Newsmax, apparently not wanting to be outdone by Fox Nation's blatantly dishonest headlines, sent out this “breaking” email yesterday:

Oh, wow, that's big news! The White House chief of staff “admits” that choosing Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court was a “screw-up” because she is “not mainstream”? Huge!

Only … that's not quite what happened. Newsmax's subject line mashes together two separate stories.

In one, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly said the White House had “screwed up the messaging” on the administration's support for Israel (while stressing “concerning policy, we have done everything that we can that is in Israel's security – and long-range interests.”)

In the other, conservative columnist Kathleen Parker argues that Kagan is not “mainstream” -- not because of Kagan's views, but because Kagan is a New York Jew who went to an Ivy League college:

More than half the country also happens to be Protestant, yet with Kagan, the court will feature three Jews, six Catholics, and nary a Protestant.

Fewer than one-fourth of Americans are Catholic and 1.7 percent are Jewish.

…

[A] New York City girl who attended a prep school, Ivy League colleges and law school, who once barred military recruiters from Harvard's recruitment office and was an adviser to Goldman Sachs, can't be characterized as anything close to mainstream America.

Newsmax's combination of a story about Rahm Emanuel talking about Israel and a conservative columnist criticizing Elena Kagan into a subject line that makes it appear as though Emanuel said Kagan is “not mainstream” is almost impressively dishonest. Fox Nation has some competition.