CNS Presents WH's Doctored Video To Justify Acosta's Suspension, Lets Trump Lie About It Topic: CNSNews.com
Needless to say, the folks at the Jim Acosta-hating Media Research Center couldn't have been happier that the White House suspended Acosta's "hard pass" for White House access, and that also goes for the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com. A Nov. 7 blog post by Craig Bannister cheered Acosta's pass suspension, adding that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders "tweeted that the White House stands by its decision to suspend Acosta and invited Americans to watch the video of the incident she embedded in her post," and embedding the Sanders tweet containing the video in his post.
Just one problem: the video was doctored. A video expert enlisted by the Associated Press documented how the video tweeted out by Sanders had frames speeded up to make Acosta's action in trying to keep a White House intern from taking the microphone from him while he was asking President Trump a question look more aggressive than it was in reality, while other frames were slowed down to make the video's run time the same as an unaltered video. The doctored video apparently came from a reporter for far-right conspiradcy site Infowars. Heck, even one of CNS' favorite conservatives, Ben Shapiro, called out Sanders for sending out a doctored video.
Despite all that, Bannister's post was never updated to reflect the controversy over the video.
Two days later, an article by Melanie Arter addressed the issue not by admitting the clear, unambiguous evidence that the video was doctored, but by starting out in stenography mode, giving Trump three paragraphs to falsely rant that the video wasn't doctored:
President Donald Trump called out the media for reporting that a video that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released of a White House intern trying to take the microphone away from CNN’s Jim Acosta at Monday’s White House press conference was doctored.
When asked why Sanders “shared a doctored video of the incident in the East Room,” Trump said, “The taped video of Acosta? What are you talking about? Nobody manipulated it. Give me a break. See that’s just dishonest reporting. All that is is a close-up.”
“They showed it close-up, and he was not nice to that young woman. I don’t hold him for that, because it wasn’t overly, you know, horrible, but all that was-- When you say doctor, you’re a dishonest guy, because it wasn’t doctored. They gave a close-up view. That’s not doctoring,” the president said.
Even though the facts are not on Trump's side, Arter chose instead to present the story as a he said-she said, following Trump's rant with a statement that "The Washington Post reported Thursday that Sanders shared a video 'that appeared to have been altered' to make Acosta’s actions 'ook more aggressive toward a White House intern,'" with two additional paragraphs from the Post article.
Giving falsehoods the same credulity as the truth without admitting that the falsehoods are, in fact, false is the very defition of false balance. That's what you do when you're a stenographer and not a reporter.
Arter concluded her article with some uncritical dissembling from Sanders on the doctored video:
After the media questioned the reasoning behind the White House’s decision, Sanders issued a statement Thursday addressing reports that the video she shared was doctored.
“The question is: did the reporter make contact or not? The video is clear, he did. We stand by our statement,” she said.
Arter did not mention that the question was actually about the doctored video, nor did she point out that Sanders refused to answer the question that was asked. She's a stenographer, after all.
WND Touts Michael Flynn Fund-Raiser, Conspiracy Theory Topic: WorldNetDaily
An anonymously written Nov. 1 WorldNetDaily article touts a fundraiser for admitted perjurer Michael Flynn and advances the right-wing conspiracy theory that Flynn pleaded guilty to a crime he didn't commit:
Supporters of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn who contend he is an American patriot who was unfairly targeted by Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation are holding a gala fundraiser in his honor next week.
Flynn, who briefly served as President Trump’s national security adviser, faces a hearing next month for his guilty plea for lying to the FBI in the Mueller investigation. But his defenders point out that Senate Judiciary Committee members say former FBI Director James Comey told them that FBI agents did not think Flynn was lying intentionally when he was first interviewed about his conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
The fundraiser, Nov. 11, culminates a conference called Operation Classified organized by John B. Wells, host of the radio program “Caravan to Midnight” and a former host of “Coast to Coast AM.”
[...]
Flynn’s youngest sibling, Joseph Flynn, the spokesman and a trustee of the Mike Flynn Legal Defense Fund, accepted the offer and will be at the event.
“General Flynn is a victim of political expedience, political skullduggery and lawfare,” said Wells.
The left, he said, “crewed up and destroyed the man’s reputation, his families’ reputations and his finances.”
As we pointed out when WND columnist James Zumwalk embraced this conspiracy theory, it ignores that Flynn was being investigated on other charges of making false statements, particulaly regarding his lobbying for Turkey. In his plea agreement, Flynn pleged to cooperate with Mueller in exchange for the rest of the charges against him being dropped.
Of course, WND won't report that because it's an inconvenient fact to the fund-raiser.
