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Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Larry Klayman's Newest Client Sounds Just Like Him
Topic: WorldNetDaily

How does Larry Klayman continue to attract legal clients despite his history of shoddy lawyering? We have no idea, but Klayman has attracted another one.

An unbylined June 1 WorldNetDaily article uncritically and lovingly depicts Klayman 's newest escapade, suing Iran and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is seeking $387 million in damages on behalf of relatives of an Iranian pro-democracy activist the regime allegedly tortured and killed.

The article quotes Nasrin Mohammadi, sister of the dead activist as saying:

“We were expecting Mr. Obama to help the Iranian people. … but he hasn’t,” she said. “Mr. Obama, are you with us or are you with the mullahs? Yes. Mr. Obama is with the mullahs…”

Funny, that sounds a lot like Klayman himself. Part of Klayman's Obama derangement is denigrating him as the "mullah-in-chief," and he thinks that putting it in quotes somehow makes it less libelous.

It appears that Klayman has been coaching his client to spew the same anti-Obama hatred he does. That doesn't seem like ethical behavior for a lawyer to engage in -- which makes him dishonest as well as incompetent.

All of which serves as a sign that Nasrin Mohammadi, if she actually wants to win this case, should find herself a different attorney.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:23 PM EDT
MRC Still Bashing Fact-Checkers Who Correct Republicans
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's multimillion-dollar "Tell the Truth!" campaign last year was mostly about keeping media outlets from reporting unflattering truths about conservatives. Part of that campaign involved attacking fact-checkers who rated claims by Republicans and conservatives to be false as having a liberal bias.

The MRC's Tim Graham does just that in a May 29 NewsBusters post:

The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University has a new study noticing that the "fact-checking" site Politifact.com over the first four months of Obama's second term found Republicans were cited as dishonest three times as often as Democrats.

Even in the first three weeks in May, while the Obama scandals piled up -- from Benghazi to the IRS to the DOJ phone-records scandals --  Republicans are still being flagged as worse than Democrats, with 60 percent of the website's selective claims rated as false so far this month (May 1 – May 22), compared to 29 percent of their Democratic statements – a 2 to 1 margin.

As for the entire four months, CMPA found PolitiFact rated 32 percent of Republican claims as “false” or “pants on fire,” compared to 11 percent of Democratic claims – a 3 to 1 margin. Conversely, Politifact rated 22 percent of Democratic claims as “entirely true” compared to 11 percent  of Republican claims – a 2 to 1 margin.

Graham doesn't mention that the CMPA has a conservative tilt making its findings somewhat suspect -- the work of CMPA chief Robert Lichter forms part of the philosophical foundation for the MRC's work.

Graham also doesn't really dispute any of PolitiFact's findings, only that they exist. He does whine that "The pants-checkers at Politifact can even select vague philosophical statements as lies, such as Mitt Romney asserting redistribution" has "never been a characteristic of America." Apparently, subsidies for transcontinental railroads were 'redistribution' in the 1800s." But what else would you call the federal government giving millions of acres of land to railroad companies so they can sell it to finance the building of transcontinental railroads?

Graham then laughably claims: 

No one should assume that a fact-checking organization can only be assumed to be fair if it tries to employ a 50-50 partisan quota on who's mangling the facts. However, "independent" fact-checking groups run by "mainstream" media companies can easily be questioned about a liberal tilt.

But a partisan quote is exactly what Graham appears to be calling for. It's part of his employer's political agenda to disabuse people of the idea that Republicans lie more than Democrats, even when the facts back it up.

Meanwhile, the CMPA "study" Graham is using to back up his attack really isn't much of a study at all -- it's a quick shot seemingly crafted to advance the CMPA's conservative agenda. As a CMPA spokesperson told Poynter, the press release announcing the study “is the study and announcement combined.” Poynter also quotes a researcher who points out that such press-release studies are “frowned upon in academic circles.”

PolitiFact editor Bill Adair also responded at Poynter to the CMPA "study," saying that "The authors of this press release seem to have counted up a small number of our Truth-O-Meter ratings over a few months, and then drew their own conclusions."

Of course, at the MRC, such things that challenge its cherished view of the world are merely inconvenient facts. Jeffrey Meyer followed up in a May 30 NewsBusters post by bashing "the liberally-skewed PolitiFact website" for pointing out the numerous falsehoods spouted by Michele Bachmann during her congressional career. Like Graham, Meyer doesn't challenge PolitiFact's findings, he only complains that they exist.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:42 PM EDT
Lying Liar Bradlee Dean Lies About Someone Else Being A Liar
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Bradlee Dean's lying is so endemic, he can't even accuse someone else of being a liar without lying himself.

