In Vergara, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Rolf Treu cited gaps in test scores between minority students and white students in California and evidence that minority schools were far more likely to have the worst teachers in concluding that three state laws protecting teachers’ jobs and prerogatives were unconstitutional violations of student rights.

Treu likened the Vergara case to Brown vs. Board of Education, the famous 1954 Supreme Court case in which justices held Kansas’ “separate but equal” public schools for whites and blacks were unconstitutional.

But the Kansas case involved a state whose education policies resulted in white schools having more money and resources than black schools. In Vergara, while there are stark differences in test scores between schools with mostly Latino and African-American students and schools with mostly white and Asian-American students, these schools receive similar funding from the state under the ADA (average daily attendance) formula. And while the worst teachers congregate at minority schools because of official rules and unofficial practices rewarding veteran teachers with clean records, it’s difficult to contend the state laws that allow this to happen were crafted with a racial animus.

However, some liberal legal experts have long made the case that showing laws have a “disparate impact” on minorities through statistics and real-world effects should be enough to invalidate them on equal protection grounds. This is how the U.S. Equal Employment Office defines the term:

Disparate impact refers to policies, practices, rules, or other systems that appear to be neutral, but result in a disproportionate impact on protected groups. Disparate treatment is intentional. For example, testing a particular skill of African Americans only is disparate treatment.

The Texas case involving allegations of housing discrimination against minorities that was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 24 was the first time that justices have taken a case in which lower-level courts had taken the “disparate impact” theory into serious consideration in their rulings.

Scalia: ‘No, no, no, no,’ numbers don’t confirm bias

The Overlawyered blog’s and Forbes magazine’s coverage of oral arguments in the case should have the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers doing handstands. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority lacerated attorneys making the “disparate impact” argument holding that the state of Texas’ policies were unconstitutional. Justice Antonin Scalia said these attorneys …

... conflated racial disparities, which can happen for all sorts of reasons, with deliberate racial discrimination, which is what racists do … .

“No, no, no, no,” Scalia said. “Racial disparity is not racial discrimination. The fact that the NFL is largely black players is not discrimination. Discrimination requires intentionally excluding people of a certain race.”

During the questioning … the court’s conservatives got to enunciate conservative concerns about the spreading use of disparate impact. … the Supreme Court has previously outlawed explicitly racial solutions to disparities, such as rigid quotas …

The analogies between Texas public housing laws and California education laws are not precise. But if Scalia’s framing of what constitutes unconstitutional racial discrimination — conscious, intentional, consequential bias in the crafting of a law — holds for a majority of the high court, then the California education status quo is likely to survive the Vergara case.

Justices eager to rebuke Obama administration?

One housing-law expert even thinks the Supreme Court’s conservative majority is spoiling to get this view explicitly stated in the Texas case so as to rebuke an Obama administration which has gone overboard in pushing “disparate impact” litigation.

The Court has wanted to examine this issue, as evidenced by accepting cert three times. It has repeatedly said that it only wanted to look at whether disparate impact applies under the Fair Housing Act and not what standard would apply if it does exist, even though there are many circuit court decisions using disparate impact, and they have used conflicting standards. Typically, the Court would want to decide an issue that is in conflict between the circuits, especially here, where HUD has already tried to resolve the conflicts with a rule. The Court’s refusal to consider a standard suggests that the majority of the justices already know disparate impact will no longer apply under the Fair Housing Act.  …

In some disparate impact cases, the theory has worked effectively to lessen racial discrimination and the perpetuation of illegal segregation. However, the substantial increase in the use of the theory … has caused the theory to be attacked and probably struck down. The takeaway is one of the pendulum having swung too far one way and now swinging back to the middle … .

That’s from Mike Skojec, partner at the national law firm of Ballard Spahr.

And while in their coverage, the Sacramento Bee and the Los Angeles Times cited environmentalists’ dire warnings about fracking, the papers once again made a gigantic omission: They don’t note the Obama administration says it’s safe.

That’s right — the greenest president ever says it’s safe. On the 2012 campaign trail, Barack Obama liked to boast that fracking had made the U.S. “the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.” That’s why greens are unhappy with him, as the recent Politico headline shows.

Why isn’t this relevant in California?

