ConWebBlog: The Weblog of ConWebWatch

WND's Farah Wants In On Some Of That Sweet IRS-Bashing Action

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:06:17 -0500

Years of bogus Obama scandal-mongering means that nobody believes WorldNetDaily anymore, but editor Joseph Farah is desperate to keep his website relevant.

You can smell the desperation in the headline of his May 19 WND column: "Hey! I got audited too!" The column itself reflects the headline: The politically-motivated-IRS-audit train has left the station, and Farah is running after it trying to get aboard, invoking his own history of purportedly politically motivated audits against various entities he used to run:

I was a prominent target of Bill Clinton’s reign of Internal Revenue Service hell on individuals and tax-exempt organizations. And I was the guy who broke the story about it – long before there was a WND. Back then, I had to get the help of the Wall Street Journal, which, to its credit, gave me commentary space to lay out the whole story and turned the sordid tale into an 11-part series of editorials.
But in this day of historical forgetfulness, no one in the media seems to remember how Bill Clinton used the IRS to terrorize Paula Jones and many other women who had the misfortune of crossing his path along with a virtual who’s who of those who made his “enemies list” like me.

Farah fails to note the fact that a joint congressional committee, formed in response to complaints by Farah's Western Journalism Center and other groups, found "no credible evidence" that the IRS was biased against anti-Clinton groups.

Further, Farah expressed no concern that we remember about claims of politiclally motivated IRS audits under the Bush administration -- heck, at one time WND was essentially begging the Bush administration to sic the IRS on a group critical of the administration's agenda.

Farah generally doesn't miss an opportunity to portray himself as a victim, which is why he's so desperate to glom onto the IRS story.

NewsBusters' Sheppard Issues Another Correction

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:14:24 -0500

NewsBusters associate editor Noel Sheppard is practically a correction-generating machine, frequently putting his right-wing agenda ahead of the truth in such a manner that even the normally reluctant NewsBusters has to issue corrections (though not as many as should be issued).

And so we see it again in a May 21 post, in which Sheppard had repeatedly identified Lizz Winstead, who had made a tweet of questionable taste regarding the Oklahoma tornadoes that she quickly apologized for and deleted after the scope of the devastation became clear -- as co-creator of "Jon Stewart's Daily Show."

Well, no -- Winstead was co-creator of "The Daily Show" as hosted by Craig Kilborn. Near as we can tell, she hasn’t had any direct involvement in the show since 1998 or so, before Stewart became the host.

Well, Sheppard managed to figure that out after the fact, because he has added a correction to his post:

*****Update: The original version of this article referred to Jon Stewart's Daily Show. The headline and the text have been corrected as Craig Kilborn was the original host.

By contrast, Sheppard felt no need to apologize for stating in a tweet, "If contraceptives R 2 B covered by health insurance shouldn't alcohol since sober people don't need birth control?"

Remember, this guy has a actual title (and, presumably, commensurate salary) at the MRC -- which it appears he will continue to have despite his lengthy record of screw-ups.

WND Basically Does A Push Poll on Obama Impeachment

Wed, 22 May 2013 06:39:55 -0500

Bob Unruh waxes poetic -- and highly biased -- in a May 19 WorldNetDaily article:

The faux stone columns from his Denver acceptance speech are crumbling, the fireworks have fizzled and the unadulterated adulation of Barack Obama is a sour feeling of disillusion, as a new poll reveals half of America wants him impeached, including a stunning one in four Democrats.
“It may be early in the process for members of Congress to start planning for impeachment of Barack Obama, but the American public is building a serious appetite for it,” said Fritz Wenzel, of Wenzel Strategies, which did the telephone poll Thursday. It has a margin of error of 4.36 percent.

