Yesterday, we noted that WorldNetDaily tweeted out a link to an race-baiting article that was published more than a year ago. WND's trip down race-baiting's memory lane continues with today's Twitter flashback:

As it just so happens, WND is publishing an updated edition of Flaherty's self-published race-baiting tome "White Girl Bleed A Lot."

Posted by Terry K. at 4:53 PM EDT

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Andrea Billups writes in an Aug. 2 Newsmax article:

A former U.S. ambassador has sued three Venezuelan executives, accusing them of racketeering, bribing authorities for energy contracts, and defamation.

The 48-page lawsuit on behalf of Otto Reich, who was Venezuelan ambassador under President George H. W. Bush, was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Tuesday. The suit claims the men paid kickbacks to government employees in Venezuela in exchange for lucrative contracts for power plant construction.

But as you go deeper in the article, the lawsuit is really all about Reich complaining that the people he's suing cost his consulting firm business by allegedly spreading rumors about who he was working with.

In other words, it's a pretty arcane lawsuit. Why should we care? Billups does a lot of resume citation to try and make us care:

Reich, 67, who served as ambassador from 1986-1989, and later assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs under President George W. Bush, now heads his own Washington, D.C., consulting firm, Otto Reich & Associates (ORA).

[...]

Reich, who served a year as a temporary assistant secretary of state, resigned from the Bush administration in 2004. He has been described in media accounts as a rock star in Latin America where he hosted a Spanish-language version of CNN's popular "Crossfire" program. He also served as a foreign policy adviser to presidential candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney.

But Billups overlooks a few things. As we've detailed, Reich ran a pro-contra propaganda operation during the 1980s with the American public being the target of said propaganda -- U.S. government agents targeting Americans with propaganda is generally frowned upon. Reich was also a champion for a convicted terrorist, Orlando Bosch, being allowed to enter the U.S.

For all of Billups' touting of Reich's resume, though, she fails to report the one thing that likely explains why this story exists in the first place: Reich is on the advisory board of LIGNET, a "global intelligence and forecasting" service operated by ... Newsmax.

This is nothing more than in-house promotion disguised as "news."

Posted by Terry K. at 12:22 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, August 8, 2013 12:23 PM EDT

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Chelsea Schilling's Aug. 5 WorldNetDaily attack on Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan is rather desperate and silly, starting with the headline "The pampered, good life of Fort Hood shooter":

Nearly four years after Islamist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shouted “Allahu akbar!” (“Allah is greater!”) and brutally murdered 14 people (including an unborn baby) and injured 30 others at Fort Hood, Texas, he now receives free helicopter rides from the local jail nearly every day, lives in a private room built to accommodate his medical needs, wears a beard against Army regulations, travels with his own security detail, has received numerous trial delays and collects a full salary of about $80,000 a year – all while many of his victims say they’ve been forgotten.

Yes, we know Hasan's a horrible person who likely deserves the death penalty he will likely get for the shootings, but come on. Being a paraplegic (which Schilling mentions nowhere in her article) in prison is hardly anybody's idea of a "pampered, good life."

Despite Schilling portraying Hasan's "free helicopter rides" as some kind of fun perk the Army hands out to people who commit massacres, it's actually part of the security measures being undertaken for Hasan's trial. Certainly Schilling wants Hasan to survive his trial so he can be properly executed, right?

And Hasan has continued to receive his salary because it's military procedure, not because it's giving Hasan special treatment (some are trying to change this policy). It's not like he can go anywhere to spend it, anyway.

But Schilling is not done complaining yet:

Hasan, 42, is facing 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder at his trial begins Tuesday. The New York Times reported the Army has spent more than $5 million on Hasan’s case and secured the courthouse with massive sand-packed barriers to protect him from explosions.

The Army has paid for Hasan’s military defense lawyers, paralegals and experts for his defense. Hasan also enjoys a heavily guarded trailer near the courthouse. The court-martial is expected to last at least a month.

