Government Agencies

The latest wet kiss from the business press thrown the Obama administration's way came from Martin Crutsinger at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, late this afternoon. Crutsinger, continuing to richly earn the "Worst Economics Writer" tag he received from National Review's Kevin Williamson two years ago, absurdly characterized the mediocre, pathetic economic peformance of the…

Employing a variant of the old surgeon's joke — "The operation was a success, but the patient died" — White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, on friendly ground on MSNBC this morning, essentially told viewers that the administration still considers Yemen a success, even as its government is on the fast track to being forced into indefinite exile. Earnest told the "Morning Joe" show's Mika…

The Census Burau's February Durable Goods report, released at 8:30 a.m. today, "unexpectedly" (Bloomberg did the U-word honors) came in with a seasonally adjusted 1.4 percent decline compared to the 0.2 increase analysts expected. Additionally, January's increase was revised down to 2.0 percent from 2.8 percent. Not adjusting for inflation, unadjusted (i.e., actual) February orders came in 2.3…

On CNN yesterday, after the network cut away from the press conference where Charlottesville, Virginia Police Department announced that it "found no evidence to support claims in a Rolling Stone article that a University of Virginia student was gang raped at a campus fraternity in September 2012," network panelist and CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin bizarrely resorted to "statistics" to defend "…

The press's reluctance to let go of a popular but debunked meme — in this case, the nonexistent "epidemic" of college campus sexual assaults — is sometimes inadvertently humorous, though still intensely annoying. Take how John Bacon and Marisol Bello at USA Today characterized the news that "Police in Charlottesville were unable to verify that an alleged sexual assault detailed in a…

Today the U.S. Supreme Court, as the Associated Press's Scott Bauer reported, "turned away a challenge to Wisconsin's voter identification law," meaning that "the state is free to impose the voter ID requirement in future elections." Bauer then focused on the impact of the state's off-year primary elections on April 7. Bauer's relatively tolerable (for him) report tagged the law as "a political…

From all appearances, only Fox News, CNS News, and a few Israel-based outlets and U.S.-based center-right blogs care about the fact, acknowledged by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, that Iran and Hezbollah, in the words of Fox's Greta Van Susteren, "are suddenly MIA from the U.S. terror threat list." DNI apparently has no plans to change its report, having told CNS News that…

Over at Hot Air, I saw that Seth Meyers, as he was figuratively grilling Texas Senator Ted Cruz on his "Late Night" program — the first rule of these shows is that conservatives get attacked, while liberals get coddled — made his case for global warming by saying, “I think the world’s on fire literally.” I checked outside just a moment ago and "literally" saw no burning bushes or other burning…

In all the hoopla over the Federal Reserve's Wednesday's signals over its intentions to raise interest rates, its significant downgrades to expected growth of the U.S. economy during the next several years have mostly been ignored. The Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, has played a part in that. Both of the wire service's reports following the Fed's actions and predictions on…

Many media myths won't die because those who should know better — and I believe in many cases do know better, and don't care — perpetuate them. One can't divine his mindset, but Politico's Michael Crowley, in his coverage of Benjamin Netanyahu's resounding Tuesday electoral victory, did his part to continue the myth that the Israeli Prime Minister's "March 3 speech to Congress (was) arranged by…

After his appearance yesterday on ABC's "This Week," Hillary Clinton may be wondering whose side James Carville is on. Never mind Carville's frequent and rude interruptions of other guests, his seemingly calculated incoherence, and his false claims about the Clintons' past record of corruption. Even though that behavior doesn't represent the Clintons well, they have to know that's part of the…

As we know - America’s media is for the most part decidedly Leftist, often befuddled and rarely right.  So when they wade into an intricate issue like President Barack Obama’s Net Neutrality Internet power grab - we can only expect even more Leftism, befuddlement and wrongness. On February 26, the Obama Administration’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) pretended to be Congress and rewrote…

Here is a clear case of media reluctance to acknowledge a drop-dead obvious fact — one even the often fact-averse New York Times has admitted. In an 8:40 p.m. report tonight, Jim Salter at the Associated Press spent eight paragraphs avoiding any mention of the race of Jeffrey Williams, the 20 year-old man arrested today and charged in connection with the shooting of two Ferguson, Missouri police…

The only surprise should be that anyone is surprised. Those who are used to how frequently the word "unexpectedly" appears in reports about disappointing economic data certainly won't be at all shocked at a Friday Bloomberg News report by Steve Matthews and A. Catarina Saraiva telling readers that "U.S. economic data have been falling short of prognosticators' expectations by the most in six…