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  1. Jul 2015
    1. "It is now more clear than ever that the New York Times report claiming there is a criminal inquiry sought in Hillary Clinton's use of email is false," he said. "It has now been discredited both by the Justice Department and the Ranking Member of the House Oversight Committee. This incident shows the danger of relying on reckless, inaccurate leaks from partisan sources."

      oh snap. Quality of NYT has been falling for awhile

  2. May 2015
  3. Feb 2015
    1. The New York State attorney general’s office accused four major retailers on Monday of selling fraudulent and potentially dangerous herbal supplements and demanded that they remove the products from their shelves.

      As early as the opening, we can see issues with the handling of the subject matter that give ample room to herbal supplement apologists.

      The apologist could start with the semantic objection, "What is an herbal supplement that does not contain the ingredients on the label -- it is just a filler pill." He will go on to establish that this constitutes supplement fraud for sure. But the author seeks to smuggle the idea of danger into the idea of herbal medicine and would not be able to do that if the products were more carefully engineered. In other words, these fraudulent herbal supplements only present dangers because they're fraudulent; if they contained what they were supposed to they would be safe.

      The apologist would be deeply mistaken.

      Sadly, even though this is just one little paragraph, the problems do not stop there. The 4 major retailers targeted by the investigation are being set-up (through the use of that "major" label) as giants in the industry. While this may be true by the numbers, it's also a very easy point for an apologist to knock down. One can almost imagine the smaller scale "herbal remedy" operation -- "Is it really any surprise big corporations fail to provide a quality herbal product? They care about you. They only care about their bottom line."

      Suffice it to say, the handling oo the reporting, as well as the circumstances of the investigation look like they're going to leave much to be desired. If thee early presentation fails persist throughout the article, it would have the effect of turning this should-be exposé into little more than a flash the pan.

      We'll see this is exactly what happens.