For a classic example of horrible CA fracking coverage, check out this quote from Sally Jewell, Obama’s secretary of the interior:

“I know there are those who say fracking is dangerous and should be curtailed, full stop. That ignores the reality that it has been done for decades and has the potential for developing significant domestic resources and strengthening our economy and will be done for decades to come.”

NYT quotes Obama aide on fracking safety; LAT quotes flack

That’s what she said at a May 17 news conference on federal fracking rules. The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times both covered the conference. Guess which paper cited Jewell as testifying to fracking’s safety, and guess which paper cited an oil-industry group.

Bingo. The New York Times matter of factly noted that Jewell, and thus the Obama administration, see fracking as safe. But not the L.A. Times.

“‘States have been successfully regulating fracking for decades, including on federal lands, with no incident of contamination that would necessitate redundant federal regulation,’ said Kathleen Sgamma, vice president of government and public affairs for Western Energy Alliance, a Denver-based trade group.”

Why would LAT reporters Neela Banerjee and Wes Venteicher think Sgamma’s view on fracking’s safety was worth quoting but not Interior Secretary Sally Jewell’s?

1) Incompetence

2) Incompetence + Bias

3) Incompetence + Pack Journalism

4) Incompetence + Bias + Pack Journalism

Because it absolutely is not …

5) Good Journalism

I’m still waiting for a single logical explanation as to why California journalists always omit the president’s views on fracking, which would go a long way toward countering green claims.

For now, the most logical assumption is that green journos don’t want to counter green claims.

July 1, 2013

By Chris Reed

The Sacramento Bee has joined the reporting staff of The Los Angeles Times and the Ventura County Star’s Timm Herdt in the Fracking Disinformation Hall of Shame. Bee reporter Tom Knudson has a lengthy, often alarmist look at hydraulic fracturing, its long history in California and the possibility that it could trigger a huge economic boom in Golden State.

But while dwelling on fracking’s purported dangers, what Knudson’s article never does is mention the Obama administration’s extensively documented position on fracking: namely, that it is just another heavy industry that can be made safe with good regulations. Instead, Knudson offers up this sort of passing observation as fact: “fracking’s risks to groundwater remain unknown.”

All the president’s men (and women) disagree

Hey, Tom! I know you’re a Pulitzer Prize winner and all, and that therefore you shouldn’t be subject to questioning or editing, but when writing about fracking, aren’t these facts relevant?

— The president’s first energy secretary, Steven Chu, said: “We believe it’s possible to extract shale gas in a way that protects the water, that protects people’s health. We can do this safely.”

— The MIT physicist Obama chose to succeed Chu, Ernest Moniz, described the risks to water posed by fracking as “challenging but manageable.”

— The president’s first Environmental Protection Agency director, Lisa Jackson, told a House committee that she was “not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water.”

— Sally Jewell, the president’s secretary of the interior, at a May 17 news conference announcing the release of fracking rules for public and Indian land, declared the following: “I know there are those who say fracking is dangerous and should be curtailed, full stop. That ignores the reality that it has been done for decades and has the potential for developing significant domestic resources and strengthening our economy and will be done for decades to come.”

Or just for fun, Tom, maybe you could quote the president himself. The photo atop this post of a recent Huffington Post story shows how he feels.

Maybe Tom Knudson got in the green tank for career reasons

The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times both covered Interior Secretary Jewell’s May 17 news conference. The contrast in their coverage is pretty amazing.

“The L.A. Times’ account put in the ‘fracking is safe and has been around forever’ context by quoting an oil industry trade association spokesperson. The NYT quoted THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR!

“Quite a gigantic difference. But than the LAT’s Neela Banerjee and Wes Venteicher and their editors can’t have Times’ readers knowing the Obama administration likes fracking, can they? It doesn’t fit the West L.A.-Marin County-NRDC narrative.”

Maybe that explains the Sac Bee’s Tom Knudson not mentioning the Obama administration’s view on fracking. He’s angling for a job at the L.A. Times.

Sheesh. If any member of the California journalism corps can offer a logical explanation as to why the environmental and political reporters who cover fracking never mention the position of the greenest presidential administration in history, I will be happy to pass it along.

But that won’t happen, because it is impossible to come up with such an explanation.

