I Need A Facts 'Cuz I'm Goin' Down

You tell lies thinking I can't see, You can't cry 'cuz you're laughing at me
I'm down (I'm really down)

-The Beatles

It's been more than a decade since Bill Clinton put a face on the concept of obfuscation when he uttered the now infamous words "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Thankfully, PolitiFact has resurrected the is defense in their ongoing protection of ObamaCare.

Image from PolitiFact.com

PolitiFact put their Pulitzer-winning skills to the test while grappling with the difficult question of Nancy Pelosi's confusing, ambiguous statement. Is the ACA bringing the cost of health care down? Heroically, PolitiFact pores through the numbers and sorts out the truth:

It depends partly on what you mean by "down."

Ah, yes, that most complicated and mysterious of all adverbs; "down." What does it mean?

Apparently to the Fact Mongers at PolitiFact, it means up, but not as up as before. Or something:

Pelosi said "the Affordable Care Act is bringing the cost of health care in our country down." But it’s the rate of growth that’s dropped, not the actual cost of care — which is still rising.

Something going up is generally considered to be the exact opposite of something going down.

This Half True rating is pure editorial spin. Pelosi is flatly wrong. PolitiFact acknowledges that costs are rising. And even if we accept at face value their argument that costs are rising slower than they were before, there's hardly an objective way to determine the ACA's influence on that.

When your fact check stumbles over what the definition of the word "down" is, you have to wonder if you're in the right line of work.


Bryan adds:

A "Half True" is almost defensible if Pelosi truly meant to refer to health care costs rising more slowly than they would have in the absence of the ACA.

The context of her statement, however, makes that interpretation implausible (bold emphasis added):

"Many of the initiatives that he passed are what are coming to bear now, including the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act is bringing the cost of health care in our country down in both the public and private sector.

"And that is what is largely responsible for the deficit coming down."

Slowing the growth of health care spending cannot bear responsibility for "the deficit coming down." PolitiFact's evaluation of Pelosi's statement involves giving her the benefit of the doubt twice:  When she says health care costs are going down she means growing more slowly, and when she says the deficit is coming down she means it's growing more slowly.

The deficit is coming down in 2013, not growing more slowly.  The CBO released statements to that effect in February and May of this year.  It therefore makes no sense to think Pelosi was saying the deficit is growing more slowly.

It's another Olympian flub by PolitiFact. Rachel Maddow's going to explode over this incompetence.  Any day now...

The Weekly Standard: "PolitiFact Mucks Up the Contraception Debate"

This year has sped by at a breathtaking pace so far, and we've neglected to review some worthy stories about PolitiFact simply because we placed a higher priority on some stories than others.

But it's not too late.

In February, The Weekly Standard's Mark Hemingway weighed in with yet another damning assessment of PolitiFact's talent for fact checking:

Before I explain why PolitiFact is once again being deliberately misleading, grossly incompetent, or some hellbroth of these distinguishing characteristics, you'll have bear with me. Part of the reason PolitiFact gets away with being so shoddy is that it counts on its readers believing that it can be trusted to explain any necessary context to justify its status as judge, jury, and factual executioner.

Obviously the right thing to do now is click the link and read the whole thing for yourself.

For those who don't have the time, I'll sum up:

Hemingway's latest example of PolitiFactian perfidy concerns its use of a Guttmacher Institute publication to support an Obama administration claim that 98 percent of sexually active women use birth control.

The Obama administration was trying to justify its insurance mandate requiring birth control as a basic coverage requiring no copay.

Hemingway noted the Guttmacher Institute's lack of neutrality, a number of the arguments marshaled against its findings and PolitiFact's selective use of the evidence.

At the end of the day, a study drawn from a group of women aged 15-44 does not justify extrapolating the data to the set of all women of any age.  PolitiFact went soft again on an administration claim.

The trouble with the disappearance of the original "Julia" fact check

Earlier this week, PolitiFact published a fact check of the Medicare portion of the Obama campaign's "Life of Julia" Web ad.

Hours later, PolitiFact scrubbed the fact check from its website.   A message appeared on PolitiFact's Facebook page saying that the article was "unpublished" so that PolitiFact could address reader criticisms.

PolitiFact took a big step backward this week with its transparency.  In past instances PolitiFact archived the flawed version of a story.  That was a good policy.

