Associated Press

If you look at the description of yesterday afternoon's U.S. Senate Roll Call Vote Number 278 ("A bill to amend title 28, United States Code, to clarify and improve certain provisions relating to the removal of litigation against Federal officers or agencies to Federal courts, and for other purposes."), you'd never know it had anything to do with illegal immigration. But it did. It was a…

Here are two stories from this past week: 1. "A [newly released] General Accountability Office (GAO) investigation has found that people with histories of sexual misconduct are still getting hired by school systems across the [United States] ... The biggest problem may be 'passing the trash.' These were cases GAO found in which school systems just let suspected sexual offenders resign, and…

Today liberal Senate Democrats failed to garner the 60-vote threshold to end debate on and move to a final passage vote for the DREAM Act. In covering the story, the news wire credited Republican opposition for "doom[ing]" the legislation, but the math doesn't work out when you look at the breakdown of the votes on the motion to end debate -- also known as invoking cloture. [h/t reader Kevin…

Did you know that the "big new tax law" signed by President Obama yesterday "will save taxpayers, on average, about $3,000 next year," and that it will have "tax breaks for being married, having children, paying for child care, going to college or investing in securities"? Don't spend that extra $3,000 yet, because it mostly won't be there. With the only major exception being the 2-point cut…

Leave it to the Associated Press, with the assistance of the "magic" of seasonal adjustments, to make the November housing market appear as if it was a bit better than the two months that preceded it. It wasn't. Thursday, the wire service grabbed the single crumb that was available, namely the Census Bureau's report earlier that day that annualized, seasonally adjusted housing starts had…

It seems to be almost required by now that any indictment of Kwame Kilpatrick must be accompanied by two or more establishment media outlets reports that fail to inform readers that the former Detroit Mayor is a Democrat -- in fact, a Democrat who was singled out for copious praise during the early stages of Barack Obama's campaign for president. In unbylined reports, CBS News in Detroit and…

Maybe we need to add the word "Palinography" to the dictionary. Its definition would be: "The process of preparing news photographs and accompanying captions about Sarah Palin in a deliberately negative light." One example many will likely remember involved the amateurish wire service shoes-and-calves-only photos frequently seen during Palin's vice-presidential run. Lori Ziganto at the…

Julia Roberts may have been crowned best actress in 2000 for her performance in (and as) "Erin Brockovich", but the film did what politically-loaded Hollywood products often do: it distorted the facts, and may have done more harm than good to the town of Hinkley, CA. The film followed Brockovich as she led a class-action suit against Pacific Gas & Electric for releasing hexavalent…

A useful guideline in evaluating the significance of a national security-related news story first revealed by someone in the establishment press is whether other media outlets pick it up. If they don't, it's probably significant. Such is the case with the Washington Post's Saturday story about Venezuela acquiring 1,800 Russian antiaircraft missiles. That appears to be 1,700 more than…

How did the nation ever survive without the government telling its schools what foods they should serve? This is one of many questions the Associated Press's Mary Clare Jalonick did not explore in her brief de facto press release this morning trumpeting the wonders of the "nutrition bill" President Obama is signing into law these days (presented in full for fair use and discussion purposes):

One of the press's longest campaigns to systematically obfuscate the truth about a specific government program is the one that has protected Social Security from reasonable scrutiny for most of the 75 years of its existence. The Associated Press's Stephen Ohlemacher did his part to continue the misdirection in his coverage of the possible effects of the payroll tax cut President Obama and…

How can you cover a story about Uncle Sam's November Monthly Treasury Statement and the proposed Obama-GOP compromise on taxes and unemployment benefits without using the words "spending," "receipts," any form of "collect," or "unemployment"? It's a neat trick, but the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger pulled it off in his Friday afternoon dispatch shortly after the government report's…

Not that he legitimately deserves our pity, but imagine the difficulty of being Ben Feller at the Associated Press yesterday. You've just attended a suddenly announced joint press conference with President Barack Obama and former president Bill Clinton to announce the latter's support for the former's tax- and spending-related legislative proposals worked out with Republicans. You witness the…

In a 12:35 p.m. story at the Associated Press's main site (pictured here, here, and here for future reference, fair use, and discussion purposes), reporter Jim Fitzgerald covers the conviction of White Plains Mayor Adam Bradley ("Suburban NY mayor convicted of attempted assault"). At Paragraph 12, Fitzgerald writes: Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore, also a Democrat, praised…