On February 23, an electoral reform bill received its final approval in the Mexican Senate en route to being signed into law. The day before, New York Times bureau chief Natalie Kitroeff, demonstrating an ongoing inability to distinguish between a news article and an opinion piece, declared that the law was “the most significant in a series of moves by the Mexican president to undermine the country’s fragile institutions — part of a challenges to democratic norms across the entire Western Hemisphere.” If the reforms stand, she warned menacingly, “it will become difficult to carry out free and fair elections — including in a crucial presidential contest next year.”

For his part, David Frum — who, together with his editor at the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, were the key purveyors of the lies that justified the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq — took to the pages of the magazine to warn the world that “liberal democracy in Mexico is under assault” by Mexico’s “erratic and authoritarian president.”

“In Mexico last week, I found virtual unanimity among academics, businesspeople and political commentators that the country’s democracy is now in real danger,” wrote the Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman, undoubtedly tapping into an extremely unrepresentative sample of the nation. And not to be left out, NPR warned that the new law “gutted” the country’s electoral commission — yes, “gutted” — constituting “a blow to its young democracy.”