Paging Dan Walters, paging Dan Walters

The best explanations are the simplest one: 1) All these political and enviro reporters are in the green tank. They’d rather not get blowback from the people they cover, so they don’t mention an angle so powerful it makes the fracking-is-dangerous crowd look like fools. 2) They’re green activists pretending to be impartial journalists.

On fracking, I look forward to Dan Walters eventually fulfilling his periodic role of pointing out the stupidity of the media party line, like he has this year on budget happy talk and like he did back in late 2006 when reporters actually bought the idea that Arnold Schwarzenegger had figured out to make Sacramento functional.

Dan probably won’t name/shame Knudson, but I’ll settle for any improvement on the Sierra Club fracking propaganda we’ve been seeing masquerade as news and “analysis.”

By Chris Reed

The publications that are part of the Bay Area Newspaper Group are giving big play to a story that suggests broad sexism in the granting of H-1B visas:

“As Congress negotiates its biggest immigration overhaul in decades, new numbers obtained by this newspaper reveal a stunning imbalance in a program that admits highly skilled immigrants to the United States, often for Silicon Valley jobs: More than 70 percent of those special visa holders who entered the country in 2011 were men.

“The long-overlooked disparity is beginning to attract attention on Capitol Hill, where activists demanded Monday that the federal government take a closer look at whether U.S. visa policy discriminates against women.”

Incredibly, reporter Matt O’Brien never makes the explicit point that this is happening because men are far more likely to have the sort of engineering and specialized science degrees for which the H-1B program is designed. There is no “stunning imbalance” once this context is understood. Instead, O’Brien offers up this misleading factoid to provide context: In the U.S., “women hold 51.5 percent of professional and management jobs, according to annual visa statistics and the Department of Labor.”

Trolling for outrage instead of supplying context and nuance

This is trolling for outrage, not honest reporting. The numbers showing male dominance in fields that win people H-1B visas are easily available.

That is an interesting story about persistent and, to some, troubling patterns of gender interest in certain professions — and I’m not talking about the Larry Summers controversy from 2005. A 2009 Cornell study made many juicy, arresting points:

“Women tend to choose non-math-intensive fields for their careers — not because they lack mathematical ability, but because they want flexibility to raise children or prefer less math-intensive fields of science, reports a new Cornell study.

“‘A major reason explaining why women are underrepresented not only in math-intensive fields but also in senior leadership positions in most fields is that many women choose to have children, and the timing of child rearing coincides with the most demanding periods of their career, such as trying to get tenure or working exorbitant hours to get promoted,’ said lead author Stephen J. Ceci, professor of human development at Cornell.

“Women with advanced math abilities choose non-math fields more often than men with similar abilities, he added.

“Women also tend to drop out of scientific fields — especially math and physical sciences — at higher rates than do men, particularly as they advance, because of their need for greater flexibility and the demands of parenting and caregiving, said co-author Wendy M. Williams, Cornell professor of human development.

“‘These are choices that all women, but almost no men, are forced to make,’ she said.

“The study, published in the March issue of the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin (135:2), is an integrative analysis of 35 years of research on sex differences in math. Ceci and his Cornell co-authors reviewed more than 400 articles and book chapters to better understand why women are underrepresented in such math-intensive science careers as computer science, physics, technology, engineering, chemistry and higher mathematics.”

This is genuinely interesting, as opposed to puerile and provocative.

But instead of anything remotely reflecting the nuance and insight of the Cornell study, the Bay Area Newspaper Group would rather hype a slanted story that pretends the granting of H-1B visas is driven by bias against women. Great, just great. WTG.

By Chris Reed

In the Bush 43 era, some pundits on the left took to decrying the media practice of treating quotes from the White House with the same respect as quotes from its critics. They said this “false equivalence” allowed alleged Bush lies about Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., to circulate without proper skepticism.

What about how the California media deal with AB 32? The fact is the peer group of environmental economists hired years ago to review AB 32’s “scoping plan” for the most part scorned its claim that forcing a switch to cleaner-but-costlier energy would have little or no effect on the economy. The leading critic was Harvard’s Robert Stavins, arguably the world’s leading environmental economist.

But in the Golden State, we still see stories like this morning’s garbage from David R. Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle, with the same old false equivalance.

