Molotov Mitchell's latest anti-Obama video rant at WorldNetDaily accuses President Obama for purportedly not enforcing border security, claiming that he has "sid[ed] with the cartels" by suing Arizona over its anti-immigration law:

For Barack Obama, who is currently responsible for securing that border, for him to stab his own citizens in the back defines the word "treason." Now, for those of you who watch "For the Record" regularly, you know I'm not the type of guy to just throw that word around, but there it is. And Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu is right when he says, quote, "our own government has become our enemy."

That ol' Molotov claims to be the kind of guy who doesn't throw "treason" around is a minor point at best, since he is the kind of guy who smears La Raza as "the tan Klan" and spread lies about Obama. He's also the kind of guy who wants to see gays killed in Uganda.

Speaking of lying about Obama: As defined by many metrics, including the number of Border Patrol agents on the job and the number of illegal immigrants that have been deported, border enforcement is actually up under the Obama administration.

Oops! It seems that ol' Molotov should be a tad more circumspect about throwing that "treason" word around by, you know, checking the facts first.

UPDATE: Also, Molotov's new friend Sheriff Babeu has a bad habit of hanging out with white nationalists and wacky conspiracy theorists.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:44 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, August 11, 2010 7:23 PM EDT

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Cliff Kincaid hates gays so much, he's willing to take on Rush Limbaugh over it. From his Aug. 20 Accuracy in Media column:

James Burnham’s 1964 classic, The Suicide of the West, was on my mind when I heard that Rush Limbaugh had homosexual entertainer Elton John perform at his wedding. Limbaugh is a great conservative entertainer, but he could have picked better entertainment at his own wedding. Such a decision carries great weight. It says that Limbaugh himself is giving up on fighting the social and cultural war and that he wants to “make peace” with the Hollywood left that has been so determined to vilify and destroy him.

[...]

The $1 million Limbaugh reportedly paid to hire Elton John would have been better spent on social conservative groups trying to preserve traditional values, including marriage between a man and a woman. God knows that groups like Peter LaBarbera’s Americans for Truth could use the assistance. Dozens of Marxist-led mean and angry “gay rights” demonstrators showed up in Chicago to protest LaBarbera’s premier Truth Academy. They fear the truth about the destructive aspects of their so-called lifestyle.

Even NewsBusters takes a hit for not hating gays as much as Kincaid does:

Meanwhile, in a post on the Bradley Manning homosexual military scandal, the usually reliable conservative-oriented Newsbusters site asks, “Does the possibility that [Bradley] Manning’s opinions on DADT [Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell] motivated him to leak the documents in question have any bearing on the validity of the policy itself? Of course not. No one is suggesting that Manning’s homosexuality in itself motivated him to allegedly leak these documents, and therefore that homosexuals should be banned from the military.”

There is every reason to believe that his homosexuality motivated the release of the documents. What’s more, the leaking of this classified information is an obvious reason why the current homosexual exclusion policy should not only be maintained but strengthened.

The rest of Kincaid's rant takes a predictable gay-bashing descent into using the Manning case as an excuse to keep don't ask, don't tell. Kincaid sums up:

It is not politically correct to say but this is the danger you face when a homosexual struggling with his sexual identity is entrusted with national security information. Admitting open homosexuals into the Armed Forces who continue to struggle with their sexual identity will only exacerbate this national security problem.

[...]

Admitting open and active homosexuals to the military will not solve the problem. It makes the problem worse. What these people need is real “compassionate conservatism,” of the kind that promises release from their inner torment and psychological instability. It means freeing them from a destructive lifestyle that has driven Bradley Manning to the point of suicide.

So what frees Kincaid from the inner torment that manifests itself in his rabid homophobia?

Posted by Terry K. at 12:58 PM EDT

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An Aug. 11 CNSNews.com article by Adam Cassandra promotes a poll by the Military Culture Coalition -- which Cassandra describes only as " affiliated with the Center for Military Readiness" -- finding that, among other things, "59 percent of Democrats think that members of Congress should consider the opinions of homosexual advocacy groups over the opinions of top military commanders when considering a repeal of the law prohibiting homosexuality in the military."

