An excellent Mark Hemingway Weekly Standard piece explored the intellectual dishonesty of supposedly neutral "fact-checking," which often turns into a way for reporters to insert their opinions into a contentious political debate. Recently, I noted hypocrisy in President Obama's State of the Union speech: "It is ironic that Obama is calling for a 90-day 'simple up or down' vote on judicial nominees when he is the only sitting president in American history who has voted to filibuster a judicial nomination." Reuters decided to fact-check this. Of course, a fact check that is a fact-check would be a single word long: "true." Obama is the only sitting president in American history who has voted to filibuster a judicial nomination. Even aside from a discussion of the Fortas nomination controversy that never mentions the severe ethical issues that caused him to resign from the Court entirely (instead it was the opposition of "Republicans as well as Southern Democrats"), the article is a nice demonstration of how much in the tank the media will be for Obama this year. Reuters went on at length how my analysis was "disingenuous"; after all, many presidents were never senators, so never had the opportunity to vote against cloture on a judicial nomination. Which misses the point. Obama isn't any less hypocritical if JFK or Warren Harding had also filibustered judicial nominations. But anything to discredit criticism of Obama.
Reuters fact check
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Rafael Mangual Project Manager, Legal Policy rmangual@manhattan-institute.org |
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Communications Manhattan Institute communications@manhattan-institute.org |