Another example in today’s WaPo of a reporter regurgitating nonsense served up by an offical “community leader.” In a story on the split among evangelicals over the McCain-Kennedy amnesty, the writer refers to one Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, “which serves 10,700 Hispanic evangelical churches with 15 million members.” It takes only the most elementary familiarity with arithmetic to understand that this number is impossible. Like the fairy tale of 6 million Muslims in the U.S., the false assertion that there are 15 million evangelicals among America’s 42 million Hispanics is a dishonest effort at boosting a lobbying group’s political heft. In fact, a credible Pew survey a few years ago found that about 20 percent of Hispanics are Protestant (very broadly defined), with 14 percent evangelical or born-again, meaning about 6 million Hispanic evangelicals. Now, that’s plenty for someone claiming to be their spokesman to get a hearing, but Rodriguez’s credibility as something other than a Jesse Jackson-wannabe is not enhanced by making such transparently absurd claims. Evidence that this outfit actually realizes the falsehood of its claims can be seen in the fact that the number of people it claims to speak for has been steadily declining; in this story last week, Rodriguez claimed 18 million followers, in the Post 15 million, and today at the group’s web site, “nearly 15 million.” At that rate, in a few more months they may start telling the truth.