Who Doesn't Farah Want to Impeach? Topic: WorldNetDaily
Interesting, isn't it, that not one member of Congress has come forward to call for the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton for moral turpitude in light of the accusations of Juanita Broaddrick?
So, let the chorus begin here: It's way past time to throw this bum out of office. He's a disgrace to his office. He's a detriment to his country. And he's an embarrassment to the human race.
Pat Buchanan, former communications director to President Ronald Reagan, former presidential candidate and WND commentator, has come to the conclusion that a courageous Republican legislator should move a bill for impeachment of President Bush.
I reluctantly agree – and for the same reasons.
President Bush has had nearly five years in office to honor his oath of office and enforce immigration laws in this country.
He has not only failed, he has intentionally neglected this sworn duty, instead claiming he prefers to promote a vague immigration "reform" plan that involved a "guest worker" program that has served as an encouragement to the most massive influx of illegal immigration this country has ever seen.
Obama must be challenged on every front – even if we don't win every battle. It's time to go on offense, buddy.
We won't get a second chance this time.
Obama should be impeached.
This isn't just about policy disagreements. It's about the biggest and most egregious abuse of power in American history.
If you think I'm exaggerating, tell me how.
It's time to step up to the plate. Americans are not sending Republicans to Congress this year in record numbers because they want a counterbalance to Obama in Washington. They are sending them there to change the direction of the country – radically.
What's wrong with impeachment?
Impeachment is a political process. It's part of the Constitution. It might fail, because there are plenty of wimps among Republican members as well as a fair number of Democrats apparently sworn to overthrowing our constitutional system.
Nevertheless, political battles are won on offense, not defense.
NewsBusters Also Gives Art Robinson's Love of Racist Novels A Pass Topic: NewsBusters
WorldNetDaily isn't the only ConWeb outlet who's eager to give Oregon congressional candidate Art Robinson a pass on his love of racist novels by G.A. Henty.
An Oct. 13 NewsBusters post by Jack Coleman declared that Rachel Maddow's mention of it meant that "Cable television doesn't get any shabbier than this." Coleman highlighted that it was a character in Henty's "By Sheer Pluck" making the racist statement in question, as if that matters. He then writes:
What if Robinson had acquired the rights to the works of Harriet Beecher Stowe? Would Maddow cherry picking the vile opinions of a specific character -- plantation owner Simon Legree -- also render Robinson a racist?
The point, as we noted, is that the racist opinions of the character are not presented as "vile" in the book -- indeed, they are reflections of the 19th century era in which they were written. The character is not a Simon Legree villain; he's the mentor of the young man who is the story's main character and is considered a hero.
The question that needs to be asked is why Robinson promotes a book that presents such a racist as a hero, and an author whose entire ouvere -- which Robinson wants his homeschool students to read -- presumably contains similar outdated imperialistic attitudes as a core component of his curriculum. Robinson has not disclosed how his curriculum addresses the issue of Henty's racism and imperialism.
The only response we can find is Robinson declaring during a debate, "Henty's books are not racist, and I'm not racist." But that's a meaningless answer that doesn't address how his curriculum deals with it.
MRC Won't Tell the Whole Truth About Cat Stevens, Salman Rushdie Topic: Media Research Center
In an Oct. 31 NewsBusters post, Brad Wilmouth touted how "Sean Hannity informed viewers that Restoring Sanity Rally participant and singer Cat Stevens - who converted to Islam in the 1970s and changed his name to Yusuf Islam - several times declared that Salman Rushdie should be killed after Iranian leader, the Ayatollah Khomeni, issued a fatwa on the British author in 1989 for publishing his book the Satanic Verses."
Similarly, a Nov. 1 MRC TimesWatch post by Clay Waters complained that a New York Times story "failed to mention the 1989 controversy over comments Yusuf made in support of the fatwa from the Ayatollah Khomeini that novelist Salman Rushdie be killed for insulting Muhammad in 'The Satanic Verses.'"
Neither Wilmouth nor Waters mentioned that Stevens/Yusuf has backpedaled on the claim.
