Crime

At a March 4 press conference, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder grudgingly bowed to the truth relating to the events surrounding the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in August of last year: "Michael Brown’s death, though a tragedy, did not involve prosecutable conduct on the part of Officer (Darren) Wilson." In doing so, Holder effectively acknowledged the falsity of the claim,…

One week ago tonight, Chris Matthews told his Hardball audience that Florida mailman Doug Hughes should pay for his illegal gyrocopter stunt by being sentenced to community service consisting of Hughes lecturing Congress for an hour on campaign finance reform. Tonight Matthews doubled down on that suggestion and gave Hughes a platform on MSNBC's airwaves.

How bad are things getting for Hillary when a defender is reduced to arguing, in response to the Clinton Cash allegations, that Bill might have been a dishonest bag man, not letting Hillary know that people were giving him money in an attempt to influence her?! On today's Morning Joe, responding to the Clinton Cash revelations, MSNBC contributor Dorian Warren said that Bill Clinton "could have…

Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Jackie Crosby's writeup on how "Minnesota has been losing residents to other states" since 2002, and that it's especially troubling because "young adults are leaving in the greatest numbers," contained an enormous blind spot. The Gopher State, aka the Land of 10,000 Lakes, is also sardonically known as the Land of 10,000 Taxes by many residents, and with good…

When it comes to false media narratives, the typical right-winger should be more concerned with the plank in his own eye than with the speck in the eye of a liberal. That, minus the allusion to the Sermon on the Mount, was the essential argument from Heather Digby Parton in a Wednesday column. Parton sees Rolling Stone’s debunked, retracted University of Virginia rape story as one component of…

New Republic staff writer Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig has clearly run out of defenses for the conduct of those involved in the disgraceful, scandalous journalistic malpractice which gave rise to the now-retracted and thoroughly discredited "A Rape on Campus: The Struggle for Justice at UVA" at Rolling Stone. So here's her last refuge: Conservatism deserves some of the blame, because Sabrina Rubin…

Earlier this evening, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism issued its report on Rolling Stone Magazine's November "A Rape on Campus" story. The report follows up on the magazine's request of Columbia to conduct an independent review of how the disastrously false 9,000-word story made it through to publication. USA Today is reporting that for all the harsh criticism the piece's…

UPDATE, April 6: An email sent by "Virginia Commonwealth University News" insists, despite the November 2014 tweet originally found at the link about Bryan's "GoFundMe" effort, that Alix Bryan "has not been employed by Virginia Commonwealth University." Accordingly, the text in this post's final sentence now refers to Bryan's claim in her WTVR bio and at her LinkedIn profile to have received a "…

The Washington Post apparently knows when it’s appropriate to completely omit a majority viewpoint from a news story: when an Obama-appointed  U.S. district judge in California orders “sex reassignment surgery” for a murderer because denying an expensive surgery on the taxpayer dime is a denial of “her” constitutional rights. Lindsey Beyer reported that Jeffrey Norsworthy, who now identifies as…

Update, April 3: The Indiana man who claims to have been hacked now admits that he wasn't, but says he was "joking" about robbing Memories Pizza, and is threatening to sue those who exposed his (ahem) public comments.  Those of us following the Memories Pizza story won't have trouble remembering it as the years go by, thanks only partially to the Walkerton, Indiana store's fairly unusual name…

A short unbylined Associated Press report at its national site on the situation at Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana this afternoon made sure to mention that the pizzeria "won't cater gay weddings" (in the headline). It also misstated the owner's statement to a South Bend TV station, claiming, using its own words, that she "said the state's new religious objections law backs their right to…

Something hasn't seemed right about the Memories Pizza story from the get-go. Now I know why. In a Tuesday report, TV Station ABC 57 cited the Walkerton, Indiana business's Crystal O'Connor as saying that, in the station's words, they "don't agree with gay marriages and wouldn't cater them if asked to." In other words, they've never been asked to. The non-story which ignited a national firestorm…

So Harry Reid knew he was lying about Mitt Romney not paying taxes for ten years when he made the claim in 2012 from the lawsuit-free zone known as the floor of the U.S. Senate, but didn't care. That's what one must conclude from Reid's response to CNN's Dana Bash about that statement. Asked on the network's New Day program if he regrets what he said, Reid responded: "Romney didn't win, did he…

Bush Derangement Syndrome is alive, well, and living in the head of Nancy A. Youssef at the Daily Beast. In a March 26 item tagged "Fallen Hero" (?!) about the Army charging Bowe Bergdahl with "desertion and misbehaving before the enemy," the web site's Senior National Security Correspondent wrote that "the administration celebrated negotiating his release after years of failed bids by both the…