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Folks who get their news from a wide variety of sources likely know by now that there is enough concern about the electability of Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders that a prominent Democratic Party donor has "emailed dozens of fans of Vice President Joe Biden on Friday, urging them to remain prepared to donate if Biden jumps into the (presidential) race." But two outlets which have become de…

Washingtonian magazine hyped how "the Catholic Church is selling Northeast DC to developers" in a story in its February 2016 issue. Jeffrey Anderson played up how "Church organizations have been profiting by developing or selling their properties" in the area near the Catholic University of America over the past several years. However, Anderson failed to give any background regarding the Church…

Daily Kos writer Mark E Andersen makes political correctness sound healthy and utterly bland -- the ideological equivalent of plain oatmeal. “Political correctness is nothing evil,” declared Andersen in a Sunday post. “It is not a liberal plot…It is about being a decent human being—period.” Andersen hinted that some non-decent, anti-PC human beings (i.e., conservatives) are concealing racist and…

Five items found at the Politico filed late Monday or early Tuesday reported that supporters of Bernie Sanders at the Iowa caucuses, while watching a live feed of Hillary Clinton's speech late Monday evening, began chanting "She's a liar!" The chants grew until they "took over the room," and didn't stop until Sanders campaign officials cut off the live feed being shown. This is barely news in…

John Llloyd spotlighted how Ted Cruz has picked a fight with the media in a Thursday item for Reuters: "Most Republican contenders take a swing at the media, but Cruz swings more than others." Lloyd pointed out how after his victory in Iowa, Cruz "did not forget to say that it was the American people, not the media, who had chosen him. A supporter emphasized the point by waving a placard in front…

On Wednesday, Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press was tasked with covering ADP's morning report on January private-sector payrolls. At 8:15 a.m., the payroll and benefits giant estimated that the economy added 205,000 seasonally adjusted private-sector jobs last month. Rugaber also attended the 8:30 a.m. conference call which followed the report's release. It's clear that he was on it…

One of the economy's more important bellwethers has been on a steep year-long decline which shows no signs of abating this year. It's barely news, and much of the sparse reporting seen has been incomplete and sloppy. Truckinginfo.com reported today that "January was a tough month for truck manufacturers as Class 8 truck orders were down 35% compared to the previous month, according to a…

A great deal was made of Facebook's announcement last week that it would ban private gun sales on both its flagship website and Instagram. Readers who only followed establishment press accounts can be forgiven if they came away from most reports thinking that the firm has some kind of algorithm or recognition system for enforcing the ban. That's not so.

In the November 2000 presidential election, the Big 3 TV networks prematurely declared Democrat Al Gore the winner before the polls in those portions of the Sunshine State in the Central Time Zone had even closed. According to one post-election study, the networks' arguably politically motivated calls cost Republican George W. Bush 10,000 votes, led to the most bitter post-election battle over…

A Sunday morning report by Associated Press political writer John O'Connor acts as if the the sordid history of fiscal irresponsibility in the State of Illinois is a new development brought on by a stubborn Republican governor in just the past seven months. What hogwash. The state has had a large backlog of delinquent unpaid bills for a decade, if not longer. Five years ago, a Democratic…

In trying to explain the current situation in Venezuela, the Washington Post's Matt O'Brien, in a post at the paper's Wonkblog, also inadvertently identified two reasons why authoritarian socialist tyrants like Huge Chavez and Nicolas Maduro are able to achieve and retain power. The formula is simple: When you first gain power, garner international and media goodwill by giving stuff away, like…

Those in the press who have insisted that the "Ferguson effect" is an urban legend will have a hard time explaining why the two cities with the most potential to be affected by this supposedly mythical phenomenon now have murder rates among the top 20 in the entire world. St. Louis, Missouri, next door to Ferguson, where a leftist-"inspired" campaign of "protests," civil disorder and rioting…

Observers can be excused for thinking that the politicial establishment is preparing the battlespace to convince us plebes that progress and economic growth are overrated. (That's sort of odd for people who call themselves "progressives," but making sense is not their strong suit.) How interesting, for example, that Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon's book, The Rise and Fall of…

As has been its habit during the Obama administration when the economy turns in a poor performance, the press's coverage of yesterday's report on U.S. economic growth focused on how much better next quarter's news will supposedly be. Especially in this instance, the beat reporters and pundits should have looked at whether or not yesterday's initial result will hold up, or whether it's likely to…