No other inmate at the Bell County jail is treated the same way.

Perhaps because other inmate at the Bell County jail (allegedly) killed 14 people and needs that level of security.

It seems that Schilling -- who has a long trail of error at WND -- didn't think about such things before writing this article.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:03 AM EDT

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One wonders how Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell can keep a straight face in his appearances when he's being so obviously disingenuous and hypocritical.

In his weekly appearance on Sean Hannity's Fox News show, Bozell ranted:

BOZELL: I said today to Cruz, Lee, and Rubio, this morning as a matter of fact, I told them that when you are attacked this viciously and this personally, it means you're doing something right. Because, and this is not liberalism anymore, Sean. This is radicalism. I'm not going to call them liberals any more. Because there's a certain decency in liberalism that doesn't exist with these radicals.

And to hear Chris Matthews six times call United States Senators “haters”! And this is the man who then turns around and says that he wished he could put a CO2 pellet in Rush Limbaugh's head and watch it explode! He comes from a network where people have wished for the death of Dick Cheney! And he's going to call conservatives haters?

That's right -- the man who called President Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead" and who was too cowardly to offer any meaningful criticism of Rush Limbaugh's tirade of misogyny against Sandra Fluke (and who employs people that heartily endorsed Limbaugh's slut-shaming) is offended that Chris Matthews said something mean about a conservative.

In another Fox News appearance, Bozell agreed with Fox host Neil Cavuto that new Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos should "try a little editorial balance. ... Last time I checked, that has not hurt Fox News, or the Wall Street Journal, or even USA Today."

Bozell did not call attention to certain facts that disproved Cavuto's assertions -- namely, that he was being interviewed by a conservative-leaning Fox host that featured no liberal counterbalance.

In fact, we can't remember the last time Bozell or anyone else from the MRC did anything other than a solo interview on Fox. Nor can we remember when Fox has ever had on anyone from the MRC's liberal counterpart, Media Matters (disclosure: my employer).

If Bozell and Fox News are so committed to journalistic balance, we have a challenge. How about letting, say, Eric Boehlert appear along with him in his next Hannity spot? Waddaya say, Brent? Are you up for it, or are you a coward?

Posted by Terry K. at 9:04 PM EDT

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WorldNetDaily has been ramping up the race-baiting of late. It's doing so on Twitter as well, sending out this message:

Either  WND doesn't know the age of the stories it's tweeting out, or it really is that committed to its race-baiting agenda.

Posted by Terry K. at 2:16 PM EDT

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Matt Philbin, the managing editor of the Media Research Center's Culture & Media Institute, is unusually sleazy for a right-wing activist -- you might remember him, for example, sliming Sandra Fluke as a "horizontal laborer" and a "Lincoln Tunnel Hitcher."

Well, he's at it again. In an Aug. 6 tweet, Philbin made a thinly veiled attack on both Michelle Obama's looks and her healthy-eating efforts, writing, "Michelle's gonna fight obesity thru hip-hop -- a music who's arguably most famous lyric is "I like big butts."

Posted by Terry K. at 11:09 AM EDT

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WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah readily concedes that his website knowingly publishes misinformation. Perhaps that explains Gina Loudon's Aug. 4 WND column.

it's a long screed about how she wishes that President Obama has a miserable birthday -- "I guess your day will be rather dark, like a lot of children’s birthdays around the U.S. for your policies of demise and death" -- and is chock full of misleading, if not entirely false, claims. Like this:

You blew out the lights on all babies. Around 5.6 million American babies have been aborted since you took office and will never blow out the candles on their own birthday cakes. Mr. Obama, you know around half of those aborted are female, yet you keynoted the Planned Parenthood gala this year. You gladly accepted an award in the name of the known eugenicist, Margaret Sanger, whose entire goal in founding Planned Parenthood was to “eradicate the black race.” You see more than $1 million per day of taxpayer money going to pay for killing those baby girls, Mr. President. Your war on baby women has dimmed the cake by about another 2.8 million little female lights.

