The NYT columnist grudgingly admits error -- to readers of his Web site, anyway.

Are all the Post editors on vacation? WaPo falls for a paradigmatic bogus interest-group poll story. In "Fighting Hunger Emerges As Nonpartisan Issue," Helen Rumbelow reports:

A poll of 1,000 likely voters found that 93 percent said "fighting the hunger problem" was important when deciding who to choose in House or Senate elections ....

Hmmm. If you were told there was "the hunger problem," wouldn't you think fighting it was important too? It's not as if voters spontaneously came up with "the hunger problem" when asked what was important. The Alliance to End Hunger, which commissioned the poll, wasn't about to take chances like that! Rather, "fighting the hunger problem" was included on a list of "a dozen leading issues" the poll respondents were fed, according to the group's Adobe Acrobat explanation. Who's going to say it's not important? ... In another shocking finding from the poll:

Almost three-quarters of likely voters (72.9 %) say the 6 million children around the world who die annually from hunger-related illness is a convincing argument to do more.

The rest say, "Screw 'em!" ...  Isn't the news here that an astonishing 27.1 percent say they don't think "the 6 million children around the world who die from hunger-related illness is a convincing argument to do more?" ... How could the pollsters have failed to stack the question more effectively? There's the scandal! ... P.S.:WaPo quotes Bill Knapp, identified as "a media strategist for the last three Democratic presidential campaigns," saying that hunger is a "sleeper issue." What the Post doesn't say is that Knapp was one of the three politicos hired by the Alliance to End Hunger  to conduct the poll. (In fact, WaPo suggests otherwise by identifying Republican Jim McLaughlin as the person "who conducted the poll." Then Knapp is quoted as if he were just a disinterested Democrat contacted by the Post.) ... Update: Eric Umansky of "Today's Papers" gagged on the WaPo story too, including the missing Knapp i.d. ... 3:40 A.M.

Rhinos, 1, Krugman, 0: Will Paul Krugman's next NYT column acknowledge the serious fact mistake in his July 16 column on George W. Bush's Texas Rangers investment? The mistake was pointed out in a letter to the NYT, dated 7/22 but printed last Friday. Krugman admitted the mistake yesterday, in weaselly best-defense-is-a-good-offense fashion, on his own Web site. But how many Times readers read Krugman's Web site? Don't NYT columnists print corrections of their errors in the same space where the errors were made?

Here are the sordid details (helpful boldface reader-aids added by kf):

Krugman originally wrote that Bush,

"who put up 1.8 percent of the Rangers syndicate's original capital, was entitled to about $2.3 million from that sale. But his partners voluntarily gave up some of their share, and Mr. Bush received 12 percent of the proceeds — $14.9 million. So a group of businessmen, presumably with some interest in government decisions, gave a sitting governor a $12 million gift. Shouldn't that have raised a few eyebrows?"

In their letter, Bush's Ranger partners Tom Bernstein and Roland Betts say: