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):

The Washington Post's Fact Checker blog, after years of usually sincerely prepared though not always accurate posts, appears to have descended to the level of hackery typically found at Politifact.

One recent example demonstrating that the effort has turned into a weapon dishonestly employed against Republicans and conservatives comes from Michelle Ye Hee Lee, who on Friday called 2016 Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina's true story about once being a secretary and eventually becoming a Fortune 20 CEO "bogus," giving it "three Pinocchios." That means, according the paper's description, that Fiorina's claim is either a "Significant factual error and/or" that it contains and/or "obvious contradictions." What rubbish.

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.

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):