Joseph Farah's Birther Lie of the Day Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah writes in his July 29 WorldNetDaily column regarding Barack Obama's birth: "Who are the two U.S. citizen parents to whom he was born – an absolute requirement to be a 'natural born citizen' circa 1961?"
In fact, it's not. As the Farah-founded Western Journalism Center detailed:
Orly Taitz asserts that “to be president there have to be two parents who are citizens.” This is false. Here is Blackstone’s classic exposition in 1765 of the legal meaning of the term from the Commentaries on the Laws of England. William Blackstone, Commentaries 1: 354 361–62
Natural-born subjects are such as are born within the dominions of the crown of England, that is, within the ligeance, or as it is generally called, the allegiance of the king; and aliens, such as are born out of it…all children, born out of the king’s ligeance [i.e on foreign soil], whose fatherswere natural-born subjects, are now natural-born subjects themselves, to all intents and purposes, without any exception; unless their said fathers were attainted, or banished beyond sea, for high treason; or were then in the service of a prince at enmity with Great Britain.” [The italics are Blackstone's]
Blackstone explicitly grounds natural-born status on location (jus soli), not parentage, except when the child is born abroad. The notion that both parents have to be citizens is false. All children born on American soil are natural-born subjects or citizens.
Given that Farah has provided no credible evidence that Obama was not born in the U.S., this is not an issue.
Farah adds: "But clearly, this is not a left-right issue. This is not a conservative-liberal issue. This is not a Democrat-Republican issue. This is not an ideological issue. This is a matter of what's true and what's not." We know how Farah and WND rate on that last statement.
Brent Baker, in a July 28 NewsBusters post, complains about NBC's "cutesy take" on the upcoming mutual beer-drinking session with President Obama, Henry Louis Gates and the policeman who arrested Gates -- but gets too cute himself in baselessly portraying Obama as an effete.
AFter noting the beer preferences of Gates and the policeman, Baker adds: "Or maybe the President prefers wine over beer and is just agreeing to beer in a political effort to re-connect with blue-collar voters he offended."
In fact, Obama is on record as drinking Budweiser. But mentioning that didn't fit in with Baker's need to smear Obama.
Right-wingers are trying to score political points in the controversy over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and President Obama's remarks on it: by seeking to justify racial profiling.
In a July 23 Newsmax column, Ronald Kessler wrote:
Then Obama cited the history of blacks and Hispanics “being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately . . . and even when there are honest misunderstandings, the fact that blacks and Hispanics are picked up more frequently, and often time for no cause, casts suspicion even when there is good cause.”
In saying that, Obama ignored the unfortunate fact that blacks account for four times more violent crimes than people of other races.
Then, in a July 23 appearance on Glenn Beck's Fox News show, David Horowitz responded to complaints by Beck's black crew members about racial profiling by saying: "If he’s on the New Jersey Turnpike or in that area, 70 percent of the drug dealers are black. And who do you think they’re dealing the drugs to? Poor blacks in the -- in Newark, in the inner cities there. So the fact that they stopped him -- I mean, it’s an inconvenience. I have an inconvenience. I get searched every single time every time I jump a plane -- take a plane because I have an artificial hip, but I put up with it."
David Swindle reiterated and sycophantically defended Horowitz's remarks in a July 25 post at the (Horowitz-operated) NewsReal blog:
In explaining why it might be appropriate to search an African-American man’s truck when he gets pulled over Horowitz threw out something Media Matters doesn’t want people to think about: a high percentage of drug dealers in the New York-New Jersey area were black and were making money addicting young blacks to drugs.
This isn’t a “racist” point. He’s not saying that blacks are ethnically inclined to be drug dealers. Horowitz has black family members and has been a civil rights activist for his entire life. He’s primarily concerned with seeing that black children grow up in a safe environment so they too can participate in the American Dream. And part of that means confronting the criminals that are standing in the way of that pursuit.
Are Kessler, Horowitz and Swindle really claiming that racial profiling is not racist? And Horowitz having "black family members" somehow give him a free pass to advocate racial profiling? It appears so.
Corsi Still Can't Stop Peddling Bogus Obama Attacks Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily originally reported that the birth certificate released by Barack Obama's campaign is authentic. Even WND editor Joseph Farah, after months of lying about what WND originally reported, has finally conceded that he believes it's authentic.
So why is Jerome Corsi, in a July 28 WND article, referring to "Obama's purported short-form certificate"? He offers no evidence that is anything but authentic -- and any such evidence would contradict what his own news organization has reported.
The only possible conclusion is that Corsi cares nothing about reporting facts. But we already knowthat.
