This story should get a big "duh-uh-uh" as the response. Two ivory tower academics want to teach us about variations of the straw man, and reveal unto us that it is a technique being used in the current political scene. Duh-uh-uh! Then they actually tell us they don't think "the deceptions are premeditated." Are you fricking kidding? Somewhere right now Karl Rove is high-fiving one of his minions saying, "See, I told you they would never pin it on us!" News flash: A lot of us (I don't know the percentage) have been watching this kind of manipulation of public opinion for seven years, recognizing the logical/psychological games being played, and wondering why the rest of you seem to have blinders on. What you need to do is ... More »

After going to their website and reviewing the authors' other articles, it is easy to see that they are sly lawyers, adept at pushing their views. This article isn't objectively about bias, so much as an objection about whose bias we focus on. They complain of how Dr. Gray was described as having "long railed," but of course, then they characterize the scientific community and Al Gore as being "hysterical." The fact is, Dr. Gray is a tiny minority of the scientific community. If his due time on the national stage were given as phone minutes, he would get about 10 minutes on a 1,000-minute plan--and he has already used up all his minutes. We have watched him get plenty of air time, and he rarely brings any facts to the table. ... More »

The story is I think an attempt to report fairly on a poll result that is certainly germane, since the Administration constantly characterizes the opposing view in a form of straw man argument. (Just as they have tried to make "cut and run" synonymous with "Democrat," when most Democrats do not favor precipitous withdrawal, and do favor a continuing U.S. military presence in the region.) However, there is a serious flaw in the story. Under the subhead "Bottom Line," we see this said about the 36 percent: "These individuals, most of whom identify themselves as Republicans . . " But, nowhere else in this story are we given statistics to show party affiliations. What percentage of the 36 percent are Republicans? What percentage of ... More »

This is an example of taking a viewpoint and then going out to see where you can get things that seem to support it, rather than collecting all the facts, pro and con. I know plenty of American-born landscapers who are happy with their jobs. They are lucky to be in areas where there is not yet a Mexican invastion. Just because in certain areas you see nothing but Mexicans as landscapers is not proof that Americans won't do such jobs. It is merely that Americans will not do them if they can choose any better way to feed the family. The Mexicans are facing the same choice, but it is between starving in Mexico or coming here and accepting whatever they wage can get as landscapers, where they do not have to show documents. To bring ... More »

I really appreciate this valuable story. You can see where AP had to do a lot of work to pull it together. It is a shame that it took all this time to recognize the pattern here, of our U.S. government releasing detainees by subterfuge (i.e., knowing full well that they will not be "further detained" in the destination country). I have one criticism, though. The numbers are hard to follow. Near the top is says roughy 360 have been released to 26 countries. Then it says the AP has tracked 245 of them, in 17 countries. Then, that 205 were either freed without charges of cleared of charges. THEN it says, "Overall, about 165 Guantanamo detainees have been transferred from Guantanamo for "continued detention," while about 200 were ... More »

This is a story with a headline about Lieberman, but really, it's about the campaign of the contender, Ned Lamont. The writer appears to have merely attended the campaign fund-raiser, fleshed out the story with some other knowledge he had--and never contacted Joe Lieberman to get comment. There is even a paragraph discussing Lieberman's options to leave the Democratic party, with no attribution other than Lieberman's "political advisors." The article calls Lieberman's campaign conventional and dumb." Now, I am a Connecticut Democrat and have been dissatisfied with Lieberman's performance for his entire career as a Senator. I happen to agree with practically everything in the article. But I cannot call this balanced reporting.