WND Peter Paul Sycophancy Watch Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's latest piece of Peter Paul sycophancy comes in the form of a Sept. 23 article by Art Moore that promotes Paul's claim that David Kendall -- attorney for Bill Clinton, whom Paul is suing to, for all practical purposes, smear the Clintons and try to chop some time off his upcoming prison term for stock fraud -- of "filing a fabricated statement in a court brief" to quash Paul's lawsuit.
What it boils down to -- and Moore does eventually get to it after first fluffing Paul as a "business mogul": A brief filed by Kendall cites statements by Paul to claim that Paul admitted that his little stock fraud adventure brought down Stan Lee Media, the company Paul headed until it collapsed and he fled to Brazil, where he fought extradiction on fraud charges for two years (as we've detailed). Since the current version of Paul's civil lawsuit claims that Clinton's alleged backing out on a deal with Paul to work for Stan Lee Media and purportedly discouraging an investor from getting involved with the company is what brought it down, rather than Paul's admitted criminal activity, Paul is vehemently denying this.
As per usual, Moore whitewashes Paul's criminal activity, once again describing it in bamboozling legalistic terminology like "a 10(b)5 violation of the Securities and Exchange Commission." The prosecutor put in much clearer terms:
At today's guilty plea proceedings, PAUL admitted orchestrating a scheme in which he and others manipulated Stan Lee Media stock, trading it through numerous nominee accounts that hid from the investing public PAUL's ownership and control of large volumes of stock that were being traded. PAUL also admitted that to further the scheme, he sought to inflate and stabilize the price of the stock by instructing market makers in Stan Lee Media stock to execute trades that created a false appearance of constant demand and that concealed from the investing public the fact that PAUL had arranged for large blocks of stock to be sold at substantial discounts in after-hours trading. Finally, PAUL admitted that he had secretly borrowed millions of dollars on margin using as collateral the stock that he had traded through the nominee accounts; in this way PAUL concealed from the investing public that he was effectively liquidating a substantial part of his stock holdings in Stan Lee Media.
Moore quotes Paul as saying that "I did everything humanly possible to save the company after Clinton did everything possible to destroy it," but he never point out that this behavior was illegal. And again, Moore fails to note Paul's long criminal history.
Morgan: 'Spinach Salad, Mr. Keller?' Topic: WorldNetDaily
Melanie Morgan -- co-author of an upcoming attack book on Cindy Sheehan --is still hatin' on New York Times editor Bill Keller. Morgan still wants Keller to die a painful death for the Times' role in exposing the Bush administration warrantless survelliance program. Her Sept. 22 WorldNetDaily column keeps up the rhetoric, making use of Bush administration rhetoric by calling it a "terrorist wiretapping program" and suggesting that Keller has "gotten away with murder."
But as she is prone to do, Morgan just can't stop there -- she has to go straight to the death threats:
Bill Keller and his ilk at the New York Times have done more to harm the United States in the war against terrorism than many of the Islamic jihadists who have been rounded up and shipped to the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
[...]
I've said it before and I'll say it again. If tried and convicted of treason, Bill Keller should be executed. But first, the Department of Justice needs to get cracking and begin the investigation into whether there are actionable charges.
When I'm feeling charitable, sometimes I soften my position. Maybe Bill Keller should merely spend the rest of his life in a tiny, cold prison cell at Guantanamo Bay. And then I like to imagine the guards blaring the Red Hot Chili Peppers and issuing Keller a prayer mat and a copy of the Quran.
Malkin vs. AP: WND Is Biased, CNS Still Silent Topic: WorldNetDaily
We have one response, sorta, to our question of whether WorldNetDaily or CNSNews.com would run the Associated Press' response to Michelle Malkin's syndicated column (which both WND and CNS ran) attacking it for its connection with photographer Bilal Hussein.
WND did print the AP's response -- as part of a column by Malkin attacking it. It is not allowed to stand alone, as did Malkin's original column. Not exactly fair treatment.
CNS, meanwhile, has done nothing with it so far.
UPDATE: The Horse's Mouth responds to Malkin. Don't expect WND or CNS to notice.
The WorldNetDaily obsession with (female) teachers having sex with students continues. From a Sept. 22 article:
Another attractive female teacher, charged with having a sexual relationship with a male student, will not be serving any jail time – indeed, a Denton County, Texas, grand jury has refused to issue an indictment of the 25-year-old woman.
Gee ... editorialize much, WND?
And of course, as we've previously noted, WND includes its list of female teachers caught having sex with students without noting that some of the incidents on that list date back as much as 15 years and was plucked from a gossip website, or explaining why is holding only female teachers to such close scrutiny.
More Anti-Gay Misinformation from Farah Topic: WorldNetDaily
While we haven't heard a peep from Joseph Farah about what he really wants to do about gays, his Sept. 22 WorldNetDaily column contains more anti-gay rhetoric and misinformation. In the column, he claimed that Tyron Garner, one of the plaintiffs in the Lawrence v. Texas case -- in which the Supreme Court ultimately overturned the country's sodomy laws -- "died mysteriously in a Houston hospital."
