Correction: This post originally referred to Variety as the publication involved. It was Vanity Fair, and the text below has been corrected to reflect that.

At the Daily Beast on Tuesday, Vicky Ward, who profiled Jeffrey Epstein for Vanity Fair Magazine in early 2003, revealed that she and Graydon Carter, the publication's editor, were aware of and had specific details about the convicted ultrarich creep's sexual episodes with underage girls. They also apparently had proof that Epstein had forged denial documents from two of his victims. Epstein had recently become publicly visible as a result of his 2002 African travels with former President Bill Clinton.

At the last minute, Carter almost completely spiked the sexual elements of Ward's story, leaving only vague references to Victoria's Secret models, a party "filled ... with young Russian models" and to "beautiful women ... whisked off to Little St. James (in the Virgin Islands)." The published product focused almost entirely on the mystery of Epstein's career as a broker, including his admission to securities law violations, his subsequent business dealings, and his quirky but often lavish purchases and lifestyle.

The magazine GQ released its list of the “20 craziest politicians” in the U.S. on Tuesday and, not surprisingly, the liberal publication selected 17 Republicans for the list compared to only three Democrats. 

Among the more prominent Republicans included Senators and possible presidential candidates Rand Paul (Ky.) and Ted Cruz (Texas) as well as incoming Senator Joni Ernst (Iowa). The only three Democrats named to the list were Congressman Hank Johnson (Ga.), Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas), and Vice President Joe Biden.

Yesterday at 4:11 p.m. ET, Eugene Volokh at the Washington Post's Volokh Conspiracy blog sharply criticized Time.com's Eliza Berman for not being "quite fair" — i.e., being quite unfair, given the author's penchant for understatement — to Breitbart.com's John Nolte, the reporter who investigated the veracity of Lena Dunham's detailed claims about and descriptions of her alleged Oberlin College rapist.

Volokh's critique was based on language in Berman's original writeup which Time pulled at some point after Volokh's post without any notice that it had done so. Berman, as Volokh noted, "casually dismiss(ed) an investigation ... that actually succeeded in getting a publisher to correct a statement," and in the process betrayed fundamental tenets of journalism as it's supposed to be practiced.

When the now-retracted article by the Rolling Stone magazine was published on November 19 about a brutal gang rape of a first-year student at the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house at the University of Virginia, the major broadcast networks rushed to the story and devoted multiple segments to both the article and reaction on the school’s campus. In doing so, they failed (unlike other outlets) to point out its flaws that brought an apology from the liberal magazine on Friday afternoon after it came to realize that many of the key facts in the story were in serious doubt.

While it is indeed nice that the Associated Press did a fact check on President Obama's Thursday night immigration address — an item P.J. Gladnick at NewsBusters covered on Saturday — it would have been even nicer if the wire service better described as the Administration's Press had fact-checked Julie Pace's and Josh Lederman's awful Friday evening backgrounder on the speech.

The AP pair couldn't even get through their first three paragraphs without distorting beyond repair their presentation of allegedly "soaring deportations."