“Studies of the cap-and-trade system’s potential impact tend to reflect the views of those who commissioned them.”

As I wrote last month, The New York Times knows the truth about AB 32: namely, that it is a huge risk.

But the N.Y. Times also wrote this:

“Opponents and supporters alike worry that the program could hurt the state’s fragile economy by driving out refineries, cement makers, glass factories and other businesses.”

No they don’t. Instead, David R. Baker and dozens of other reporters around this state somehow can’t grasp the idea that forcing California business to spend more for energy that other rival states and nations hurts California’s competitiveness in the most fundamental way.

Duh. At least they are consistent. They’ve been doing this for years.

Katy Grimes: A story in the Sacramento Bee Saturday reported that Israel’s liberal press is on the ropes. But the McClatchy writer’s conclusions about why are laughable.

“The economic crisis that’s hit the newspaper industry in the United States and elsewhere is threatening some of Israel’s most influential publications and could soon leave the country with virtually no left-leaning printed newspapers,” the Bee reported.

The economic crisis had very little to do with the decline of newspapers in America. The crisis is one of content.

The number of newspaper readers has been declining for many years. Even with the decline in readership, many big newspapers refuse to accept blame or responsibility.

Far too many newspapers continue to publish biased, highly subjective stories, in place of news content. The opinion pages have melded with the news pages, with many newspapers no longer making the distinction.

“Unlike in the United States, where most news outlets strive for objectivity, Israeli papers take political stands in their news pages,” the McClatchy writer stated.

Oh, there’s no bias in that statement. It’s just laughable, but many reporters actually believe this.

“Publishers say that competition with the Internet, as in the rest of the world, is one reason for their decline.”

Pardon me while I choke back the tears.

What we have today is a mainstream media in denial. Perhaps the Internet is to blame. More people than ever hunger for information, and many don’t want it filtered or biased. Political junkies know that most newspapers are only a jumping-off point for the real story. The Internet has provided people with a way to access the rest of the story, as radio giant Paul Harvey used to say.

“Are Israelis aware that they are reading a paper that is practically in Netanyahu’s pocket? Sure they are,” said Didi Remez, a left-wing Israeli political activist, the Bee reported.

Are Americans aware that they are reading newspapers and listening to mainstream television media that is practically in President Barack Obama’s pocket?

The Media Research Center reported:

“As even former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw acknowledged today, liberal journalists were loaded and ready to pronounce this election over and Romney’s campaign dead after the first debate: ‘If it had been Romney performing like the president last night, it would have been over.’ But the beating Obama received last night was so complete that virtually no one (the New York Times excepted, as usual) denied it.

But how did they report Obama lost? Therein lies the rub: they — as well as Democratic operatives — are pushing the spin that this was all about style and presentation. Obama was “flat,” “lackluster,” “not himself,” and “not firing on all cylinders.” In other words, Obama wasn’t Obama last night. Some are going further, pushing the narrative that Romney was somehow mean-spirited and even deceptive in his presentation.

This analysis denies reality. Obama lost on style, to be sure. More importantly, much more importantly, he lost on content. Romney crushed him. For the first time in his political career Obama a) had to defend his record and  b) had no one running interference on his behalf. Romney as challenger had a seemingly endless list of particulars to choose from and did so in a devastating manner. That, that was the damage done to Obama.”

If this is still unclear, try these interesting examples:

Media Reality Check: ABC’s George Stephanopoulos: Reliably Crowning Democrats as Debate Winners 

Media Reality Check: ABC, CBS, NBC Hype Romney Hidden Camera Tape, Bury Obama’s ‘Redistribution’ Clip 

Media Reality Check: Convention Slant: NBC Donates 25 Percent More Airtime to DNC Than RNC 

Special Report: The Media’s “Miracle” of a Scandal-Free Obama 

Media Bias 101: What Journalists Really Think — and What the Public Thinks About Them 

Profiles in Bias: Documenting the Bias of Top Journalists and Major News Stories 

and here.

By Chris Reed

On Sunday, as I read iconoclastic pollster Pat Caddell‘s sharp, persuasive tirade documenting the many issues where the national media have spared the public from the details of the Obama administration’s venality and incompetence, I got to thinking about the parallels with the Sacramento media’s coverage of the state government.