Dean's May 25 WorldNetDaily column begins with a quote, "ADHD is a prime example of a fictitious disease," followed by an attack on a medical researcher:

These were the words of Leon Eisenberg, the “scientific father of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder),” in his last interview before his death.

Leon Eisenberg made a luxurious living off of his “fictitious disease,” thanks to pharmaceutical sales. Coincidentally, he received the “Ruane Prize for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Research. He has been a leader in child psychiatry for more than 40 years through his work in pharmacological trials, research, teaching, and social policy and for his theories of autism and social medicine,” according to Psychiatric News.

Yes, it was even admitted that they are his THEORIES. The medical industry is using the guise of helping children to depersonalize and disconnect our children from a healthy, normal upbringing. Parents are placing their children on these drugs and subjecting them to what the world has to offer, when in fact all these children are looking for is their parents in hopes of being the blessing that God intended them to be.

But Dean is taking Eisenberg's words out of context -- as Snopes details, he was actually agreeing somewhat with Dean in that he thinks ADHD is overdiagnosed and that doctors will simply "prescribe a pill for it" instead of working to determine the root case of behavioral problems.

Dean is also guilty of what Eisenberg accuses doctors of doing. In highlighting alleged "alarming studies linking antidepressants to mass murder," Dean isn't looking deeper for root causes. As we've documented, WND managing editor David Kupelian's favorite example of this -- blaming Andrea Yates killing her children on the antidepressants she was taking -- overlooks the fact that she and her husband were in thrall to a fundamentalist Christian preacher who preached austerity (the Yates family lived in a bus the preacher had sold them) and taught that it was better to kill oneself than to mislead a child in the way of Jesus.

Meanwhile, we're still waiting for Dean to publicly apologize and repent for the raft of lies he has told in the past.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:08 AM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, June 5, 2013 10:11 AM EDT
Tuesday, June 4, 2013
CNS Promotes NRA's Publicity Stunt
Topic: CNSNews.com

Gregory Gwyn-Williams Jr. uses a May 30 CNSNews.com blog post to promote the National Rifle Association giving a lifetime membership to Josh Welch, an 8-year-old boy who was suspended from school for shaping a gun out of a Pop-Tart.

Gwyn-Williams, however, makes sure not to mention that Welch has no idea what the NRA is. From the Baltimore Sun article Gwyn-Williams links to:

Josh said he didn't know what the NRA was or what it meant to have a membership, but chimed in when his parents were asked whether anyone else in his family belonged to the NRA.

"Nope, only me," he said.

The Sun also notes that "Josh also received an autographed photo of himself with David Keene, the immediate past president of the NRA and the keynote speaker at the fundraiser" -- which probably means even less to Josh than the NRA membership.

The event might have been more meaningful if the NRA hadn't imposed its agenda on a clueless 8-year-old. But such logic apparently means nothing to Gwyn-Williams.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:47 PM EDT
WND's Geller Falsely Criticizes 'Moderate Muslims'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Pamela Geller writes in her June 2 WorldNetDaily column:

Muslims who cited the Quran to explain and justify their ritual slaughter have beheaded a young British soldier in broad daylight on a London street. “Moderate Muslim” groups have issued their usual vague and tepid condemnations, with their usual finger pointing and blaming of anything and everything except Islam’s violent teachings. Their leftist media propagandists have fallen into line. But what are the “moderate Muslims” really doing to stop jihad terror?

The kneejerk reaction from Muslim spokespeople and the “leaders” of various Muslim organizations after that bloody beheading in London and the copycat stabbing of a French soldier by a Muslim who is still at large in Paris, as well as the bloody bombing of women, children and families on a bright shiny Monday in Boston, has not been to start real work on reforming Islam. Instead, it has been a secondary attack on the kuffar. We are admonished and schooled on a mythical narrative of anti-Muslim backlash and “Islamophobia.” “Moderate Muslims” hold no protests against the jihad here or abroad.

As Little Green Footballs' Charles Johnson pointed out when she made a similar claimat Breitbart.com, "all of the major British Muslim organizations immediately spoke out against this murder, with no 'deflection of responsibility' or 'attacks on the kuffar.'"