NEW ARTICLE -- The MRC's War On Journalists, Part 3: Craven Callousness Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center tries to protect its brand and insists its (and President Trump's) hateful anti-media rhetoric doesn't inspire violence against journalists -- then claims that it's "self-centered" for journalists to be worried about their safety. Read more >>
An anonymously written Nov. 1 WorldNetDaily article sure tried to make its case, under the headline "Now Biden calls for GOP congressman to learn 'threshold of pain': More rhetoric calling for violence over 2018 elections":
Former Vice President Joe Biden only a week ago called for an end to “this division, this hatred, this ugliness” around the 2018 midterm elections.
Now he’s calling for a union official to come up and show a member of Congress “a threshold of pain.”
It’s the latest in the Democrats’ rhetoric calling for violence around next week’s election.
A post on the Twitter news aggregating site Twitchy said it “seems like only last week when Joe Biden was decrying ‘this division, this hatred, this ugliness.’ Probably because it was only last week.”
The RNC pointed out, “Joe Biden suggests union president should attack GOP Congressman @KevinCramer, ‘show him a threshold of pain.'”
Such comments have become common in the run-up to the vote.
Except that's not what happened at all. WND completely eliminates the context of Biden's remark -- which, surprisingly, was in the Republican National Committee video embedded into the article -- which clearly shows that Biden was responding rhetorically to a specific comment made by the Republican opponent of the Democratic candidate he was stumping for:
Let me tell you, these guys are amazing, and they stand up -- how they stand up and say things that are absolutely mind-boggling. I love this one on trade. This I love, and by the way, I told you I come from an agricultural state. I don't know how you can possibly get elected in an agricultural state with the things he's saying. But -- but, we're nearing the 20th week of zero soybean orders from the Pacific and Northwest and China, and your guy calls farmers' concerns hysteria and says they don't have a very high threshold for pain. Well, I get that president of the trade union's up here and he'll show him a threshold of pain.
In other words, WND is peddling fake news again. Given that fake news helped drive WND to the brink of death, you'd think Joseph Farah and Co. would know better by now.
WND Columnist Declares Trump To Be 'God's Man' Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has been mildly obsessed with portraying Donald Trump's election as divinely ordained and placing him in the pantheon of Bible heroes. The latest stab in this genre comes from evangelist Hal Lindsey in his Nov. 2 WND column:
“Merry Christmas” is back. There is unabashed prayer in the Oval Office – in front of the cameras! As a nation, we have loudly proclaimed our support for and solidarity with Israel. We have smashed some of the most dangerous Islamic terrorist forces in the world. We have withdrawn from pacts and partnerships that were not only duplicitous, but dangerous. We are witnessing a restoration of the constitutional role of the judiciary. We have eased the bureaucratic burdens on industry and business that were choking our national economy. Most of us have seen the immediate benefits in our paychecks. We have unleashed the power of American creativity and productivity, and we’re seeing a rebirth in hope and optimism among American workers of all races and classes. We are finally seeing the brakes being applied to our mad rush toward a nonsensical world of unlimited and undefined genders. We are seeing a phenomenal surge in our citizens’ pride in and appreciation for our military, law enforcement and first-responders. And the list goes on.
In short, I think we are seeing a genuine resurgence of President Reagan’s inspiring ideal of America as a “shining city on a hill.”
We owe much of this progress to President Donald Trump. It’s not that he has singlehandedly made these things happen, but his genuine love for America, his optimism, fearlessness, determination, courage and willingness to suffer the blows has inspired so many people in so many areas to take a step of faith and do what is right for America.
I do not say that President Trump is a man of God, but I firmly believe he is God’s man for this time in America.
And the world, too. As we hurtle toward the end of this age, the infrastructure of the Antichrist’s government is being constructed with alarming speed. To have the leader of the free world stand tall and threaten the “globalist” forces who are preparing the way of the Antichrist cannot be a coincidence. If nothing else, President Trump is drawing into sharp focus the opposing forces and the battle formations that will soon come into play in the end-times scenario.
That means it is time to choose on which side of this battle you will fight.
How about the side that thinks lionizing Trump as a instrument of God is somewhere between creepy and blasphemous?
Posted by Terry K.
at 12:19 AM EST
Updated: Wednesday, November 14, 2018 12:29 AM EST
CNS Gushed Over Trump's Final Pre-Election Rally, Pre-Spins Election Results Topic: CNSNews.com
On the day or two before the midterm elections, CNSNews.com was in full pro-Trump spin mode -- so much so, in fact, that it tried to pre-spin election results it was basically admitting were not going to go well for President Trump and the Republicans.
CNS editor in chief Terry Jeffrey used a Nov. 5 article to discount any House seats that Republicans would lose because Democratic presidents lost more:
In the post-World War II era, Presidents Barack Obama, Harry Truman and Bill Clinton saw the three biggest midterm election losses for their party in the House of Representatives, according to historical data published by the Clerk of the House.
