What Palin Said:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

How Politico reported it:

Palin calls Dems healthcare plan "evil," cites threat to Trig Describing Democratic healthcare plans as "evil," Sarah Palin is warning that the proposals being debated in Washington could threaten the life of Trig, her Down Syndrome infant boy. Palin, in her first policy statement since resigning as Alaska governor, wrote on her Facebook page Friday afternoon that the sick, elderly and disabled would suffer should healthcare be rationed, as conservatives claim it will with a public option. [...]

Seriously? Seriously?

Yes, seriously. It falls to Politico to take a story about a national figure making up wholesale a crooked and ridiculous story about how Democratic "Death Panels" are coming after her disabled child if we dare reform healthcare, and turn it into an absolutely straight news story.

Well done, Politico. Absolutely masterful. I couldn't come up with a more embarrassing example of the national political media as lazy, stupid, worse-than-useless prop if I tried.

I think there should be such a thing as an anti-Pulitzer. There should be an award for the reporter or reporters that most willfully ignore the basic falsehood of a story -- something like "fire is cold", or "if you shoot yourself in the head, M&M's will come out" or "if we reform our nation's healthcare, the President will send a Death Panel to murder my disabled son" -- and instead treat as if it was a debatable point worth reporting as fact.

You have to really, really try, in order to take a story so asinine and report it with such studious credulity. Well freakin' done.