Flutterby™! : human trafficking boondoggle

Figleaf: Masking Real Problems With Tabloid Headlines looks at Washington Post: Human Trafficking Evokes Outrage, Little Evidence.

A woman from Nepal testified that September that she had been drugged, abducted and forced to work at a brothel in Bombay. A Christian activist recounted tales of women overseas being beaten with electrical cords and raped. A State Department official said Congress must act -- 50,000 slaves were pouring into the United States every year, she said. Furious about the "tidal wave" of victims, Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) vowed to crack down on so-called modern-day slavery.

Of course the reality has been that after $150M there have been "..1,362 victims of human trafficking... since 2000...", resulting in 148 federal cases. Once again, Congress gets "Marc Klaas"ed, and we end up with wasted money and fewer civil liberties because of outrage over events that weren't true.

Figleaf 's commentary points out most of the flaws in this, I've got two questions:

1. Where is our press in doing basic back of the envelope questions about these statistics when they come up. It's great that we're seeing this fact-checking 8 years later, but how about some basic back of the envelope "hey, that claims 10% of all illegal immigration is forced" calculation when they're proposing wasting our money and civil liberties.
2. How is any reasonable press letting the people who vote for this shit re-elected?