If we're going to spend the next week hearing about Rahm Emanuel's comment about “rescuing” the economy -- and it seems likely it will, given how the right-wing noise machine is latching onto it -- wouldn't it be nice to know what he actually said?

The quote comes from a New York Times article by Sheryl Gay Stolberg that provides precious little context -- and precious few words inside quotation marks:

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said in an interview that the president intended to use the news conference, scheduled for 8 p.m. Eastern time, as a “six-month report card,” to talk about “how we rescued the economy from the worst recession" and the legislative agenda moving forward, including health care and energy legislation, which squeaked through the House and faces a tough road in the Senate.

Sure looks like Emanuel was simply saying that the Obama administration's policies have saved the country from what would have been a much worse recession. Nothing particularly scandalous about that, even if you don't agree with him.

But John Boehner is cropping that already brief quote, turning it into a claim that the Obama administration has “rescued the economy” -- dropping off the bit about “from the worst recession” -- and Politico is there to type up Boehner's comments and fail to provide the missing context.

Based on what the Times reported, that's a phony line of attack, and media should make that clear rather than enabling it. But it would also be helpful if the Times made the full context available.