Local right-wing pol Greg Patterson, who blogs under the name Espresso Pundit, is a nut on several levels, but he reads the Republic closely and occasionally catches it out.

Today he notes that the paper, in its endorsement of Felicia Rotellini for AG, praises her temperament.

This point Patterson ridicules (“My puppy has a nice temperament”) unfairly and dumbly.

(For one, a better temperament is something many Arizona politicians need. Two, it’s not clear he understands what the word means. I don’t think his puppy does have a “nice” temperament for example. I’d bet that, like most puppies, it has an overexcitable, easily distractible, immature one. And finally, in any case the paper didn’t say Rotellini had a nice temperament; in this context it was obviously talking about probity and fairness and the like.)

Anyway, he goes on to note that a few months ago the paper went out to praise Rotellini’s “significant” courtroom experience.

It’s since come out she doesn’t have much of that: Patterson quotes a more recent Republic story that says Rotellini’s never tried a criminal case.

Says Patterson:

Neither the Republic nor Rotellini ever bothered to tell voters that the Republic’s Primary endorsement was based on an incorrect statement. It’s obvious why Rotellini didn’t go back to the Republic editorial board and set the record straight. She would have had to concede that she had exaggerated her record so much that she caused the Republic to get it wrong. Then the public would know that while she was touting her record as a “career” prosecutor, she had actually never tried a criminal case.

Full post here.