Government Agencies

Well, I guess it's getting serious now in the melodrama known as the Minnesota state government shutdown. If the Gopher State shutdown goes on much longer, hundreds of bars and restaurants will lose their ability to serve alcohol because they can't renew their liquor licenses. Worse, as reported by Eric Roper at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, MillerCoors, whose "brand license" somehow expired…

If we are believe two late Friday afternoon dispatches from the Associated Press following the government's awful Employment Situation report earlier in the day, you would think that even a cadre of cops with the talent of Sherlock Holmes couldn't solve the mystery of the underperforming job market. Economics Writers Christopher Rugaber and Paul Wiseman went with themes of "baffled economists…

We really shouldn’t get angry with the media for being obstinately silent and/or willfully ignorant when it comes to - amongst many, MANY other things - Democrats and Leftists breaking the law. It’s like getting upset with a six-month old for behaving badly in public.  It’s what we get - we should not be vexed when we get it.

When the Associated Press's Paul Wiseman and Martin Crutsinger team up for a report on the economy, there's no limit to the comic potential. Today, in covering what the folks at Zero Hedge described as "Ben Bernanke's 'I Have No Idea Why The Economy Will Get Better But It Will' Speech" (transcript is at link), the AP pair may have set a new world record for most unused words one would expect…

The Department of Energy (DOE) continues to tout the importance of safety at nuclear facilities, while simultaneously ignoring legitimate safety concerns in the name of saving time and money. Last week, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board delivered a scathing report on the ‘safety culture’, or lack thereof, being perpetuated by the DOE. Within that report, which focused on how the…

In the run-up to the passage of Obamacare in March 2010, Nancy Pelosi infamously told a friendly audience: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." Fifteen months later, we still haven't learned everything about a bill which no honest congressperson or senator can claim to have read and fully understood. Today's "discovery" is that some couples in their early 60s…

In a late Monday morning report, the Associated Press's Erica Werner wondered why "the White House has yet to take any new steps on gun violence" he supposedly promised in the wake of the January shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Either Werner or the headline writers at AP are getting extraordinarily impatient, as seen in the headline which follows the jump:

Thursday morning, initial weekly unemployment claims as reported by Uncle Sam's Department of Labor came in at a seasonally adjusted 414,000. It was 16,000 lower than the previous week's upwardly revised (as usual) number, but certainly no indicator in and of itself of meaningful improvement. The housing industry data really wasn't any better. True, the seasonally adjusted figures from the…

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) conducted hearings on Wednesday to investigate a highly controversial ATF operation that led to the death of a U.S. border agent, but neither NBC nor ABC covered the story on their nightly newscasts. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman lambasted a Justice Department official who claimed to be cooperating with the investigation but offered…

To say that the statistics concerning new business formation during the past few years haven't been very good would be a major understatement. USA Today's Scott Patterson deserves some credit for even looking at the topic. It is tailor-made for neglect by the rest of the establishment press. When government policies lean towards lower taxation and regulation, policies left-leaning journalists…

Statism never sleeps. The Obama administration has apparently identified a significant constituency it hasn't been able to buy off, and is attempting to do something about it. Of course, the ever-gullible Darlene Superville at the Associated Press is swallowing the White House line completely, as seen in these excerpted paragraphs: Obama to create White House Rural Council  …

Dennis Cauchon at USA Today has been one of a very few establishment press reporters willing to expose federal workers' disproportionate pay and benefits (previous examples here and here) as well as Uncle Sam's precariously dangerous financial situation. Cauchon has two USAT items today on the latter topic (HT to NB commenter Gary Hall): "U.S. funding for future promises lags by trillions,"…

The educated guess here is that Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler is currently not the most popular person in the White House. On Saturday, in a relatively rare rebuke originating from what G. Gordon Liddy has mockingly derided as "Washington's quaint little alternative newspaper" (daily circulation 741,000 in March 2005, 551,000 in March 2011), Kessler ripped into the President's…

On Friday, Cass Sunstein, the White House's 56 year-old Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (pictured at right), attempted to disavow a 42-page paper he wrote called "Lives, Life-Years, and Willingness to Pay," which recommended that the government reduce resources directed at benefitting the elderly in favor of increasing what goes to young people, because young…