The new approach is puzzling.  It isn't hard at all to find guidelines for journalistic ethics strongly discouraging the removal of a whole online story.

What happened? 

Did PolitiFact institute a new policy?  Did a person handling Web content act without approval from up above?  The former appears more likely given the Facebook announcement.

PolitiFact's actions did mitigate some of the ethical black clouds.  The story was not permanently deleted.  The new version carries a "CORRECTION" notice in keeping with PolitiFact's statement of standards and it explains the differences between the old version of the story and the new version (just trust 'em!).

However, the new policy is not likely to assist PolitiFact in building an image of reliability.

As for the "Julia" fact check itself, a review will appear before long at Sublime Bloviations.

PolitiFact unpublishes "Julia" fact check (Updated)

Whoa, Nelly.

PolitiFact today took the unusual step of taking down a fact check of the Obama campaign's "Julia" Web ad.

This is about the only Web evidence left from the story after it was scrubbed from the PolitiFact website:

The link goes to one of PolitiFact's clever bad link pages for now.

PolitiFact's Facebook page had this to say:

Some readers have raised questions about our latest item on Medicare and Julia. We've unpublished it while we look at them.

Jeff and I put forth a few digs on the issue of journalistic ethics on the Facebook page.  Other than that we're pretty much holding our fire until we see where this goes.


Update May 23, 2012:  PolitiFact's Twitter feed contains a bit more information:

Would @MittRomney replace Medicare with "nothing but a voucher"? That's not what his plan says. False: http://ow.ly/b5hah

 This looks like a rating that some felt was too harsh on President Obama.  The explanation for unpublishing (if we even get one) may prove more entertaining than the new version of the story.

Flip-Flopping Your Way to Consistency: A Constant Evolution

"Whatever words I say, I will always love you."
-The Cure

When President Obama came out of the closet as a supporter of gay marriage last week it was little surprise that PolitiFact weighed in with a "Full-Flop" rating. Considering the widespread attention Obama's announcement received, coupled with his vacillation, the rating appears to be a no-brainer:

Image from PolitiFact.com

Obama's many different positions on gay marriage are common knowledge. We joked on Twitter that PolitiFact would be unveiling the Evolv-O-Meter, but how could PolitiFact have given any rating other than "Full-Flop"? The problem is that, according to PolitiFact, Obama's flip-flop is actually an example of how constant his views have been:

While the president has consistently supported civil rights for gay couples-

Wait, what? Could you repeat that?

 Obama, a consistent supporter of civil rights for gay couples...

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Only PolitiFact could manage to shower praise on Obama for consistency, twice, in an article that describes his current position as a Full-Flop. This also raises an interesting question: Has PolitiFact determined that gay marriage is not a civil rights issue? That's a rating I missed.  PolitiFact has  minimized Obama's changing view of gay marriage and presented it as a minor nuisance in the statutory minutiae of the debate. Heck, Obama has always been pro-gay rights! Just not that right. Obama's positions cannot be simultaneously consistent and evolving. If Obama has always been a consistent supporter of civil rights for gay couples, and Obama's stance on gay marriage has changed, then it follows that gay marriage is not a civil right. Considering the controversial nature of the gay marriage issue, you'd think PolitiFact would let us know when they determined the status of such a key sticking point in the debate. It also puts PolitiFact at odds with Andrew Sullivan. Check out his over-the-top article in which he describes Obama's announcement as leaving him teary-eyed and speechless. Sullivan notes the contradiction in Obama's evolving positions:

"[Obama] said he was for equality, but not marriage. Five years later, he sees - as we all see - that you cannot have one without the other."

Sorry, Mr. Sullivan, but according to Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact you can.

Another question Obama's comments raise is just what is he supporting? A recent state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in North Carolina was overwhelmingly passed after only a nominal effort from Obama (robocalls) opposing it. Notice too, that despite PolitiFact referring to the announcement as a "historic shift", Obama's support is personal, not policy.

At a certain point, I've just concluded that-- for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that-- I think same-sex couples should be able to get married...And I continue to believe that this is an issue that is gonna be worked out at the local level, because historically, this has not been a federal issue...