Yes, WND's ethically challenged pollster strikes again. But if you look at the questions Wenzel asked, they are so biased and so clearly designed to elicit an affirmative response for impeachment that it's no better than a push poll:

The administration of Democrat Barack Obama has still not satisfied congressional and media questions about just what it knew and when it knew it about the terrorist attack on U.S. diplomats in Benghazi, Libya, last September 11. That attack killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya. The Obama administration has changed its explanation of that attack several times since and has so far refused to identify those officials who made key decisions not to send help to stop the attacks, and who decided not to initially call the killings a terrorist attack. Knowing that and anything else you may be aware of about this issue, do you agree or disagree that President Obama should be impeached over his handling of this situation?
It has been learned that the Internal Revenue Service, under the administration of Democrat Barack Obama, has purposely targeted conservative and Christian groups for harassment over their tax exempt status while giving liberal nonprofit groups little or no scrutiny. Further, the IRS apparently leaked private tax information from these conservative groups to opposing liberal groups who were able to use that confidential information for political advantage. Knowing this and anything else you may be aware of about this issue, do you agree or disagree that President Obama should be impeached over his handling of this situation?
It has been learned that the U.S. Department of Justice under the administration of Democrat Barack Obama secretly obtained confidential telephone records of many reporters of the Associated Press in Washington, D.C. Attorney General Eric Holder has said his department obtained the phone records without the permission or knowledge of the Associated Press in order to find who in the federal government was leaking information about terrorist plots against America. AP officials have strongly protested this invasion of their privacy but the administration stands by its actions. Knowing this and anything else you may be aware of about this issue, do you agree or disagree that President Obama should be impeached over his handling of this situation?

Since WND is paying Wenzel good money to get the poll results it wants, it certainly won't tell you how abysmal Wenzel's polling was in the 2012 elections. Most notably, in the Missouri Senate race, Wenzel had Todd Akin ahead of Claire McCaskill by 4 points a few weeks before the election -- which McCaskill won by 16 points.

CNS Takes 'Irrelevant' Remark Out of Context

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:37:35 -0500

Susan Jones does her best to take Obama adviser Dan Pfeifer's claim about it being "irrelevant" whether the IRS broke the law by allegedly giving extra scrutiny to the tax-exempt applications of tea-party groups out of context.

The headline of Jones' May 20 CNS article reads, "Obama's Point Man: 'The Law Is Irrelevant,'" and Jones herself wrote that Pfeifer "at one point told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, 'The law is irrelevant.'"

The full context of Pfeifer's remarks is, of course, buried farther down in the article. That context -- which Jones didn't see fit to lead with -- is that the legality of the IRS' actions are "irrelevant" because President Obama considers it to be wrong regardless.

This is yet another case in which CNS decided it would regurgitate right-wing talking points instead of report the truth.

The WND Birther Blackout Is Back On

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:56:01 -0500

Earlier this month, WorldNetDaily dipped its toes back into the birther pool after a post-election break. Now, WND is is full pre-election mode -- with all the blackouts of inconvenient facts that go along with it.

Bob Unruh devotes his May 19 WND article to regurgitating the birther talking points regarding the latest lawsuit, and he has no time for inconvenient facts.

Unruh touts an affidavit from Cold Case Posse chief Mike Zullo asserting that "there was probable cause that forgery and fraud had been committed" regarding Obama's birth certificate. He makes no mention of Frank Arudini's deconstruction of a similar Zullo affidavit pointing out that, among many other falsehoods and deceptions, that Zullo claims to be speaking from "pesonal knowledge," which is simply false based on the legal definition of the term since "a full 60% of the affidavit has been told to him by Jerome Corsi or gleaned from other sources on the Web."

Unruh claims that the cold case posse was assembled by Sheriff Joe Arpaio "at the request of his constituents, who were concerned they were being defrauded by having an ineligible candidate on the 2012 election ballot." That's a highly disingenuous take on the truth; as we documented, WND's Jerome Corsi got the investigation ball rolling by making a birther presentation to a tea party group.

Unruh notes that Roy Moore is on the Alabama Supreme Court overseeing the case in question and "is on record previously questioning Obama’s constitutional eligibility to serve as president," but he doesn't bring up whether such a prejudicial opinion should disqualify him from judging this case.

Unruh fails to disclose that Larry Klayman, who is representing the birther side of this case, has done legal work for WND, thus violating longstanding journalistic ethics about reporting conflicts of interest.

We'll give Unruh a pass on this one since it was failed after his article was published, but don't look for any future reporting on an amicus brief filed by the Alabama Democratic party in the case that exposes yet another flaw in Zullo's affidavit: that it's signed "solely in his personal capacity and without any title, even an imaginary one."