We have not been able to find any evidence that Sanger said that her goal in founding Planned Parenthood was to "eradicate the black race." The only people who have used that quoted term are right-wing anti-Planned Parenthood activists.

What Loudon may be referring to is the "Negro Project," an effort by Sanger to bring family-planning clinics to the deep South. FactCheck.org reports that anti-abortion activists love to take a certin Sanger quote -- "We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population" -- out of context:

Sanger wrote in 1939 letters to colleague Clarence James Gamble that she believed the project needed a black physician and black minister to gain the trust of the community:

Sanger, 1939: The minister’s work is also important and he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.

Sanger says that a minister could debunk the notion, if it arose, that the clinics aimed to “exterminate the Negro population.” She didn’t say that she wanted to “exterminate” the black population. The Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University says that this quote has “gone viral on the Internet,” normally out of context, and it “doesn’t reflect the fact that Sanger recognized elements within the black community might mistakenly associate the Negro Project with racist sterilization campaigns in the Jim Crow south, unless clergy and other community leaders spread the word that the Project had a humanitarian aim.”

[...]

The project says: “No serious scholar and none of the dozens of black leaders who supported Sanger’s work have ever suggested that she tried to reduce the black population or set up black abortion mills, the implication in much of the extremist anti-choice material.”

Perhaps Obama might have a better birthday if people like Loudon weren't spreading malicious lies.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:17 AM EDT

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A July 31 Newsmax article by Andrea Billups is little more than a press release promoting the new film Dinesh D'Souza is making.

Billips touts how D'Souza's previous film, "2016: Obama's America," was "the second-highest-grossing political documentary in history" and "used arguments made in his bestselling 2010 book 'The Roots of Obama's Rage' to argue that Obama had deep-seated anger against the country he leads, a feeling that he absorbed from his father, a Kenyan who resented British colonialism."

But Billips is careful not to mention the fact that D'Souza's highbrow birtherism was discredited upon his book's release, which made his film equally discredited, regardless of how well it did at the box office.

Since Billips endeavored to include no negative information about D'Souza in her article, there's also no mention of D'Souza being ousted as president of a Christian college after 1) spending way too much time making his anti-Obama film, and 2) claiming to be engaged to his mistress while still married to his wife.

Billips does, however, tell us how much D'Souza wants to make his upcoming film the most popular documentary ever, ahead of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," because "We have to dethrone the fat guy. It's too embarrassing to be right behind him."

Posted by Terry K. at 9:38 PM EDT

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WorldNetDaily sure loves its race-baiting headlines.

The latest is from an unbylined Aug. 5 article about a school bus fight. WND started off with "Blacks pummel white child on bus":

Posted by Terry K. at 7:28 PM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, August 6, 2013 7:37 PM EDT

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CNSNews.com reporter Fred Lucas has joined Glenn Beck's The Blaze as its White House correspondent.

To get an idea of what The Blaze will be getting, here's a quick look back at some of Lucas' ideologically skewed reporting for CNS:

Misleading about an Obama judicial nominee.

Attempting to manufacture an IRS controversy.

Dishonestly reporting on alleged pay disparities by gender in the Obama White House.

Arguing that spending federal money on LGBT issues is a waste.

Trying and failing to manufacture another Obama White House controversy.

Giving President Bush credit for killing Saddam Hussein, and not blaming him for the thousands of troop deaths in Iraq.

Putting words in Obama's mouth.

Was three weeks late to a story about Bill Clinton and still managed to get key facts wrong.

Cleaned up after Mitt Romney.

Presumably, such biased, ideologically motivated work was what The Blaze is looking for in a White House correspondent, because that's what it's getting.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:00 PM EDT

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Joseph Farah devotes yet another WorldNetDaily column to blatant self-promotion:

It started with a column right here in this space back on April 11.