In 2010, when Obama was in his first term and had signed the Obamacare law, the Democrats lost a net of 63 House seats. In 1946, after Truman had succeeded the late Franklin Roosevelt (who died in April 1945) and real GDP was declining by 11.6 percent, the Democrats lost 55 seats. In 1994, when Clinton was in his first term in which his signature proposal was Hillarycare (a “universal healthcare plan"), the Democrats lost 54 seats.
On Nov. 6, highly biased CNS reporter Susan Jones gushed over one of Trump's final pre-electon rallies by giddily (and, of course, uncritically) reciting Rush Limbaugh's introductory speech:
Massive crowds and surging energy greeted President Donald Trump at his final midterm campaign rally Monday night in Cape Girardeau, Missouri -- home town of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who introduced the president.
In his warm-up-the-crowd remarks, Limbaugh reminded everyone that Democrats call all of them "divisive."
"Divisive?" he asked. "The Democrats haven't even accepted they lost the election in 2016. That's what this is all about! It's serious stuff! All of this," he said.
[...]
He also addressed the size and the enthusiasm of the crowds that have attended Trump's rallies around the nation:
"These rallies, I have to tell you, they are the envy of official Washington. You realize there isn't a single elected official in either party who could do what this is tonight. Other than Donald Trump, there's no one. No one! And they're jealous. They are envious. This isn't supposed to happen. You people are supposed to love them, not Trump.
"And so guess what? They want to get in on it. Bill and Hillary Clinton and their national stadium tour. Have you seen Obama? He's been stumping down in Florida where I live. He's drawing crowds of a thousand people, two thousand people. Joe Biden can't fill a phone booth because he's looking for someone to punch out," Limbaugh joked.
Yes, Jones thought Limbaugh's partisan rant warranted a "news" article.
Jones gushed further in a second article as she tried to portray the crowd at the rally, and Trump himself, as compassionate over an attendee with a health emergency:
The enormous, enthusiastic crowd fell suddenly silent Monday night at Trump's final campaign rally in Cape Girardeau, Mo., when one of the attendees collapsed.
Trump, looking out from the podium, asked, "Is there a doctor in the house, please? Doctor?"
"Doctor, take your time," he urged, as medics and security made their way through the full house.
Three-and-a-half minutes later, Trump urged his supporters, "Say a little prayer." And he stepped away from the podium, as heads bowed and eyes closed.
The somber president again urged doctors to "take your time."
Almost seven minutes elapsed, when voices swelled into a stanza of "Amazing Grace." Everyone joined in.
The woman who collapsed was conscious as she was wheeled out of the arena moments later, the crowd cheering for her.
Trump returned to the podium:
"That was really something,” he said. “I want to just thank everybody for the way you behaved. That was beautiful. And at the end -- was beautiful. ‘Amazing Grace,’ thank you very much. That was beautiful. Hopefully, she'll be okay. Hopefully -- she'll be okay.”
This was also a "news" article. Given that CNS is basically pro-Trump state media these days, that's not a surprise.
It was a smug Pelosi who obviously was elated by the election of a Democratic House majority. She immediately promised, “Democrats pledge a Congress that works for the people – for the people.” Of course the anti-Trump drum she has been beating for two years and promises to launch numerous investigations of everyone except Hillary Clinton suggest otherwise. Pelosi managed to keep a straight face while claiming, “The Democratic Congress will be led with transparency and openness.” We have not heard such false optimism since her mentor, former President Barack Obama, made a similar empty promise.
[...]
Hopefully, House Democrats, if they are truly interested in serving the people, giving them priority over tribal interests, will mutiny against Pelosi and elect someone more capable of bridging the gap between parties. Pelosi is a Trump hate-monger bearing other baggage as well.
Of concern should be her mental state. She has repeatedly demonstrated an inability to complete sentences or thoughts.
To some extent, she appears to have relinquished her leadership role. In the aftermath of the 2016 election and Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters’ rant about getting confrontational with Republican leaders, Pelosi initially chided Waters, only later to agree.
Upon becoming speaker in 2007, Pelosi clearly reveled the role – one important in leading the Congress in fully understanding and debating any and all legislation passing before it. It should have left her little time for non-speaker related activities. However, while not having time to read the Obamacare legislation before voting on it, suggesting “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,” she miraculously found time to write a book touting her personal achievements. Undoubtedly, some government time was spent doing so.
Additionally disturbing is that Pelosi praises her party for having Muslim members of Congress, demanding they boast about it at rallies. Yet, she has devoted no time to reading the Quran to better understand what exactly it is she is helping to promote.
As a courtesy, the speaker has a military aircraft available to fly him/her back home when Congress is in recess. It should be noted how “Queen” Pelosi treated the aircraft like a party plane, with alcohol running freely for family and contributors.
