Government Agencies

Less than five hours after its release, the government's news that retail sales fell by 0.6 percent in February — compared to a 0.3 percent increase expected by economists and analysts — is buried way down (about 6-8 screens, depending on your computer) on the home page of Bloomberg News, where the focus is supposed to be on developments in business and the economy. Instead, the web site's main…

The University of Notre Dame won an important victory at the Supreme Court Monday morning when the Court acted in its case involving Obamacare's contraception mandate. Its "GVR" order (grant, vacate, remand) granted Notre Dame a "writ of certorari," vacated a lower court ruling against the school which would have forced it comply or face severe penalties, and remanded the case back to that lower…

After yesterday's government report on economic growth reduced the fourth quarter's originally estimated increase in gross domestic product from an annualized 2.6 percent to 2.2 percent, you just knew that the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, would try to ride to the rescue. Late Friday afternoon, the AP's Martin Crutsinger gamely tried to concoct five reasons why we shouldn't…

On Friday morning at Jezebel, a Gawker-affiliated web site, Natasha Vargas-Cooper thought she had Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker by the — well, you know. In a post tellingly tagged "Conservative Werewolves," Vargas-Cooper was absolutely sure — so certain that she apparently felt no need to check any further — that Walker's proposed budget would allow its colleges to "to stop reporting sexual…

A couple of thousand protesters have showed up to rail against the Wisconsin Legislature's move to pass right to work legislation this week. That number is far smaller than what was seen four years ago, when Badger State Governor Scott Walker championed Act 10, a budget repair bill which limited — but please note, contrary to frequent press assertions, did not eliminate — most public-sector…

The Fiscal Times is a generally strong and informative online publication. That said, it has occasionally exhibits symptoms of what could be seen as either serious leftist bias, quite disappointing ignorance, or both. One such example arrived in my email box early this morning. It contained the following headline and opening tease for a story about the food stamp program:

At the Associated Press late Thursday morning, Ken Dilanian, the wire service's intelligence writer, did a marvelous job of covering up the essence of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's Worldwide Threat Assessment testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. The trouble is that if he were doing his job as our Founders anticipated he would when they gave the nation's press…

The Associated Press's headline at Alan Fram's coverage of the controversy over the existence of an Obama administration contingency plan if it loses the Halbig v. Burwell case pending at the Supreme Court may be among the most inchoherent ever: "GOP CLAIMS PAPER SHOWS FED AIDES' PREPS FOR HEALTH LAW LOSS." "Paper"? What is in question is an alleged 100-page contingency plan should the Court…

Wednesday night, Fox News's Greta Van Susteren sharply criticized Susan Rice for her Tuesday comment about Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's impending March 3 speech to Congress, namely that "On both sides, there has now been injected a degree of partisanship, which is not only unfortunate, but I think it's destructive of the fabric of the relationship." To be clear, Rice is not freelancing.…

Wyatt Andrews revealed the details of a new scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs on Wednesday's CBS This Morning. Andrews zeroed in on how the veterans'  benefits office in Oakland, California simply ignored "more than 13,000 informal claims filed between 1996 and 2009 – all of which were stashed in a file cabinet." The correspondent spotlighted whistleblowers who claimed that "V.A.…

Tuesday's New York Times featured a front-page "congressional memo" by Carl Hulse and Ashley Parker devoted to the paper's new favorite topic: How the GOP-led Congress is staining the party's reputation for 2016: "Funding Fight Poses Dangers For the G.O.P. -- Battle on Immigration Puts Security at Issue."

In an almost completely expected decision, the Department of Justice yesterday announced that it "found insufficient evidence to pursue federal criminal civil rights charges against George Zimmerman for the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, 2012." In reporting on the announcement, Jennifer Kay and Eric Tucker at the Associated Press were predictably selective in recounting the details…

On Monday, both NBC's Today and CBS This Morning used a terrorist threat against the Mall of America in Minneapolis to hit the Republican Congress over the Department of Homeland Security funding fight. On Today, White House correspondent Kristen Welker concluded her report on the security concerns by declaring: "Meanwhile, the clock is ticking with Congress locked in a bitter battle over how to…

Thursday on his Your World show, host Neil Cavuto went after the Obama administration's near obsession with the coverage it gets on Fox News. While Team Obama can count on the Big Three triumvirate of ABC, CBS and NBC to toe the line, promoting its points while generally avoiding damning information, Fox has generally remained fair and balanced, an approach which has clearly gotten under their…