I had an idea. Frustrated by the state of our country and man’s broken institutions, I called for a national day of prayer a little more than a month from now – on Sept. 11, 2013.

I actually called for a day of prayer and fasting, on that date, but I thought better about that idea and later amended it to a day of prayer and repentance.

Less than five months later, I’m happy to say, support for the plan is building for what I hope will be an annual event – an auspicious date in American history when believers in the One True God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, those called by His name, will humble themselves and pray and seek His face and turn from their wicked ways.

I am more convinced than ever before this is the only prescription for healing of our land. Nothing men do, short of this, will change the course of the country. Nothing men do, short of this, will save the nation from judgment and collapse.

Of course, few people have wicked ways to turn from than Farah himself, what with his continual lying and his use of WND to attempt to personally destroy Barack Obama by pushing falsehoods and distortions. But he has never admitted to this wicked behavior, let alone indicated that he will repent for it.

That would seem to be a stumbling block for a man who's promoting a "Day of Prayer and Repentence" -- and it should be a red flag for anyone thinking of taking part in it.

And, wouldn't you know it, the day after he writes the above, he tells another blatant lie. He writes in yet another Obama-bashing screed (bolding in original):

“So the point is, if Washington spent as much time and energy these past two years figuring out how to grow our economy and grow our middle class as it’s spent manufacturing crises in pursuit of a cut-at-all-costs approach to deficits, we’d be much better off,” he told Tennesseans. “We’d be much better off. And it’s not like we don’t have to cut our deficits. As a share of the economy, we’ve cut our deficits by nearly half since I took office. Half. And they’re projected to go down even further, but there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. And we should do it in a way that actually helps middle-class families instead of hurts them.”

How is this possible? The economy is not growing under five years in the Obamanation. And the deficit has increase more than $1 trillion per year under his watch – with no end in sight.

In fact, the federal deficit for fiscal year 2013 is projected to fall well below $1 billion. And that projection means the 2013 deficit would equal 4.7 percent of gross domestic product versus the 10.1 percent of GDP in 2009.

Farah then whines, "Sadly, too many low-information voters believe anything this guy says." Sadly, the same is true about Farah.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:30 AM EDT

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The Media Research Center doesn't seem to understand that words mean things.

Geoffrey Dickens starts a July 30 NewsBusters post -- which has been updated over the past week with alleged offenses by the broadcast networks in alleged non-coverage of controversies involving the IRS -- like this: "The Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks have colluded with the Obama administration to censor the latest IRS scandal news."

The definition of "collusion" is "secret agreement or cooperation especially for an illegal or deceitful purpose." Dickens offers no evidence of such an "agreement." Even if allegegd behavior suggests collusion, such a claim is dishonest without proof -- otherwise, it's just a correlation-equals-causation fallacy.

Nor does Dickens offer any evidence of "censorship." Failure to report a particular spin that not equal "censorship" -- indeed, given the talking points Dickens is providing as evidence, that's the prudent and honest path.

For instance, he writes:

House Committee Analysis: Only 46 Percent of Conservative Groups Approved by IRS

On July 30, as reported by even the liberal NPR, House Republicans offered proof that while 100 percent of groups with “progressive” in their name had their tax exempt status approved by the IRS, “only 46 percent of conservative groups won approval.”

The analysis put out by the House Ways and Means Committee also found “conservative groups were asked more questions - on average, three times more” than liberal organizations.

Number of days with NO network story: 6

Dickens didn't mention that "the liberal NPR" also pointed out a serious problem with the House Republicans' metholodogy:

The majority staff dug into the applications of both conservative groups and progressive groups given extra scrutiny by the IRS, but for the purposes of the analysis looked only at groups with names that included terms the IRS used for flagging. The terms included "conservative," "Tea Party," "patriot 9/12" and "progressive."

The committee opted not to make any judgments about the political leanings of other groups given extra scrutiny by the IRS, sticking only with those listed on IRS "Be on the Lookout" watch lists.