This is starting to sound more like a Truth-O-Meter item: Is it true that Obama supports gay marriage? While it's unlikely Obama will "introduce legislation making gay marriage legal in all 50 states" as Megan McCain suggested, one wonders if it's true that an evolution in personal feelings while simultaneously rejecting political involvement actually qualifies as "support." Unfortunately, PolitiFact declined to sort out the truth of these questions.

To repeatedly commend Obama for his consistency in an article highlighting his contradictions is puzzling. It gives the impression PolitiFact wants to present his new, contradictory position as a minor adjustment rather than the Full-Flop they put on the meter. This type of sugarcoating is more consistent with an editorial piece than an objective review of the facts.


The bottom line is no matter what Obama says, PolitiFact will be there to put it in the best light. As the election approaches, readers should remember that PolitiFact is not a dispassionate witness to the political process. They are cheerleaders pulling for the home team, adept at turning every setback into a positive rally. Their motivations are expressed in gratuitous commentary best reserved for the opinion pages.

Don't believe the hype.

counterirritant: "The Cracks in the Crystal Ball"

If you're not following Byron York on Twitter, then you may have missed this mic dropping takedown of PolitiFact:

Image from Twitter

York is referring to the covering fire PolitiFact recently laid down for the Obama campaign for their insinuation that Mitt Romney would have heeded Joe Biden's advice and not ordered the hit on Osama bin Laden. "Counterfactual supposition" is an accurate description of Obama's campaign ad. But for a more in-depth analysis, check out this post over at "counterirritant":

Apparently the folks at PolitiFact believe that they have achieved such a mastery of the art of fact checking that they feel the need to branch out — into the art of fortune-telling.
(...)
The obvious rating for PolitiFact to assign is “Pants on Fire.” There is no way for the Obama campaign to know what Romney would or wouldn’t have done as the president. However, the folks at PolitiFact apparently they [sic] believe they have an idea (half an idea?) of what Romney would have done...

It's worth noting that adhering to their own standards is not a strong point for PolitiFact. Remember, that before deciding to rate a claim, PolitiFact asks themselves a few questions: 

Is the statement rooted in a fact that is verifiable? We don’t check opinions 

Fear not PolitiFans, they've found a loophole to help spread Obama's message without violating their sacred standards:

We wondered: Did the ad accurately characterize Romney’s "heaven and earth" quote?

A-ha! It's the ol' "did he cherry-pick this quote accurately?" conundrum. Glad they sorted out the truth of the president's paraphrasing. This isn't the first time PolitiFact has used this ruse to smooth over rough spots in Obama's message, and it's doubtful it will be the last.

There's more to this particular instance of Politiganda, so make sure to head over to counterirritant to read the whole post.



Bryan adds:  Politiganda!  Good one.  It's important to note, and counterirritant nails this point, that Obama took the Romney quotation out of context.  Romney (and others both Republican and Democrat) criticized Obama for publicly declaring the intention to tread on Pakistan's sovereignty.  The Pakistanis did not react well to it and still haven't warmed to Obama.

PolitiFact's prophylactic CYA

Yesterday PolitiFact rolled out a CYA article in response to the blowback to the oft-floated claim that 98 percent of all Catholic women use contraception.  PolitiFact rated that claim from an Obama administration official on Feb. 6, finding it "Mostly True."  PolitiFact's treatment of the issue provided little evidence of earnest journalistic curiosity and left its readers with no real means of independently verifying the data.

Watch how PolitiFact deftly avoids taking any responsibility for failing to present a clear account of the issue:

For the past week, thoughtful readers have let us know that we were wrong to give a Mostly True to the claim from a White House official that "most women, including 98 percent of Catholic women, have used contraception."

They said we overlooked a chart in a study from the Guttmacher Institute that showed the percentage was far more limited. But there’s a good reason we didn’t rely on the chart — it wasn’t the right one.

PolitiFact doesn't tell you that the Feb 6 story doesn't refer at all to the relevant chart.  PolitiFact claims to provide its sources. The source list doesn't include the relevant chart.  Instead, it features the charts that drew so much attention in the published criticisms.