If another Pelosi coronation as speaker occurs, voters will quickly find out, and may not particularly like, what it is they are paying for. They will discover too it includes putting a chicken in every illegal alien’s pot.
MRC Downplays The Conservative Among Pollitical Donors Who Are Media Moguls Topic: Media Research Center
In a Nov. 6 Media Resarch Center post, Julia Seymour highlights a Los Angeles Times article about the top 12 political donors in the 2018 midterms, four of whom own media outlets. The top name on the list is a conservative, but Seymour gave him only a short paragraph:
Ranked at the top by that measure were Sheldon and Miriam Adelson who the paper labeled as “ultra-conservative,” are “Republican super-donors” who spent $113 million on the 2018 elections. LAT noted that Adelson purchased the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2015.
Seymour didn't mention that Adelson also owns several media outlets in Israel, which tend to serve as loyal backers of conservative Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And in the next paragraph, Seymour downplayed Adelson's media holdings, calling the Review-Journal a mere "city paper" that's "small potatoes" compared to the next person on the list, Michael Bloomberg.
Bloomberg got two paragraphs, with Seymour claiming without substantiation that Bloomberg's media empire "often promotes the same liberal attitudes as Bloomberg himself, especially on climate change and gun control" -- right after she cites a claim that Bloomberg's media outlets publish 5,000 stories a day in 120 countries. Seymour did not say how many of those 5,000 items a day were "often" repeating Bloomberg's "liberal attitudes."
Further down was "Hillary Clinton supporter" Fred Eychaner, whose media outlets actually are small potatoes compared with even Adelson -- he owns a couple of small radio stations in the Chicago area, but his main media business is in printing newspapers. He gave one-tenth the money that Adelson has.
Finally, there's Jeff Bezos, who Seymour concedes gave even less political money than even Eychaner and all of it to a nonpartisan group dedicated to electing military veterans. But because Bezos owns the MRC-desipsed Washington Post, he comes in for an irrelevant partisan beating:
While their giving may be nonpartisan, the Postleans heavily left. Shortly after Donald Trump assumed the office of president in 2017, the Post introduced a new slogan: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
More recently the paper’s book critic compared Trump voters to “cancer cells,” the paper editorialized that Trump was “complicit” in the destruction that would be inflicted by Hurricane Florence, and a Post political reporter argued “The American people aren’t interested in”the Trump administration's “substantive accomplishments.”
Weirdly, Seymour didn't mention another MRC-despised political donor on the list, George Soros, even though the MRC has spent years ranting about how much money Soros has given to various and sundry media outlets (even though conservative moneybags have spent much more than Soros ever did trying to prop up their failing conservative newspapers).
Fringe-Right Anti-Muslim Group Thinks People Fear It (And Misleads About Dead Saudi Journalist) Topic: Horowitz
It's been a while since we've written about anything Horowitz-related, mostly because the David Horowitz Freedom Center has long since marginalized itself as little more than a Horowitz cult of personality with an anti-Muslim obsession on the side. But we fefel like we had to weigh in on an Oct. 22 FrontPageMag article by Daniel Greenfield smearing apparently deceased Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Greenfield complains that the Washington Post singled it out for pushing said smears. It's telling that Greenfield doesn't link to the Post article to which he objects so his readers can judge for themselves. Instead, he rants:
Front Page Magazine’s article documented Khashoggi’s extensive terrorist affiliations and his advocacy for Islamist power, and subsequent posts delved into his anti-Semitism and support for Hamas. These were all documented using reputable sources ranging from Khashoggi’s own published writings and interviews, to sources like The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright and the Wiesenthal Center.
The Washington Post had no rebuttal to this array of facts. Instead, it dishonestly used conspiratorial language to cast aspersions on our work, smearing the unchallenged facts in a widely distributed article as part of a “dark whisper campaign.” It argued that some unnamed and unquoted “experts on the Middle East” claimed that Khashoggi had adopted a “more liberal, secular point of view.”
[...]
The Post quoted "four GOP officials" who were apparently too afraid to name the names of the "lawmakers and others who are passing around information critical of Khashoggi" because it would expose them as "sources." The “right-wing” sources were Patrick Poole, Mark Levin, and, an article by me that the Post smeared as a “story in far-right FrontPage magazine,” taking issue even with Bosch Fawstin’s artful illustration of “bin Laden and Khashoggi with their arms around each other.”
The hysterically vitriolic tone of the Washington Post piece, its conspiratorial claims of “cadres” mounting a “dark whisper” campaign and hidden “sources” among House Republicans could be mistaken as another routine smear of conservatives. But it’s a about a war for Washington D.C.
Greefield's link on the words "reputable sources" gpes to the similarly right-wing American Spectator, which no rational observer considers "reputable," let alone fair or balanced.
