Negative Descriptions Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com serves up more negative descriptions of liberals in two Sept. 13 articles on the confirmation hearings for John Roberts.
One article, by Melanie Hunter, claimed that Sen. Ted Kennedy "lectured Roberts on civil rights" and that "Kennedy was admonished - on several occasions - to let Roberts finish answering Kennedy's questions." Hunter added:
Much of Kennedy's questioning was specific and technical, relating to the application of certain civil rights laws, but his tone was stern and disapproving. He often looked down or took notes as Roberts attempted to reply to - or correct - Kennedy's statements.
And while Hunter described conservative groups who support Roberts as "pro-family groups," another Hunter article described NARAL Pro-Choice America as a "pro-abortion group."
Annals of Liberal Bias Topic: Media Research Center
How absurdly wide is the Media Research Center's view of "liberal bias"? Apparently, saying anything nice about Bill Clinton is ipso facto evidence of it.
NewsMax Xenophobes Topic: Newsmax
Is NewsMax taking a xenophobic turn?
A Sept. 13 article by Phil Brennan and Jim Meyers attacks Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy for using "foreign laws and constitutions to interpret U.S. laws and our Constitution."
But Brennan and Meyers go beyond that to attack Kennedy for traveling outside of the U.S.:
Kennedy in particular has a passion for foreign cultures and ideas. In the late 1970s he was appointed supervisor of the territorial courts in the South Pacific, and traveled often to Guam, Palau, Saipan, American Samoa, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
Every summer for the past 15 years, Kennedy and his wife Mary have rented an apartment in Salzburg, Austria, where he has taught a summer program at the local university.
Brennan and Meyers don't want that sort of thing in a Supreme Court justice, apparently. Do they want any American to travel outside of the U.S.? You never know what ideas diseases they'll pick up.
Examples, Please Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a Sept. 12 WorldNetDaily column about "how easy it is to slant journalistic writing" through word choices, Michael Ackley writes:
Another example is to be found in references to the president of the United States. Throughout his tenure, Bill Clinton was uniformly referred to as "President Clinton" by radio and TV network broadcasters. This is a courtesy seldom accorded the current resident of the White House, who regularly is called "Mr. Bush."
Ackley offers no specific proof that this has occurred.
Ackley previously worked with WND editor Joseph Farah while both were at the Sacramento Union. At both the Union and WND, Farah and his employees have a history of using, as Ackley wrote, "loaded words that might prejudice the reader." Ackley might want to look into that sometime.
Addition Topic: WorldNetDaily
One more noteworthy thing has been added to the ConWebWatch article on Joseph Farah's plagiarism: He knows it's wrong because he has criticized others in the past for using WorldNetDaily copy without proper credit.
AIM Plays the Race Card Topic: Accuracy in Media
A Sept. 10 Accuracy in Media press release suggests that the news media is protecting New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin from criticism over his handling of the Hurricane Katrina aftermath because he is black.
"Why is there a media rush to blame Bush and let a black mayor and female governor off the hook in the blame game?" AIM editor Cliff Kincaid is quoted as saying.
A better question would be: Why is AIM so slavishly adhering to Republican talking points in trying to shield the Bush administration from blame for its role in the Katrina aftermath?
Klein's Far-Right Friends Topic: WorldNetDaily Bartholomew tells us about the Rabbinic Congress for Peace, which WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein quoted in a Sept. 7 WND article as claiming that God sent Hurricane Katrina as punishment for U.S. support of Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Turns out it's another far-right group of the kind that Klein tends to favor.
Thankful Topic: Newsmax
Michael Reagan writes in a Sept. 8 NewsMax column: "Did it occur to any of his critics to take a moment out to say 'thank you' to George Bush?"
For what? Appointing Michael Brown as FEMA director?
Speaking of Brown, NewsMax gets desperate in trying to absolve Republicans of responsibility for him, claiming in a Sept. 10 article (citing National Review's Byron York) that it's the Democrats' fault that Brown was there at all because he was confirmed by a Democrat-controlled Senate.
The Counter Returns Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember the Alexa traffic ranking counter that WorldNetDaily had on its website until sliding numbers forced WND to remove it? Well, its ranking has increased, so it's back, buried among the ads on the left side of WND's front page, toward the bottom.
The Daily Les, 9/9 Topic: The Daily Les
Today, Les Kinsolving did his best to play interference for Scott McClellan, attmpting to cut off another reporter's Katrina-related question with a Gannonesque query about same-sex marriage.
WorldNetDaily unintentionally got in the middle of a verbal match today between White House press secretary Scott McClellan and ABC reporter Jessica Yellin, persistently trying to ask a question after being called on by the Bush spokesman.