According to a Wikipedia page on the incident, Yusuf backpedaled the day after originally making the statement, insisting he was only talking about the punishment Quran advocates for blasphemy. And Yusuf says on his website, "I never called for the death of Salman Rushdie; nor backed the Fatwa issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini – and still don’t," though he says that Rushdie's book "destroyed the harmony between peoples and created an unnecessary international crisis."
Isn't the full story of Yusuf's comments worth reporting? Not at the MRC, where only half the story serves its purpose of inflaming conservatives.
NewsBusters, WND Run With Murky Audiotape Topic: NewsBusters
When Andrew Breitbart's websites posted audio they claimed were of reporters at a CBS affiliate in Alaska plotting to smear Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller, a good portion of the ConWeb was eager to report the claim -- and, in the process, downplay or ignore completely doubts about it.
Tom Blumer jumped on it in an Oct. 31 NewsBusters post declaring that the reporters were intent on "finding (creating?) an incident similar to one involving a Rand Paul campaigner and a MoveOn.org protester in Kentucky 'so we can put out a twitter/facebook alert.'" This was immediately followed by Mark Finkelstein uncritically repeating Sarah Palin's "shocking allegations" regarding the audiotape, adding that "this could shake up the Alaska race--and CBS."
Meanwhile, over at WorldNetDaily, Aaron Klein wrote that "the journalists can be heard plotting to 'find' a 'child molester' among the politician's supporters."
But things are not as clear-cut as NewsBusters and WND portray them. The TV station has stated that "The Miller campaign's analysis of the recording is incorrect in many material ways" and that "The complete conversation was about what others might be able to do to cause disruption within the Miller campaign, not what KTVA could do." Even Fox News has reported that it "cannot verify" what Palin and Breitbart have said about the audio's contents. Politico's Ben Smith added, "The transcript does not, in fact, make it terribly clear what they're talking about."
Despite such significant doubts being raised, NewsBusters has not mentioned them as of this writing, continuing to portray Palin's and Breitbart's skewed interpretation as fact. WND's Klein did note part of the TV station's response, but immediately followed with an attack on it by a blogger -- a response courtesy WND typically does not extend to liberals regarding right-wing claims.
But why would WND and NewsBusters let the facts get in the way? There's an election coming!
UPDATE: Plus, there's Breitbart's shoddy track record of sloppy and dishonest "journalism." WND and NewsBusters didn't mention that, either.
UPDATE 2: A NewsBusters post by Kyle Drennen complained that CBS' "Early Show" didn't mention the story. Like his colleagues, Drennen didn't mention the doubts that have been raised about the audio.
And Accuracy in Media pounced on it as well. Unlike the rest of the ConWeb, Don Irvine does include a significant portion of the TV station's response as an update to his blog post, though he immediately and sneeringly dismisses it.
The U.S. Constitution has no parliamentary provision for a "no confidence" vote, but Obama, Pelosi, and Reid have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to circumvent America's Constitution.
This ruling imperialist triumvirate prefers the ways of Europe. Americans, therefore, should demand that they follow their preferred European parliamentary standards and resign.
On Tuesday we shall see if voters believe President Obama, whose policy of taxing, borrowing, and spending our way out of today's economic crisis is plunging America deeper and deeper into debt, decline and a potential crash of the dollar, has lost what in Chinese emperors was called the "mandate of heaven."
If Obama and his comrades genuinely wish to restore economic health and prosperity to America, they would resign even if they win on Tuesday.
The stock market would probably surge by 5,000 points within days of a mass resignation by left-liberal Democratic rulers. Foreign investment money would also flood into America.
[...]
Democrats ought to lose in 2010 and 2012, but they also need to be removed from power for at least two generations, as Republicans were from control of Congress from the 1930s to the 1980s.
For their redemption and ours, left-liberal Democrats need to wander for 40 years in the desert until they purge themselves of the pagan pseudo-religious cults of Eurosocialism, Marxism, progressivism and all other collectivisms.
In year 2050 Americans can reconsider whether the Democrats have again become an American political party.
Every American this week should take a vow never to vote for any Democrat until 2050.