Guttmacher Institute, "Contraceptive Use Is The Norm Among Religious Women," April 13, 2011

Guttmacher Institute, "Countering Conventional Wisdom: New Evidence on Religion and Contraceptive Use," April 2011

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "National Survey of Family Growth," accessed Feb. 2, 2012

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Key Statistics from the National Survey of Family Growth," accessed Feb. 6, 2012

PolitiFact's mission (bold emphasis added):

PolitiFact relies on on-the-record interviews and publishes a list of sources with every Truth-O-Meter item. When possible, the list includes links to sources that are freely available, although some sources rely on paid subscriptions. The goal is to help readers judge for themselves whether they agree with the ruling.

Um, yeah, whatever.

So did PolitiFact fact check the item without checking the facts or simply forget to link the relevant data in the source list? 

Don't look for a confession in a CYA:

To double-check, we reviewed the criticism, talked with the study’s lead researcher, and reviewed the report and an update from the institute. We’re confident in our original analysis.

We can take that statement for what it's worth, given that the original analysis never produced a baseline for determining the error of the 98 percent figure.  We're left to guess whether the CYA intends to assure us that the original item includes data sufficient to help readers judge for themselves whether to agree with the ruling.

PolitiFact is suggesting that the fact check was perfectly fine, and those of you who used their references to try to reach your own conclusions mishandled the facts.

PolitiFact:

The spate of blog posts and stories this week — some directly claiming to debunk our reporting — unfortunately rely on a flawed reading of a Guttmacher Institute study.

They were easy mistakes to make, confusing the group of women who have "ever used" contraceptives with those who are "currently using" contraceptives — and misapplying footnote information about those "currently using" to the 98 percent statistic.

The "flawed reading" results directly from the fact that neither the Guttmacher Institute nor PolitiFact provided access to the data that might have supported the key claim.  I'll quote from the PFB assessment:  "That's fact checking?"

If PolitiFact had checked the claim properly in the first place then PolitiFact could have answered the criticisms without the wholesale review.  In fact, the criticisms would be clearly wrong based on material included in or linked from the original fact check.

More from PolitiFact:

The critics of our reporting — bloggers for the Weekly Standard, CatholicVote.org and GetReligion.org — were relying on an analysis from Lydia McGrew in her blog, "What's Wrong With The World," which was also cited by the Washington Post's WonkBlog.

PFB highlighted McGrew's analysis, certainly.  But our criticisms expanded beyond McGrew's and recognized that the Guttmacher Institute report may have included data that PolitiFact neglected to explain to its readers.  One would think from PolitiFact's response above that no criticism of its reporting on this issue contains merit.

Focus on McGrew

What's Wrong With the World: "How to Lie with Statistics, Example Umpteen"

Jeff and I hugely appreciate bloggers who delve into the more complicated PolitiFact-related issues.

Lydia McGrew of the "What's Wrong With the World" blog gives a proper dressing-down to the Obama administration, the Guttmacher Institute and our beloved PolitiFact over the supposedly "Mostly True" claim that 98 percent of Catholic women use birth control.

As is our wont, we'll focus primarily on PolitiFact's role in the mess.

McGrew:

(T)his Politifact evaluation of the meme gets it wrong again and again, and in both directions.

First, the Politifact discussion insists that the claim is only about women in this category who have ever used contraception. When I first heard that and hadn't looked at the study, I immediately thought of the fact that such a statistic would presumably include women who were not at the time of the study using contraception and had used it only once in the past. It was even pointed out to me that it would include adult converts whose use might easily have been prior to their becoming Catholic. However, that isn't correct, anyway. The study expressly was of current contraceptive use. That's, in a sense, "better" for the side that wants the numbers to be high.

McGrew pointed out earlier that the Guttmacher Institute study uses data for "women at risk for
unintended pregnancy, whom we define as those who had had sex in the three months prior to the survey and were not pregnant, postpartum or trying to get pregnant."  The women surveyed were additionally in the 15-44 age range.  Yet PolitiFact describes the findings like so:

We read the study, which was based on long-collected, frequently cited government survey data. It says essentially that — though the statistic refers specifically to women who have had sex, a distinction Muñoz didn’t make.

But that’s not a large clarification, since most women in the study, including 70 percent of unmarried Catholic women, were sexually experienced.

That's fact checking?

McGrew:

(O)n this point, too, the Politifact evaluation is completely wrong. Politifact implies that only the supplementary table on p. 8 excluded these groups and that Figure 3 on p. 6 included them! But this is wrong. The table on p. 8 is simply supplementary to Figure 3, and both are taken from the same survey using the same restrictions! This is made explicit again and again in the study.

