Not quite as good as "sexual indoctrination centers" and "sexualized activists ... stalking their parents," but still worth noting:
The liberals have the three major broadcast networks; they have PBS; they have CNN, MSNBC and Bloomberg on cable; they have the powerful voices of THE WASHINGTON POST, LOS ANGELES TIMES and NEW YORK TIMES. We have the Fox News Channel (which only seeks to present both sides and is not outright conservative) and talk radio.
-- Paul Weyrich, Free Congress Foundation commmentary, Sept. 26.
Beyond the Valley of the Description-Equals-Promotion Fallacy Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily still has no intention of offer fair and balanced coverage of the California education bills issue, even as the opponents of the bills who WND love to quote make increasingly bizarre claims about them. From a Sept. 26 WND article featuring Campaign for Children and Families head Randy Thomasson:
"If Arnold Schwarzenegger signs these bills, we will be calling on people to leave the governor's race blank on their ballot and calling upon pro-family people to remove their children from the government school system," Thomasson said.
Life in California under these bills would mean that "children would not go to school anymore, they would go to sexual indoctrination centers for six hours a day. They would come home sexualized activists at an early age, stalking their parents and radically changing the society we live in."
AB 606 would allow the state to financially destroy local schools unless those districts trained all their teachers to promote transsexuality, bisexuality and homosexuality as "good" and "natural" for children as young as ages four and five, Thomasson said.
Thomasson's depiction is allow to stand unchallenged, despite his obvious distortions and unhinged rhetoric.
WND describes CCF only as a "family group" despite its clear conservative ties. It also repeats its misleading description of a signed law that added "sexual orientation" to the non-discrimination provisions any group accepting state money must abide by as a mandate "to promote those alternative choices."
And needless to say, WND permits nothing to counter Thomasson's views, even as far out there as they are.
Riehl Weighs In on George Allen Topic: NewsBusters
Via TBogg, we learn of the latest shenannigans by our ol' buddy (and NewsBusters poster) Dan Riehl. At his own blog, Riehl is claiming that Sen. George Allen is undergoing a "lynching" via revelations of his history of making racist remarks; below a picture of one of Allen's (white) accusers with his (black) wife, but before he details said accuser's CV -- as if that's relevant to the conversation; are people with Ph.D's in anthropology not qualifed to speak on racial issues? -- Riehl adds: "It's a little difficult to imagine he's the type of guy one would want to hang around the pond and crack wise with about race...." As TBogg points out, the accuser wasn't "hanging around the pond" with Allen; he had come to pick up a puppy.
This, remember, from a guy who was eager to falsely smear S.R. Sidarth as a racist. And yes, he's still listed as a NewsBusters blogger. Riehl, apparently, is the kind of blogger the MRC likes.
Finally! Topic: CNSNews.com
Four days after WorldNetDaily did so and six days after the original column ran, CNSNews.com finally addresses the controversy between columnist Michelle Malkin -- whose Sept. 20 column attacking the Associated Press CNS ran -- and the AP. But, like WND, it did so in a biased fashion, running only Malkin's response to the AP (in which AP's original response is buried) while not letting AP's response stand on its own.
New Article: AIM's Game of Semantics Topic: Accuracy in Media
AIM's Cliff Kincaid claims that the CIA is not operating secret prisons, even though they were secret and people were imprisoned. Read more.
A Sept. 25 CNSNews.com article by Susan Jones about an classified intelligence report that reportedly asserts that the Iraq war has heightened increased the terrorist threat -- which focuses less on that conclusion than on the fact that it was leaked classified information -- concludes by claiming: "Some say the leak to the New York Times may have been timed to bolster the Democrats' Monday hearing." Jones quotes nobody making this claim.
We have to wonder: Do any of the "some" claiming this reside outside of the Media Research Center's offices?
In a rather selective attack on President Clinton's statements during a "Fox News Sunday" interview with Chris Wallace, Noel Sheppard used a Sept. 25 NewsBusters post to narrowly focus on Clinton's claims that when Clinton launched an attack on Sudan in 1998 at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, "Clinton had performed these attacks to distract the American people from his extracurricular activities much as in the movieWag the Dog." Sheppard was quick to do some quote-mining to dismiss the claim: "Were there high-ranking Republicans that piled on this assertion? Hardly."
Sheppard does not appear to have checked the archives of his employer. The Media Research Center, in fact, did pile on this assertion by criticizing media outlets who dismissed it.
In an Aug. 21, 1998, CyberAlert, Brent Baker noted that "every network did raise the "Wag the Dog" scenario" in their coverage of the Sudan bombing strike. But Baker seemed unhappy that "CBS questioned the lack of "bipartisan patriotism." When ABC's George Stephanopoulos said that "Yesterday White House advisers were saying that one of the reasons the President was wary of a giving a more fulsome, elaborate apology Monday night was because he was afraid of projecting weakness in the face of potential hot spots around the world and now we know why," Baker responded: "Who really believes that? Instead, Clinton’s now ridiculed."
