beyond recognition” — all things the Times said about Trump — were perfectly legal, accepted, and no problem at all.

Perhaps if the New York Times did not deploy double standards in its coverage of candidates, we’d treat this story more seriously. But after years and years of saying every Republican is a more terrible, deplorable racist when they were not, the Times has stretched its credibility beyond recognition. It has become the newspaper that cried wolf.