Since Geller is too caught up in her anti-Muslim jihad to handle the truth, she attacked Johnson for correcting the record, stating in one tweet, "Cash that check, Chuckie!" Johnson responded to these attacks by Geller and her anti-Muslim compadre Robert Spencer:

I’m being paid with the peace of mind that comes from knowing I did the right thing by renouncing him and his divisive, hateful agenda, and knowing that I’m continuing to do the right thing by exposing him and Geller when they lie, smear, promote fascist groups and ideas, and encourage the ugliest forms of xenophobia.

WND won't tell you any of this, of course. Instead, it lets Geller peddle the fiction that the anti-Muslim thugs of the English Defence League -- with whom Geller has aligned her various "Stop Islamization" groups -- are really holding "freedom rallies."


Posted by Terry K. at 12:30 PM EDT
Noel Sheppard: Eleanor Clift Comes From A Long Line of Morons
Topic: NewsBusters

It's probably difficult to top his claim that some actresses are too pretty to accurately portray Hillary Clinton in a biopic, but Noel Sheppard gives it a try by portraying commentator Eleanor Clift as coming from a long line of morons.

In a June 2 NewsBusters post, Sheppard claims that Clift's statement that “When my ancestors came in they were probably at the low end of the feeder of this also” might "explain a lot to conservatives" because "Maybe this explains some of Clift's really inane comments over the years."

In addition to being a sleazy, mean-spirited insult, Sheppard completely misunderstand the point Clift was trying to make. She was rebutting Pat Buchanan's claim that the U.S. is "moving towards Third World standards" because it's allegedly admitting too many low-skilled immigrants.

Apparently, Sheppard was too busy getting off on insulting another female liberal to understand that.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:48 AM EDT
WND Fawns Over Drudge, Leaves Out How He Drives WND's Web Traffic
Topic: WorldNetDaily

A June 2 WorldNetDaily article by Chelsea Schilling is basically a love letter from WND to Matt Drudge, touting how Drudge's "prophetic words" that the Internet would take over the news business "haunt once-flourishing segments of the news industry," as demonstrated by his "mega-hit website."

Since this is a love letter, Schilling has edited out anything that might make either of them look bad. Like, for instance, how much WND depends on Drudge to drive traffic to its website.

ThinkProgress reported that in a one-year period in 2011 and 2012, Drudge linked to WND and their fellow conspiracy theorists at Alex Jones' Infowars 184 times, driving more than 30 million page views to the two sites. And Drudge was highlighting WND's more paranoid (and discredited) claims about President Obama's "eligibility."

Schilling also isn't going to tell you about Drudge's rumored sexuality -- namely, that he is, in the words of Gawker, "is commonly understood to be gay."

Those things are much more interesting than what amounts to free advertising for Drudge. But Schilling and WND don't think you need to know about that.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:55 AM EDT
Monday, June 3, 2013
James Walsh's Fellow Citizens All Sound Suspiciously Like James Walsh
Topic: Newsmax

Newsmax columnist James Walsh loves to devise trips to grocery stores or wherever and invent people who speak articulately about the same things Walsh just happens to write about: bashing immigrants and President Obama.

The latter was only display in Walsh's May 31 column:

On a sunny Saturday morning, locals and tourists were lined up in a Southwest Florida supermarket checkout line, when a regular customer proclaimed for all to hear: “The IRS screws us, Obama and Hillary sleep through the killings in Benghazi, and our Border Patrol Agent’s death is said to be the imagination of right-wing nuts living in the past. I may be a Democrat, but how long will it take for Americans to speak up?”
 
Tourists in the checkout line seemed stunned, but year-round residents took the comment as a cue to voice their thoughts.

[...]

A town leader noted, “Obamacare, which the majority of Americans is against, is a fraud. Democrats have no problem with Benghazi and the killing of four Americans. Where was President Obama? — campaigning. The attorney general lies about a newsman’s phone records, and IRS officials take the Fifth. Is this Obama’s transparency? Mr. President, the entitlement takers — not the workers — voted for you. The takers just want money and you give it to them — they are the greedy ones.”
 
Stunned silence was followed by applause in the checkout line.

[...]

A Marine veteran declared, “It’s my turn at this impromptu town hall.” Looking around, he continued, “Benghazi is a disgrace. You don’t leave a buddy hanging out there. You go for him — regardless of the odds.”

He continued, “Veterans want to know: Who ordered the stand down? We believe it was a political decision and to hell with the front-line guys — they were just stupid American mercenaries. As Chris Matthews brags, he was in the Peace Corps, inferring that smart people go in the Peace Corps, while dumb-ass peasants fight for America rather than blaming it.