McGrew's exactly right.  The same information accompanies the asterisk for each table (bold emphasis added):  "*Refers to sexually active women who are not pregnant, postpartum or trying to get pregnant."

It doesn't occur to PolitiFact that restricting the survey population like that throws a serious spanner in the works.

That kind of credulity goes by a different name:  gullibility.

Visit What's Wrong With the World and read all of McGrew's skillful fisking of the liberal trio.  It's well worth it.


Addendum:

The Guttmacher Institute drew its data ultimately from here.

It may be the case that the Guttmacher study is reliable.  Regardless of that, PolitiFact did virtually nothing to clarify the issue.  A recent Washington Post story does shed some light on things, however:

I called up Rachel Jones, the lead author of this study, to have her walk me through the research. She agrees that her study results do not speak to all Catholic women. Rather, they speak to a specific demographic: women between 15- and 44-years-old who have ever been sexually active.

Jeff Adds (2/15/2012): Over on PolitiFact's Facebook page, frequent PF critic Matthew Hoy offered up his usual spot on commentary:

I find [PolitiFact's] failure to note that the Alan Guttmacher Institute is closely allied with Planned Parenthood a troubling omission. It isn't some neutral observer and its studies shouldn't be taken at face value without some healthy skepticism.

This isn't the first time PolitiFact has ignored Guttmacher's relationship with Planned Parenthood. Regardless of the studies accuracy, the alliance deserves at least a cursory disclosure. It's also important to note that PolitiFact used a similar connection to justify the rating of Florida Governor Rick Scott's claim about high-speed rail projects:

Scott bases his claims on hypothetical cost overruns from a suspect study written by a libertarian think tank...We rate Scott's claim False.

We highlighted that rating here.



Correction 2/17/2012:  "Guttmacher" was misspelled in the next-to-last paragraph.

Hoystory: "Obama’s War on Religion and Conscience"

Matthew Hoy is back at it with his usual biting commentary on PolitiFact. This time he shares his thoughts on the current debate about the effect of PPACA mandates on institutions of the Roman Catholic Church.

Hoy deals broadly with the controversy, but we'll highlight his mention of PolitiFact. At issue is PolitiFact's treatment of Newt Gingrich's statement that the PPACA requires religious institutions to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives:

After honestly analyzing the rule and the law, Politifraud labels Gingrich’s charge “mostly false” as they engage in an amount of hand-waving that would enable human flight without the aid of wings, engines or the other commonly required tools.

Still, if you consider a Catholic church to be a "Catholic institution," or a synagogue to be a "Jewish institution," Gingrich isn’t correct that the recent federal rule on contraceptives applies. Those nonprofit religious employers could choose whether or not they covered contraceptive services.

It’s pretty clear that Gingrich chose his words carefully here and Politifraud is muddying the waters. When I hear the words “Catholic institution” I think of everything Catholic that isn’t the church. I think of hospitals, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, adoption services, the Knights of Columbus, etc. Maybe it’s just because I’m likely more familiar with religious terminology than the (snark on) godless heathens (snark off) who populate many newsrooms, that I interpret it this way. But if the difference between a “True” or “Mostly True” ruling and a “Mostly False” ruling is over whether the word “institution” includes the church or not, then there’s way too much parsing going on.

Parsing words is nothing new for PolitiFact. But that's not the biggest flub Hoy spots:

In the video Politifact links to of Gingrich’s statement (provided by none other than Think Progress), Gingrich makes it clear that he is talking about the rule issued “last week.” The rule issued last week was the one regarding religious employers covering contraceptives in their health plans. Politifraud dishonestly expands that specific criticism of that specific rule into states can set their own benchmarks. No, they can’t. Not when it comes to the rule that came down “last week.” That rule says they MUST cover contraceptives.

Once again Hoy is spot on, though as usual our brief review doesn't do his work justice. Head over to Hoystory and read the whole thing.

Bewz Newz 'n' Vewz: "Total Clusterfact: Sorting out Solyndra"

PFB associate Jeff Dyberg has posted a magum opus questioning how PolitiFact Florida could reach its finding of "Mostly False" that President Obama's administration extended half a billion in loans to its friends at Solyndra.

