AP calls out White House officials for anonymized press conference.

From the AP: “The White House organized a conference call with two senior administration officials to preview an announcement by President Barack Obama about an important China trade issue but told reporters that no one could be quoted by name. The officials were U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and the deputy national security adviser for …

The notion that the Bible prohibits abortion is more recent than the invention of the Happy Meal.

In 1968, Christianity Today (Billy Graham’s magazine) pointed out that Leviticus 24:17 commands capital punishment for murder, but Exodus 21:22–24 lays out a specific scenario under which, if a fetus is killed, the offender must pay a fine to her husband. The author concluded that, according to the Bible, a fetus does not have a …

The AP demonstrates how to point out an untruth.

I have recently been lamenting the media’s habit of allowing subjects’ false statements to stand, without challenge. This morning I spotted a great example of the right way to handle this, in a story about Mitt Romney from the AP’s Kasie Hunt: “‘I will never apologize for America,’ Romney says often—suggesting that Obama has done …

Links for November 23rd

New York Times: Who’s on the Line? Increasingly, Caller ID Is DupedTelemarketers are faking Caller ID information with apparent impunity, so that people believe that the IRS or the FBI is calling. (Just like spam!) The FTC has just filed their first complaint against a company for doing that. The FCC wouldn't comment as to …

Links for October 6th

New York Times: Herman Cain is a Candidate Writing His Own Campaign RulesRunning for president? Nah. Herman Cain has decided he'd rather go on a book tour. Much like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, Cain appears to view running for the Republican nomination as a cheap method of getting national press. MSNBC: Secret panel can …

Links for September 27th

Bloomberg: Obama Lawyers Signal Likely Supreme Court Appeal on Health CareThe White House wants to end the federal appeals court rulings on the president's health care reform, and for the Supreme Court to take up the case. That's likely to bring a decision in June, in the middle of the presidential campaign. "President Barack Obama …

Links for August 27th

MSNBC: Santorum—GOP not ‘anti-science’Good for Jon Huntsman for acknowledging that the first step to getting the Republican Party out of the intellectual wilderness is to stop being anti-science. (Anti-science is anti-facts, and being anti-facts doesn't work for long.) Unsurprisingly, Rick Santorum says that his party isn't anti-science. He claims, by inference, that Huntsman asserted that …

Links for August 19th

CBS News: Like Every Administration, White House Defends Obama "Vacation"President Obama has taken 38 days of vacation so far in his presidency. At this point in Bush's presidency, he'd taken 102 days of vacation. Rick Perry’s Texas A&M TranscriptRepublican presidential candidate Rick Perry's academic record is on par with President Bush's—which is to say, very …