A PHONY JOBS DEBATE: Robert Samuelson says that Kerry and Edwards are lying about unemployment, and that the press knows it and doesn’t care:

[N]o one considers it dishonorable to blame a president falsely for job loss (or to credit him falsely for job gains). The dishonesty is so routine that it’s respectable. The press abets the hoax because it must report what candidates say and because it favors campaign combat over substance.

Read the whole thing.