So: The birther games have resumed at WND, and they have as much to do with reality as its earlier anti-Obama jihad.

At NewsBusters, Telling The Truth = "Demonizing"

Tue, 21 May 2013 10:21:11 -0500

Remember the Media Research Center's multimillion-dollar campaign last year of demanding that the media "Tell The Truth!" except when it made conservatives look bad? Well, they're still at it.

Jeffrey Meyer huffs in a headline on a May 20 NewsBusters post: 'MSNBC Dutifully Demonizes Conservative Black GOP Politician: ‘He Might Make Todd Akin Look Like A Moderate'." And how, exactly did MSNBC "demonize" this politician? By telling the truth.

Meyer complained that MSNBC's Chuck Todd "hammered the GOP’s nominee for Virginia Lieutenant Governor, African-American pastor E.W. Jackson, as extreme and someone who 'might make Todd Akin look like a moderate.' 'Can the GOP win in 2013 with a ticket of candidates who are best known for being very conservative and very outspoken on social issues?' Todd rhetorically asked before playing several clips of Jackson in a manner worthy of a liberal attack ad." If that wasn't enough, Meyer writes, "Nowhere in the segment did Todd feel it necessary to mention the passionate speech Jackson gave at the convention, instead choosing to mock the candidate as worse than Todd Akin, the U.S. Senate candidate last year now infamous for his "legitimate rape" remarks."

Oddly, Meyer doesn't include the content of the Jackson clips Todd played in the body of his item, only in the transcript at the end.Meyer also doesn't complain of any inaccuracy on Todd's part, only that Todd played accurate clips of Jackson saying:

E.W. JACKSON: Planned Parenthood has been far more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was and the Democrat Party and their black civil rights allies are partners in this genocide.
[...]
JACKSON: I know that people say, well, it's unfair to associate homosexuality with pedophilia or some of these other perversions, but I believe that there is a direct connection because what they really want is absolute, complete and total sexual freedom.

Does Meyer not think these remarks are controversial? Or is he trying to work the ref as the MRC did last year, trying to discourage any scrutiny of Republican candidates?

WND's Colin Flaherty Pretends He Knows About Kansas City

Tue, 21 May 2013 06:19:25 -0500

Colin Flaherty is still trying to race-bait, this time in a May 19 WorldNetDaily column insisting that it's "black mobs," and only "black mobs," taking part in "dozens" of incidents in Kansas City:

I’ve talked to police. I’ve talked to victims. I’ve seen video. I’ve read Twitter streams and Facebook pages. I’ve read comments on Kansas City news sites. And every single one of these sources confirms one fact: Everyone involved in the dozens of episodes of racial violence and lawlessness at the Kansas City Plaza is black.

Or are all those observers as racist as the police? Selectively noticing just the black people? Are whites or Asians or Amish also making the Plaza a mini-war zone? And are police ignoring them?

Huh? What is this "Kansas City Plaza" he's talking about? Anyone who is remotely familiar with Kansas City knows the area he's referring to is called Country Club Plaza. If Flaherty had actually done the amount of research he claims he did, he would know that as well.

And are there really "dozens of episodes of racial violence and lawlessness" there? A report from a Kansas City TV station cites "several violent teen fights" in recent years, but we haven't seen any evidence of "dozens" of instances of "black mob violence" there.

But Flaherty wasn't done demonstrating his ignorance. Near the end of his column, he wrote: "Councilman Reed, another question: You want honesty? Then can you please honestly tell me where black people in Kansas got the idea that they can visibly and publicly break the law, hurt people, destroy property, over and over again?"

Again, as anyone remotely familiar with the area knows -- and Flaherty would know too if he'd done the research he claims he has -- Country Club Plaza is in Kansas City, Missouri. Unless Flaherty thinks all the "black people in Kansas" are crossing the border to make Kansas City look bad.

If Flaherty is incapable doing even the most basic research about the city he's writing about, his obsessive race-baiting must be just as factually shoddy.

