Sheppard Defends Limbaugh, Ignores His Falsehood Topic: NewsBusters
Noel Sheppard used a May 8 NewsBusters post to take offense at Bill Maher for saying mean things about Rush Limbaugh. Regarding Maher's claim that Limbaugh "said on his show this week that, that the Times Square bomber had an Obama bumper sticker on his car," Sheppard provided a transcript of Limbaugh's statement, then harrumphed:
As evidenced by the transcript, Limbaugh WONDERED if there was an Obama bumper sticker on the SUV and said someone would "MAYBE SEE" an "Obama 2012."
Wondering and saying "maybe" is far different than claiming something occurred, although clearly that's NOT a distinction the typically inflammatory Maher would likely understand.
That Limbaugh transcript supplied by Sheppard, however, began with the statement, "Guess what? Faisal Shahzad is a registered Democrat." Which is a lie.
It seems Sheppard thinks Limbaugh is above fact-checking -- a strange position for someone who works for a group whose purported job is to check facts.
Bozell's Evidence Kagan Is Liberal: College Drinking Over Dem Loss Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell uses his latest column to complain that "media liberals" are being coy about Elena Kagan's political leanings, even though she's obviously a liberal. Bozell then unveils his indisputable evidence:
As with Sotomayor & Co., media liberals greeted Kagan’s record as a great mystery, and because of that, no one should “pigeonhole” this woman as a liberal. But there it was in black and white in a sympathetic New York Times profile. She spent the summer of 1980 working to elect a left-wing Democrat, Elizabeth Holtzman, to the Senate. “On Election Night, she drowned her sorrow in vodka and tonic as Ronald Reagan took the White House and Ms. Holtzman lost to ‘an ultraconservative machine politician,’ she wrote, named Alfonse D'Amato.”
Maybe she’s not a liberal. If she thinks Al D’Amato is an “ultraconservative,” then she might just be a radical leftist.
That's right -- Bozell had to go all the way back to 1980, when Kagan was a college student, to find evidence that she's a liberal ... 30 years later.
That's the thin gruel Bozell and friends will try to stretch into repeated attacks on Kagan over the next few months. It's gonna be a long summer.
Unruh's One-Sided Attack on Kagan Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh's May 10 WorldNetDaily article on Elena Kagan's Supreme Court nomination is a highly biased affair, quoting only right-wing groups critical of Kagan and making no apparent effort to talk to anyone for a response. (Biased reporting is Unruh's stock-in-trade at WND.) As a result several false claims stand uncorrected by Unruh.
For instance, Unruh writes that "Kagan had tossed military recruiters from the Harvard Law School campus because of the military's 'discrimination' against homosexuals because they were not allowed to openly portray their chosen lifestyle in the ranks." Unruh also claimed that Kagan's "bold criticism" of the military'sDon't Ask, Don't Tell policy included "included throwing military recruiters off campus," and quoted the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins as saying Kagan is "marked by kicking the military off campus during the height of the Iraq War." Unruh further quoted Perkins claiming that Kagan has "hostility to the U.S. military" and a similar attack from the right-wing Center for Military Preparedness claiming Kagan has expressed "deliberate hostility" toward the military.
If Unruh was concerned with reporting facts -- you know, committing actual journalism -- instead of regurgitating right-wing talking points, he would know those claims are false. Kagan has repeatedly praised the military, she did not kick military recruiters off campus, and military recruitment at Harvard Law School was not impacted by the one single semester Kagan blocked military recruiters from using the school's career office.
Unruh also uncricially repeats a claim from Jewish World Review that Kagan "treated two liberal law professors with kid gloves when they were busted for plagiarism." In fact, Harvard investigated the allegations and found no deliberate wrongdoing, and there is no evidence that the findings were motivated by politics.
Further, Unruh quotes several critics calling Kagan "pro-abortion" while offering no evidence to support the claim. In fact, she supported a late-term abortion ban in the 1990s.
A May 10 Newsmax article by David Patten uncritically repeats the maliciously false claim by Young America's Foundation that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan "trampled on the rights" of students during her tenure as the dean of Harvard Law School, and "segregated" students who sought to meet with military recruiters to hear about possible careers in the U.S. armed services.
Patten made no apparent effort to investigate YAF's claims. If he had, he would have found that YAF's attack is untrue.
First, students had access to military recruiters during Kagan's entire tenure as dean. Kagan prohibited military recruiters from using Harvard Law School's Office of Career Services for only one semester, spring 2005. During that semester, students could meet with military recruiters at the Harvard Law School Veterans Association office.