Cassandra fails to mention the bias of the group -- a operation supported by right-wing activists that opposes the repeal of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Also unmentioned by Cassandra is that one of those right-wing activists backing the group is none other than Brent Bozell, Cassandra's boss.

CNS has a history of failing to disclose conflicts of interest in the organizations it promotes. Last year, it repeatedly promoted a group opposed to President Obama's speech at Notre Dame without disclosing that Bozell was a member of the group's board of directors.

Cassandra also failed to note the ideological slant of the pollster the group used, The Polling Company/WomanTrends. As we've previously noted when CNS has promoted its findings, The Polling Company's owner, Kellyanne Conway, is a partisan Republican activist.

Posted by Terry K. at 10:51 AM EDT

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WorldNetDaily is a prime go-to destination for unhinged screeds, and it makes another contribution with an August 10 column by Christopher Grey attacking the 14th Amendment. The headline sets the tone: “14th Amendment is a fraud that should be repealed.”

Grey begins by explaining why the amendment is a “fraud and abomination on our Constitution”:

Let's begin with how we got the 14th Amendment in the first place. It was ratified under very dubious circumstances in the immediate aftermath of our devastating Civil War. Nearly half of all U.S. states effectively were controlled under martial law when this amendment was ratified. Procedurally, this calls into question whether or not the ratification of this amendment was even legal.

One of the major reasons for the 14th amendment, in fact, was that the Congress had passed several laws that it knew probably were unconstitutional because they illegally transferred enormous powers from the individual states to the federal government. The 14th amendment was the blunt instrument that they used to correct this problem, but it has grown over the years into a voracious monster that is devouring everything in its path.

The rant then bashes the amendment’s citizenship clause:

This clause is why people from Third World countries around the world sneak into our country to have their babies. Once they have a baby here, the child is automatically a U.S. citizen and the parents are allowed to stay here even though they came here illegally.

This is ridiculous. No other country in the world allows people to do this. This clause encourages people around the world to come here for the express purpose of raising their children on the backs of U.S. taxpayers. Our country is going broke and we still allow this to happen because we have no choice. The 14th Amendment guarantees this to everyone.

Grey goes on to declare the amendment’s equal protection clause to be something commies would do:

The Equal Protection clause guarantees that each state provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. Think about this statement for a moment. It sounds reasonable on the surface. However, it has been used as a justification for the creeping advance of socialism and tyranny for decades. It has been the backdoor for the federal government to place more and more restrictions on the ability of states to operate independently from Washington. It also has been used to justify more and more federal regulation of private businesses. If you think about this equal-protection clause statement more deeply, its true implication is extremely Marxist or even Leninist and Maoist.

How can a state or any government possibly provide equal protection under the law in a free and capitalist society? The answer is that it cannot. It's impossible. The only way for everyone really to have equal treatment under the law is if people all have the same resources and aren't allowed to make free choices about their own lives. This is an extreme version of socialism akin to what Mao forced upon the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution.

Using the equal protection clause to end school segregation is just not realistic, according to Grey, because it’s just too much of a pain for a “free and capitalist system” to give people the same opportunity at a decent education no matter where they live:

Let's just take a few examples to further illustrate this point. If you live in a good neighborhood, you have better law enforcement, health and safety services, schools, transportation, and the list goes on and on. There's no way that someone living in a very poor neighborhood reasonably can have protection under the law equal to a person living in a good neighborhood.

Someone might say that this isn't the intent of the equal-protection clause. That's true. It wasn't the original intent, but this is exactly how it's been used over the years. The whole point of Brown vs. Board of Education, one of the most famous Equal Protection clause cases in our nation's history, was that separate but supposedly equal services such as education were not equal enough.

It is not any stretch of the imagination to jump from this conclusion to mandating that all school districts must be of equal quality, which is of course impossible in a free and capitalist system. This was the idea behind forced busing in the 1970s, which fortunately was ended after disastrous consequences made it politically abhorrent.