The other main sign that Greenfield really is all about smearing Khashoggi is his edited quote of Khashoggi's statement following the death of Osama bin Laden, with whom Khashoggi had been acquainted before he turned to terrorism, which Greenfield misleadingly painted as an "old friend":
“I collapsed crying a while ago, heartbroken for you Abu Abdullah,” Khashoggi wrote after Osama bin Laden’s death. “You were beautiful and brave in those beautiful days in Afghanistan.”
Greenfield deliberately cut off the end of Khashoggi's message: "...before you surrendered to hatred and passion." In other words, Greenfield is censoring the fact that Khashoggi hated what bin Laden had become after what he considered to a just cause fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.
From here, Greenfield descends into delusions of grandeur regarding himself, his political god and his employer:
The Washington Post believes that it can set the agenda for Washington D.C. And it sees Front Page Magazine'scutting edge investigative journalism and the David Horowitz Freedom Center as a threat.
[...]
The Washington Post’s smears in September and October share a common underlying worry that the David Horowitz Freedom Center is reaching Republican House members. And it is trying to intimidate them with slanted stories and anonymous leaks. The Republicans whom the media fears are not the loudest or those who have the most conservative ratings, but those who don’t listen to the media.
That is why the media hates and fears President Trump so much.
The media’s power comes from driving the narrative, not just at the breakfast table, but in the Senate cloakroom, the legislative chambers, and in the Oval Office. The Post’s latest attack on the Freedom Center is an acknowledgement that our stories and speakers are undermining the media’s influence.
Last year, the Washington Post attacked the Freedom Center’s tax exempt status in “How a ‘Shadow’ Universe of Charities Joined with Political Warriors to Fuel Trump’s Rise.”
It warned that the Freedom Center’s 2014 Restoration Weekend had “brought together an array of hard-right activists and a little-known charity whose ideas would soon move from the fringes of the conservative movement into the heart of the nation's government.”
After this profile, identifying the Freedom Center as a key hub for conservative ideas among elected officials, the Washington Post has been launching smear campaigns intended to prevent the Center’s ideas from reaching elected officials. Other media outlets quickly joined in this coordinated campaign.
Greenfield's aversion to directly linking to anything the Post wrote is so extreme that he doesn't link directly to the Post article on the the far-right connextions to the Trump orbit; rather, he links to a Tampa Bay Times reprint of it.
Greenfiled concludes: "The Freedom Center believes in a free press. And it believes that everyone is entitled to the facts." If that was actually true, Greenfield wouldn't be editing Khashoggi's words or be so desperate to smear a man whose death the Saudis apparently made extremely painful simply for criticizing its leadership.
CNS Echoes Trump's Call To End Birthright Citizenship Topic: CNSNews.com
President Trump says "jump," and CNSNews.com asks, "How high?" That's pretty much CNS' editorial agenda these days -- support pretty much anything Trump proposes.
When the Trump administration floated the idea of trying to end birthright citizenship -- in which any person born on American soil is officially a U.S. citizen, CNS knew it had to bolster the legal case for it. And bolster it did with a barrage of opinion pieces.
An Oct. 30 column by the Heritage Foundation's Hans von Spakovsky insisted that the long-established legal case for birthright citizenship is based on a "misunderstdanding" of the 14th Amendment.
The same day, CNS published a column by conservative law professor Lino Graglia, who asserted that "A policy of granting birthright citizenship to children born here of illegal aliens is not merely unreasonable and harmful, but irrational and self-contradictory, a matter of both punishing and rewarding the same conduct."
The next day, Craig Bannister published a "flashback" from a 1993 speech by Democratic then-Sen. Harry Reid cvlaiming that "no sane country" would permit birthright citizenship. It's not until the final paragraph that Bannister gets around to noting that Reid has repudiated his remarks a few years, citing a Fox News article to blame that repudiation on "union pressure."
Bannister also wrote another blog post citing the author of the 14th Amendment, Sen. Jacob Howard, stating that the amendment "“settles the great question” and “removes all doubt” about citizenship.
CNS then called on its favorite right-wing radio ranter, Mark Levin, promoting the alleged constitutional expert's claim that "Nobody really knows how birthright citizenship was instituted." Levin was able to double-dip with an item complaining that House Speaker Paul Ryan is "utterly wrong" and "has no idea what he's talking about" in criticizing Trump's call to end birthright citizenship.
On Nov. 1, von Spakovsky popped up again to declare that "the president is correct when he says that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution does not require universal birthright citizenship" and that "Contrary to popular belief, the 14th Amendment doesn’t say that all people born in the U.S. are citizens." Levin popped up again as well to rant that he was challenging "practicing lawyers or former federal this or former that ... to show me the evidence in the 1860s that supports your position that birthright citizenship was enshrined in the 14th Amendment."