CNS Still Unhappy Feds Are Spending Money On Gays

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:25:12 -0500

CNSNews.com remains unusually concerned that the federal government is spending money on gay people.

A May 15 article by Elizabeth Harrington states: "While the White House claims its stimulus package 'supported as many as 3.5 million jobs,' none were yielded from a $152,000 project to ready lesbians for 'adoptive parenthood.'" Harrington obviously disapproves of the expenditure, but she doesn't explain why.

CNS does have a particular disdain for LGBT folks being the beneficiary of federal largesse: Of the 20 articles currently listed on CNS' "Waste Watch" page, five of them involve LGBT issues.

WND Columnist Baselessly Blames Rise In Military Assaults on Obama

Mon, 20 May 2013 19:16:17 -0500

Jane Chastain writes in her May 15 WorldNetDaily column:

Last week, the Pentagon released a report on the soaring number of sexual assaults in the military. These crimes have increased a whopping 129 percent since 2004. The confidential portion of this report indicates that some 26,000 members of our armed forces were sexual assaulted last year alone. However, only 3,347 of these assaults were reported. The reasons are as obvious as they are disturbing.
[...]
Over the years, military necessity has given way to political correctness, which has proved costly and unworkable. This didn’t happen overnight, but the Obama administration recently pulled the pin on two hand grenades that can finish the job by 1) lifting the ban on gays in the military and 2) setting in motion an incremental plan that will place women at the point of the spear in direct ground combat units.

The military has been playing with fire with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and by placing young male and female soldiers and sailors together in barracks and on ships and submarines at the time in their lives when hormones are raging.

Due to constant feminist pressure – not necessity– the line between combat and combat support slowly has been erased to the point that women are now in units that are more physically demanding, and close contact is inevitable.

Men often resent having to carry twice the work load in order to make up for the lack of strength of the female soldiers next to them who receive the same pay.

Also, these soldiers, sailors and airmen not only have to deal with the rigors of military life, but one where no one goes home at night, boredom often sets in and rank rules. No amount of sensitivity training is going to change that!

But if the trend began in 2004, how can be the fault of Obama, who didn't take office until 2008? And how can it be the fault of allowing gays in the military and women to be stationed closer to combat units if, by Chastain's own admission, those changes occurred only "recently"?

Chastain also offers no evidence to back up her claim that "
Men often resent having to carry twice the work load in order to make up for the lack of strength of the female soldiers next to them."

Chastain appears to be much more concerned with attacking Obama than telling the truth.

NewsBusters Double Standard on Political Motives

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:28:14 -0500

NewsBusters' Tom Blumer is shocked -- shocked! -- that anyone would impute a political motive on the part of Republicans who want to get rid of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Responding in a May 19 post to claims that "Republicans are eager to claim a trophy firing" in targeting Holder, Blumer insisted that the GOP is operating only on the purest of motives:

There are plenty of Republicans, conservatives, and a few on the left who would like to see Holder step down as Attorney General, not because they want a "trophy," but because no man in modern U.S. history and possibly all of U.S. history has so thoroughly politicized his office to the point of becoming his administration's policy enforcement arm, perverting the rule of law almost beyond recognition in the process. People who genuinely care about this country's deterioration as a civil society want Holder gone because his departure may stop or slow down the bleeding and may force out some or most of the truth he and his department have been hiding.

Blumer went on to whine that no evidence was offered that Republicans' anti-Holder operation is partisan -- but Blumer offered no evidence that Republicans' motives are as pure as the driven snow.

Since this is NewsBusters, you can be sure that someone was doing the very same thing Blumer was criticizing. That someone is Noel Sheppard, who just a few hours before Blumer's post went up was dismissing the idea that IRS scrutiny of tea party groups could be anything other than political:

"Can you see in your mind's eye a way that this might not have been political, that this was a misguided stupid way to sort, but that they didn't intend it to be some kind of political attempt to harass the Tea Party?"
So actually asked CNN's Candy Crowley of her guest Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) concerning the Internal Revenue Service scandal Sunday[.]
[...]
So Crowley actually thinks it's possible that this wasn't political?!?

Apparently, according to NewsBusters, Democrats operate only for political reasons, and Republicans care only about the country.