Paul krugman tells a whopper today in his column about media recounts in the 2000 election: “Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida’s ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore.” Um–no. Wrong. Bzzzzz. One of those groups was led by USA Today, and here’s what they found in a May 15, 2001 USA Today story headlined “Newspapers recount show Bush prevailed”: “George W. Bush would have won a hand count of Florida’s disputed ballots if the standard advocated by Al Gore had been used, the first full study of the ballots reveals. Bush would have won by 1,665 votes — more than triple his official 537-vote margin — if every dimple, hanging chad and mark on the ballots had been counted as votes.”

This will be the subject of about a billion blog entries today. Did Krugman really think he could get away with this?