How does the Media Research Center's Tim Graham respond to Media Matters' report that Fox News' Bill Sammon admitted lying on-air about Obama advocating "socialism"? By tossing around the word "Soros" a lot. Oh, and not questioning the factual accuracy of the report.

Media Matters has more.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:12 AM EDT

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WorldNetDaily presumably remains happy that Terrence Lakin destroyed his life and miliary career to further WND's birther agenda, because it now has another opportunity to portray him as a martyr.

A March 31 WND article by Bob Unruh fawningly reports on how Lakin "is more than halfway through his sentence" for disobeying orders. He repeats "private communications to the Terry Lakin Action Fund" in which Lakin "commented on the physical workouts he's enjoyed, his work, his cell and other issues," as well as his reading material, "including Mark Levin's 'Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto.'"

As is WND operating procedure, Unruh obscures the fact that Lakin's offense was his refusal to obey orders, not his "questioning Barack Obama's eligibility to be president." All the better to keep up the pretense of Lakin's martyrdom.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:40 AM EDT

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Back in January, we detailed how WorldNetDaily threw its support to Laurent Gbagbo, the "Christian" leader of Ivory Coast who's fighting to stay in office despite international consensus that his Muslim opponent, Alassane Ouattara, won the election.

WND is standing by its man. A March 31 WND article, taken from WND editor Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, declares that Ivory Coast "is being plunged into civil war by rebel Muslims who want to get rid of a Christian president," going on to complain: "They are being supported by United Nations and U.S. efforts, even though the nation's own constitutional process affirmed Christian President Laurent Gbagbo's election victory."

In fact, the reason the U.S., the U.N., and even the European Union declared Ouatarra the winner is because there is a problem with the "constitutional process" WND touts. The constitutional council WND relies on as having certified the results of the election is, in fact, controlled by Gbagbo loyalists who reversed previous results declaring Ouattara the winner.

WND also conveniently ignores that Gbagbo's "Christian" regime has been accused of human rights abuses. Human Rights Watch states that "pro-Gbagbo forces are increasingly targeting immigrants from neighboring West African countries in their relentless attacks against real and perceived supporters of Alassane Ouattara." It continues:

Residents from Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Niger gave detailed accounts of daily attacks by pro-Gbagbo security forces and armed militias, who beat foreign residents to death with bricks, clubs, and sticks, or doused them with gas and burned them alive. A Malian man interviewed by Human Rights Watch described how he and six other West Africans were forced into two vehicles by armed militiamen and taken into the basement of an abandoned building. More youths were waiting, who then executed five of the captured West Africans at point-blank range. The homes, stores, and mosques of hundreds of other West Africans have been burned, or they have been chased out of their neighborhoods en masse under threat of death at the hands of pro-Gbagbo militias.

The brunt of these attacks came immediately after Gbagbo's "youth minister," Charles Blé Goudé, called publicly on February 25 for "real" Ivoirians to set up roadblocks in their neighborhoods and "denounce" foreigners. The situation threatens to worsen further, as a March 7 letter addressed to the Burkina Faso ambassador by a militant pro-Gbagbo group warned. The letter threatened to "cut the umbilical cord" of the Burkina Faso nationals in Côte d'Ivoire unless they left the country by March 22.

Human Rights Watch also documented the recent enforced disappearances of at least seven active members of Ouattara's party, as well as the February 25 rape of nine politically active women - the day after fighting between armed forces loyal to Gbagbo and Ouattara broke out in the Abobo area of Abidjan. Pro-Gbagbo forces are using excessive force in response to largely peaceful demonstrations, resulting in at least 25 deaths since February 21 - including seven women killed on March 3 when security forces opened fire with a mounted machine gun and a larger unidentified weapon against thousands of women demonstrators.

The abuses by pro-Gbagbo forces against real and perceived Ouattara supporters have escalated since mid-February.

Human Rights Watch also notes that pro-Ouattara forces have engaged in abuses as well. But it states that, since Gbagbo still controls the state apparatus, "pro-Gbagbo forces engage in these frequent acts of deadly abuse, apparently with absolutely no fear of being investigated or held accountable."

