Newsweek's “The Gaggle” blog let Bloomberg News have it today with a sharp-tongued tirade against the rival media outlet, claiming its reporting on the Sunday health care vote was misinformed.

Specifically, “The Gaggle” objected to this Bloomberg report:

The health-care legislation working its way through the Senate passed the House of Representatives March 21 in a 219-212 vote that had no Republican support. Democrats circumvented traditional rules that require a two-thirds majority for passage by taking advantage of a budget process called reconciliation.

Noted Gaggle Blogger Ben Adler, “If Bloomberg wants to repeat the Republican talking point that passing legislation through reconciliation is inappropriate, the least that they could do is make the argument correctly. It is Senate rules, not 'traditional rules,' to which they are referring.”

He later stated: “Aside from whether Bloomberg's reporters and editors who cover politics have been asleep for the year-long civics lesson the rest of us have undergone, I'm wondering why this sentence even needed to be written, since the premise is incorrect. Health-care reform is not currently 'working its way through the Senate.' It already passed the Senate. And it did so under normal rules, with the supermajority of 60 votes required to overcome a filibuster, not through reconciliation. The legislation that 'passed the House of Representatives March 21 in a 219-212 vote' is the same Senate bill! The reconciliation sidecar, which now goes to the Senate, passed 220-211.”

Ouch! I would hate to be in his journalism class. But he is right.