A Nov. 2 syndicated column by anti-immigrant writer Pat Buchanan asserted that "in challenging birthright citizenship, Trump has some constitutional history on his side."
Von Spakovsky showed up once more with a Nov. 5 column pushing the case that Trump can end birthright citizenship with an executive order.
The "news" side of CNS (which is that pretty much in name only) wasn't much more balanced. Bannister wrote a blog post cheering Sen. Lindsey Graham for saying that he was glad Trump was addressing the "absurd policy of birthright citizenship."
And an Oct. 31 item credited only to "CNSNews.com Staff" spent more space attacking Nancy Pelosi forsaying that Trump does not have the power to alter the Constitution over birthright citizenship then it did quoting her saying that.
CNS clearly knows how to jump very high at Trump's request.
WND Misleads Again Through Press-Release Journalism Topic: WorldNetDaily
WND rewrites another press release from the right-wing Thomas More Society in an anonymously written Nov. 4 article on a case it has previouslyoffered biased, misleading reporting about:
Three 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges are considering a case in which government officials facilitated sex-change treatments for a minor child against the parent’s specific instructions.
Anmarie Calgaro filed suit in November 2016 after her then-minor son underwent sex-change treatment with the aid of the St. Louis County School District, St. Louis County, Fairview Health Services and Park Nicollet Health Services.
At the trial level, Judge Paul Magnuson agreed her parental rights, which remained “intact” at the time, were violated. But he dismissed the case, determining school officials and social workers did not infringe on her constitutional rights.
[...]
Calgaro is represented by the Thomas More Society, and special counsel Erick Kaardal has called her ordeal “a parent’s worst nightmare.”
As before, WND sticks so closely to Thomas More's talking points that it completely ignores the other side of the story. The child had been living apart from Calgaro for serveral months and was self-supporting financially while still taking classes, which meets one definiton of legal emancipation in Minnesota, and the mother had made little effort to bring the child home, contact her or even report her as a runaway before filing the lawsuit.Further, Thomas More -- and, thus, WND -- refused to acknowledge claims by the teen that her mother and stepfather were verbally and physically abusive after she came out as gay.
WND quietly acknowledges that the case is basically moot, noting that the teen was a "then-minor"; indeed, the teen is over 18 now, meaning the teen is an adult as an uncontested matter of law. Thomas More appears to be perpetuating an effectively dead case in order to push a "parental rights" argument, which seems to conveniently ignore that Calgaro effectively abandoned her child and only wanted control again as part of her objection to "sex-change treatments," not necessarily because she actually cares about the child. The gay-hating aspect seems to be one that the Thomas More Society -- and, thus, WND -- finds appealing.
Press-release journalism is probably not the way for WND to go if it wants to ever be taken seriously again.
What LGBT Stuff Is The MRC Freaking Out About Now? Topic: Media Research Center
Yes, the Media Research Center is still freaking out about LGBT stuff. Let's investigate, shall we?
Matt Philbin is as hateful as ever, sneering: "Los Angeles has only one “LGBT-focused coffee shop.” This is surprising news to me, but then I believe pumpkin spiced latte is Big Coffee’s fiendish plot to turn America into a nation of jittery, fem Pajama Boys." Philbin is so homophobic that he feels the need to invent "the former daytime darling of L.A.’s queer social ecosystem, a makeup artist and part-time yoga instructor named Rudolfo," to mock a story about the financial plight of said coffee shop, cranking up the hateful snark:
Here’s a thought: maybe don’t be so gender-incontinent. Put the disco ball in the back. Lose the teal (keep the leather: you never know when some of those cis-gay guys might drop in. “As if!” sneered Rudolfo.) Maybe accept you might be misgendered by, say, every second person in order to make the joint a going concern. Look outside and see who other potential customers may be.
But solipsism, like deep voices and hairy legs, is brewed into this crowd.
Just as homophobia is deeply ingrained into Philbin and the rest of his MRC cohorts.
Lindsey Kornick declared that one of the "sneaky ways" that "raving lefty lunatic" Sean Penn has put a "liberal agenda" in his new Hulu show "The First" is that "The show really wants you to remember that Kayla is a queer woman. She has a wife she who discusses her feelings of frustration, and the two sleep together near the end of the third episode. Like the previous issue, there really is no need for these agendas as they also deal with the logistics of space travel and the lethal risk of another Mars mission."
Jay Maxson was mad that a media report noted "the first openly gay college football player to score a touchdown, complaining that the commentator "has been on board with the LGBT agenda for a long time."Maxson, of course, has been on board with the right-wing anti-LGBT agenda for a long time.
