Associated Press

The day before Thanksgiving brought encouraging news on unemployment.  CBS News.com reported "New Jobless Claims Plunge to 466K."  Investors.com headlined "Jobless Claims Dive To 466,000."  CNN Money.com issued a special report titled "Jobless claims plummet to 14-month low."  And the Financial Times included a link to the Calculated Risk blog article "Weekly Initial Unemployment Claims Decline…

It's nice that the story of Rom Houben has recently made the news. I carried it as one of my own "Positivity" posts earlier this week. A Google News Search on "Rom Houben Laureys" (not typed in quotes; Laureys is the last name of Houben's principal doctor) at about 11:30 p.m. ET came back with 1,528 results relating to the word of his amazing recovery and ability to communicate after 23 years of…

Here's a news story that should be interesting to watch as it develops further.The New York Police Department executed a raid on the circulation offices of four New York newspapers earlier today. The Associated Press reported the story shortly after 1 p.m. EST (h/t Alex Yuriev):By COLLEEN LONG p {margin:12px 0px 0px 0px;}NEW YORK (AP) - A law enforcement official says the New York Police…

That the Associated Press's basement-level poll-cooking and poll-reporting standards are quite low, and quite agenda-driven, might as well be an article of faith by this time. But the wire service-commissioned poll on health care, and Erica Warner's report on it (saved here for future reference, fair use, and discussion purposes; HT JammieWearingFool via Instapundit; the full poll report in PDF…

Twitter has announced that it will end a list service that blatantly favored Democratic politicians by attracting viewers to their profiles while excluding GOP officials from the service.The list service provided new Twitter users with lists of prominent message-posters they might like to follow. Watchdog groups discovered late last month that Democratic officials were prominently listed by the…

In the alternative universe known as Government/General Motors Land, you can: Talk about how your financial results are going to be better than last year's and in the next breath caution that the numbers won't be comparable. Inform the public that the financial information to be released on Monday isn't going to be prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP),…

The Associated Press recently assigned eleven of its writers to fact-check Sarah Palin's new book "Going Rogue." AP's team of truth-seekers only found six errors the former Alaska Governor's book, most of which were trivial and presumably not worth the time of a team of reporters."AP writers Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard,…

In a report that is so riddled with bias and factual errors it's hard to know even where to begin, Associated Press Writers Tom Raum and Andrew Taylor yesterday gave making President Obama look like a born-again deficit hawk their best shot. The pair's work is partially saved here for fair use, discussion and in this case entertainment purposes. The biggest error Raum and Taylor made was…

In what is presented to readers of an Associated Press report as a done deal, the Netherlands will impose a mileage tax on drivers beginning in 2012. It goes beyond most if not all other government-imposed taxes in that it will charge more during so-called peak times or if a vehicle is considered a heavier polluter. The abolition of two other taxes is apparently the mechanism for enticing the…

It might seem odd, given its content, that I'm about to criticize yesterday's Associated Press report on the deficit. After all, AP business writers Martin Crutsinger and Daniel Wagner did give us the facts about Uncle Sam's October Monthly Treasury Statement, put them into historical context, and told us that we face $1 trillion-plus shortfalls in fiscal 2010 and 2011. But the pair missed a…

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn is stepping down at the end of the month.NewsBusters readers should remember Dunn as the outspoken Adminstration official who made quite a splash in October when she said the Fox News Channel "really is not a news network at this point."Now, according to the Associated Press, she's passing the baton:

It's a development that I wouldn't wish on anybody, but one that the City of New London, Connecticut largely brought upon itself by pursuing and winning the Kelo v. New London case at the Supreme Court in June 2005. Some "win." In what Ed Morrissey at Hot Air calls "a fitting coda to a chapter of governmental abuse," pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer is leaving the global research and…