UPDATE: If WND and Farah (if not Corsi) have concluded that the certificate is authentic, why did it just post a video -- liftclaiming that it isn't? The video itself -- anonymously posted on YouTube-- contains a major factual error, claiming that "there's not even a hint of a [raised] seal" on the certificate released by the Obama campaign. In fact, it contains a raised seal.
Could it be that Farah was lying when he said he believed the certificate is authentic? It appears so -- just another lie he and WND have told.
Media Matters' Simon Maloy catches Clay Waters making the claim, in a July 27 NewsBusters post and TimesWatch item, that the New York Times had dismissed the birthers as conspiracy theorists, but couldn't bring themselves to do the same for the 9/11 Truthers, to whom the paper showed "respect," citing a 2006 Times article in which the writer "not once ... dismiss the 9-11 Truthers bizarre charge as a "conspiracy theory," as the Times article on the birthers did. Waters somehow overlooked the word "conspiracy" in the headline of that truther article, or that its overall tone was hardly "respectful."
UPDATE: Media Matters' Jamison Foser catches MRC director of communicaions Seton Motley, in a July 28 NewsBusters post, responding to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's assertion that a new auto plant in Canada won't result in additional costs to the government under its nationalized health care system by asserting, "Really? Adding workers brought in from outside Canada to the government rolls won't increase government spending?" Yes, really, since nobody said anything about bringing in workers "from outside Canada."
The problem with the short-form certification is that it could easily be obtained for a birth that took place out of the state or out of the country. All it would take is the word of one parent.
In fact, as the Joseph Farah-founded Western Journalism Center pointed out, there is no evidence that Hawaii issues birth certificates "for a birth that took place out of the state or out of the country" that claim the person was born in Hawaii.
If WND can't prove that this happens -- and it hasn't so far -- this issue is irrelevant, and the letter is irrelevant ... and this is just another lie from WorldNetDaily.
WJC Peddles More Birther Lies, Distortions Topic: Western Journalism Center
A July 27 email by the Western Journalism Center, sent to the WorldNetDaily mailing list, contains a whole new crop of distortions and falsehoods.
The email asserts that "no amount of ridicule will change the fact that close a a half-million people have signed petitions calling on Barack Hussein Obama to release his birth certificate." Actually, the WJC has no way of knowing that this is a "fact." As we've detailed, WorldNetDaily -- whose petition the WJC is presumably referring to -- has never released the signatures of the signees, making it impossible to verify the number of valid signatures (WND's count at this writing, by the way, is a lot closer to 400,000 than "a half-million"). Further, WND has no apparent mechanism to prevent multiple signatures by the same person, making that count even more unreliable.
The email also claimed that "no amount of name-calling can change the fact that 58% of respondents to an AOL on-line poll said that Obama should produce his actual birth certificate." True, perhaps, but irrelevant -- online opt-in polls are not a reliable indicator of public opinion. The email adds that "49.3% of the respondents to a scientific Wenzel poll found the question to be legitimate." But as we've noted, WorldNetDaily commissioned that poll -- the questions for which were skewed to get the answers WND wanted -- and Wenzel Strategies, headed by a former conservative newspaper columnist who later worked for a Republican congresswoman, has a clear bias.
The email goes on to assert that "Obama's paternal grandmother said, she was present at Obama's birth, which took place in Mombasa in what is now Kenya." That's false -- WJC is relying on a translation error to make that claim.
The email also asserts, "Obama's mother was only 19-years old when Obama was born... she was much too young to bestow her citizenship on him for the purpose of satisfying Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution." Also false. As we've detailed, if Obama was born in Hawaii -- WJC offers no credible evidence to the contrary -- that's irrelevant. Further, according to the Chicago Tribune, the timetable at the time Obama was born for a parent to confer U.S. citizenship upon a child born outside of the U.S. (again, which WJC has not proven about Obama) was being a citizen for 10 years including five years past the age of 14; Stanley Ann Dunham was three months short of her 19th birthday when Obama was born (not exactly "much too young"). But federal law shortened that time period to two year after the age of 14 and made it retroactive to 1952. That makes Obama doubly covered.
The WJC also makes a big deal out of how "the State of Hawaii does not accept the Certification of Live Birth as singular proof that an individual was actually born in Hawaii" for the Home Lands program. Again, true but irrelevant. The Home Lands is exclusively for those of "native Hawaiian" ancestry, which Obama has never claimed to be, so it wouldn't matter if he failed to meet the birth requirement for that program.