No, really:

(clipped from PolitiFact.com)

A snippet of Jeff's take from his blog Bewz Newz 'n' Vewz:

PolitiFact reviews an Americans for Prosperity ad and helpfully specifies what they're going to sort out the truth of:

We decided to fact-check the ad, focusing on whether the president gave "half a billion in taxpayer money to help his friends at Solyndra, a business the White House knew was on the path to bankruptcy." 

They can't screw this one up, can they? Multiple media reports have shown beyond dispute that Obama donors are closely tied to Solyndra, and also that the White House was aware of Solyndra's problems prior to the loan. So just how bad did PolitiFact flub this rating?

Jeff provides plenty of evidence showing the PolitiFact bloodhounds all over the trail without picking up the scent.   Apparently, it's plenty of correlation without any hint of causation.

It's recommended reading.

James Taranto: "Richard E. Coyote: The bumbling paranoia of the Obama re-election campaign."

If there were a New Coke Award for fact-checking websites the all-time champion would have to be President Obama's AttackWatch.com:

Image from Twitter

The website itself has gotten much more publicity for conservative mockery than it has any actual debunking. But what does this have to do with PolitiFact?

As it turns out one of its "sources" for getting out the facts is none other than our Pulitzer-possessing pals:

Image from Attackwatch.com (with magnification added)

Being a part of Obama's quest to right the wrongs of political dishonesty is certainly a noteworthy claim. And who is PolitiFact sharing such rarefied status with? None other than those stalwarts of objectivity, Talking Points Memo and former PolitiFact source Media Matters for America. The Three Musketeers of fact-checking indeed.

AttackWatch's source list wasn't lost on the capable James Taranto, who wrote a piece about AttackWatch in the Wall Street Journal:

And the site's substance is no less marvelously mockable than its style. The "News Feed" page rebuts three "smears" by linking to exceedingly weak left-liberal defenses.

Taranto goes on to flay the MMFA and TPM "facts" with ease, and are themselves worth a read. But for our purposes we'll stick to his review of our factastic friends. Specifically, AttackWatch highlighted PolitiFact's rating of Rick Perry's claim that the stimulus "created zero jobs":

Image from PolitiFact.com

AttackWatch sums up the key points of the PolitiFact piece:

At the most recent GOP debate, Rick Perry said President Obama “had $800 billion worth of stimulus” and “created zero jobs.”

“We say pants on fire,” reports Politifact.com. The site refers to four independent analyses by the Congressional Budget Office and three private assessments of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act to determine that anywhere between 1.3 million and 3.6 million jobs were created or saved by the stimulus—“but certainly more than zero.”

Of course, like most PolitiFact articles, there's more to story, and Taranto quickly fills in the missing details:

What both sites omit is that, as we noted Sept. 2, the way these estimates are arrived at is not by counting actual jobs--of which, as the Romney chart points out, there are actually fewer than before the stimulus--but by assuming that so-called stimulus spending created jobs. That assumption may be accurate--it is possible that, as Obama and his supporters claim, even more jobs would have been lost absent the stimulus--but these estimates do not demonstrate it.

Ah, but PolitiFact does have proof that Perry's statement was false:

We even found Billy Weston, a Florida Republican who personally credited the stimulus for his new job with a private Riviera Beach pharmaceutical manufacturer.

PolitiFact lists the various estimates, then wraps up as follows:

Note the language "created or saved," which means not every one of those more than a million jobs count [sic] as "created," as Perry said.

But certainly more than zero. Ask Billy Weston.

Perry said "the first round of stimulus . . . created zero jobs." We say Pants on Fire.

Take that, Gov. Perry! The stimulus created one job!

While being listed as a source on AttackWatch doesn't itself indicate a bias, the proximity to two unabashedly liberal outfits, as well as being considered safe enough to be listed in the first place should certainly raise eyebrows. And it's not surprising that a talented writer like Taranto so easily destroys PolitiFact's flimsy defense of the stimulus. As we've seen time and again PolitiFact's ratings simply can't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny.

The rest of Taranto's piece is well worth reading, so go do that now.

You can also check out our previous review of Taranto's work here.




Edit: Added PF/Perry rating image, and quoted AW's summary directly. 9/17/11- Jeff