Annie Piper hates, hates, hates it when gay people are on her TV, specifically in an episode of "A Million Little Things" that focuses on an 11-year-old boy (bolding in original):
Wednesday night’s episode “Band of Dads” focused on one of the oldest topics in the books for liberal enthusiasts—homosexuality. This is something anyone who spends even a night or two a week watching TV should be no stranger to. We are all used to that one gay neighbor, or the gay best friend inserted into almost every show. It’s become so commonplace that if I were to write about every occurrence, I’d have a lot less free time on my hands.
[...]
As if it isn’t enough for ABC to make one of their youngest characters gay, they add in one more punch. Not only does Gary support same sex attraction—he encourages it and actually loves him "even more" for it. How quickly we go from tolerance to acceptance to celebration to preferential treatment.
Rebecca Downs similarly complains about people loving gays for being gay:
If there’s a theme in Star’s October 31 episode “Someday We’ll All Be Free,” it’s the suffering and healing of the black characters on the show, particularly the gay ones. The suffering of these characters is so righteous, that it is ultimately likened to the suffering of Jesus on the cross, and taken to mean that God has bestowed a special kind of love upon them.
[...]
Bobby could have reminded Miss Bruce about human dignity and worth, and that he is indeed loved by God. Instead, being black and gay is equated with the suffering Jesus as the Son of God endured during the crucifixion. For any demographic to be loved more or less by God, or to be considered having suffered in the same way in which Jesus did at his death, completely distorts the narrative of what the love of God is about. This includes how Jesus was the one who was sent to suffer and die in such a way.
By speaking about how being "made" black and gay shows Jesus “must really love” a person, and that blacks and gays are in a select group of being “the only ones,” the show doesn't remind of us of how we are all children of God, or seek to unite us as members of that human family. Instead, it focuses on a person’s demographics while hitting at "church folk." If this is supposed to be an episode about realizing the importance of healing and seeking help, Star actually hurts the cause.
And Maxson returns to rant that USA Today is "a blatant mouthpiece for the LGBT agenda" because it reported on a transgender female cyclist aiming for the Olympics, fearing that a "biological male" could earn an Olympic medal and huffing: "Perhaps that is what it will take for women ― real women ― to rise up in opposition to a movement that threatens to relegate them to permanent also-ran status in athletic competition."
CNS Brings In Pro-Trump Rabbi To Praise Trump's Response to Synogogue Shooting Topic: CNSNews.com
We've highlighted how CNSNews.com has a thing for rloopy, abidly anti-Obama and pro-Trump rabbi Aryeh Spero. An Oct. 29 CNS blog post by Michael Morris lets Spero play Trump suck-up by ostentatiously praising President Trump's response to the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting:
Spokesman for the National Conference on Jewish Affairs (NCJA) lauded President Donald Trump’s heartfelt response and concern for Pittsburgh’s Jewish community yesterday, saying on behalf of the NCJA, “We commend President Trump for his heartfelt expressions of grief.”
“We commend President Trump for his heartfelt expressions of grief to Pittsburgh’s Jewish community, as well as to all American Jews regarding the slaughter at the Etz Chayim Synagogue on Saturday in Squirrel Hill,” stated Rabbi Aryeh Spero in a Facebook post. “It is quite obvious that the President was deeply distressed by the events Saturday and has made an upcoming priority in his schedule to go to Pittsburgh to be with the victims.”
[...]
Rabbi Aryeh Spero continued later in his Facebook post:
“We know that President Trump feels this tragedy very personally because he himself has attended synagogues and Jewish rituals as a father and grandfather to a Jewish daughter and grandchildren. The President, as did his late father, Fred, has had a history of supporting Jewish synagogues and causes, and the President continually demonstrates his love of the Jewish People and Israel. Safety for Jews around the world is of prime concern for Mr. Trump.”
We know llittle about this group, but any reputation the NCJA has of a legitimate spokesman for Jews in America is sullied by the presence of Spero, who appears to be placing political concerns before religion. Last year, presumably through Spero, the NCJA sucked up to Trumpa again by praising Trump for his allegedly "principled decision" to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement, further gushing: "We thank President Trump for acting on the facts regarding the Iranian regime’s nuclear program, and for his resoluteness and courageous leadership in protecting the safety and security of the American People."
The presence on the group's website of an article from the anti-Muslim Gatestone Institute complaining about "persecution of Christians" (!) is another sign that the group's true agenda is politics instead of Jewry.
Weirdly, CNS takes Spero's statement from his personal Facebook page -- not from any NCJA website -- upon which Spero has made only three posts this year, before which his most recent post was January 2014.
Guy Who Called Obama A 'Skinny Ghetto Crackhead' Lectures On Civil Political Discourse Topic: Media Research Center
Tim Graham and Brent Bozell whine in their Oct. 31 column:
The frightening exposure of pipe bombs being mailed to prominent Democrats and media outlets, followed by a horrific shooting in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, led to news networks lecturing, hour after hour, on the tone of our civic discourse.
