Government Agencies

Imagine if a Republican or conservative U.S. president told an audience — on foreign soil, no less — that he didn't properly warn Americans about how long it would take for the economy to recover from a recession. "So-and-so Admits He Lied About the Economy" would be headlined everywhere. At the University of the West Indies in Jamaica on Thursday, President Barack Obama essentially admitted…

A Reuters report published late Saturday evening ("Obama meets Venezuela's Maduro at time of high tensions") is astonishing for what it ignores. The unbylined report from Panama City opens by referring to how "the United States recently placed sanctions on Venezuela." Indeed, President Barack Obama did just that in an executive order on March 9, stating that he was "declaring a national…

It took the Associated Press barely 2-1/2 hours to bury the bad news in the Census Bureau's 10 a.m. release on February wholesale sales and inventories. As of 12:32 Eastern Time, Martin Crutsinger's 10:21 a.m. time-stamped story was not present at the AP's Top 10 Business stories page (saved at my host for future reference), making it quite likely that the news won't get much prominence at the…

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…

Chickens came home to roost yesterday at the Associated Press. The AP, the economy's most consistent cheerleader when a Democrat is in office, has not only been ignoring and downplaying the significance of disappointing and negative reports for several months, pinning its claim that all is well on the streak of seasonally adjusted 200,000-plus job gains seen during the past 12 months. It has…

On Monday, as has been their habit going back at least to the Clinton administration, Investor's Business Daily's editorialists once again broke a story the establishment press likely could have reported years ago. IBD revealed that the Obama administration "was secretly negotiating the Taliban Five's release without (Bowe) Bergdahl." IBD reasonably believes that coming up with any reason to get…

The press won't roast New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for this, but it should — at a very high temperature. Today, Mr. Self-Righteous, who in the past has suggested that anyone who is pro-life, against same-sex marriage, or for the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment as written and adjudicated should leave his state, banned all "non-essential" state travel to Indiana, home of a recently enacted…

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…

On Sunday on CNN's State of the Union, Dana Bash, while interviewing Texas Senator and GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz, attempted to compare his alleged lack of experience to that of Barack Obama when he declared his candidacy in 2007. It did not go well for her. It's a mystery why Bash might have thought that Cruz wouldn't have an answer for her faux concerns, but he did, and he hit her…

The government's report on consumer spending released this morning was another disappointment. Seasonally adjusted spending increased by just 0.1 percent, falling short of modest expectations of a 0.2 percent jump, following 0.2 percent declines in both December and January. The opening paragraphs of coverage at Bloomberg News and the Associated Press contrasted sharply. Longtime readers can…

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 "…