That means the House Republican list is incomplete at best and highly biased at worst.

Dickens also writes:

Newly Released E-Mails Suggest IRS Colluded with FEC to Target Conservative Groups

On July 31 The National Review reported the stunning news that yet another government agency (the FEC) may have been utilized by the Obama administration to target conservative groups. NR’s Eliana Johnson reported the following:

“Embattled Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner and an attorney in the Federal Election Commission’s general counsel’s office appear to have twice colluded to influence the record before the FEC’s vote in the case of a conservative non-profit organization, according to e-mails unearthed by the House Ways and Means Committee.”

Johnson continued: “The correspondence suggests the discrimination of conservative groups extended beyond the IRS and into the FEC, where an attorney from the agency’s enforcement division in at least one case sought and received tax information about the status of a conservative group, the American Future Fund, before recommending that the commission prosecute it for violations of campaign-finance law.”

Number of days with NO network story: 5

In fact, there is no scandal here. As Media Matters details, there's no evidence of the direct link Dickens and National Review claim -- just a suggestion of wrongdoing from selectively leaked emails from partisan sources that don't actually establish any malfeasance.

In short, Dickens is demanding that these things be reported -- even though they are dishonest, unproven or have been discredited -- because they conform to right-wing talking points.

Not because they are true -- because they advance Dickens' right-wing agenda (not to mention his boss, Brent Bozell).

Dickens would be screaming at media outlets if they had reported similar things on such flimsy evidence if they had taken place under a Republican administration. But such shoddy reporting is just peachy with Dickens because it advances his political agenda.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:28 PM EDT

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If this display by our most distinguished and honored American military heroes is any indication, given the state of affairs generally in this nation, which borders on total political, economic, moral and ethical collapse, is it inconceivable that one day the military in this country could rise up in support of not only the American people but themselves, and remove Obama and his radical Muslim, socialist comrades by whatever means prove necessary to preserve the republic?

This is not the scenario we would like to see, but like the Egyptians, when there is no other choice, anything is possible. Our Congress has shown no willingness to seriously confront Obama for his illegal and treasonous acts; the constitutional process of impeachment has never succeeded at removing a lawless and destructive president; and our judges have become the “yes-men and women” of the political establishment.

-- Larry Klayman, July 5 WorldNetDaily column

Obama is, without question, a mendacious, narcissistic sociopath, but does that contribute to his support for the most despotic anti-American hostiles in the Middle East? What is his quid pro quo for having these elements triumph? Whatever it is, we as Americans should be very concerned.

Those of us old enough will recall that Carter’s betrayal of Mohammad Pahlavi gave almost immediate rise to the Ayatollah Khomeini, which ushered in the destabilizing of Iran and the Middle East.

What does Obama tell malevolent dictators in private? What did he promise Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood? What secret agenda did Obama bring with him that goes beyond his promise to “fundamentally change America”?

-- Mychal Massie, July 8 WND column

Some people insist that racism no longer exists in America. Clearly, that isn’t true. After all, Barack Obama once said that Trayvon Martin looked like the son he might have had. Inasmuch as Obama is half-white, can any of us imagine his making that statement if the 17-year-old who was known to be a dope-smoking thug had been a Caucasian? On the other hand, I suspect that when he gazes fondly at Eric Holder, the attorney general who refuses to indict blacks for intimidating white voters, he sees himself with a little mustache.

-- Burt Prelutsky, July 9 WND column

Recently, a friend and I were discussing the expansion of criminality in the ranks of Washington’s power elite, which prompted him to ask, “With the dramatic increase in the purchase of firearms and ammunition by private citizens since Obama took office, when will the general populace say ‘Enough!’ and resort to violence to overthrow the oligarchy in Washington?”

The answer, I told him, is never. Forget about it. It’s not going happen. There will be no violent revolution in the United States, for a number of reasons.