WND Columnist Likens Obama to Russian Bolsheviks Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has already likened President Obama to Nazis, the Antichrist and the Angel of Death. Why not Russian Bolsheviks? From a n Oct. 30 WND column by Alex Markovsky:
To say that Obama is a Bolshevik may sound extreme, but as someone who grew up in the former Soviet Union and holds degrees in economics and political science from the University of Marxism-Leninism, viewing the American political landscape through red communist glasses reveals a scary reality: The United States elected a radical socialist government committed to the transformation of the American capitalist free-enterprise system into an egalitarian society driven by a state-controlled political economy.
[...]
Obama came on the American scene at the right time: The lack of education, historical perspective and political literacy turned the American electorate into what Bolshevik Trotsky called the "voting herd." The combination of impending economic crisis and the weak candidacy on the Republican side created fertile ground for a talented demagogue to seduce the nation.
Obama's agenda reads as if it came straight out of the University of Marxism-Leninism. There is nothing new here but the striking parallels between the Russian Bolsheviks and Obama's government: both utterly convinced in their own uncompromising righteousness and their fanatic belief in economic equality, and both equally obsessed with power and control.
To control the masses, as the Bolsheviks' teaching goes, the leader should instill fear and hope. There is plenty of hope in the "Audacity of Hope" and plenty of fear being peddled in the president's speeches and actions. He has been frightening the country with the threat of such enemies as Wall Street, the undue influence of big corporations, special-interest groups and the so-called extremists of the tea party.
[...]
Obama is clearly following Lenin's script, spending and printing money at unprecedented levels. The plan is simple: Replace American self-reliance with government dependency. Increasing government spending in ever growing numbers – be it for bailouts, stimulus plans, health care, manure management, tattoo removal, condoms or solar energy – is the program; the area doesn't really matter. The objective is to spend until the country is in such debt as to result in default or hyperinflation, causing the destruction of our currency and the obliteration of wealth. The more the American people are indebted to government, the more they will turn to the government to save them, assuring Democratic one-party rule for the future.
In a sense, Obama is taking a page from the playbook of FDR, who successfully exploited economic difficulties to ensure the Democratic Party's continued domination and to have the voters appoint him president for life.
WND Misrepresents DC Area Shootings As Islamist Topic: WorldNetDaily
An Oct. 30 WorldNetDaily article by Drew Zahn asserts that "A rash of unsolved sniper shots in Washington, D.C., is resurrecting concerns that terrorists may once again be on the loose in the nation's capital, following an al-Qaida blueprint – not for large-scale bombings, but for smaller, seemingly 'random' acts of violence."
But not only does Zahn quote no one likening the shootings to Islamic terrorism (including the Washington Times editorial he cites), he misrepresents what authorities have said about the alleged shooter. Here's what Zahn writes:
FBI spokeswoman Katherine Schweit has suggested the shooter is simply a "struggling" individual.
"This guy hasn't hurt anybody. We don't think he wants to," she says. "We're hoping that he'll turn himself in."
In fact, authorities were much more specific about what they think about the identity of the shooter, who has targeted the Pentagon, the Marines museum and a Marine recruiting office:
"We believe the suspect has a grievance surrounding the U.S. Marine Corps," said John Perren, acting head of the FBI's Washington Field Office. "We'd like to know what this grievance is, and what we can do to try and resolve it. We're willing to listen to him and hear his side of the story."
The shooter may have a grudge against the Marine Corps as an institution, but could hold the servicemen and women in high regard, officials said. He or she may recently have experienced a trauma such as the death of a loved one or the loss of a job. The shooter likely is familiar with the Northern Virginia area, and if the shooter lives with family or friends, may have offered excuses after slipping away at night.
"It may be that he feels he's been wronged by the Corps in his professional or personal life," Perren said.
Zahn goes on to reference a previous WND report on "an al-Qaida training tape that was captured in Afghanistan and revealed terrorists planning not only attacks with weapons of mass destruction but also with drive-by shootings, home break-ins, ambushes of law-enforcement officers and targeted assassinations." This runs counter to actions of the shooter, who so far, as the Washington Post notes, "has struck overnight or in the early morning hours when no one would be around the facilities."