Finally, Grey declares equal protection as something that’s just too impractical in a “free society.” If you’re poor and need an attorney, but you can’t afford a decent one, well, too bad:

Another clear example of how the Equal Protection clause really cannot function in a free society applies to the criminal and civil justice system. It's obvious that people who have more money have access to much better lawyers than people who don't have money. This creates a very clear difference in the amount of protection under the law that is afforded poor people versus rich people.

Specific and egregious examples of this are the acquittals of O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake and Claus von Bulow even as we know many innocent, but poor, defendants are convicted because they lack sufficient legal representation to defend themselves against the charges.

Attempts to remedy this problem by giving poor defendants a public attorney in criminal cases is like putting a fig leaf on the problem. There really is no solution to this disparity in legal representation between the rich and the poor in a free society. This is just part of the injustice that we all have to tolerate if we want to enjoy the freedoms that we have.

Right-wingers have been railing against the 14th Amendment in recent days, but Grey gives us a all-too-clear view of what would actually happen if it were repealed -- and how much the amendment contributes to a genuinely free and equal society. Grey has no apparent problem with poor people and minorities having fewer rights than him, but the vast majority of the country believes differently.

(Cross-posted at Media Matters.)

Posted by Terry K. at 1:36 AM EDT

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In his Aug. 10 WorldNetDaily column, Joseph Farah insists that President Obama haslost on the "eligibilty" issue:

 Not only is it a winning issue, it is the only issue that can effectively undo the nightmare of the Obama era in one fell swoop.

There would be no need for repealing Obamacare if it turns out his presidency was a sham from the beginning.

There would be no need to wait until Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan retire or die to see them replaced on the Supreme Court if it turns out his presidency was a sham from the beginning.

There would be no need to wring our hands in hopes that future congresses and future presidents might roll back all of the damage Obama has inflicted on America if it turns out his presidency was sham from the beginning.

There would be no need to wait until 2011 in hopes that a new Republican majority might impeach Obama if it turns out his presidency was a sham from the beginning.

There would be no need to wait until 2012 for another chance to replace Obama if it turns out his presidency was a sham from the beginning.

That's why this issue is so important.

The way Farah and WND have been trying to keep the issue alive is by telling a lot of lies. An issue based on lies is hardly a winning one. And Farah keeps up the lies here:

Secondly, even in the extremely unlikely event that Obama were to produce a birth certificate that affirmed his birth story, it will merely serve to refocus the debate on eligibility. The best-selling new book "Manchurian President" devotes an entire chapter to exploring whether Obama could be constitutionally eligible as the son of Kenyan father. The clear conclusion is no – he can't be. There is no way that a foreigner could confer natural-born citizenship on a son no matter where that son was born.

In fact, as we detailed, Klein reached that conclusion by parroting birther lawyers and studiously ignoring legal analysis to the contrary, so it's hardly the exhaustive analysis Farah portrays it as. Klein's analysis also relies on defining "natural born" as having both parents be U.S. citizens -- which even WND acknowledges lacks binding legal precedent.

Further, Klein also concluded that Obama was born in Hawaii, but you won't hear Farah mention that.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:40 PM EDT

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In an Aug. 9 Newsmax column running to defense of a counseling student who is suing her college because she claims the school wanted her to "renounce her faith" regarding her anti-gay views -- which would likely interfere in any counseling career -- Herbert London seems to be endorsing the controversial practice of conversion therapy to change gays' sexual orientation:

To exacerbate matters within the department, [student Jennifer Keeton] argued the “conversion therapy” for homosexuals should be entertained, a point of view that departed significantly from accepted norms within the program and according to program officials, from “psychological research.”

It is noteworthy that the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) defends the practice Keaton [sic] advocates and notes opponents of conversion therapy are often criticized by politically motivated biases, albeit, in fairness, the reverse accusation might also be made. 

