Associated Press

Note: This post contains graphic language and subject matter, and links to more of the same. The UK Daily Mail has already reported that "The three boys alleged to have gunned down an Australian baseball player out for a run because they were 'bored' were influenced by an ultra-violent rapper." Specifically, "rather than being part of any gang, which had been suggested before, authorities…

It seems that beat reporters need to be constantly reminded that they have their hands full just discerning the facts, relaying them coherently, and leaving the "analysis" to others (while presenting alternative analytical takes when necessary). The nagging is really for their own good. If they would stick to their jobs instead of "analyzing," which often is a cover for getting out their own…

At 10 a.m. this morning, the Census Bureau essentially declared the much-ballyhooed "housing recovery" an illusion. Only 35,000 homes were actually sold in July. That translates to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 394,000, miles below the expected 487,000 and 12% below June's 455,000, which was itself revised down from 497,000. After the jump, I'll reveal what supposedly leading personal…

After a two-year hiatus, the Associated Press has apparently decided that Americans need a weekly reminder of how bad weekly layoffs were during the recession. In June 2011, possibly as a result of some hectoring by yours truly, the wire service totally or almost totally stopped reminding readers that "(unemployment) claims applications peaked at 659,000 during the recession." That tired…

Corrected from earlier | People who were wondering whether Jesse Jackson would ever respond to the killing of an Australian collegiate baseball player by three "bored" teens in Oklahoma, one of whom allegedly posted racist tweets, got their answer today. Jackson's early Wednesday morning tweet read as follows: "Praying for the family of Chris Lane. This senseless violence is frowned upon and…

Maybe because it's a UFO, we're not supposed to be able to explain it. No, I'm not talking about unidentified flying objects at the recently acknowledged Area 51. I'm talking about an unexplained financial observation, the one made by the Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber on Monday after the release of the July Regional and State Employment and Unemployment report Monday morning. Rugaber…

Two reporters at the Associated Press covering the trial of the alleged (but really confessed) perpetrator of the Ft. Hood massacre still believe there is a "key but difficult question" which needs to be answered: "Why did Maj. Nidal Hasan attack his fellow soldiers in the worst mass shooting ever on a U.S. military base?" Although the narrative of Nomaan Merchant and Michael Graczyk is…

What do you do when you're the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, and you're trying to do your level best to described a floundering economy without incurring the wrath of the Obama administration? You search for positive-sounding words to describe what is in reality a marginal situation. The AP seems to have settled on "steady" and "steadily."

On Wednesday at CBSnews.com, Sharyl Attkisson reported that "Three more weapons from Fast and Furious have turned up at crime scenes in Mexico." A Google News search at 10 a.m. on ["Fast and Furious" guns] (typed exactly as indicated between brackets, past 7 days, sorted by date, with duplicates) returned 26 relevant items. Very few (to be noted later) are from establishment press outlets.

Oprah Winfrey's attempt to inject race into a European shopping trip has blown up in her face. First, as summarized at Powerline, in response to a question as to whether she still experiences racism, Ms. Winfrey "told a tale about not being allowed to look at an expensive handbag in a boutique in Zurich because the sales lady assumed she wouldn’t be able to afford it." The allegedly racist…

Though many of us have known a fundamental truth about Obamacare for several years, the fact that Harry Reid admitted to the truth is important. How important? So important that despite plenty of bloggers and other new media outlets taking note of it, the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post (the latest stories here and here are from before Reid made his admission on Friday…

One has to sift through the biased blather to get to it, but Mary Clare Jalonick's August 1 coverage at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, of the House's plans to rein in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, still popularly called "food stamps," contains an important admission which most of the establishment press has avoided as the program's costs and enrollment…

On Thursday, the Department of Labor announced that initial unemployment claims during the week ended August 3 rose to a seasonally adjusted 333,000, up from a revised 328,000 the previous week. A "breaking" tweet from the Associated Press issued just a few minutes after the report's 8:30 a.m. (5:30 PT) release read as follows: "U.S. unemployment aid applications up only 5,000 to 333,000 - a…

Following blowback which began at Michelle Malkin's Twitchy.com and spread to Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, and surely other online locales, the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, has issued a thoroughly unsatisfying "correction" to the story I covered here Wednesday about President Obama's "Gulf ports" gaffe. The fix applied to the original story by Russ "Nobody's Fool" Bynum's…