"We ask, ‘Mr. President, where were you on September 11, 2012, at 7 p.m.? Madame secretary of state, where were you at 7 p.m. on September 11, 2012?’”
 
With exasperation, the Marine concluded, “Obama’s people are not veterans, in fact, many of them hate the military. The Muslim Fort Hood shooter is still getting his pay, while his victims, the ones that lived, get no benefits. Obama says it was ‘workplace violence’ and not terrorism. Enough said!”

Funny how they all just happen to parrot Walsh's views.

 


Posted by Terry K. at 3:30 PM EDT
WND's Mercer Rips Obama Comment Out of Context
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Ilana Mercer writes in her May 30 WorldNetDaily column:

While pitting a favored voting bloc against the rest of us, Obama told militant Latinos: “We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.”

First, Obama made the statement during an interview on the Spanish-language network Univision, which is nobody's idea of "militant Latinos."

Second, Mercer took the comment way out of context -- Obama meant it as an encouragement for Latinos to vote, and he was not speaking for himself:

Well, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna see how well we do in this election and I think a lot of it is gonna depend on whether we still have some support not only from Democrats, but also Republicans, but they're gonna be paying attention to this election. And if Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, we're gonna punish our enemies and we're gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us, if they don't see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it's gonna be harder and that's why I think it's so important that people focus on voting on November 2.

Obama later apologized for using the term "enemies," saying that "I probably should have used the word 'opponents.'"


Posted by Terry K. at 1:55 PM EDT
CNS' Starr Freaks Out Over Sexual Information Provided to Teens
Topic: CNSNews.com

Does CNSNews.com writer think that forbidding governments from providing factual sexual health information to teenagers will somehow keep them from having sex? Apparently so -- she devoted two articles last week to attacking such efforts.

In a May 28 article, Starr railed against a smartphone app provided by New York City "that teens can download to their smart phones to get information on “sexual health,” including where they can get birth control and abortions. Starr doesn't challenge the accuracy of claims made by the app, only that the information is available. She went on to complain that "Inquiries to the department from CNSNews.com about sources of funding for the website and the app, including whether any federal funds were used, were not answered," but she offers no explanation for why providing factual information is not a legitimate government function.

Starr continued her attacks on government-provided sexual health information in a May 31 article:

A government website designed for girls ages 10 to 16 offers health advice and information on a wide range of topics, including homosexuality, anal sex and “mutual masturbation.”

The Health and Human Services’ girlshealth.gov includes tips on fitness and nutrition and an “environmental health” section where girls can read about leading a “green” lifestyle.

But the site also includes a glossary that explains anal sex and “mutual masturbation” and includes information about birth control and how to access everything from condoms to “emergency contraceptives.”

Again, Starr does not challenge the accuracy of any of the information, only that it is available. Again, she adds that "Requests from CNSNews.com to the HHS on how the website is funded and who is responsible for its content were not answered."

At no point in either of these article does Starr explain why a government serving as a distributor of factual information on an issue of public health is a bad thing.

 

 

 


Posted by Terry K. at 12:54 PM EDT
WND's Klein Glosses Over Bush Release of Terrorist From Gitmo
Topic: WorldNetDaily

The headline on Aaron Klein's May 30 WorldNetDaily article reads, "How Obama, Hillary wrecked Libya," but the article doesn't support the claim.

Klein's article is about how a Library of Congress report detailed "how al-Qaida established a major base of operations in Libya in the aftermath of the U.S.-NATO campaign that deposed Muammar Gadhafi and his secular regime." But Klein never explains how this is the fault of the Obama administration, let alone how they "wrecked Libya."

Actually, Klein glosses over how one key component of how terrorists gained a foothold in Libya is not Obama's fault at all. He writes:

The Library of Congress report said Ansar al-Sharia, led by Sufian Ben Qhumu, a former Guantanamo detainee, has increasingly embodied al-Qaida’s presence in Libya.

Qhumu, formerly a driver for Osama bin Laden, was released by the U.S. in 2007 and was transferred to a Libyan prison where he remained until being freed in a 2010 amnesty deal.

Klein doesn't mention it, but Qumu was released from Guantanamo under the Bush administration. Stating that inconvenient fact out loud would have undermined Klein's bogus Obama-bashing narrative.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:47 AM EDT
Sunday, June 2, 2013
NewsBusters Discovers A New Word
Topic: NewsBusters

Sneering Alex Wagner Mocks 'Alligator Moat' Border Plans in New Lean Forward Ad

[...]

