Tuesday afternoon, Alan Fram laughably headlined his coverage of Planned Parenthood head Cecile Richards' appearance before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee at the Associated Press as follows: "FACING CONGRESS, PLANNED PARENTHOOD CHIEF REBUTS VIDEOS."

She did no such thing. Most notably, Fram quoted Richards making the following statement to the committee: "The outrageous accusations leveled against Planned Parenthood, based on heavily doctored videos, are offensive and categorically untrue." Not merely "heavily edited," but "doctored," which according to the dictionary in this context means "to tamper with; falsify." Unfortunately for Richards and her group's supporters, in a report released yesterday, forensic experts have concluded that the Center for Medical Progress videos she criticized are "authentic" (bolds are mine throughout this post):

In Congressional testimony Monday and Tuesday, Planned Parenthood head Cecile Richards twisted the truth in several instances.

One of them had to to with how many of its facilities are involved in the provision of fetal tissue for compensation. She may be technically telling the truth about how many are involved at this moment, but it's clear that far more have been — at least until recently.

August's seasonally adjusted Pending Home Sales Index value contained in the related press release from the National Association of Realtors was the lowest in the past five months, and 2 percent below April's level.

Disclosing the size of the recent slump apparently wasn't considered important at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press. What was news at AP, whose Josh Boak essentially copied NAR's release and added standard boilerplate about job growth instead of engaging in informative journalism, is that the index is up by over 6 percent from a year ago, even though that increase ended several months ago.

Imagine my "surprise" (not really) when I came across a Thursday Daily Beast item originally referenced by Mark Levin on his radio show (HT Joe Newby at Examiner.com) about the comments of a "secular Muslim" in response to what 2016 Republican presidential contender Ben Carson had to say about whether he could support a strict, sharia-compliant Muslim to be this nation's chief executive.

The author of that column, Asra Q. Nomani, effectively made mincemeat out of a "fact check" written by Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post on Tuesday. You see, Kessler, in what must be his worst "fact check" ever, gave Carson's statement about the Muslim concept of taqiyya, namely that it "is a component of Sharia that allows, and even encourages you to lie to achieve your goals," a grade of "Four Pinocchios," i.e., "a whopper."

The left's strategy for smearing Republicans and conservatives is, from all appearances, to "throw anything and everything out there, not matter how false or outrageous, and see what sticks."

A major reason why this strategy works is that the establishment press ignores bogus leftist smear attempts which should be utterly embarrassing, effectively eliminating the strategy's downside. Take Debbie Wasserman Schultz's Monday press release on 2016 GOP presidential candidate Marco Rubio's fundraiser at the home of Dallas businessman Harlan Crow.

The competition for the most annoying aspect of establishment press business reporting is fierce. One which immediately identifies a reporter as hopelessly biased and ignorant is any reference to "laissez faire" as a condition allegedly present in any modern economy anywhere on earth.

"Laissez faire" is an economic concept involving "an economic system in which transactions between private parties are free from government interference such as regulations, privileges, tariffs, and subsidies." There are no true "laissez faire" economies of any meaningful size, because they are all regulated to some extent. As we will see shortly, some in the press even employ the obviously absurd term "laissez faire regulation."

Word on the street is that ESPN is planning to lay off "200 to 300" employees in the coming months.

The go-to euphemism surrounding the impending layoffs, according to Variety's Brian Steinberg, is "the changing media landscape," primarily the "cord-cutting" phenomenon. In July, the Big Lead blog, in discussing Keith Olbermann's expected departure from ESPN, explained that "millennials are eschewing expensive cable TV bills and streaming everything online." While that might explain flat viewership or even a modest decline, cord-cutting is only a minor part of the problem. Someone needs to explain why ESPN's ratings have fallen by a stunning 30 percent in the past 12 months.

The Associated Press's report yesterday on the law license suspension of indicted Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, a Democrat, apparently bore too much resemblance to how the wire service typically reports on troubled Republicans and conservatives. The Monday afternoon report by Marc Levy and Mark Scolforo identified her position in its headline ("Court suspends Pennsylvania attorney general's law license"), named her in its opening sentence, and tagged her as a "first-term Democrat" in its second.

As will be seen after the jump, today's AP report on how Kane's office is trying to cope with not having someone allowed to practice law at the helm reverted to predictable form: running an incredibly vague and almost incoherent headline, saving Kane's name for Paragraph 2, and holding the identification of her Democratic Party affiliation until Paragraph 9 (even then, referring only to a "fellow Democrat").

Sunday's New York Times story by Joseph Goldstein appearing on Page A1 above the fold in Monday's print edition contains absolutely appalling news.

Goldstein's report — originally headlined and appearing in print as "U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Afghan Allies' Abuse of Boys", and currently carried online as "U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies" — asserts that "American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records," in known instances of "sexual abuse of children," particularly young boys. In excerpts following the jump, we will see that Goldstein describes that stance as a "policy" several times (bolds are mine):