What was the single fact that most explains how California works, but which has never appeared in a succinct version in a regular newspaer story or “analysis” of Sacramento? It was obvious. Here’s a one-paragraph version that should be the basis of what journos call the “nut graph” of most stories about state spending and state priorities:

“The members of the most powerful political force in state politics, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers, get far more money from taxpayers than any other single group. The teacher unions’ power derives from the automatic dues deducted from teachers’ paychecks, meaning taxpayers directly fund the lobbying and political operations of Sacramento’s most influential entity.”

I have lived in California since 1990, and I have seen many stories that point out that the biggest chunk of the state budget — per Proposition 98 — is public education, with a minimum of roughly 40 percent. In that time, I occasionally have seen stories that focus on the fact that compensation for all school employees is by far the biggest chunk of school district budgets.

But I seriously don’t remember a mainstream newspaper story that makes the collective points in the nut graph above. Nor do I remember a story that goes into the details of the nut graph: that teacher compensation has long been at least two-thirds of total state education spending and that it now is more like 80 percent.

Nor have I seen a story that frames the battle over school spending as being almost entirely about teacher pay, or that specifically says teacher pay is the single biggest element of the state budget.

Before now, have you ever read this anywhere? I doubt it.

This tracks with the points made by Caddell about the selective obliviousness of the media. Just as with the national media’s disinterest in noting that the White House lied about a terrorist attack on the 11th anniversary of 9/11, we’re seeing the California media look at Propositions 30, 32 and 38 and not note the centrality of the teacher compensation issue.

If they did, it would be obvious that the dominant issue in state politics is teacher jobs and teacher pay.

Now here is where it gets really pathetic.

Prop. 38

Proposition 38, introduced by liberal civil rights lawyer Molly Munger, has as a central tenet that the money it raises (allegedly) couldn’t go to teacher raises. It’s one of Munger’s talking points. So a KEY PREMISE of 38 is that it will avoid teacher union avarice.

And yet this is never pointed out by the regular media in anything approaching the stark terms laid out in my nut graph above, or the more indirect ways used by Munger.

This is incredible, this avoidance. It’s not just libertarian-lite whiners like me. It’s not just small-government/good-government advocates like CalWatchDog.com. It’s not just the California Republican Party. Anyone who has a functioning brain has to realize what’s going on here.

But not the Sacramento media. Instead, here’s an example of the crap/pap we see. This is a short Associated Press update of a 2005 budget fight that makes my point:

August 9, 2005

Teachers, schools superintendent sue governor over school funding

By JENNIFER COLEMAN, Associated Press Writer

SACRAMENTO — California’s top school official and the state’s largest teachers union sued Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday to restore $3.1 billion they claim is owed to public schools.

At issue is a deal school officials say was struck during a meeting with the governor in December 2003, a month after he was sworn into office.

Educators said they agreed to accept $2 billion in cuts to help the newly elected governor balance the 2004-05 state budget. To do that, lawmakers had to suspend Proposition 98, the voter-approved funding guarantee for schools.

In return, the governor promised schools would get more money if state revenues increased more than expected, said Jack O’Connell, superintendent of public instruction.

“Revenues did go up, and according to our agreement with the governor public education should have been one of the beneficiaries,” O’Connell said.

Instead, O’Connell said, schools were shorted an additional $3.1 billion over two years.

Schwarzenegger has denied there was a promise to share the excess revenue with schools. Because the funding guarantee was suspended, the schools were not entitled to a share of the billions of unanticipated income tax revenue California took in, his administration said.

In the budget approved earlier this summer, the governor used about $4 billion in unanticipated revenue to pay down some of the state’s debt, fund road improvements and reimburse cities and counties for money they lost when he repealed an increase in the vehicle license fee.

In the lawsuit, O’Connell, the California Teachers Association and some parents ask the court to find the state out of compliance with the law and state constitution.

The 2005-06 spending plan, signed by Schwarzenegger in July, invests nearly $60 billion in schools – more than half the $117.3 billion state budget.