No, it is not "noteworthy" that NARTH endorses conversion therapy; after all, it is an anti-gay group, so it's presumably more than happy to eliminate gays by whatever means. (A NARTH board member was recently caught hanging out in Europe with a male escort, so whatever it does seems not to stick.)

Additionally, all major national mental health organizations oppose conversion therapy. Does London think all of these organizations have "politically motivated biases"?

Posted by Terry K. at 1:09 PM EDT

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An Aug. 5 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas claimed that President Obama "pledged his support for a card check bill, which would eliminate secret ballots in elections to unionize workplaces." Lucas went on to write that the bill "replaces the secret ballot by allowing union organizers to publicly ask workers to sign a card in favor of unionizing."

In fact, the bill Lucas is writing about, the Employee Free Choice Act, does not "eliminate secret ballots." It eliminates the part of the law in which employers are the only ones who can demand a secret ballot in a union election. The bill gives employees the right to make a choice of approving a union through either a "secret ballot" election process or the non-secret ballot "card check" process.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:16 AM EDT

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Marketwatch's Jon Friedman writes in an Aug. 9 Newsmax column:

ar be it from you or me to deny President Obama a special 49th birthday present. What do you give to a man who has everything — literally? That's easy. President Obama gave himself the gift of playing a pick-up basketball with LeBron James and some of the other top players in the land.

I think it's great that my president is in touch with the zeitgeist. But I'm getting a little tired of watching him goofing around like this. I want him to show as much concern as I feel. Oh, I have no doubt that the president is engaged, perhaps even fixated, on fixing the economy and solving as many problems as he can — especially prior to the midterm elections in November.

Perhaps Andre Agassi, who may pop up on the White House tennis court someday, put it best when he once remarked famously that "image is everything."

President Obama has enough well-paid handlers around him 24/7 to understand keenly that the American people are forever scrutinizing his performance — and his image.

Do the advisers fret that their boss is undermining his prestige by playing basketball with a bunch of NBA stars? It's also questionable as to whether President Obama's image looked dicey when he was shown hanging out with LeBron James, whose own reputation took a big hit when he hyped his decision to join the Miami Heat during the off-season.

But Friedman didn't mention the reason this basketball session took place: it was to entertain wounded troops.

By hiding the full truth, Friedman is creating an image problem for Obama that doesn't exist.

Posted by Terry K. at 10:11 AM EDT

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Terry Jeffrey attempts an attack on Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling overturning California's Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in an Aug. 9 CNSNews.com article by blaring what he perceives to be the most damning aspect of it:

U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who ruled last week that a voter-approved amendment to California’s constitution that limited marriage to the union of one man and one woman violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, based that ruling in part on his finding that a child does not need and has no right to a mother.
 
Nor, he found, does a child have a need or a right to a father.

Jeffrey doesn't explain from where he divines these "rights" he's talking about. It also contradcts CNS' promotion of those who oppose the idea of a child having rights.

In fact, just three days before, a CNS article by Christopher A. Guzman promoted Republican Sen. Jim DeMint's attack on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a convention signed onto by every country in the world except the U.S. and Somalia. Among the rights enumerated in the convention are that "Governments should respect the rights and responsibilities of families to direct and guide their children" and that "Children have the right to live with their parent(s), unless it is bad for them. Children whose parents do not live together have the right to stay in contact with both parents, unless this might hurt the child."

So why is CNS giving people space to attack these rights? According to DeMint, the treaty would allegedly place parental rights under the jurisdiction of the international community.

CNS published annother attack on the U.N. convention in a November 2008 article by Penny Starr, in which Michael Smith, president of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, asserted that the convention "could damage relationships by giving children 'rights' to question their parents’ decisions on a range of issues, including discipline, religious training and education."

It seems that CNS needs to figure out whether children have rights or not, or whether those rights depend on what sexual orientation the parent is.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:38 AM EDT

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In an Aug. 8 "Insider Report" item, Newsmax touts its Twitter account:

Visitors to Newsmax’s website are continuing to link to the social networking services Twitter and Facebook in increasing numbers.