Farah: WND The Only 'Free Press' Left In America Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah howls in a July 27 WorldNetDaily column about the mainstream media coverage of the Obama birth certificate conspiracy:
We don't have a free press left in America – aside from the one you're reading. What we have is an official press – one that doesn't want any rogue journalists rocking the boat, challenging authority and watchdogging government at all levels.
This story isn't dead at all.
And that's what scares the management of CNN, the New York Times, the Associated Press and other Big Media who only recently were forced to cover this story at all through the sheer tenacity of WND, which has chronicled it tirelessly for 11 months.
So WND is the only "free press" left in America because it's promoting the birthers? Please.
Telling lies about Obama and portraying discredited claims as fact are not the same thing as "watchdogging government." Farah was never as concerned about George W. Bush's National Guard record as it is about the Obama birth certificate -- indeed, WND appears to care about government watchdogging only during Democratic administrations.
Hiding the truth from its readers because it conflicts with your political agenda is not the act of a "free press" -- it's an act of disrespect and dishonor to readers and dishonesty in journalism.
The only reason the story isn't "dead" in Farah's eyes is because he and WND peddle lies to keep it alive.
Farah also asserts of the "Big Media": "They're losing what little credibility they had left." But what credibility does WND have? None that we can tell, given that it's so determined to hound Obama from office that the truth no longer matters, if it ever did.
Farah concludes by whining: "It's not the story that's dead. Instead, what you're hearing is the sound of the Big Media watching their own funeral." Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Joe, as more of the public catches on to the lies you and WND have been spewing. Then we'll see which media outlet will be six feet under.
New Article: WorldNetDaily's Obama Birth Certificate Lies Topic: WorldNetDaily
Numerous claims have been discredited, but WND pretends they never were, deceiving its readers and making a mockery of journalism. Read more >>
Will WND Treat Coulter Like Gates? Topic: WorldNetDaily
Since the incident involving Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and local police -- and, specifically, after President Obama commented on it -- WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein has engaged in a near-constant effort to smear and discredit Gates as an extremist and tie him around Obama's neck.
Klein has written nofewerthanfivearticles on Gates, tying him to "radical black activists" and even denigrating pioneering black scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, whose namesake institute at Harvard Gates heads, as little more than "an avowed communist and also a socialist sympathizer." Klein even dredges up a 1996 speech in which Gates "uses the N-word."
Such smear jobs are what WorldNetDaily does to people who run afoul of its far-right, anti-Obama ideology.
By contrast, right-wing pundit (and WND columnist) Ann Coulter ran afoul of WND's ideology as well by declaring CNN's Lou Dobbs to be "wrong on this issue" on Obama's birth, pointed out "every conservative publication ... dealt with this" a year ago "and said there's nothing to it," and, even more shockingly, that the birth certificate conspiracy is an issue only to "a few cranks out there" -- and is not receiving the same treatment being meted out to Gates.
WND offers only an outside link to Coulter's comments, no transcription of them, and a poll that couches criticism of Coulter in an unsually (for WND) respectful way. The current top answer is "I usually agree with Coulter, but she is dead wrong on this issue."
Therefore, we call on Aaron Klein or anyone else at WND to start smearing Coulter like they are Gates. It's only fair, after all.
Even to allow Obama’s socialist programs a mere toe in the water could prove to be too late. These programs are like flypaper or unspeakable social disease. The elevator to the hell of a Marxist society goes in only one direction – ever higher into costs taken from appropriations of individuals’ earned incomes.
[...]
It won’t be enough for Republicans just to be “the party of no” and stop there. They will also have to propose national alternatives that begin all over again where Barack Obama first seduced America into his leftward-spiraling, all-consuming maelstrom of latter-day Marxism.
If they fail, this nation will be down on its hands and knees for decades, scouring floors in an Augean stable where no one-time sluice will suffice to eradicate the bacilli of socialism from forever attempting a comeback.
Cliff Kincaid's Conspiracy Du Jour Topic: Accuracy in Media
The headline on Cliff Kincaid's July 23 Accuracy in Media column pretty much says it all: "The Chavez-Obama U.N. Plot Against Honduras."
Yep, Kincaid has found another consipracy to latch onto.
Kincaid claims there is an "Chavez-Obama axis" and suggests that "Obama Administration is, in effect, acting as an agent of Venezuela (and Iran) in Honduras." His main source for this conspiracy? Tom Hayden -- or, as Kincaid describes him, "former Marxist SDS radical Tom Hayden."
Kincaid has suddenly found a left-winger's words to be trustworthy. And we thought commies couldn't be trusted.
