Don Babwin

If we're to believe the pose struck by five Associated Press reporters who contributed to a Sunday afternoon story on the topic, the spike in violent crime in the U.S. during the past nearly two years apparently needs its own episode of the old Unsolved Mysteries TV series. "Experts can't point to a single reason" for the rise. The increase "is stumping law enforcement officials." FBI Director…

For the "Freedom for me, and not for thee" file: Donald Trump decided to cancel a campaign rally in Chicago tonight "due to safety concerns after protesters packed the arena where it was to take place." An Associated Press report time-stamped at 10:12 p.m., like so many AP reports in similar circumstances before subsequent revisions "clean things up," so to speak, has some elements of balance,…

Less than 48 hours from now, Chicago's teachers, whose union head insists, as quoted by the Associated Press, that "we are here to negotiate for better schools in Chicago," may walk off the job, leaving the children entrusted to them to languish in half-days of activities unrelated to learning "staffed by non-union and central office workers." There seems to be an unwritten rule that news…

Wednesday afternoon, Matthew Balan at NewsBusters noted that two of the three network morning shows failed to mention disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's Democratic Party affiliation. Not that it's an excuse, but what was probably their primary raw material, namely three Tuesday reports from the Associated Press, completely failed to tag Blago as a Democrat, specifically the…