MSNBC on Wednesday debuted yet another hard-left Lean Forward ad. This time, liberal anchor Alex Wagner slammed anyone who wants border security, sneering that they want "bigger, meaner, scarier fences" and "electrified, alligator moats to prevent 'them' coming in."

-- Scott Whitlock, May 29 NewsBusters post

In a sneering tirade against conservatives on Wednesday’s PoliticsNation, Reid broke the entire party into five separate groups: the “angry” Tea Party, the evangelicals that “want to litigate social issues only,” the “economic conservatives” who want to “get rid of Social Security and Medicare,” those who focus “on ripping away programs for the poor,” and the “Wall Street guys who really run the party.”

-- Andrew Lautz, May 30 NewsBusters post

MSNBC's David Corn Sneers: I Thought 'Charlton Heston Wrote' Ricin Attack Letters

-- Scott Whitlock, May 31 NewsBusters post

WashPost’s Milbank Sneers: Conservative Leaders are 'Children' that Will Eventually 'Get Around' to the Right 'Point of View'

[...]

Referencing Cruz’s assertion that new conservative leaders are the “children of Reagan,” Milbank sneered:

Andrew Lautz, May 31 NewsBusters post

But she quickly turned the nonpartisan cause into a sneering criticism of the former president's intelligence and decision-making, with nary a word of praise for the charity work:

Andrew Lautz, June 1 NewsBusters post

“I guess they walked or ran or something on their prosthetic limbs,” Maher sneered about George W. Bush’s ride around his Texas ranch with 20 servicemen, “and I found this to be nauseating. I mean, first he sends them off to war to get their limbs blown off and then he has them over for a barbecue.”

-- Brent Baker, June 1 NewsBusters post


Posted by Terry K. at 10:30 PM EDT
WND Gay Boy Scout Derangement Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily has been cranking out the gay-bashing insanity in the wake of the Boy Scouts allowing gay members.

Here's Judith Reisman:

Youths commonly heed adult ideas and mark themselves accordingly (I’m stupid, clumsy, ugly, or even brilliant or wise!). However, adults are meant to help vulnerable youths grow, learn and become who they are meant to be – years hence.

Instead, 854 adults stamped a “bull’s eye” on the Boy Scouts as pederast targets.

Now, bigger and/or more manipulative lads, with cell phones and other pornography resources stirring their sinews, will greedily entrap any and all boys who seem easy prey.

Self-proclaimed ex-gay Michael Glatze is seriously trying to overcompensate for something by adding an unhealthy does of sexism to the mix:

I don’t think it’s coincidental that President/Emperor Obama is referred to by some as “the first gay president,” and he has no qualms weaving together “gay rights” with “civil rights” in a single breath, positioning himself even further as the Great Human Emancipator (which causes gays to love him viscerally – even if they don’t agree with every aspect of his policies).

Christians – yes, you – we do have a solution. The solution is found in the same place where it was found back when Paul encountered a society that deified Man through homosexual “worship.” Men lead society, and women follow. What men elect to do will have an effect on the responses of women. That, also, is the natural order of things, which is why many have suggested that the feminist movement was, simply, a natural reaction to the lack of strong masculinity in their homes and in the culture around them. Women need strong men; are you, men, willing to be one?!

To be strong, as men, Christian men must understand that homosexuality is a direct raping of the relationship between Man and God – NOT, as some have suggested, a perfectly viable sexual “choice” open to the same freedoms that any other “consensual choice” seems to have in our relativistic society. Sure, Christian truth may not become the law of our land any time soon (though it certainly could), but Christian truth can certainly become the law of our lives – and it should, if we hope to make an impact on our world!

Ken Hutcherson, who officiated Rush Limbaugh's (most recent) wedding, has something to say on the subject:

Watch out, Girl Scouts. Next year you might have to sell cookies dressed in drag.

Parents: Imagine your son is 12 years old. He enjoys the outdoors and loves Scouting. Would you have reservations about him sharing a tent with a young girl his age if they were gone for the weekend? Come on, don’t be such a buzz-kill. What’s the worst that could happen? Are you afraid that they might go on a different kind of scouting trip?

Now imagine sending your son on a camping weekend where he shares a tent with the president of a junior-high LGBTQ club. The homosexual youth has already declared his intentions. Would you honestly want your child to be put in that compromising of a position where his tent-mate has announced he is attracted to people of the same sex? Well, if you wouldn’t allow the first scenario to take place, how, in good conscience, could you permit the second?