Physicians, heal thyselves.
These are not dispassionate observers of the national scene. These are leftist partisans and they are cynically using national tragedies to equate conservative speech — conservative thought — to violence.
Yes, the guy who ranted that President Obama was a "skinny ghetto crackhead" is about to lecture us on proper political discourse.
The pair then play the whataboutism card:
In 1998, Eric Rudolph bombed an abortion clinic in Birmingham, killing a policeman. The media demanded that the pro-life movement condemn this violence. Pro-life leaders lined up before the cameras for humiliating we're-not-as-bad-as-this interviews.
In 1996, Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was indicted for murdering three men with mail bombs. Authorities found Al Gore's book "Earth in the Balance" in Kaczynski's shack. No one in the media demanded Gore denounce this evil.
In 2009, Scott Roeder murdered late-term abortionist George Tiller in Kansas. Again pro-lifers were publicly shamed by the press. In 2013, monstrous abortionist Kermit Gosnell was convicted of killing three babies born alive, along with one mother. No reporter suggested the pro-abortion lobby bore any responsibility. No one condemned the agenda of NARAL, et cetera. Virtually no one bothered even covering the trial.
It's "humiliating" for anti-abortion activists to have to distance themselves from violence against abortion doctors and clinics, even though mainstream anti-abortion rhetoric frames abortion doctors as murderers and abortion clinics as perpetrating another Holocaust? Bozell and Graham have probably never spent a single second thinking about how humiliating it is for every American Muslim being forced to distance themselves from a terrorist attack. (They also can't name a single line out of Gore's book that could have directly inspired Kaczynski to his violent acts.)
Bozell and Graham ignore the fact that violent anti-abortion extremists are not that far from the anti-abortion mainstream. For instance, WorldNetDaily's Jack Cashill not only tried to claim that Rudolph was framed for the clinic attack and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing that was purportedly actually carried out by Islamic extremists, he devoted a seven-part WND series to claiming that James Kopp was framed for the murder of abortion doctor Barnett Slepian, which worked until Kopp confessed to the murder.
Further, we documented how the "news" operation Bozell runs, CNSNews.com, buried Roeder's links to the mainstream anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, nor did it report a statement from Randall Terry, a foundational figure in the anti-aboriton movement, effectively condoning Tiller's murder.
And, of course, Bozell and the MRC have for years been cynicallyexploiting Gosnell to further their right-wing anti-abortion agenda -- the exact behavior for which he attacked the "liberal media" at the beginning of his column.
So, once again, Graham and Bozell are ranting about behavior by others that they themselves engage in.
Needless to say, the folks at the Jim Acosta-hating Media Research Center couldn't have been happier that the White House suspended Acosta's "hard pass" for White House access, and that also goes for the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com. A Nov. 7 blog post by Craig Bannister cheered Acosta's pass suspension, adding that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders "tweeted that the White House stands by its decision to suspend Acosta and invited Americans to watch the video of the incident she embedded in her post," and embedding the Sanders tweet containing the video in his post.
An anonymously written Nov. 1 WorldNetDaily 
An anonymously written Nov. 1 WorldNetDaily 
It's time to tally up how many times CNSNews.com did stenography for its favorite sources in October.
WorldNetDaily has been mildly obsessed with portraying Donald Trump's election as 
On the day or two before the midterm elections, CNSNews.com was in full pro-Trump spin mode -- so much so, in fact, that it tried to pre-spin election results it was basically admitting were not going to go well for President Trump and the Republicans.
It was a smug Pelosi who obviously was elated by the election of a Democratic House majority. She immediately promised, “Democrats pledge a Congress that works for the people – for the people.” Of course the anti-Trump drum she has been beating for two years and promises to launch numerous investigations of everyone except Hillary Clinton suggest otherwise. Pelosi managed to keep a straight face while claiming, “The Democratic Congress will be led with transparency and openness.” We have not heard such false optimism since her mentor, former President Barack Obama, made a similar empty promise.
In a Nov. 6 Media Resarch Center 
It's been a while since we've written about anything Horowitz-related, mostly because the David Horowitz Freedom Center has long since marginalized itself as little more than a Horowitz cult of personality with an anti-Muslim obsession on the side. But we fefel like we had to weigh in on an Oct. 22 FrontPageMag 
President Trump says "jump," and CNSNews.com asks, "How high?" That's pretty much CNS' editorial agenda these days -- support pretty much anything Trump proposes.
WND rewrites another 
Yes, the Media Research Center is still freaking out about LGBT stuff. Let's investigate, shall we?
We've highlighted how CNSNews.com has a thing for rloopy, abidly 
Tim Graham and Brent Bozell whine in their Oct. 31 