Newsmax Deletes Columnist's Criticism of Morris Topic: Newsmax
In the Washington Times version of his column, Arnaud de Borchgrave criticizes wild attacks on President Obama:
President Obama is now a card-carrying socialist or borderline Marxist. He is the Manchurian Candidate. He was not born in the United States. He never produced a birth certificate. And now this closet neo-Marxist is plotting the revenge of those defeated in the Cold War. Therefore, he should be impeached and removed from office because his plan is to place America in a government-owned straitjacket.
It's vicious stuff. One of the vociferous voices is that of Dick Morris, who moved from the liberal camp under President Clinton to the hard right with his new book, "Catastrophe," which is what Mr. Obama has wrought for America.
In the version of de Borchgrave's column that appears at Newsmax -- a huge promoter of Morris that is currently giving away copies of "Catastrophe" with new subscriptions to its magazine -- that entire paragraph on Morris has been removed.
Newsmax did leave in a later statement by de Borchgrave quoting Morris. But it's not as explicitly judgmental as the one Newsmax excised.
WND's Klein Tries to Gin Up Non-Existent Obama Conspiracy Topic: WorldNetDaily
How desperate is Aaron Klein to smear Obama? The latest example: trying to create another bogus conspiracy.
In a July 26 WorldNetDaily article, Klein insists that "speculation abounds over the genesis of the press conference inquiry last week by Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times, whose question about Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. prompted a national race scandal involving President Obama." Despire asserting that "several blogs" Klein names only two -- something called "The Real Barack Obama," whose credibilty Klein does not establish, and right-wing radio host John Batchelor.
But this is an echo chamber: Batchelor cites "The Real Barack Obama." So really, "several" is more like one blog quoted by another blog. Further, Klein fails to disclose his relationship with Batchelor; not only has made numerous appearances on Batchelor's radio show enough so that he considers Batchelor a "friend," he tweeted that he was appearing on the show the very same day this article was published.
The Real Barack Obama has also promoted Klein and prominently touts Batchelor's show, so the echo chamber appears to be even smaller than we thought.
For all this mutual back-scratching, Klein presents no actual evidence that, as he claims, "the White House may have coordinated the question" with Sweet.Here's what he tries to pass off as evidence:
"This was the first time Sweet was granted a question from Obama at any of his presidential press conferences."
"Asking a question about Gates at an event focused on health care seems remote to some. "
"Her question was read from a piece of paper."
Apparently, Klein has never written down questions before asking them in a interview.
Klein couldn't be bothered to note Sweet's denial of the charge until the 16th paragraph, after getting some of that baseless speculation out of the way. But a flat denial was not enough for Klein:
Her explanation, however, has only generated more unanswered questions for the bloggers' speculation. If she had never written about the Gates incident, for example, why did she use her one question to Obama on the matter?
Klein then insisted: "In another twist in the plot, the White House's Gibbs refused an opportunity to deny Sweet's question was not preplanned with the White House." But the excerpt Klein provides shows that Gibbs was not asked whether Sweet's question was "preplanned with the White House"; he was asked whether the Gates matter was discussed in preparation for the press conference, which is not the same thing.
Klein, in trying to smear both Obama and Sweet, demonstrates himself to be as dishonest a reporter as ever. After all, he's still peddling the discredited lie that Obama could not have visited Pakistan on a U.S. passport.
What has our old friend Ellis Washington been up to this past week?
First, he arrogantly portrays himself as having the wisdom fo Socrates, pounding out another bizarre pseudo-Socratic dialectic, this time pitting himself -- er, Socrates against President Obama, Teddy Kennedy, "Sen. RINO" and "We the People (mute part)."
This provides the spectacle, convincing only to someone who knows nothing at all about Socratic dialogue, of "Socrates" berating "Obama" as "incapable of answering a simple historical question about socialism in light of your proposed health care system," attacking Kennedy for his "long, shameful legacy in America, the capstone of which is universal health care," making Nazi smears, and quoting Winston Churchill and "the words for the ages of that great conservative British parliamentarian Sir Edmund Burke."
For Washington to portray Socrates as engaging in right-wing screeds that are nothing more than Washington himself spouting off -- i.e., "We know that Democrats have long ago sold their souls to the devil on all issues of life" -- is not very, well, Socratic.
Speaking of right-wing screeds, Washington follows up with one against the NAACP, approvingly quoting Rush Limbaugh calling the group "NAALCP – National Association for the Advancement of LIBERAL Colored People."Washington denounces the group as "one of the most radical socialist organizations in America," thanks his lucky stars the the group declined to hire him as a young man ("Thank you, God, for shutting some doors in my life"), and concludes: "And that is why I wish you an UnHappy 100th birthday, NAALCP!"
