This afternoon, The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake tweeted out a link to a story about a Republican member of the Virginia House of Delegates who, at an anti-Planned-Parenthood event, told his audience that disabled children are punishment for women who have had abortions:

[Bob Marshall] made that statement last Thursday at a press conference to oppose state funding for Planned Parenthood.

“The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children,” said Marshall, a Republican.

“In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.”

Marshall’s remarks are certainly callous and appalling. For him to use innocent disabled children as political pawns is despicable, and it’s definitely newsworthy. At least it was, when the event took place well over two years ago. The WTOP article Blake linked to was originally published in February 2010, but for some reason, it’s dated September 10, 2012. It is unclear as to why or how the story resurfaced in this way.

Blake, once he discovered his error, was sure to let his followers know that he’d been mistaken:

But not before media lapdog David Shuster seized the opportunity to fear-monger and peddle the story as if it were new:

Trending

Others on the Left worked themselves into a frenzy:

https://twitter.com/DanoG/status/247829315549532161

Media outlets also picked up on the story, reporting it as current news — and then quietly deleted their posts once they realized their mistake:

Good of these folks to pull the story from their sites. It’s just too bad they couldn’t be bothered to issue actual corrections. Oh well. What else can you expect from “real reporters”?

Meanwhile, after sending his tweet out over three hours ago, David Shuster has yet to acknowledge any mistake on his part. Telling.

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