Randolph Mantooth’s Web site. (Courtesy of Dave at Garfield Ridge.)

So, FactCheck.org has this to say about the recent NARAL ad slandering John Roberts:

The ad is false.

Hard to get clearer than that. The FactCheck.org post about the NARAL ad is pretty scathing. It’s filled with phrases like “especially misleading” and “false implication.” I’d advise you to read the whole thing.

But the L.A. Times — which ran a story on the ad the other day that failed to quote any independent experts, portraying the ad’s veracity as a “he said, she said” type of issue — has no mention of the FactCheck.org analysis.

Interesting.

But, you say, maybe the L.A. Times is too lofty a news organization to outsource its fact-checking to an Internet site called FactCheck.org?

Excuse me while I heave with laughter. There. Okay, I’m done.

Because, you see, The Times has treated FactCheck.org like gospel — as long as it promotes a leftist position, of course. Examples? Yes, I have a few:

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A New York Times letter to the editor, from a radio talk-show host named Martha Zoller, says:

Cindy Sheehan gave a very different account of her visit with President Bush in June 2004.

Yes, she did. But the New York Times still has not breathed a word of it.

I wonder if there are people who get their news exclusively from the New York Times who are reading this letter thinking: “What is this Zoller woman talking about? I haven’t heard about that! Must be another one of those talk-radio myths . . .”

The L.A. Times reports:

A Los Angeles County judge has thrown out a $6.5-million award to a former gang member who sued his public defender for failing to convince a jury he didn’t assault two corrupt police officers.

When the verdict was rendered, I noted the outrage of a jury finding that the cops who shot and framed the guy were zero percent responsible for his incarceration. I then predicted:

[T]hat verdict will not stand. In fact, my guess is that the trial judge won’t wait for the appeal — she’ll substantially cut the award, and may vacate the judgment entirely.

Just call me Karnak. Though it really didn’t take a Karnak to see this coming. This was an outrageous and unsupportable verdict. Good on the judge for throwing it out.

The L.A. Times reports:

In another setback to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “year of reform” agenda, an appeals court on Tuesday blocked his redistricting initiative from the November special election, ruling that supporters of the measure violated state election law in the way they put it on the ballot.

The vote was 2-1 — something I predicted here the other day after reading a Dan Weintraub post on the oral argument:

Based on [Weintraub’s] post, it sounds like the decision will issue on Tuesday and is likely to be 2-1 — though which way it will come out is anyone’s guess.

I was tempted to call this post “Patterico = Karnak (Part 2)” but the credit really goes to Weintraub, whose post made it clear that Presiding Justice Arthur Scotland intended to vote for initiative proponents, and Justice Coleman Blease would vote against them. That’s exactly what happened. Unfortunately, the swing vote swung the other way.

We’ll see what the California Supreme Court does . . .

I have finally heard from the L.A. Times Readers’ Representative on an error by David Savage that I pointed out to them on May 20. If I can distill the response to its essence, it was: we weren’t wrong, and even if we had been, so what?

The details are in the extended entry. It’s all ancient history about Priscilla Owen, and it involves an extended legal discussion. So if that’s not your bag, nobody will blame you if you move on to the next post.

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