WND also repeats the discredited lie that Barack Obama, during a 2006 visit to Kenya, was "appearing ... at campaign stops" with Raila Odinga, who was campaigning for president at the time, where "Obama gave speeches accusing the sitting Kenyan president of being corrupt and oppressive." As we've detailed, PolitiFact.com found "no evidence to indicate that Obama 'openly supported' Odinga" during his 2006 trip to Kenya.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:41 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, April 1, 2011 12:42 AM EDT

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A March 28 interview of conspiracy theorist extrordinaire Jack Cashill by Accuracy in Media's Roger Aronoff is all about giving Cashill a platorm to spin his latest theory that Bill Ayers wrote Obama's book "Dreams From My Father." Aronoff makes no attempt to question any claim Cashill makes.

Therefore, there's no mention of the Oxford don who found that Cashill's analysis of Obama's book to be "very implausible" and and that his research methods "seem badly flawed." There's also no mention of the fact that Cashill's invoking of celebrity biographer Christopher Andersen as backup for his conspiracy ignores the fact that Andersen was citing Cashill's previous work as part of his evidence, or that Andersen has specifically said that "I definitely do not say he wrote Barack Obama's book."

Instead, Aronoff helps him shoot down any criticism, saying at one point, "I know the mainstream media, the liberal media, of course, is going to shun this or use ad hominem attacks. They’ll never go in and try to address your issues one by one and refute them, so they just call you names and all that."

Accuracy in media? Not so much.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:14 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, March 31, 2011 11:35 PM EDT

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Joseph Farah has another impeachment flare-up, calling once more for President Obama's impeachment in his March 30 column, pretending that no one, including him, has ever called for Obama's impeachment until now:

Never before in the history of the United States has an occupant of the White House displayed less concern for the Constitution and the rule of law than Barack Obama.

It's about time somebody said it: It's time to impeach Obama.

Of course, Farah already said it last November. And as far back as October 2009, WND was promoting far-right hack Floyd Brown's call to impeach.

Farah continues his particular bit of impefachment agitation. But does it really matter why he wants Obama impeached since any excuse would be sufficient to feed his Obama-hate?

Posted by Terry K. at 11:30 AM EDT

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Newsmax's Ronald Kessler has been a longtime fluffer of former American Conservative Union president David Keene, giving him a platform to spout conservative talking points and even to spin away controversies at the ACU-operated CPAC conference (after first ignoring said controversies, of course).

With Keene moving on from the ACU to become president of the National Rifle Association, it's completely unsurprising that Kessler would fluff him in that new position:

You might expect that the man who is incoming president of the National Rifle Association and was chairman of the American Conservative Union would be a double-barrel ideologue.

Not quite.

David Keene’s friends include liberal-leaning types like Al Hunt of Bloomberg News, former ABC correspondent Sam Donaldson, former New York Times reporter Adam Clymer, and former Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy.

Keene never hesitates to mention that his mother and father were labor union organizers in Wisconsin or that, as a teenager, he passed out literature for John F. Kennedy during the presidential primary.

Moreover, Keene has stood firm against attacks from within the conservative movement over his decision to keep the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) open to participation by such groups as GOProud, an organization of conservative gays.

At the same time, few have had as much impact on the conservative movement and been so successful over the years at promoting Republican candidates at the national level as Dave Keene.

The rest is a fawning biography, complete with his-and-hers stories about how Keene met his current wife (the previous one is alleged to have embezzled from the ACU, something Kessler apparently thinks is too gauche to mention), how he "hunted cape buffalo in Zambia," and his favorite brand of whisky.

Ah, the fluffing never stops...

Posted by Terry K. at 8:53 AM EDT

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Matt Cover writes in a March 29 CNSNews.com article about a claim by Sen. Harry Reid:

“Social Security has not contributed one penny to the debt or the deficit ever in its 75 years,” Reid said at Monday’s event.

The claim is false. According to the actuaries for Social Security and Medicare, the Social Security program ran a deficit of approximately $41 billion, excluding interest on the bonds in the Social Security trust funds. Those bonds, which are a special type of Treasury bond, are placed in the trust funds in place of the cash surpluses Social Security has taken in from payroll taxes.

Because there is no cash in the Social Security trust funds, any deficits the program runs, including the 2010 deficit – and those projected into the future – must be repaid from current tax revenue.

Since the federal government was already running a deficit in 2010, and ran one in 2009, the money required to pay the Social Security deficit would have had to be borrowed, meaning it was added to the deficit and the national debt, contrary to Senator Reid’s claim.

Cover's reasoning here is specious. Near-term Social Security deficits were designed to be covered by surpluses from previous years, which were converted into treasury bonds and spent by the government. The current value of the trust fund is $2.6 trillion. The insistence of previous Congresses on spending the money in the trust fund, replacing it with the treasury bonds to be cashed in when needed, is the reason Social Security is running a deficit that must be covered out of the current federal budget.