Teacher pay

If you read that, would you have the slightest idea that this fight was almost 100 percent over teacher pay? Would you have the slightest sense of the Sacramento political dynamics it reflected? Would you have any sense of whose ox would get gored if Arnold got his way? Would you have any grasp of the real story of what this said about how Sacramento works?

No, of course you wouldn’t.

I know several reporters who cover Sacramento, and I have OK-to-good relationships with a few. But it is simply beyond my comprehension that so many of them think that it would be bad journalism to explicitly point out that teachers get more money from taxpayers than anyone else. And that these teachers’ unions use automatic paycheck deductions to massively multiply their clout.

These are objective facts, and they make the case for Proposition 32. But the next time that Associated Press or the reporters of the Sacramento Bee or the Los Angeles Times reports them, it will be the first.

William Endicott, former deputy managing editor of The Bee, wrote a column about liberal bias in the media – his claim is about the lack thereof.

Endicott dug deeply into his political file cabinet to reference a disgraced Republican, former Vice President Spiro Agnew, “ripping into one of their favorite bogeyman, the liberal media.” Endicott reminded readers that Agnew “resigned the vice presidency in disgrace in 1973 after being charged with tax evasion and money laundering while governor of Maryland.”

This is true. Agnew was a bad boy. Liars and cheats are on both sides of the political aisle, but it seems that only Republicans resign.

Notorious and nefarious Democratic politicians Barney Frank, Jon Corzine, Chris Dodd, Charlie Rangel, William Jefferson, Bill Clinton, John Edwards, and many other Democratic politicians have been linked or charged with dubious deeds and crimes, but are never described as “disgraced.” And they don’t resign elected office.

Endicott’s own bias is telling with his immediate reference to the hated Nixon Administration and Spiro Agnew.  But Endicott never pointed out that Agnew, Nixon and former Democratic President Bill Clinton all lied under oath… that would have been unbiased.

“Such visceral reaction can bear little or no resemblance to what actually appears in the newspapers, online or on television day in and day out, but ‘the liberal media’ image is fueled, interestingly enough, by ‘the conservative media,’ as represented especially by Fox News and the crown prince of talk radio, Rush Limbaugh,” Endicott said.

He may be right that it’s only conservatives and non-traditional news media who point out liberal bias in media. But Liberals aren’t going to poke holes in their own stories, are they?

And notice that Endicott couldn’t resist mentioning liberals’ most hated media, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. How predictable. Endicott and many others in the traditional media have complained loudly about the impact of  Fox News, since the network came on the scene in 1996.

The bias Endicott fails to address is not just in obvious partisan biases, but how the subtle bias is when crucial details are left out of stories and even op eds. Journalists are usually able to choose how to tell the story, and everyone has an angle. But the best journalists present the good, the bad and the ugly details, and let the reader decide.

Most of the criticism I hear about the mainstream newspapers and television is the way in which they report the news, and the obvious omissions. Television reporters and anchors now offer bold opinion about the news stories they present. Newspaper reporters make blatant, non-sourced opinion statements in news stories.

Endicott’s last barb sums up his own glaring bias: “Strangely enough, you rarely hear Democratic candidates and/or their allies bashing ‘the conservative media,’ even though, for instance, they have ample reason to question Fox’s ‘fair and balanced’ slogan. Either they have a more even temperament, or the right just enjoys a more receptive, quick-to-anger audience.”

The blending of news and opinion, as well as the omission of events and facts that differ from a liberal ideology, is the bias that non-liberals reference.

A perfect example are the hundreds of stories about current Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich and the many accusations that he cheated on one of his three wives. Gingrich may have cheated on his wife. It’s been in the news for many years.

But when Bill Clinton was running for President in 1992, before Fox News was even created, the media appeared to work harder at ignoring and covering up stories of his dalliances while he was Arkansas Governor, despite his notorious reputation in Arkansas. The media made him out to be so cool, sexual affairs and dalliances were just part of his repertoire and mystic. It only came out years later, that Clinton paid a large settlement of more than $800,000 to accuser Paula Jones.

The media and Democratic politicians continually covered for Clinton, and said that his only crime was sex. Tell that to Monica Lewinsky, the world’s most famous intern.

By 5:00 p.m. this evening, the Bee story had more than 250 comments left online. It appears that Endicott’s denial struck a nerve.

FEB. 4, 2012