But as most newsreports on Garner's death have stated, Garner died of complications of meningitis. No mystery there.
Farah also uses his column to promote a book (sold by WND, natch) claiming that the Lawrence v. Texas case was a setup done for the express purpose of overturning the law. But as a law-student blogger notes, "if you break a law and get caught, you have standing. It doesn't matter why you broke the law or why you got caught. There's no clearer case or controversy than being in jail":
What I really think Judge Law, or at least this article, wanted to say was that homosexuals are sneaky and conniving and will stop at nothing to force their agenda upon the entire world--even resorting to staging faux controversies in order to bring the perfect case before the court.
Some of the most famous civil rights stories in history were staged: Miss Rosa Parks was a secretary for the NAACP; the lunch counter sit-ins of the 1960s weren't held because somebody wanted a sandwich. These scenes were crafted to avoid any judicial wiggling, to hit the issue right on the head and avoid rulings on other grounds.
Which seems to confirm our suspicions that not only does Farah believe that homosexuality should be illegal but that it must be. But he won't explicitly say that, or what he thinks the penalty for homosexuality (death? re-education?) should be.
A Sept. 21 CNSNews.com article purported to detail that "Hugo Chavez's Bush-bashing tirade at the United Nations on Wednesday drew little or no response in most quarters, except for liberal Democratic blogs, where cheers for Chavez dominated the discourse."
While Jones cited only one "liberal Democratic blog" in support of her claim, she also repeated claims that "A number of Democrats also have said derogatory things about President Bush." Among them was Rep. Charles Rangel, who"told the Congressional Black Caucus, 'George Bush is our Bull Connor.' " Needless to say, Jones failed to note that conservatives have similarly compared Democrats to Bull Connor -- like Mychal Massie, who ironically later condemned Rangel for doing so.
But later the same day, CNS' Melanie Hunter wrote an article highlighting Rangel's criticism of Chavez's speech, in which he stated, "You don't come into my country, you don't come into my congressional district, and you don't condemn my president" (even though the United Nations is technically not part of the United States, let alone in Rangel's congressional district). Thus far, Jones' article has not been updated to reflect that Rangel has criticized Chavez -- which would seem to be the fair and journalistic thing to do, since Hunter's citing of Rangel and two other members of Congress seems to contradict Jones' claim that the speech "drew little or no response in most quarters."
Then again, it just may be that CNS would rather let Rangel's remarks about Bush stand unbalanced in Jones' article lest it blunt the article's attack effect -- which, after all, was the point of it.
AP Responds to Malkin; Will WND, CNS Print It? Topic: CNSNews.com
WorldNetDaily and CNSNews.com run Michelle Malkin's syndicated column, and bothran her Sept. 20 column bashing the Associated Press for hiring photographer Bilal Hussein, who conservative bloggers like Malkin accuse of collaborating with terrorists in Iraq.
According to NewsBusters, the AP responded with a letter that is has requested be printed by print and online subscribers to Malkin's column, calling it "filled with innuendo, distortion and factual error." (Malkin responds here.)
The big question: Will CNS and WND, as subscribers to Malkin's column, print the AP's response? We'll be watching.
New Article: The 'Forced Homosexualization' of Joseph Farah Topic: WorldNetDaily
Out There: WorldNetDaily's editor and CEO is so paranoid about anything gay-related that not only does WND pursue a distorted anti-gay agenda, he thinks people critical of it are out to kill him. Read more.
CNS Treats 'Elitist' Meme as Fact Topic: CNSNews.com
A Sept. 20 CNSNews.com article by Kevin Mooney accepts as fact claims by Republican Rep. Peter King and the conservative Center for Immigration Studies that there is a "gap between the elite and public opinion" on the issue of immigration, unquestionly forwarding the CIS' "elite" terminology to describe those who oppose the hardline (er, "enforcement-only") immigration bill in the House.
Mooney even served up a list of these "elitists" -- "the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (USCC), President Bush and U.S. senators who support more lenient immigration legislation such as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)" -- but made no attempt to explain how supporting "more lenient immigration legislation" -- presumably, the Senate immigration bill -- makes one "elitist," let alone obtain any response from these purported "elitists" to find out their views about being placed on such a list.
"Elitist," of course, is a longtimepejorativeRepublicansandconservativeshaveused to describe Democrats, the media, and anything else they feel a need to disparage, something Mooney might also have informed his readers about (well, at least if his employer wasn't one of those conservatives that lovetousetheterm as well).
And, in an attempt at creating an echo chamber, Craig Bannister repeats the CNS article's "elitist" claims -- approvingly, of course -- in a Sept. 20 NewsBusters post.
In a charming turn, the left net-roots and the Webb campaign have taken to spelling out the senator's full name "George Felix Allen," and "Felix" crops up in the Times' comments section as well.
As we've noted, the MRC's Tim Graham has been equally charming by calling Robert Casey Jr., the Democratic challenger to Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, "Bobby."
Perhaps Waters can explain why the "charming" behavior of the "left net-roots" is unacceptable and Graham's "charming" behavior apparently is.