Social Security is not running a deficit within the program's accounting because the money to cover that shortfall has already been collected. Cover's attempt to equivocate the need to cash in treasury bonds to cover the revenue shortfall with the overall federal budget deficit is ridiculous.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:44 AM EDT

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Diana West writes in her March 25 WorldNetDaily column (also posted at thet Washington Examiner):

It's as if Obama considers the interest he serves as being above all that Congress-American-people-stuff. "Humanitarians" are like that, and what we're seeing is so-called humanitarian military intervention, the doctrine is promulgated by Obama's human rights adviser Samantha Power. Known as a genocide expert, Power has gone so far as to argue for the insertion of a "mammoth" American "protection" force into Israeli-Palestinian environs to prevent "human rights abuses" – code for neutralizing Israeli self-defense.

West is taking Power's comments out of context. Power was not speaking in "code" for "neutralizing Israeli self-defense"; in fact, Power was addressing a hypothetical situation about the peacekeeping force that would be needed if "one party or another" in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict were "looking like they might be moving toward genocide."

Posted by Terry K. at 12:45 PM EDT

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Matthew Sheffield attempted to gloat in a March 29 NewsBusters post that the movie "Fair Game," about the Valerie Plame case, "ended up being a total bomb." But then he proved himself wrong in the very next sentence:

It grossed just $9.5 million domestically. Add in the international ticket sales and the fiction flick just barely managed to recoup its production budget of $22 million.

A movie that recouped its production costs on its theatrical release is a "total bomb"? Sounds like Sheffield is trying to redefine the term.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:47 AM EDT

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Aaron Klein's March 26 WorldNetDaily article is yet another one of his guilt-by-association specials, this time attacking union official Eliseo Medina as a "radical on immigration issues" whom President Obama once "boasted of consulting."

How "radical" is Medina? The only evidence Klein offers is thatMedina has spoken in favor of comprehensive immigration reform, and that he was among "top supporters of Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez's Comprehensive Immigration Reform for America's Security and Prosperity Bill." That bill would have created a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants currently in the country and boost border enforcement.

Why is that bill so "radical"? Klein doesn't explain. Perhaps that's becuase there isn't anything radical about it. Only right-wingers like Klein oppose any sort of immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the country.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:49 AM EDT

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The last time we heard from Kent Clizbe, he was promoting false claims about Elena Kagan. It's been a while, so we knew another bitter anti-Obama screed had to be coming.

And here it is, in the form of a March 28 Newsmax column in which he touts how he vets candidates in his role of a CIA agent-turned-"executive recruiter," and how President Obama doesn't measure up:

On the other hand, Barack Obama’s background remains nearly a blank slate. His school records, from kindergarten to law school, remain hidden. The story of his financial support is hidden — his private elementary and high school in Hawaii, his international travel, his graduate and undergraduate tuition and living expenses, and more. And these are just the beginning of the Barack Obama vetting failure.

My extensive research into the espionage operations of the Communist International (Comintern), detailed in Willing Accomplices, familiarized me with their techniques. One of their most common tactics when responding to exposure is so pervasive that it could be their motto: Admit nothing. Deny everything. Make counteraccusations.

For a professional vetter, it is clear that one candidate in 2008 was concealing vital information, at best. The documents and stories floated to support the candidate’s claims only raise more suspicion.

Clizbe is a guy who has smeared Obama as a Soviet tool, so it's a little difficult to take his commentary as anything more than a bitter old man who can't get over the fact that his candidate didn't win.

Posted by Terry K. at 5:22 PM EDT

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A March 28 WorldNetDaily article uncritically promotes Donald Trump's claim that Presieent Obama has "spent millions of dollars trying to get away from this issue" of his birth certificate and eligibility. But WND did not serve up any evidence Trump has to back up the claim -- perhaps because there isn't any, as WND should know.

WND reported in October 2009 that "President Obama has paid nearly $1.7 million to his top eligibility lawyer since the election" -- a claim that wasn't exactly true. The evidence WND presented showed only that Obama's campaign, reorganized after the 2008 election as Organizing for America, paid that money to the law firm representing the campaign, but no proof was offered that all of the money -- or, for that matter, any of it -- went toward addressing "eligibility" questions.

WND also touted how "Trump released a copy of his own hospital-generated birth certificate to the media today, listing New York City's Jamaica Hospital as his place of birth on June 14, 1946." But as we've noted, the certificate was issued by a hospital, not the state-issued certificate he's demanding from Obama. That makes it even less valuable the certification of live birth Obama's campaign released, which, unlike Trump's certificate, was issued by a state agency.