And Jane Chastain feels the need to assert that "I do not hate anyone" before unloading her anti-gay hate by going Godwin and insisting that "hormone treatments" can cure gays who are "predispose[d]" to that "lifestyle":

Adolf Hitler introduced the principle of winning the battle of the mind with the “Big Lie” in his book “Mein Kampf”:

“… the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in the world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success.”

The Big Lie as practiced by gay rights activists:

  • Homosexuality is not a choice. One is born that way.
  • Homosexuality is normal and natural for these individuals.
  • If you have any of these feelings, you should embrace them.
  • If you do not agree with the above statements, you are displaying homophobic behavior (fear of homosexuals).
  • And therefore you discriminate against gay individuals.
  • No one likes to be accused of discrimination or to be called names, which is part and parcel of the bullying process. However, to cave in to bullies is not bravery, it is cowardice.

I would be the first to admit that some people are “born gay” if there were scientific evidence to support such a claim. There is not!

Some people (a tiny fraction of a percent) are born with physical abnormalities that might predispose one to that lifestyle. These cases are 100 percent correctable. It often involves something as simple as hormone treatment.

What was that about not hating anyone, Jane?


Posted by Terry K. at 12:57 PM EDT
Saturday, June 1, 2013
NewsBusters: Ex-Heritage Researcher Was 'Objectively Observing' That Hispanics Are Dumb
Topic: NewsBusters

Tom Blumer wrote in a May 27 NewsBusters post that Jason Richwine "recently resigned from the Heritage Foundation over objectively observing, in the words of a Fox News report, 'that Hispanics had a lower IQ than American whites, and that their descendants would too.'"

Really, Tom? It's an objective observation that Hispanics are dumber than whites?

Well, not so much. Think Progress summarizes the problems with Richwine's research:

If the dissertation was bad enough to get him fired from the Heritage Foundation, how did it earn him a degree from Harvard?

A popular answer among Richwine’s defenders is that, quite simply, it was exemplary work. Richwine’s dissertation committee was made up, by all accounts, of three eminent scholars, each widely respected in their respective fields. And it is Harvard.

But dozens of interviews with subject matter experts, Harvard graduates in Richwine’s program who overlapped with him, and members of the committee itself paint a somewhat more textured picture. Richwine’s dissertation was sloppy scholarship, relying on statistical sophistication to hide some serious conceptual errors. Yet internal accounts of Richwine’s time at Harvard suggests the august university, for the most part, let serious problems in Richwine’s research  fall through the cracks.

[...]

Jason Richwine received a PhD from Harvard University for sub-standard research, work that makes strong assertions on a charged topic based on poorly defined concepts, incomplete and misleading summaries of opposing arguments, and bald analytic overreaches.

[...]

And as for Richwine, the overwhelming sense you get from reading his work and speaking to his acquaintances is that he was, as odd as this sounds, a well-intentioned naïf. We’ve all met the type: someone so airily focused on their own passions and interests (in Richwine’s case, Murray-style hereditarian work on race and IQ) that they miss the broader social forest for the trees.

“I think what happened was that he tried to make an academic argument but did not foresee this [racism] problem,” his friend, Professor Tran, told me.

Whatever one thinks about Harvard or Richwine, the real lesson here goes beyond both of them.

Even if Richwine’s dissertation, despite all of its errors and omissions, was “good enough” to earn a passing mark, it’s emphatically not “good enough” to make a real contribution to our knowledge about the intersection between race and IQ. The scholarly errors in his research are too pervasive and severe.

Beyond the failure of craft, however, is the serious harm that can result from quasi-eugenic works masquerading as serious research.

So, not objective -- or even particularly good -- research happening on Richwine's part. But he generates the kind of results people like Blumer want to hear, so Blumer is more than happy to give Richwine a pass on the dubious racial aspects of his work.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:37 PM EDT
'The Obama Name, The IRS And Polygamy All In 1 Story'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

You can easily imagine -- if not actually hear -- the folks at WorldNetDaily having multiple orgasms over writing this email tease:

The article it's promoting, by Jerome Corsi, cites apparent fraudster Walid Shoebat to claim that "Funds contributed in the United States to a 501(c)3 foundation run by President Obama’s older half-brother, Abongo 'Roy' Malik Obama, have been diverted to support Malik’s multiple wives in Kenya."

Posted by Terry K. at 8:15 AM EDT

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