John McCain complains about government spending he doesn't like, and the Los Angeles Times copies-and-pastes it, without making any effort whatsoever to assess the purpose or efficacy of the spending. It just adopts McCain's premise that the spending is wasteful and passes along his snarky descriptions. This is not journalism. This is the opposite of journalism. This is a major newspaper acting as press secretary to a United States Senator.

And it's shameful demagoguery that only makes it more likely that public policy debates get decided in the dumbest possible way.

Previously: The media's deliberate stupidity