Where the Washington Post’s Joby Warrick and R. Jeffrey Smith are not flat out wrong in their May 19 article “U.S.-Russian Team Deems Missile Shield in Europe Ineffective”, they are flat out lazy. First the facts.

The EastWest Institute recently released a report titled “Iran’s Nuclear and Missile Potential: A Joint Assessment by U.S. and Russian Technical Experts.” The report concludes that a ballistic missile threat from Iran is not imminent, and that planned US missile defense would not be effective and threaten US-Russian cooperation.

Warrick and Smith wrote that “[m]oreover, if Iran were to build a nuclear-capable missile that … Continue Reading

LA Times reporter Tom Hamburger had a very good article in May 19th’s paper chronicling the business community’s largely behind-the scenes lobbying effort against the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act.”

To Hamburger’s credit, he provides a lot of details about the business community’s lobbying effort that were not reported contemporaneously by the national media, however, Hamburger leaves unchallenged a questionable claim from an unnamed union advisor that unions have been “outspent” by business groups this year, and he gives the impression that unions have been largely sitting on their hands during this year’s debate:

… once [Obama] was elected, labor leaders

… Continue Reading

Under the headline Economy Limiting Services of Local Police, The USA Today’s Kevin Johnson reported May 18th:

The recession is altering local law enforcement in the U.S. by forcing some agencies to close precincts, merge with other departments or even shut down.

…

“For the first time, because of the economy, police departments … may have to change how they do business,” says Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement think tank.

But Johnson fails to report that it is the federal government that first changed how police departments “do business” and the feds did it long … Continue Reading

The May 8 New York Times Magazine ran a piece by Nicholas Schmidle titled “Wanted: A New Home for My Country”, repeating debunked mythology about atoll nations being submerged by rising sea levels as a result of Man-made global warming.

Scmidle writes: “Even a slight rise in global sea levels, which many scientists predict will occur by the end of this century, could submerge most of the Maldives.”

However, there is no evidence of sea level rise around the Maldives, at all. This claim was popularized in “An Inconvenient Truth”, prompting the only court to examine its merits (Dimmock v. Secretary … Continue Reading

With the Antarctic now demonstrably cooling and gaining ice mass, media outlets have recently shifted to touting ice-shelf break-off in the northernmost Antarctic Peninsula as evidence of “global warming”. Today’s example comes from AP’s David Rising whose Antarctic Ice Shelf Falling Apart article carries a pictorial “Frightening Forecast for Earth”. The piece begins:

BERLIN (April 29) — Massive ice chunks are crumbling away from a shelf in the western Antarctic Peninsula, researchers said Wednesday, warning that 1,300 square miles of ice — an area larger than Rhode Island — was in danger of breaking off in coming weeks.

The Wilkins Ice

… Continue Reading

In an otherwise fine article on how the Obama administration’s stimulus package has made the federal government the largest source of revenue for state and local governments, the USA Today’s Dennis Cauchon writes:

Federal stimulus money aimed at reviving the economy and a sharp drop in tax collections have altered, at least temporarily, the traditional balance of how states, cities, counties and schools pay for their operations.

But there is nothing temporary about the growth of state dependence on federal revenues. Since the beginning of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the percentage of state revenues from the federal government has … Continue Reading

Reporting about President Obama’s upcoming meeting with Mayor Bloomberg, former Speaker Gingrich, and Rev. Al Sharpton, the New York Times’ Jeff Zeleny misreports the administration’s new position about the future of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program:

The private meeting comes on the same day that Mr. Obama will announce his intention to extend the school voucher program in the District of Columbia. The program provides scholarships to about 1,700 poor students so they can attend private schools, but it was scheduled to end this year, creating uncertainty for the students already enrolled.

While Mr. Obama remains opposed to voucher programs,

… Continue Reading

In a May 6th LA Times article entitled “Obama budget puts security first at the border”, President Obama perpetuates the myth that the primary source of Mexican gangs’ guns is the United States by saying “This war is being waged with guns purchased not here, but in the United States.” The LA Times themselves fed into the misinformation with their April 18th editorial, “Stemming the flow of guns to Mexico”, in which they repeat the untruth that “about 90% of the…military-style assault weapons captured from (Mexican drug) traffickers” came from the US.

But that 90% number is just … Continue Reading

For the second-straight year the media are trumpeting a “record-warm” March. This year the April 16th USA Today touts its version with the headline “Earth’s temperature 8th-warmest on record so far in 2009” – on the basis of just three months’ data. Doyle Rice’s accompanying article is textbook hype.

We are in a slow recovery since the little ice age with 60 year cyclical ups and downs. We peaked around 1940 and 2000 and reached bottoms near 1910 and 1970. We have been cooling for the last 7 plus years. Claims of warming are increasingly tenuous.

When turning to surface station … Continue Reading

In the May 3rd New York Times, Ken Belson writes about how colleges and universities are cutting teams and athletic budgets as a result of the economic down turn. He mentions that this is a big change from recent trends, which have seen “steady growth” in the number of teams and student athletes, and cites “Title IX, which provided equal opportunity in men’s and women’s sports,” as part of the reason.

While he goes on to acknowledge that it’s really the number of women’s teams that has increased dramatically, when he discusses sports that have disappeared on campus, … Continue Reading

Jordan’s King Abdullah appeared on the April 26th edition Meet the Press, host David Gregory invited Jordan’s King Abdullah to pass judgment on our country’s detainee policies, first asking: “Do you think the United States lost its moral bearings?” and then “Do you think the United States engaged in torture?”

King Abdullah may be one of the more humane leaders in the Middle East, but his government is no moral arbiter on the proper treatment of detainees. Gregory did very little to challenge Abdulluh on this point, referencing just one Human Rights Watch report which made it seem like Jordan … Continue Reading

This week, the U.S. Department of Education released the test scores of American students on the long-term National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)—an exam that’s been administered to kids since the 1970s. The test found that American students in the earlier grades have made modest progress in reading and math over time. The test scores also reveal that the achievement gap between minority and white children is continuing to (slowly) narrow over time. Unfortunately, the test scores of 17-year-olds are essentially the same as in 1971.

The New York Times was quick to interpret these mixed-results as … Continue Reading