Lauren Carroll cannot contain herself

PolitiFact/PunditFact writer Lauren Carroll couldn't resist pushing back against criticism she received on her story looking at the containment of ISIS.

Carroll suggested on Twitter that Breitbart.com's John Nolte had not read her fact check. The evidence?

1) I am the only byline on the story 2) I fact-checked Ben Rhodes, not Obama. @NolteNC— Lauren Carroll (@LaurenFCarroll) November 16, 2015

The fact is that PunditFact gave Carroll's story more than one presentation.

In one of the presentations, a version of Carroll's story was combined with another story from a Sunday morning news show. That second version of the story has Linda Qiu listed on the byline. So Carroll's claim she's the only one on the byline rates a "Half True" on the Hack-O-Meter. Combined with her whinge about fact-checking Obama proxy (deputy national security advisor) Ben Rhodes instead of President Obama, Carroll provides an astonishingly thin defense of her work.

The critiques from Breitbart.com and the Washington Examiner both made the point that Obama was answering a question about ISIS' strength, not the range of its geographical control. Carroll completely accepted Rhodes' spin and ignored the point of the question Obama was asked.

Where's Carroll's explanation of her central error? It's certainly not in her clumsy jabs at John Nolte.