One of the perils of reading things online is that there can be some confusion over the date of the piece being read. I erred yesterday when I implied that Paul Krugman’s piece in which he displays a stunning ignorance of the history of liberalism was dated January 4th, when in fact it was his New Year’s Day column. A reader comments:
That Krugman column was actually from New Years’ Day. But he said a whopper yesterday, too:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/opinion/05krugman.html
“The biggest problem facing the Obama plan, however, is likely to be the demand of many politicians for proof that the benefits of the proposed public spending justify its costs — a burden of proof never imposed on proposals for tax cuts.”
So, in Krugman’s view, tax cuts must meet the same “burden of proof” as spending. It doesn’t occur to him that when the government asks for your money in taxes, they ought to justify that request by explaining what they’re going to do with that money.
If the liberal mindset was ever captured more perfectly…
Meanwhile, the Washington Post demonstrates that even a legion of editors and fact-checkers can’t guarantee that they will find errors. In his article outing John Howard as the man keeping Barack Obama out of the Blair House (and thereby ruining my commute), Al Kamen says:
Howard and his entourage will be bunking at Blair House on Jan. 12, the night before he, former British prime minister Tony Blair and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe are to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bush, said Sally McDonough, a spokeswoman for first lady Laura Bush. The three current and former heads of state are longtime political allies of the president’s, and Blair and Howard were key partners in the Iraq war.
But neither Howard nor Blair were Heads of State. They were both heads of government, with the office of Head of State in both Britain and Australia occupied by Her Majesty the Queen.