Zahn also brings up the 2002 Belway Sniper case of "a pair of Muslim men named John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo," adding: "Notably, authorities in 2002 consistently denied Muhammad and Malvo's connections to terrorism, even after it was revealed they spoke sympathetically about the Sept. 11 hijackers and Malvo filled nearly 100 pages with sketches obsessed with jihad and shedding American blood for Islam."
But those sketches weren't seen as evidence of committed Islamic terrorism -- a logical decision given that Malvo also mixed in images from the decidedly non-Islamic film "The Matrix" -- they were seen as evidence of how Muhammad controlled Malvo. Indeed, according to the New York Post, "Malvo's drawings were introduced into evidence by the defense, which contends they shed light on the insane mind of a young man brainwashed by Muhammad."
CNS Buries Donohue's Smear of New Superman Topic: CNSNews.com
Most organizations, when finding themselves in possession of an hot, controversial quote, would play up that quote.
If you're CNSNews.com, and the quote is from one of your favorite fellow conservatives, you bury it.
An Oct. 28 CNS article by Pete Winn grousing about how a new Superman comic book series features a title character that is "dark and brooding with glowering – and eerily glowing – eyes" waits until the 10th paragraph to drop this quote by the Catholic League's Bill Donohue:
“It looks like the new Superman should have great appeal to the Columbine crowd,” Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights told CNSNews.com.
“After all, he’s moody – not pensive, but moody – and he’s got that hood on him. I think people who want to shoot up innocents in high schools will look at him and say, ‘He is hip.’”
In addition to burying such a hot, offensive quote and not giving anyone a chance to respond to it (he does note that "DC Comics did not return calls from CNSNews.com"), Winn also obscures the right-wing slant of who he does talk to. He identifies one person as the "senior associate editor of the youth culture magazine Plugged In" (who complains that "it seems like ‘dark’ and ‘brooding’ – and everything that goes with that – sells") without noting that Plugged In is a publication of Focus on the Family and, one can presume, is biased against anything dark and brooding that it can't demonize.
Mind you, this is all about what the character looks like. There's no evidence that Winn, Donohue, the guy from Plugged In or anyone else involved in this article -- none of whom have any acknowledged awareness of the comic book culture -- went much beyond the cover art or the provided synopsis of this particular story arc. Indeed, Winn goes on to write:
The creators also portray the new Superman as politically correct -- refusing to become “an instrument of politics or policy” of the United States, saying things like: “I was raised in this country. I believe in this country. Does it have its flaws? Yes. Does it have its moments of greatness? Yes. Bottom line is, it's my home and I'll always carry those values around with me. But if I do what I can do just for the U.S., it's going to destabilize the whole world. It could even lead to war.”
So saving the whole world, and not just the United States, is politically correct?
Musser strikes again in an Oct. 28 AIM column making this bizarre claim:
In a word, the Nazi quest for Lebensraum in the East was an early pioneering attempt at what is today called the Green Economy. It was a backward eco-imperial plan of Aryan sustainable development, all at the expense of Jews and Slavs, and all dressed up in the latest scientific vocabulary of the day. To fixate on Nazi technology, industry, and the economy, therefore, as the explanation for that all that was evil about the Third Reich, is to subvert the means of holocaustal murder with the motive. The Nazi economy was merely the means by which the holocaust was paid for. The Russian Front provided the opportunity for murder. However, the motive of the holocaust was an Aryan environmentalism rooted in a romantic, evolutionary philosophy of man and nature, notwithstanding Speer’s defense at Nuremberg.
AIM won't tell you, of course, that Musser's entire Nazi-environmentalist link has been discredited.
