Christine Romer

CNN's Rick Sanchez took a very strong position about a White House promise on Monday only to have to backtrack and admit he was wrong 45 minutes later.

During Monday's "Rick's List," Sanchez challenged Republican National Committee communications director Doug Heye about his claim that the Obama administration said the unemployment rate wouldn't exceed eight percent if Congress enacted the President's stimulus bill.

"Doug, who made that promise?" asked a defiant Sanchez. "I never recall hearing the President of the United -- in fact, I recall the very first speech the President of the United States made after being sworn in and the very first thing he said to Americans was, expect unemployment to go into double digits."

The CNN host arrogantly continued, "I don't think you're right. Prove me wrong."

About 45 minutes later, Sanchez marvelously proved himself wrong (videos follow with transcripts and commentary):

It would appear that the Apparatchik Press -- er, the Associated Press -- thinks that part of its job is to soften the impact of embarrassing admissions made by Obama administration members.

Take the wire service's Thursday afternoon AP report by Jim Kuhnhenn on Council of Economic Advisers' chair Christine Romer's observations about the stimulus package. Romer said (in AP's words) that "the government's economic stimulus spending has already had its biggest impact," and will (in Romer's words) "likely be contributing little to further growth by the middle of next year."

As you'll see shortly, AP's headline doesn't reflect what Romer said. Additionally, Kuhnhenn allowed Romer to mischaracterize the economy's performance in the second quarter without challenging it, and saved the big news -- yet another administration official admitting that unemployment will stay near double digit through the end of next year -- for his eighth paragraph.

Here's a graphic capture of Kuhnhenn's first eight paragraphs, posted for fair use and discussion purposes: