It has been said that it doesn’t matter where a conservative stands on immigration reform, he will be accused of xenophobia, regardless. In a recent post (largely) about yours truly, a contributor to the HuffPost seems to confirm this maxim.

Consider this. Despite the fact that I opposed the Arizona immigration law in 2010 — made the conservative case for more Hispanic immigration in 2011 — and backed Rubio’s DREAM Act in 2012, according to this HuffPost contributor, I am “emblematic of the right-wing populist revolt against Rubio.”

Here’s the funny thing. He apparently thinks I’m Mickey Kaus.

Seriously.

Here are two excerpts from the story. If you click the hyperlinks, you’ll see they are attributing Mickey’s comments to me:

“For days now, Lewis has been waxing apocalyptic on his blog over the dawning of the end-times that will be ushered in by the passage of this bill. According to Lewis, if it passes, then President Obama, using Rubio as his tool, will have ‘transformed what America is,’ since the Hispanic share of the electorate — and hence Democrats’ electoral prospects — will increase upon legalization.”

 

“… Lewis’ fuller critique of the bill, incidentally, isn’t without its merits…”

If you click the links, you will be taken to Mickey Kaus’ blog — not mine.

Now, normally, if a reporter makes a mistake, I quietly contact that reporter and ask them to fix it. After all, we all make mistakes (I know I do), so why make a big deal out of it? In this case, however, the story is so mean-spirited — and egregiously shoddy — as to not warrant such consideration.

But I do wonder about the HuffPost. At the time of this writing, the story has been up for 22 hours. I have tweeted about it, and Erick Erickson has alerted the author (as well as Erickson’s 90,000+ followers.)

At HuffPo @AlexKnepper has written this http://t.co/FKKD5UW1K6 and spends several paragraphs dinging @MattKLewis for stuff he didn’t write

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) June 17, 2013

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* UPDATE: The HuffPost has fixed and updated their story. Additionally, it is worth noting this was not written by a reporter employed by Huffington Post, but instead, was a blog submission. For the sake of accuracy and clarity, I have also updated the headline and body of this post to reflect that.