Mychal Massie's Sept. 19 WorldNetDaily column, presented as a open letter to Jesse Jackson, contains the usual rhetorical flourishes ("Who brought 'discredit' on America in the years preceding 9/11, as the mongrel followers of a pedophile and false god bombed American interests around the world?") and personal attacks and smears ("You are the man who rubbed the blood of a fallen hero on your clothing and then lied, saying he died in your arms") that we've come to expect from Massie. But he also gets stuff wrong (which we've also come to expect). He wrote:
You intentionally and erroneously labeled domestic eavesdropping "warrantless wiretapping," never mentioning that it prevented Lyman Farris from blowing up the Brooklyn Bridge, was instrumental in protecting the Sears Towers and was key in uncovering the UK suicide bombers' plan to blow up 10 international passenger planes just one month ago.
Massie never explains why the term "warrantless wiretapping" is erroneous; after all, there is wiretapping and no warrants were obtained to do said wiretapping. And the program, in fact, played no signficant role in thwarting the alleged plot of Iyman Faris (not "Lyman Farris") to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge, and there is only scant evidence that warrantless surveillance played any role in breaking up the British blowing-up-airplanes plot.
Matthew Sheffield, in a Sept. 20 NewsBusters post:
Sometimes when I'm talking about the media with someone who's smart but not particularly that political, they'll sometimes wonder why it's worth pointing out press bias or unfairness. The way they figure it, basically everyone is smart enough to take everything they see in the press with a grain of salt. If they come across something that's not true, they'll reject it.
It's a nice idea in theory, but in practice it just doesn't work that way. Most people are either too busy, too apathetic, or not intelligent enough to question the accuracy of something they see on TV or read somewhere.
Is that why Sheffield keeps falselyclaiming that liberals were trying to "censor" the ABC miniseries "The Path to 9/11" because it put Clinton administration officials in a "bad light" when, in fact, they were complaining that it put them in a false light?
Breaking: New WND Reporter Is Biased! Topic: WorldNetDaily
With his hiring by WorldNetDaily, Bob Unruh has apparently said "screw that" to everything he learned about journalism in his nearly 30 years' experience with the Associated Press. Here's the lead paragraph of his Sept. 20 article:
Another three dozen major American corporations have acceded to the demands of homosexual activists in their corporate decision-making process and have been given a top ranking in an activist group's annual assessment of their accommodations.
Unruh offers no evidence to back up his claim that "demands" have beed "acceded" to. Unruh also misspells "Volvo" as "Volva"; apparently, they don't have those fancy imported vehicles out where he is.
We suspected this would happen. This is apparently the reason he punted his AP career for WND -- he wanted to write biased news and not be held to any sort of standard of fairness. And WND is more than happy to indulge that urge.
Farah Gets It Wrong About Anthrax Topic: WorldNetDaily
Via Orcinus, we learn that WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah has been engaging in false fear-mongering. In his Sept. 11 column regarding the unsolved post-9/11 anthrax attacks, he wrote:
ABC News reported in October and November 2001 that at least five experts had identified a substance called bentonite that was used to upgrade the anthrax found in the letter sent to Sen. Tom Daschle's Washington office. ABC's experts, as well as former U.N. inspectors that worked in Iraq, claimed that bentonite "was a trademark of the Iraqi germ warfare program."
ABC wasn't the only news agency that reported the bentonite discovery. The Wall Street Journal also claimed it was detected in the anthrax mailings that nearly paralyzed the country.
[...]
Remember bentonite? It turns out one of the largest manufacturers is (get ready for this, Michael Moore) a subsidiary of Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer.
In fact, bentonite was not found in the anthrax mailings. David Neiwert at Orcinus links to a website compiling evidence about the anthrax attacks, which points out that, contrary to ABC's claims, no trace of aluminum -- an indicator of bentonite -- was ever detected in tested anthrax samples.
Orcinus also notes that Michelle Malkin linked and excerpted Farah's column as evidence for the erroneous bentonite claim.
A Sept. 18 NewsMax article by Ronald Kessler paints the Bush administration's faith-based initiative in glowing terms, complete with the Bush sycophancy Kessler has become known for:
The media have characterized Bush's faith-based initiative as a way to introduce religion into the public sphere. Because he prays and reads the Bible every day, they routinely portray Bush himself as a religious zealot.
[...]
In fact, many of Bush's closest friends going back to Yale say he has never brought up religion with them. Bush talks about religion publicly only when asked questions by reporters.
Kessler himself declares:
While the initiative may seem like a way of mixing church and state, further examination reveals that it is simply a way to make sure that organizations that help the needy are not deprived of federal funds simply because they are affiliated with a religious group.
Kessler features Jim Towey, the current occupant of the White House's Faith-based and Community Initiatives office, but fails to mention the first occupant of that post, John DiIulio. That could be that after he resigned the post in 2002, he complained that the Bush White House cared much more about politics than policy, infamously calling it "the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis."
Apparently, if Kessler can't turn it into a straw man, he won't address it at all.
