The media have been quite zealously attacking Ben Carson for criticizing aspects of Islam that he believes are incompatible with the American political system. The skeptical among us — and that, unfortunately, must include every discerning consumer of mainstream media — would note that much of this criticism is motivated primarily by a disingenuous desire to make Republicans look bad, as no honest liberal would support, say, Islam’s political approach to women’s rights. (See recent posts from Jonathan Last and me for more on this point.)

Now I’m not impugning Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler’s motives by saying this, except to say that his most recent fact check on what GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson had to say about Islam suggests, that he’s strayed far from checking the verifiable facts into, perhaps inadvertantly, taking sides in a complicated debate about Islam. Anyway, Carson doesn’t deserve “four Pinocchios” for saying the following: