After reading this ridiculous “gotcha” hit job by Politico’s Andy Barr, let me tell you what I know.

• During the course of an inteview on the Obama administration’s record on protecting the border, Texas Governor Rick Perry referred to Juarez, Mexico as “the most dangerous city in America.”
• After speaking with an aide, Perry indicated (correctly) that Juarez is in fact in Mexico, not the United States.

That is it. Those are literally the only two pieces of factual information conveyed by Andy Barr’s ridiculous story. Barr doesn’t even have the basic journalistic decency to quote anything Perry said to the assembled reporters about the administration’s border enforcement efforts. Just an arguable slip of the tongue by someone who – beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt – knows exactly where Juarez is and the problems it poses for the jurisdiction for which he has been responsible for over a decade. In fact, if Rick Perry did not know Juarez was in Mexico, why did Juarez come up during a discussion of the Obama administration’s enforcement of the Mexican border? In point of fact, if Andy Barr will check a globe, he will see that Juarez IS in “America,” it just isn’t in the United States. But, whatever, let us suppose that Andy Barr is correct and that Rick Perry meant the United States of America with his initial remark (which he corrected immediately). We are still left with the following questions:

Why is this a news story? Why does the headline describe this as a “Texas-sized gaffe”? Why is the first line of the article “it seems Texas isn’t big enough for Rick Perry”? Is Andy Barr really intending to assert that Rick Perry believes that Juarez is in Texas?

When confronted with these questions questions on twitter, Barr responded:

1. @DanIsett @jstrevino OOOOH that’s what it means. Thanks so much for clearing that up.about 2 hours ago via web in reply to DanIsett
2. @jstrevino @DanIsett I’m just reporting what he said. If you read the item you’d see that he corrected himself. I’m not asserting anything.

This, apparently, is the best defense Andy Barr has for this “story.” Who, other than an agenda-driven hack would look out at the panoply of events occurring in the world today and determine that this remark merited a story unto itself? I suppose it is possible that Andy Barr just isn’t very interested in keeping his career as a reporter covering stories that anyone could possibly care about, but given that he works for Politico, “agenda-driven hack” seems by far to be the more likely explanation.