According to the Seattle Times' David Postman, Musser has previously cited professors Raymond Dominick and Peter Staudenmaier to support this claim. But Dominick said his words have been "twisted almost into its opposite." Germany's conservation movement began in the 19th century, but the Nazis co-opted it: "But it is not the kind of conservation that the Greens preach. For the Greens, this kind of racist conservation is not part of their world view at all. I see the Greens as descendents of those parts of the conservation movement that were not tainted by Nazism." Dominick continued:
Well the one that’s so problematic is the racist environmentalism, has largely disappeared. And that’s because in Germany and elsewhere, the lessons of the Nazi debacle and devastation had discredited racist thinking. I wouldn’t suggest that there are no racists left on the planet, and maybe wouldn’t even suggest that there are no racists among the Greens. But certainly among the Greens, racism is antithetical to what they preach. If you follow the program of the Green movement, and in Germany and Australia, it’s very similar, the Greens preach profound tolerance of human diversity.
What the Nazis preached was the genocidal extermination of people they considered unworthy of life. It’s hard to find a more categorical difference than that. And if you run down the programs of the Greens and the Nazis point by point, you find similar kinds of diametrical opposites. For example, the Greens preach non-violence in international affairs and I imagine that’s part of what motivated Senator Brown’s confrontation with President Bush. The Nazis of course were the opposite. At the very core of Hitler’s world view was this militaristic, aggressive world domination. If you begin to talk about domestic politics, the differences are profound there too. One that leaps out to me most obviously is the feminism that’s preached by the Green movement. The Nazis were as patriarchal as any political movement that’s ever existed, and of course the Nazis preached totalitarian dictatorship. The Greens preach the exact opposite, grassroots democracy. So to say that the Greens and the Nazis are closely related is to defy the evidence, I would say.
Similarly, Staudenmeier says his work has been misappropriated:
I have heard from a number of conservative political figures in the United States, where I live, who are eager to use my historical work as a weapon in the struggle against what they see as the Green menace. These people refer to my research on ecofascism as a cheap tactic to impugn virtually all varieties of political environmentalism. In my opinion, this is not a serious way to approach important historical questions.
[...]
The Nazis certainly did not come to power because the predecessors of the Greens in Germany were too vocal in their opposition to the militarist and authoritarian tendencies of their day.
Postman also contacted environmental historian J.R. McNeill for his views of Musser's work:
There is a core of truth to the proposition that some (by no means all or even most) Nazis cherished a romanticized ideal of German nature, free from the ravages of industrialization. But this was a low priority among the leadership, and never carried out. The laws of 1935 on nature conservation were not enforced or followed, as the regime preferred heavy industry, development and rearmament. It would be more accurate to say a small minority within the Nazi party took nature conservation seriously, but they were unable to prevail over the mainstream, which for reasons of national power and full employment favored coal, steel, armaments, etc.
Postman further contacted University of Maryland professor Thomas Zeller, co-editor of the book "How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich." Needless to say, he too thinks Musser's views don't reflect reality:
This polemic has been used a lot and I'm sure this is going to continue to crop up, unfortunately. It's convenient, but doesn't advance our understanding of Nazism or of environmental history. Either you say the Greens are latter-day Nazis, or people from the extreme right wing say these people, the Nazis, weren't all that bad. Either view distorts the historical record for a current-day political purpose.
There's much more from Postman discrediting Musser, but don't look for AIM -- who supposedly believe in accuracy in media -- to tell you about it.
WND Can't Stop Lying About 'Civilian National Security Force' Topic: WorldNetDaily
You already know that WorldNetDaily is a flamingly dishonest website. Bob Unruh's Oct. 28 article is just one more reason why.
In it, Unruh asserts that Rep. Charles Rangel's proposed Universal National Service Act is the manifestation of President Obama's desire to "create a 'Civilian National Security Force' as big and well-funded as the $650 billion-plus U.S. military, a mysterious campaign promise ignored by virtually the entire media except WND."
First, Unruh is outright lying when he claims that Obama's discussion of a "Civilian National Security Force" has been "mysterious." As we documented when WND first peddled this bogus story more than two years ago, Obama was referring to an expansion of the State Department to create the ability to "deploy teams that combine agricultural specialists and engineers and linguists and cultural specialists who are prepared to go into some of the most dangerous areas alongside our military."