Second, Kagan consistently followed the law. The semester military recruiters were banned from using the OCS office followed a federal appeals court ruling that declared the Solomon Amendment -- which denied federal funding to schools that prohibited military recruiters on campus -- unconstitutional.
Third, military recruitment at Harvard Law School did not drop as a result of Kagan's behavior. Indeed, the number of graduates who entered the military from each of the classes that would have been affected by the single semester military recruiters were prohibited from using the OCS office was equal to or greater than the number who entered the military from any of Harvard's previous five classes.
YAF is spreading a malicious lie, and Patten allowed YAP to do it. That makes Patten a propagandist, not a journalist.
Vox Day On Reclaiming 'Traditional White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Culture' Topic: WorldNetDaily
If Americans can find the courage to consciously reject the myth of the melting pot and expel the Mexicans from the American Southwest, the Arabs from Detroit and the Somalis from Minneapolis, they can reclaim their traditional white Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. This is highly improbable because so many descendants of that culture have rejected it in favor of the vibrancy of diversity while those who haven't are far too frightened of criticism and social rejection to even articulate their thoughts.
(World O'Crap expands on Mr. Day's writings. Also, Mr. Day has previously approvingly cited the Nazis as a model for removing millions of people from a country, a statement so outrageous even WND was moved to remove it.)
Klein Now Misleading About What He Wrote In His Book Topic: WorldNetDaily
Appearing on the May 10 edition of Fox Business Network's "Happy Hour," WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein said:
And by the way, in the book, I show Obama in the 1990s was a member of the New Party, which was a socialist party that sought to infiltrate the Democrat Party to push it so far leftwards that it ultimately turns into a socialist party. I found newspaper evidence and personally interviewed the founder of the New Party, Marxist Carl Davidson, who recounted to me in the book Obama’s membership and participation with this socialist party.
That's not true at all. As we detailed, Klein quotes Davidson saying quite the opposite to claiming that Obama was a New Party member -- Davidson said that Obama never signed the party contract Klein described as "stipulating [candidates] would have a 'visible and active membership' with the party." Klein also quoted Davidson saying that "Obama was never a man of the left, either in his view or in being a member of an actual socialist organization" -- which, by Klein's own definition, excludes the New Party.
Klein misled in his book; now he's misleading about what he wrote in his book.
Jim Kouri's Ever-Shifting Immigrant-Bashing Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jim Kouri claimed in a May 4 Accuracy in Media column:
On April 7, 2007, the U.S. Justice Department issued a report on criminal aliens that were incarcerated in federal and state prisons and local jails.
In the population study of 55,322 illegal aliens, researchers found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about 8 arrests per illegal alien. Nearly all had more than one arrest. Thirty-eight percent (about 21,000) had between two and five arrests, 32 percent (about 18,000) had between six and 10 arrests, and 26 percent (about 15,000) had 11 or more arrests. Most of the arrests occurred after 1990.
Sound familiar? Kouri made almost the exact same claim in a column published in ... 2005:
On April 7, 2005, the US Justice Department issued a report on criminal aliens that were incarcerated in federal and state prisons and local jails. The report contained information on the number of criminal aliens incarcerated, their country of citizenship or country of birth, and the cost to incarcerate them. Congress also requested that the Government Accounting Office provide information on the criminal history of aliens incarcerated in federal and state prisons or local jails who had entered the country illegally.
In the population study of a sampling of 55,322 illegal aliens, researchers found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about 8 arrests per illegal alien. Nearly all had more than 1 arrest. Thirty-eight percent (about 21,000) had between 2 and 5 arrests, 32 percent (about 18,000) had between 6 and 10 arrests, and 26 percent (about 15,000) had 11 or more arrests.
It's highly unlikely that two government studies released exactly two years apart would repeat exactly the same numbers. And, of course, that didn't happen.
It turns out that neither date Kouri supplied is correct, nor is the issuing agency he cites. Kouri's numbers come from a May 9, 2005 report from the Governmental Accountability Office, issued by request from a group of House Republicans including the notoriously anti-immigrant Steve King.
While the numbers Kouri cites are correct as far as they go, though out of context -- it does stand to reason that illegal immigrants spending time in jail are there because they committed numerous crimes -- he misleads by portraying them as representative of the criminality of all illegal immigrants. Indeed, the report includes the disclaimer that "our analysis is not designed to infer conclusions about the arrest history of other illegal aliens not in our study population who entered the country illegally and have been arrested."