You'd think WND would call Trump out on that. But since he's doing WND's dirty work in promoting the birther narrative, Joseph Farah and Co. are apparently going to give him a pass on the certificate's relatively meaninglessness.

Posted by Terry K. at 2:04 PM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, March 29, 2011 2:17 PM EDT

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Newsmax is making a big deal about how Donald Trump "released his birth certificate exclusively to Newsmax." Just one little problem: That's not really a birth certificate.

As The Smoking Gun points out, the document he provided to Newsmax is not an official, state-authorized birth certificate -- it's a ceremonial one issued by the hospital he was (allegedly) born in, Jamaica Hospital in New York City, adding, "Official birth certificates are issued (and maintained) by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Office of Vital Records."

In other words, it's no better -- and since it's not issued by a state record-keeping agency, arguably worse -- than the birth certificate Barack Obama has released, which was issued by the Hawaii Department of Health.

The Smoking Gun adds: "On a possibly related note, Jamaica Hospital has been the recipient of significant financial largesse from the Trump family. In fact, the Queens institution includes the Trump Pavilion, a nursing and rehabilitation facility that was named for Mary Trump."

It seems that, by Trump's own standards, Trump has something to hide.

UPDATE: Trump has now ponied up an actual, official birth certificate to Newsmax. Meanwhile, Politico notes that -- as the official certificate states -- Trump's mother was born in Scotland, which would seem to run him afoul of the other birther argument used against Obama: he's not a "natural born citizen" because both of his parents were not born American.

UPDATE 2: Newsmax has also posted Trump's "certification of birth" from New York City -- the exact same form Obama has.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:47 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, March 29, 2011 5:27 PM EDT

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A March 27 WorldNetDaily article kicked off the rollout of Jerome Corsi's WND-published birther book,which "promises to be a game-changer on the issue of Barack Obama's eligibility." But it also came with a questionable plea for cash:

Advance orders for this book from retailers across the U.S. already suggest it will be Corsi's third No. 1 New York Times bestseller – probably bigger than the previous two.

"Imagine how that will change the character of the debate on this critical constitutional issue," says Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WND and WND Books, the publisher of "Where's the Birth Certificate?" "Therefore, we have a strategy for promoting this book far and wide – going right over the heads of the hopelessly biased and politically correct press. But we need your help to pull it off."

A series of television ads are now in production to ensure this book cannot be spiked by the Big Media. WND needs to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to air these commercials on television networks and stations throughout the country.

"You can view the first TV spot right now and help us spread it across the Internet long before the book is even available," says Farah. "Put it on your websites, your Facebook pages, send it to your friends by email and make sure they know how to donate to the cause – the cause of truth in the matter of Barack Obama's eligibility for office."

Go to Wheresthebirthcertificate.com to get the word out now.

"We need to make this the biggest publishing event of the year," said Farah.

Farah also urges everyone concerned about the cover-up to make a donation in any amount – from $5 to $5,000. (Bigger donations can be accepted by special arrangement by emailing Farah personally jfarah@wnd.com.) Anyone who donates $25 or more will get a first-edition, autographed copy of "Where's the Birth Certificate?" by Jerome Corsi as soon as it is available in May.

WND is not a non-profit operation --  it's a for-profit, Delaware-incorporated company that is majority owned by Joseph Farah. It has claimed to be profitable in the past. So why is Farah begging for money?

Surely such a blockbuster book, with all of those advance orders Farah claims to have, should be throwing off enough cash for his envisioned publicity campaign to pay for itself, or at least demonstrate enough promise (if Farah's hype is to be believed) that WND could borrow the money to pay for the publicity campaign from a reputable financial insitution that would be paid back through the massive profits from said blockbuster book sales.

Instead, Farah wants your money. What is he offering instead? Just an autographed copy of Corsi's book. Nothing else. Not a piece of his company, which any prospective donor certainly should get -- Farah wants to keep all of that for himself.

Will he be offering accounting and documentation to prove that any donated money will actually go toward the book's promotion and not for, say, WND's day-to-day operations or remodeling Farah's house? He's not promising that.

Seems to us that Farah is running something of a scam here, trying to personally profit from other people's money.

If Farah is running his business this way, why should anyone have any sort of confidence in the contents of Corsi's book?

Posted by Terry K. at 9:51 PM EDT

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