A Sept. 7, 1998, MRC MediaWatch began "Three days after admitting a sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky, Bill Clinton authorized cruise-missile attacks on suspected terrorist sites in Afghanistan and Sudan. Was this attack intended to divert attention from Monicagate?" The MRC seemed to concur: "If the timing had been a cynical damage control strategy, it surely worked in the short run: From Thursday to Sunday, the evening shows on ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN carried 78 stories on the attack to just six Lewinsky pieces." The item also appeared to criticize those who tried to supported that theory:
Media and Republican figures initially questioned the attack’s timing, but the backlash came quickly. In Time’s daily Internet update, Frank Pellegrini reported: "Although Clinton-haters Newt Gingrich and Dan Burton have avowed their support of the strike, Republicans Arlen Specter and Dan Coats did not shy from the low road."
The item further attacked ABC's Ted Koppel for saying that it "is, in the final analysis, unthinkable" to "doubt [Clinton's] word on this occasion": "But Koppel did not find it "unthinkable" in 1991 to charge that the 1980 Reagan campaign delayed the release of American hostages in Iran. Nor was it "unthinkable" days before the 1992 election to wonder if the Bush administration secretly armed the Iraqis before the Gulf War."
In an Aug. 10, 1999, MagazineWatch item, Tim Graham beat up on a U.S. News & World Report writer who claimed that a "reporter who demanded to know if Defense Secretary William Cohen had seen the movie Wag the Dog" was a sign of "the reliable inanity of the Washington press corps." Graham responded by suggesting that dismissing the "Wag the Dog" claim meant dismissing any questions about the Sudan strike: "Reporters who lapped up Peter Arnett’s tales of bombing Iraqi baby-milk factories found it somehow suddenly unpatriotic to follow up on this still largely unknown story."
Before Sheppard continues to push his claim that "Wag the Dog" speculation about Clinton was discouraged and shouted down by Republicans themselves, he might want to do a little more research.
CNS Still Silent on Malkin-AP Spat Topic: CNSNews.com
Even though Michelle Malkin's syndicate has apparently sent out to those media outlets who print her column -- of which CNSNews.com is one -- a letter from the Associated Press reacting to Malkin's Sept. 20 column (which CNS ran) attacking AP as well as Malkin's reponse to it, and even though fellow conservative website WorldNetDaily has already run that response (but framed it in a biased manner), CNS has still not acknowledged the controversy surrounding Malkin's column.
What was that about CNS vowing to "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story"?
The Sexpidemic! Jihad Rolls On Topic: WorldNetDaily
Beware when Joseph Farah writes a "news" article. It will undoubtedly include numerous journalisic breaches up to and including plagiarism, as we've detailed.
Thus, it's no suprise that the first thing wrong in a Sept. 23 Farah-penned WorldNetDaily article is the headline. It reads:
School strip searches mandated by House With student molestations skyrocketing, lawmakers demand weapon in drug fight
First, as even the article itself states, the House bill in question does not "mandate" strip searches; rather, as even Farah himself describes it, it would require schools to "develop policies for searching students, or face the loss of some federal funding," and it would provide immunity for teachers and administrators regarding those searches. Mandating a policy on strip searches is not the same thing as mandating the searches themselves.
Second, Farah offers no objective documentation to support the idea that "student molestations" are, in fact, "skyrocketing." What he offers instead is a qualified claim: that "student molestations seem to be reaching epidemic proportions in schools across America" (italics ours). In fact, all WND has done is compile anecdotal examples and attempt to pass them off as a "trend."
Farah states that "WND has documented the incidents of teacher-student sex throughout the country – particularly the new trend of female teachers molesting male students." But, as we've pointed out, this list was cribbed from a gossip site and stretches back more than 15 years, which hardly makes it a "new trend." And again, there's no explanation of why WND is placing such a focus on "female teachers molesting male students."
Farah concludes: "WND news editor Joe Kovacs, who has spearheaded the research on this trend, is scheduled to appear Wednesday on "The O'Reilly Factor" on the Fox News Channel to discuss the issue." Given O'Reilly's history of misinformation, that seems like the perfect venue for Kovacs.
Meanwhile... Topic: WorldNetDaily
Robert Beale (WorldNetDailiy investor and Vox Day's dad) is still on the lam, a fugitive from justice from tax evasion charges. His co-defendent in the case, the president and COO of the company Beale operates, was found guilty of aiding and abetting Beale's tax evasion.
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.