Yellin, not satisfied with a response to her last question, badgered McClellan for more information about federal debit cards for Katrina evacuees as he tried to listen to WND's question, which had to be started repeatedly, each time at a higher volume to be heard.
Good Wages Are Racist? Topic: CNSNews.com
A Sept. 9 CNSNews.com article by Susan Jones plays the race card to support President Bush's executive order to rescind the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires the government to pay prevailing local wages to construction workers, in hurricane-damaged areas.
After quoting House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi saying that the Davis-Bacon Act sprang from the Great Depression - "at a time when scurrilous employers were taking advantage of the desperation of American workers to care for their families," Jones writes:
But according to a report by the Cato Institute, Congress passed the Davis-Bacon Act in 1931 to benefit white-only unions at the expense of non-unionized black workers.
According to the Cato report, "Davis-Bacon was designed explicitly to keep black construction workers from working on Depression-era public works projects."
Those discriminatory effects continue today, the report says - "by favoring disproportionately white, skilled and unionized construction workers over disproportionately black, unskilled and non-unionized construction workers."
Obsession Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein has penned anotherarticle about Yasser Arafat's purported homosexuality, joining the other two he has written this week.
Is an obsession with homosexual behavior a prerequisite for employment at WND?
Defending Michael Brown Topic: Media Research Center
Most conservatives, even as they have rushed to the defense of President Bush, have been loath to defend Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Michael Brown for his slow response to Hurricane Katrina. Until now.
NewsBusters has rushed in to fill the void. A Sept. 9 post by Dustin Hawkins takes issue with a Time magazine piece on Brown:
While accusing Brown of both padding his resume and having no emergency management expience prior to becoming FEMA head, TIME simply doesn't acknowledge his work as having "served as FEMA's Deputy Director and the agency's General Counsel. Shortly after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Mr. Brown served on the President's Consequence Management Principal's Committee, which acted as the White House's policy coordination group for the federal domestic response to the attacks." Nor does TIME mention his handling of some 150+ handling of other declared disasters and emergencies prior to Hurricane Katrina and the job he did.
The Daily Les, 9/8 Topic: The Daily Les
Les Kinsolving uses this day's White House press briefing to recite conservative talking points about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who will be visiting the U.S. next week. In his polemic-slash-question, Kinsolving claimed that Ahmadinejad "was identified by five former U.S. hostages as one of their captors and interrogators in '79, and there's the assassination of a Kurdish leader in Austria in 1989 as well as recruitment of suicide bombers."
But that may be more speculation than hard fact. Both CNN and the BBC point out that known leaders of the 1979 taking of hostages at the American embassy in Tehran claim that Ahmadinejad wasn't involved.
Presidential Threat Double Standard Alert Topic: Newsmax
In a Sept. 8 NewsMax piece noting that the Secret Service is declining to say whether it's investigating Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu's threat to punch President Bush, NewsMax references Jesse Helms:
The agency took a tougher stance on Senatorial threats in 1994, when then-North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms joked that President Clinton "had better watch out if he comes down here. He better have a bodyguard."
But NewsMax leaves out the context of what else was going on in 1994, or why "some pundits" were "complaining that Helms had committed treason." (Actually, it was only one pundit, The Baltimore Sun's Roger Simon.)
At the same time he made that remark, Helms had also reaffirmed an earlier statement that everyone in the armed forces believed that Clinton was unfit to be commander in chief, undermining respect for authority and, Simon claimed, giving aid and comfort to our enemies. (Imagine the conservative firestorm if anyone said that about President Bush today.) A man had recently sprayed the White House with semi-automatic bullets. And the nation was marking the 31st anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
NewsMax apparently wasn't bothered by Helms' statement -- if not secretly wished for something to happen to Clinton that would required bodyguards -- but it's worried that a female senator might pop Bush in the kisser (which NewsMax called a "much more explicit threat" than Helms') is worthy of a full-on investigation.
And, as an added bonus, the article references a incident in which, during a visit to hurricane-stricken Louisiana by Vice President Dick Cheney, a man said "Go f - - k yourself, Mr. Vice President." NewsMax called it an example of the "rising tide of hostility towards the Bush White House where normal boundaries of criticism have fallen by the wayside." But NewsMax failed to note that 1) the heckler was using the very same expletive that Cheney himself used against Sen. Patrick Leahy (an insult NewsMax had no apparent problem with) and 2) NewsMax helped obliterate some of those boundaries on criticism of the executive branch with its continuous attacks on the Clinton White House.
