LAYERS OF EDITORS AND FACT-CHECKERS FAIL AGAIN: Fake story meant to ensnare bloggers catches NYT instead.

More from Gawker. Here’s the prankster’s account.

The basic idea was this: A bunch of law bloggers would try to punk the political bloggers, whose reputation is to grab any old rumor and run with it. Fact checking hasn’t always been the strong suit of this community.

But the political bloggers, to their collective credit, didn’t bite, despite wide dissemination of the story. Not on the right or the left. Instead it was the vaunted New York Times that ran with the story without bothering to check its facts. The Times, of course, had no sense of humor about it when the angry phone call came to me a couple of hours later.

Heh. Well, anybody can be fooled, but the Big Media folks sure pull a lot of attitude.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT under socialism.

UPDATE: A reader emails that the quoted segment is satire. Nothing to that effect at EconLog, though.

TRYING TO UNTANGLE THE SPIN on jobs and unemployment.

ROBERT REICH IS NOT HAPPY: The Economy Is Still Wildly Out Of Whack, And Experts Like Larry Summers And Alan Greenspan Have No Clue.

MARK STEYN: The Democrats’ Fake Hate Crime. “I disagree with John Lewis (Democrat, Georgia) politically but I have always respected him as a genuine civil rights warrior. And I feel slightly queasy at the thought that he would dishonor both the movement and his own part in it for the cheapest of partisan points – in the same way I would be disgusted by a Holocaust survivor painting a swastika on his own door and blaming it on his next-door neighbor over a boundary dispute. But that’s what the Democratic Party has been reduced to – faking hate crimes as pathetically as any lonely, mentally ill college student.”

(Via Obama voter Ann Althouse, who comments: “By the way, I called bullshit on the story as soon as it was reported.” Video of her doing so is below, more at the link.)

Also: Don’t Leave It To Cleaver.

REP. PHIL HARE: What’s he doing in Congress?

CHANGE: Office Vacancy Rate Hits 16-Year High.

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE ON Lethal Food.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: A Postmodern Presidency.

RUBIN AND GREENSPAN FACE FINANCIAL CRISIS INQUIRY: “Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary who played a key role in financial deregulation during Bill Clinton’s presidency and who has kept a low profile since stepping down as a special adviser to Citigroup in January 2009, is to be questioned by the US financial crisis inquiry commission this week. The committee, created by Congress and given sweeping powers in May 2009, is also to question Chuck Prince, the former chief executive of Citi, as well as Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.”