Of course, Kouri does exactly that, baselessly asserting an "escalation in alien crime" and claiming that "Handling the myriad problems associated with alien crimes is often beyond the capabilities of local police departments."
But if Kouri is so lazy as to invent new release dates for the report he's using for evidence, why listen to anything else he has to say?
(We've previously caught Kouri in a flare-up of Obama Derangment Syndrome and defending the murderous Branch Davidians.)
Well, that didn't take long: Joseph Farah has already started a petition drive at WorldNetDaily to oppose Elena Kagan's Supreme Court nomination. Too bad it's not based on anything factual.
WND hasn't told these things to its readers, so it's no surprise that Farah is so ignorant.
Perhap's he's too busy trying to make a buck off the nomination. Farah has also launched yet another of those junk mail-blasting schemes that he's so fond of, which "allows any American citizen to generate 100 individually addressed letters to every U.S. senator, each including the name of the sender and all delivered by Fed Ex for the low price of just $24.95."
IT seems Farah is so preoccupied with counting his money that he can't be bothered to tell the truth.
CNS, Newsmax Repeat False Attacks on Kagan Topic: CNSNews.com
The ConWeb seems to think that quoting from press releases equates to journalism.
A May 10 Newsmax article is solely dedicated to a rewritten press release from the right-leaning Center for Military Readiness, which claims that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan has shown "deliberate hostility" toward the military, adding, "It is unfortunate that President Barack Obama has chosen to replace the only military veteran on the Supreme Court with a nominee whose only significant record indicates deliberate hostility and opposition to laws protecting the culture and best interests of the American military."
In fact, Kagan is not only not "hostile" to the military, she has repeatedly praised it.
Meanwhile, a May 10 CNSNews.com article by Susan Jones uncriticzlly forwards the complaints by "conservative groups" about Kagan, including the false claim she has "anti-military views." Jones also cites Kagan's "lack of judicial experience" without noting that the last justice with no judicial experience was William Rehnquist, or that the chief reason Kagan has no judicial experience is because Republicans blocked her nomination for two years in the 1990s.
WND's Klein Misleads on Kagan Topic: WorldNetDaily
As is his wont, Aaron Klein tries his best to smear yet another member of the Obama administration by unleashing false and misleading attacks on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.
In one May 10 article, Klein rehashes right-wing attacks on Kagan without identifying any of the groups he cited by their political ideology. These include an assertion by the right-wing Move America Forward that Kagan is "radically anti-military" -- a claim that is utterly false.
In another article, Klein purports to read the contents of Kagan's mind when she was a college student, baselessly claiming that in her Princeton undergraduate thesis, Kagan "lamented the decline of socialism in the country as "sad" for those who still hope to 'change America.'" In fact, Kagan never claimed in her thesis that she personally supported socialism, and Klein is lying when he suggests she did.
UPDATE: Klein tosses out yet another misleading claim in a new article -- that Kagan "argued certain forms of speech that promote 'racial or gender inequality' could be 'disappeared.'" It's not until the fourth paragraph that Klein notes Kagan is referring to the "uncoerced disappearance" of such speech [emphasis ours].
Kessler Falsely Suggests Obama Hid Health Reform Report Topic: Newsmax
Ronald Kessler writes in his May 6 Newsmax column regarding a Department of Heatlh and Human Services report claiming that the cost of the health care reform bill will be higher than originally estimated:
Richard S. Foster, the chief actuary of Medicare and Medicaid who prepared the report, says the reason his analysis did not come out before the bill was passed is that he “didn’t have access to the reconciliation legislation itself until it was publicly issued on March 18, which was three days before the House vote took place on March 21. Because of the complexity of the reconciliation changes, it wasn’t possible to estimate the package prior to the vote.”
In other words, the White House, which claims to endorse transparency, had no interest in telling the public the real costs of the bill until after it was passed. Otherwise, it would have made sure that Foster received the appropriate information in time to prepare an analysis.
[...]
Now it turns out Obama misled the country about a measure that affects one-fifth of the economy, yet there is no outrage except from Republicans. The news media have treated the story as a non-event.
The New York Times played the story on Foster’s report on page A8. The Washington Post and USA Today did not run a story. With the exception of Fox News, none of the networks touched it.
If Obama were a company that advertised such false claims, the Federal Trade Commission would take action. If Obama were a Republican, the news media would play his deception as a scandal.