Newsmax’s Twitter account now has more than 2,000 followers, up from 1,670 in June. Twitter enables its users to send and read messages known as “tweets,” text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to subscribers known as “followers.”

On Twitter, Newsmax posts links to stories on politics, health, money and other topics, to be shared by followers and spread to other Twitter users.

Well, not everyone -- Newsmax has blocked us from adding it to our ConWeb Twitter feed in the right-hand bar of ConWebBlog. It joins WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein in blocking us for no apparent reason.

Posted by Terry K. at 2:20 PM EDT

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Joseph Farah headlines his Aug. 9 WorldNetDaily column "Lies on top of lies on top of lies." Unfortunately, he's not talking about the ones he and his website have told.

As we've detailed, WND is the leading purveyor of falsehoods over Barack Obama and his eligibility to be president. WND has also been piling up falsehoods to cover up its mendacity, such as pretending that it never questioned Obama's citizenship, an effort that still goes on today. In a July 21 WND article, Aaron Klein claimed that WND "has never reported Obama was born outside the U.S." -- a claim contradicted by WND's promotion of an "Kenyan birth certificate" it couldn't be bothered to confirm the authenticity of before publishing.

Last week, WND asserted that newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan worked on birther cases as Obama's solicitor general -- a claim so utterly false that even WND was shamed into correcting it.

Farah is the last person who should be throwing stones at the supposed lies of others.

Those attacks, meanwhile, are couched in technicalities and theoretical suppositions, not fact. Here's Farah's response to the idea that contemporaneous announcements of Obama's birth in Honolulu newspapers are sufficient evidence of his Hawaiian birth:

I'm still shocked by the fact that so many press outlets, media pundits and otherwise certifiably skeptical news people accept newspaper birth announcements as the equivalent of a birth certificate. I would like any of them to try using newspaper birth announcements as a substitute for a birth certificate in any venue that requires the original document. I'll save you the trouble. It won't work. The newspaper birth announcements only provide some corroborating evidence that a certification of live birth was likely generated by the Hawaii health department. And even the certification of live birth is not a legitimate substitute for an original long-form birth certificate – nor should it be – to get a driver's license, a passport or to enroll in Little League sports. There are just too many ways to generate such a document without documented, eyewitness accounts of the actual birth.

Farah, of course, has no evidence that  Obama was not born in Hawaii -- even his reporter Aaron Klein concedes this, though WND won't report it -- so he must take refuge in the theoretical (and arguably infintesimal) possibility that Obama's parents might have lied to Hawaii officials about where Barack was born in order to obtain a Hawaii birth certificate, with the presumed intent of making Barack eligible to run for president 47 years hence.

Farah doesn't care about the truth -- he only cares about peddling hate. If he's accusing others of telling lies, you can be sure he's really just trying to cover up his own.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:06 AM EDT

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CNS is trying to create yet another controversy where none exists.

A July 21 article by Eric Scheiner reported that "The Justice Department is not saying whether Solicitor General Elena Kagan has been taking the full federal salary of solicitor general since she 'ceased' performing the full responsibilities of that position more than two months ago." This was followed on Aug. 5 with Fred Lucas asserting that "Neither the White House nor the Justice Department are saying whether Elena Kagan has been collecting her full government salary since she 'ceased' performing her full duties as solicitor general after May 10 when President Barack Obama nominated her to serve on the Supreme Court."

What's missingfrom both of these articles is any historical examination of the subject. For instance, both Sam Alito and John Roberts were on the government payroll as judges when they were nominated to the Supreme Court, and both presumably had to cease performing their full duties as a result of their nomination. Yet neither Scheiner nor Lucas tells us whether their pay was reduced during that time, which they seem to demand Kagan's pay to be.

Nobody begrudged Alito and Roberts their full pay during the nomination process. Why does CNS want Kagan to be docked when there's no established historical precedent?