-- Robert Ringer, July 10 WND column

 Now, decades later, it falls on non-blacks like Zimmerman to bear the brunt of discrimination, as even white prosecutors and judges cower at the thought of having to “answer” to the black power structure, led by our anti-white, racist president, Barack Hussein Obama. Not coincidentally, the “racist in chief” had injected himself into the politics of the case at the outset, when he boasted publicly that he wished that he had had a son like Trayvon. This sent a signal to the legal establishment that it better bend over backwards to placate the black community and ignore the rule of law.

-- Larry Klayman, July 12 WND column

Posted by Terry K. at 5:11 PM EDT

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An Aug. 1 CNSNews.com "news" article by Gregory Gwyn-Williams Jr. is, in reality, a slobbering love letter to Rush Limbaugh on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his nationally syndicated radio show.

Gwyn-Williams includes numerous of Limbaugh congratulating himself for his success. But no mention is made of the two most recent controversies involving him -- his tirade of misogyny against Sandra Fluke, and the fact that one of the largest groups of radio stations in the country, Cumulus Media, is apparently planning to drop Limbaugh's show from dozens of its stations, in part because of the fallout and decreased revenue it has experienced in the wake of Limbaugh's attack on Fluke.

CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, similarly gave Fox News' Greta Van Susteren a pass for conducting an hourlong interview with Limbaugh without touching on those controversies.

An Aug. 5 CNS article by Susan Jones uncritically quoted Limbaugh from the Fox News interview, making no mention of the fact that Van Susteren never asked Limbaugh about Fluke or Cumulus.

So much for the MRC caring about fair and balanced journalism.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:52 AM EDT

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Drew Johnson -- the Chattanooga Times Free Press editorial writer who was fired after publishing an Obama-bashing editorial headlined "Take your jobs plan and shove it, Mr. President" -- has been making the tour of the right-wing media, where his unsubstantiated claim that political pressure caused his firing have found a receptive audience. WorldNetDaily and Newsmax have uncritically repeated Johnson's claims, and even the Daily Caller's Jeff Poor (a former Media Research Center staffer) has given Johnson a pass. The result: creation of the impression that Johnson is a victim of the "liberal media."

But these ConWeb sources have all failed to report a couple of pertinent facts that back up the Times Free Press' claim that Johnson was fired for violating newspaper policy, not because of politics.

First, the Times Free Press is one of the very few newspapers, if not the only one, that runs two separate editorial pages each day -- the liberal-leaning Times page and the conservative-leaning Free Press page. That's a legacy from when there were two separate newspapers in Chattanooga. Johnson was editor of the conservative page, and his departure does not mean any diminishing, let alone the end, of conservative opinion in the Chattanooga newspaper.

Second, the ConWeb has been utterly loath to mention who owns the Chattanooga paper. It's WEHCO Media, which also owns the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The head of WEHCO is Walter Hussman Jr., who made his biggest splash in the newspaper industry in the 1980s by engaging in a newspaper war in Little Rock, ultimately defeating and merging with his own newspaper the rival paper owned by deep-pocketted giant Gannett. It was under Hussman that the two newspapers in Chattanooga -- the Free Press and the Times, the latter formerly owned by the Ochs family of New York Times fame -- were combined and allowed to keep their separate editorial pages.

As the Arkansas Times points out, "Hussman's sympathies — indeed much of his game plan for his own newspaper building strategies came from the former Free Press owner — are not generally with those of the New York Times." Indeed, the Democrat-Gazette's editorial page is headed by Paul Greenberg, a conservative who's perhaps most notorious for his Clinton-bashing during the 1990s.The American Journalism Review has reported that Hussman says the best part of his day is "proofing the paper's stridently conservative editorial page."

It's lazy and dishonest for the ConWeb to shove Johnson's firing into its tired "liberal media" narrative. A conservative-leaning newspaper owner, after all, doesn't fit their agenda.

(Disclosure: I'm a former employee of the Democrat-Gazette.)

Posted by Terry K. at 12:39 AM EDT

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