I just spoke with Robert Bluey about his Human Events Online story from last week, which misleadingly trumpeted an upcoming Al Gore speech under the headline “Al Gore to Attack Bush ‘Police State.’”

As I wrote, the decision to put “police state” in quotes suggested that Gore would use the phrase in his speech, even though it appeared nowhere in the MoveOn.org press release from which Bluey quoted.

The potential deception was magnified when Matt Drudge linked to the story, reprinting the headline in giant type under an angry-looking picture of Gore.

Of course, the Vice President never used the phrase “police state” in his speech on Monday, a fact that Drudge and Bluey failed to note in their items on the speech.

When I spoke with him, Bluey admitted that the phrase “police state” was not a direct quote. Instead, he said that Human Events “inferred” that Gore was attacking “the police state,” calling it a “buzzword.” When I asked whether he understood how putting the phrase in quotes might leave readers with a misleading impression of what Gore actually would say, he said he did.

The real test, however, is whether Human Events will do better in the future. Given the publication’s misleading direct mail and dissemination of the deceptive and hateful writings of Ann Coulter, it’s hard to be optimistic.