Posted by Terry K. at 1:43 AM EDT

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David Swindle maintains the David Horowitz cult of personality in an Aug. 8 NewsReal post devoted to "The 10 Most Important David Horowitz Books to Read":

One of the most common queries I’ve gotten from NewsReal Blog readers and bloggers alike is some guidance on which of David Horowitz’s books to read. Which are the most important? Which will help them understand his political approach and analysis of the Left the best? Which will be most useful in their own political fights?

It’s not an easy question as different people have different interests and will be moved by different books. Never the less, I’ve decided to create this guide listing what — in my personal opinion — are the ten most important of David’s books to read — and I’ve ranked them in order.

Thanks for sharing. Not quite the wonk-Tiger-Beat tone of previous posts, but still yet another reminder that it's still all about the increasingly Lenin-like visage of Chairman David.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:56 AM EDT

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An Aug. 4 NewsBusters post by Matt Hadro complained that PBS "watered down" the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' "infamous history of liberal rulings, saying that though it may be liberal, it is not more so than any other U.S. Circuit Court." Hadro continues:

The Ninth Circuit has a long history of being stacked with liberal judges since the days of President Carter, and infamously struck down "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance in 2002. The Court has arguably inched to the right with the addition of moderate and conservative judges, but is still widely regarded as the most liberal of the circuit courts.

James Taranto, member of the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, described the court as "notoriously liberal," in his piece about the reversal of Proposition 8. Ashby Jones, writing for the WSJ's law blog, said that the court has a reputation for being "packed with liberal judges."

The sentiment isn't confined to conservative-friendly publications.

The Los Angeles Times reported last year that 15 of the court's 16 cases reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court were reversed. "Judicial analysts attribute the high reversal rate at least partly to the 9th Circuit's reputation as a liberal-dominated bench, even though more recent conservative appointments have diluted that influence," the paper reported.

Indeed, the New York Times reported this past spring that "outside experts who have examined the circuit for quantitative evidence of its leanings say that over all, it is indeed the most liberal circuit – but not by all that much."

But in addition to contradicting history in suggesting that the 9th Circuit's reversal rate is abnormally high, Hadro is selectively quoting from those aforementioned newspaper articles. The Los Angeles Times article he cites puts the reversal rate in context:

Most analysts dismiss statistics on reversal as of little significance, given the small number of cases reviewed from most circuits. The 6th and 8th Circuits, which together comprise 11 states from Tennessee to the Dakotas, saw 100 percent of their cases reversed this term, respectively five and four of the Supreme Court's 83-case docket.

But Mr. Samaha, a former law clerk for Justice John Paul Stevens, said it was common knowledge that decisions made by panels that include certain liberal judges get closer scrutiny than others.

"Is it really a circuit being profiled, in a sense, or really a smaller set of judges who set off alarm bells?" Mr. Samaha pondered. "I would suspect it's the latter."

The New York Times article Hadro cites also adds context to reversal rates that Hadro didn't see fit to include:

Susan B. Haire, an associate professor of political science at the University of Georgia, has done extensive research into the rate of reversal for the various circuits and said that, in fact, the reversal rates for the Ninth are generally higher than for other circuits. However, Ms. Haire noted that the Ninth hears far more cases than any other circuit.

In the context of the total volume of cases, she said reversals are “marginally higher than the other circuits, but such a teeny-tiny difference from a substantive perspective even if it is statistically significant, people might say that’s to be expected when you have such a high volume” of cases.

Tom Goldstein, an expert on the Supreme Court, said there was “no evidence of the Ninth Circuit being out of control or of the Supreme Court thinking it is out of control.” He said that there were “old-school, Carter-era liberal appointees on that court who are out of step with the current Supreme Court and are quite strong willed.” He added that those judges “get a lot of attention from the justices” of a Supreme Court that has itself moved significantly to the right over the years.

The highest court in the land, he suggested, so clearly rankles at the views of Judge Reinhardt that litigators hoping to get his decisions overturned will go out of their way to cite him by name in their briefs.

It seems that mentioning the 9th Circuit's size and the even higher reveral rates of other circuits are relevant to any attack on the court's alleged liberal bias. Too bad Hadro didn't think so.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:34 PM EDT

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