>>How so? The way I understand it, economically Liberal means:
>>
>>Spending more freely.
>>The government better knows how to spend your money than you do.
>>More is spent on social programs.
>>
>>All of these are typically synonymous with Democrat.
>>
>>Or am I misunderstanding it?
>
>You are misunderstanding it, sort of. Liberal (in the old Hayek terminology) meant a policy of "laissez-faire" economy, in which govt kept *out*, and was synonomous with Republican ideals. Almost the opposite of today's typical meaning. Not sure how the term got so thoroughly corrupted :)

With the quality of today's reporting all things are possible.
For 15 years part of my consulting business included investigating homicides.
Not once was I ever quoted by the press accurately. Rarely was the story even approximately close. In one instance, there was a blatent attempt to influence the public perception of the facts about certain murder by misrepresentation of 'evidence'. (In fact, extensive photos of the scene that night showed no 'evidence' where the reporter claimed to have found it the next day. The attempt was exploited by a local politician, who 'happened' to be at the scene with the report to make the public think that the swat team shot down a man who was trying to surrender. Nowadays, ethics has certainly become a strange, if not infrequent, bedfellow with politics.