Kevin Williamson

At AP, Crutsinger's Too-Convenient Mislabeling Hides Steep Wholesale Sales Decline
By Tom Blumer | July 11, 2015 | 3:11 AM EDT

Martin Crutsinger has been a business and economics writer at the Associated Press for over three decades. Certain people in high places apparently hold him in high regard. In early 2014, on his 30th anniversary with the wire service, he is said to have received congratulatory letters from soon-to-be Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, soon-to-be-former chair Ben Bernanke and Obama administration Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, which he clearly enjoyed as those in attendance munched on a very delicious-looking cake.

We can't know whether the congrats from those heavy hitters merely marked a career milestone, or if they included an element of "Thanks for toeing the line all these years." What I do know is that the dispatch Crutsinger wrote Friday morning on the government's gruesome May wholesale trade report contains errors and instances of ignorance which really do take the cake.

Juan Williams: There Are 'Elements of Racism' in Today's Constitution
By Tom Blumer | February 23, 2015 | 4:10 PM EST

In a discussion with plenty of other objectionable elements on Sean Hannity's Fox News show Friday, Juan Williams asserted that "There's no question that if you look at our Constitution, there are elements of racism right in it." Note his use of the present tense.

The version of this country's founding document Williams was referencing must be 147 or more years old, because the only element of the original Constitution which was arguably racist — the inclusion of non-free persons as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of allocating House seats in Article I — went away when the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868. Even that argument ignores the existence of white slaves at the time of its adoption.

NRO's Williamson: Conference Question to IRS's Lerner Was Planted
By Tom Blumer | May 15, 2013 | 7:30 AM EDT

When I first heard of limp faux apology by the IRS's Lois Lerner on Friday for her tax-exempt division's harassment of Tea Party and conservative organizations, I thought she had done so on a conference call.

Well, she did have a conference call with reporters later that day -- the one where she said “I’m not good at math” -- but her original apology occurred at a conference of the Exempt Organizations Committee of the Tax Section of the American Bar Association in Washington (Lerner's relevant involvement is shown here). Why would such a mea culpa occur out of the blue at such a venue? The answer, per Kevin Williamson at National Review's The Corner blog, is that it wasn't out of the blue at all (bolds are mine throughout this post):

NRO's Media Blog Notes 'Textbook Case in Media Bias' in WaPo Virginia Budget Story
By Ken Shepherd | March 10, 2010 | 4:18 PM EST

The sour economy has forced many Americans to tighten belts, and everyday Americans expect the same from their government. But that's practically unconscionable to the Washington Post as witnessed by its March 10 article, "Va.budget plan would shrink general spending to 2006 levels."*

Here's how Post staffers Rosalind Helderman and Fredrick Kunkle launched into their lament of the pending budget cutbacks:

RICHMOND -- Virginia will do less for its residents, and expect local governments and private charities to do more, under a new state budget likely to have an impact for years to come. 

With Virginia facing what lawmakers say is the grimmest financial picture in memory, the House of Delegates and Senate adopted budgets last week that would shrink general spending to about $15 billion, or no more than was spent four years ago. In other words, Virginia would spend about the same amount on services as it did when there were 100,000 fewer residents and many fewer were in economic distress. 

What followed was a typical laundry list of scenarios the writers insisted "could" happen, including "[c]riminal defendants who cannot afford an attorney appear[ing] in court without one." Of course, seeing as the Constitution requires that indigent defendants be provided a public defender, it's quite odd for the Post to conclude any judge "could" let a trial proceed with a defendant unrepresented for lack of counsel. At any rate, National Review's Kevin Williamson has an excellent takedown of the article and its numerous liberal assumptions, which I've excerpted below (emphases mine):