Second, Rangel's desire to create a national service requirement has nothing at all to do with Obama. Rangel has introduced verisons of this same bill at least three times previously, in 2003, 2006, and 2007.
Third, WND this story already -- back in July, when the bill was first introduced. AS we noted at the time, reporter Chelsea Schilling pulled the same bogus link to Obama's purportedly "mysterious" statement that Unruh does now, with the added benefit of citing a writer at the website of conspiracy-monger Alex Jones as backup. Unruh offers no new information beyond a comment from "a WND reader who read the plans online."WND's readers must be idiots, since this one apparently missed the original fearmongering WND did.
Fourth, the most recent action on the bill as of this writing is that it has been referred to a subcommittee. No hearings have been held on it. This lack of action makes it all but certain that the bill will die in committee with the end of this particular Congress at the end of the year. When the new Congress convenes in January, Rangel will have to reintroduce the bill yet again.
Unruh doesn't mention that his recycled fearmongering is essentially for naught. Why would he? This is the kind of story that indicates Unruh had a story quota to fill, which he did with this empty, meaningless, fundamentally dishonest piece of hackery.
But then, that's the kind of dishonest hackery that makes Unruh such a valued WND employee.
Tim Graham's Double Standard on Co-Opting Others' Agendas Topic: NewsBusters
Tim Graham is shocked -- shocked! -- that a certain media watchdog that doesn't employ him (but does employ me) would latch onto someone else's event.
Graham's Oct. 29 NewsBusters post asserts that "One prominent liberal supporter/exploiter of the Comedy Central 'sanity' rally is Media Matters for America, which will glom onto the march in its effort to kill Fox News Channel."
Yeah! Graham's employer, the Media Research Center, would never do something so gauche as to glom onto somebody else's big Washington rally.
Thousands of protesters descended on Washington, Sunday, for the 9/12 rally and many rallied with MRC signs proclaiming, "Don't believe the liberal media!"
The message could be seen in the background of cable coverage, including a live report from CNN. (See picture at right.)
To see conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart and others sporting the MRC's signs, see a selection of pictures below the jump.
What was your problem with Media Matters again, Tim?
WND Finds A Creepy New Poster Boy To Whitewash Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily just keeps latching onto people it thinks are poster boys for its far-right agenda, whose questionable backgrounds WND must then bury in order to make the poster-boy stuff plausible. WND did it first with a homeschooling family run by a controlling, abusive father, and then with a Oath Keepers member who's a suspect in a child abuse case.
Now, WND has found another piece of work to champion, the full truth about whom it must once again hide. From an Oct. 28 WND article by Brian Fitzpatrick:
Filing a complaint about President Obama's eligibility has led retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Walter Fitzpatrick III into some very deep waters.
The 58-year-old Naval Academy graduate is now paying the price for fighting City Hall. Fitzpatrick was arrested Wednesday for missing a court date, and he now sits in jail after allegedly being beaten and tasered by Monroe County, Tenn., deputies.
"I've been told he's been beaten up pretty good, enough to require X-rays," freelance reporter J.B. Williams told WND.
So Brian Fitzpatrick has essentially claimed that Walter Fitzpatrick was jailed for questioning Obama's "eligibility." Only that's not the case.
After a lot of conspiracy-mongering about purported "corruption in the county courts and sheriff's office," as exemplifed by the claim that "state law places a two-year limit on the term of a grand jury foreman, but Monroe County grand jury foreman Gary Pettway has occupied the office for 27 years" -- really, that's the only actual alleged offense cited -- Brian Fitzpatrick finally hints at the truth in the 18th paragraph of his article: "In April, Fitzpatrick attempted to execute a citizen's arrest of Pettway at the county courthouse, resulting in his own arrest for allegedly inciting a riot."
Fortunately, the Associated Press tells the story that WND won't -- specifically, that the jailing of Walter Fitzpatrick had nothing at all to do with his birther tendencies:
Fitzpatrick is charged along with Darren W. Huff, 40, a former militia member from Dallas, Ga., accused of inciting a riot at the Monroe County Courthouse in April while coming to Fitzpatrick's defense after Fitzpatrick's intrusion on the closed grand jury session.