But Obama is neither. He is a pitchman who has victimized the American people with his sham reform.
The idea that the Obama administration conspired to withhold the report until after the vote -- first promoted by an anonymous report in the American Spectator and repeated by Newsmax -- has been discredited.
Further, the report that was eventually released is, according to Time magazine, "nearly identical" to Foster's report on the Senate health reform bill -- which was issued in January. If you'll recall, the House voted on the Senate reform bill; the updated report reflects changes made in the accompanying reconciliation bill that the Senate later approved.
A May 9 Newsmax article on pay for military personnel carries the headline: "Outrage: Obama Administration Targets Military for Pay Reductions."
That headline is a lie. As the Washington Post article that Newsmax based its article on states, The Obama administration is not proposing a "pay reduction" for military personnel, it is proposing a smaller pay increase than Congress:
The Pentagon wants a pay raise of 1.4 percent for service members next year, an increase based on the Employment Cost Index, which the Labor Department uses to measure private-sector salary increases. Congress, as it has for the past several years, has indicated it favors a slightly bigger bump, of 1.9 percent.
Proposing a smaller raise is not proposing a "pay reduction."
UPDATE: On her Facebook page, Sarah Palin links to the Newsmax story and repeats the false headline: "Soldier pay decreases in the midst of overspending elsewhere and government union pay raises? Seriously? What are our priorities?"
A May 6 CNSNews.com article (as posted at Free Republic) by Fred Lucas carried the headline, "Gibbs Can't Say, Won’t Check, If Obama Used Sexual Slur Against Tea Party Activists." The article began, "White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said he did not know and could not imagine asking President Barack Obama whether he used the vulgar sexual term 'tea baggers' to describe Americans active in the Tea Party movement."
But Lucas didn't tell the whole story -- as the transcript of the May 6 White House press briefing shows, Gibbs added, "I can’t imagine I’m going to ask the President that. But I will entertain it. ... I will check."
So CNS had to walk it back. Lucas' article now begins with a correction:
Correction: An initial posting of this CNSNews.com story by Fred Lucas had incorrectly reported that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said in his Thursday, May 6, 2010 press briefing that he would not check if President Barack Obama had used the term “tea baggers” to describe activists in the Tea Party movement. In response to a question about whether President Obama had used the term tea baggers, Gibbs actually said, “I can’t imagine I’m going to ask the President that. But I will entertain it.” Gibbs later added, “I will check.”
So CNS does make corrections after all. It still hasn't corrected Matt Cover's false claim that when then-Transportation Security Administration director nominee Erroll Southers referred to some groups that post a domestic security threat as being "Christian-identity oriented,"he was referring to a specific extremist group called Christian Identity and not to Christianity in general.
WND's Meaningless New Anti-'Amnesty' Scheme Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has a new money-making scheme.
In the tradition of its dubious and factually inaccurate "pink slip" campaign, WND has concocted a new letter-writing campaign designed to fleece its readers. This time, WND will send a letter on your behalf to all 100 senators that opposes "amnesty" for illegal immigrants.
Just one problem: At no point in the letter or the WND article promoting it is "amnesty" defined. The article suggests that "comprehensive immigration reform" is the same thing as "amnesty," but it offers no explanation of why this is so. Instead, we're treated to Joseph Farah ranting that "Amnesty will tear this country apart" and "Americans will not accept the destruction of their country lying down."
Farah will, however, shamlessly embrace making a buck off of people's fears.
WND is also playing the same numbers game it did with the "pink slip" campaign, promoting the number of letters issued rather than the (unimpressive) number of people WND has fleeced to send them. It's now touting that it's sent "50,000 individual letters to senators in the first week"; if you do your math and divide that by 100, that's only 500 people who have taken part.
Newsmax Email Makes False Claim About Obama Topic: Newsmax
A May 6 email to Newsmax's mailing list contains the following subject line: "Insider: Obama May Stop All Oil-Drilling, Wants Lithium."
But the email itself -- a third-party promotion hyping the stock of a company involved with the "miracle mineral" lithium -- doesn't make that claim. Heck, it doesn't even mention Obama at all. And the only mention of oil is in a claim that lithium will "get us off foreign oil sold to us by people who hate us."
So who's responsible for making this utterly false and completely unsubstantiated claim about Obama? Given that the email itself doesn't make this claim, suspicion must fall on Newsmax. It's previously harnessed Obama-bashing to make a buck through shilling investment schemes, so why wouldn't it toss out a casual, libelous smear to plug someone's stock?