Huff, who also faces related federal charges, was among about a dozen armed people who gathered at the courthouse. Records show Huff had said that he and others planned to take over the courthouse in Madisonville and arrest "domestic enemies of the United States engaged in treason."
Fitzpatrick disrupted the grand jury in a failed attempt to arrest Gary Pettway, who Fitzpatrick claims was unlawfully serving as foreman after serving continuously for almost three decades.
Blackwood previously dismissed a defense motion that Fitzpatrick and Huff were indicted by a "tainted" grand jury process and refused to dismiss felony and misdemeanor charges that include civil rights intimidation.
Ironically, Brian Fitzpatrick links to this very same AP article -- but only for the puprose of repeating the claim by a local district attorney who "said in a previous court filing that rulings in such challenges of grand juror qualifications show there is 'no limit on the number of two-year terms for which a foreman may be reappointed.'" The rest of the article is completely ignored.
This is the state of journalism at WND. Recent hire Brian Fitzpatrick hasdemonstratedall too well his ability to live down to those standards.
WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah is so cute when he pretends his website has standards.
In an Oct. 27 WND article responding to reader complaints about ads for Democratic candidates popping up on the site -- which in all likelihood is less about the claimed argument of "free political expression" than it is about maximizing revenue -- there appears this:
"WND advertising messages should never imply endorsement – especially political ads," explained Farah. "WND commentators, including me, make their views clear in their columns and videos. None of them, including mine, necessarily reflect the corporate positions of WND. WND has rarely ever offered corporate positions in the form of editorials, like most newspapers do. That's because WND is and always will be primarily a news source. Commentary and political opinions are secondary to the primary mission of breaking news. This commitment and characterization distinguishes WND from many other websites and many other news organizations – perhaps even most of them."
Farah also reminds that, unlike any other news pioneer on the Net, he spent his entire professional career in the news business as a reporter, editor, top news executive and publisher and attempted, 14 years ago, to carry over the highest standards and practices from the old world of newspapering into the new medium of the Internet.
"We're doing the same thing we set out to do – with the same standards, the same mission," he added. "We're not an opinion site, like so many others out there. We are an independent news operation like no other in the world. There is no litmus test for the expression of political viewpoints at WND – unlike most other websites and media organizations. So, certainly, there has never been any temptation to ban political advertising based on the views of anyone at WND."
That's pretty much all balderdash. Farah's claim that WND is "not an opinion site" is false -- most original WND "news" articles are so slanted, through distortion or outright elimination of alternate sides of the story, that they are synonymous with opinion. We've caught so many falsehoods and misrepresentations in WND "news" stories that we've lost count. Only Farah could believe that such slanted, sloppy reporting equals having "the highest standards and practices."
Farah is also disingenous in pretending that his opinions do not represent the "corporate positions" of the company of which he is CEO and largest shareholder. Sorry, dude, but WND is Farah and Farah is WND. There's no logical reason to pretend otherwise.
And there is very much a litmus test for political viewpoints at WND -- liberal opinions must be heavily outweighed by conservative opinions.
See how silly Farah is being? Pretending he operates a real "news source" is goofy enough, but insisting he has nothing whatsoever to do with the website he runs? That's goofiness on stilts.
NewsBusters Purports to Read Jon Stewart's Mind Topic: NewsBusters
Media Research Center have occasional fits of mind-reading. That tendency popped up again in an Oct. 28 NewsBusters post by Lachlan Markay.
Responding to Jon Stewart's statement that, in Markay's words, "the agenda the administration has managed to get through "has felt timid at times,'" Markay insisted:
Under "timid," read "not liberal enough." Stewart's complaint was that the Obama agenda has not come to completely dominate the national political scene. He's not concerned that perhaps the president has overreached. No, to the extent that there are problems with Obama's policies, they are due only to the fact that those policies are not far enough to the left.
Markay, of course, does not back this assertion up. He's merely pretending to read Stewart's mind, insisting that he can divine what Stewart said better than Stewart himself.
An Oct. 28 CNS 
