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Monday, February 3, 2014
MRC, Home Of Man Who Called Obama A 'Skinny Ghetto Crackhead,' Thinks MSNBC Should Apologize For Offending Conservatives
Topic: Media Research Center

So the Media Research Center's Rich Noyes devoted an entire "Media Reality Check" to things MSNBC should be apologizing for, in addition to last week's tweet about a Super Bowl ad. Noyes declared that "The Media Research Center has compiled a long list of instances in which the network’s anchors have committed character assassination disguised as journalism, unjustly smearing conservatives, Republicans and the Tea Party as racists."

Meanwhile, no apologies have been forthcoming from the MRC regarding:

  • Brent Bozell calling Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead."
  • Matt Philbin calling Sandra Fluke a "horizontal laborer" who wants to "sleep around with impunity."
  • Philbin smearing a critic of his offensive tweets (specifically, us) as a "faggot" and telling us to "fuck off."
  • Noel Sheppard claiming that "sober people don't need birth control."
  • Tim Graham attacking ABC's Martha Raddatz as a "woman who won't take husband's surname" and suggesting that Raddatz will "have a hard time deciding which debate questions to ask" while moderating a presidential debate because she has "marrie[d] three times."

Noyes should take his employer's own never-apologized-for offenses into consideration before attacking others.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:07 PM EST
Meanwhile ...
Topic: WorldNetDaily
Richard Bartholomew details how WorldNetDaily is putting a bargain-basement price of Carl Gallups' WND-published book promoting the dubious idea that a rabbi once predicted that the death of Ariel Sharon would be somehow mystically linked to the return of Jesus.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:15 PM EST
CNS Repeats Global Warming Denier's Distortions
Topic: CNSNews.com

Barbara Hollingsworth proclaims in a Jan. 28 CNSNews.com article:

Dr. Don Easterbrook – a climate scientist and glacier expert from Washington State who correctly predicted back in 2000 that the Earth was entering a cooling phase – says to expect colder temperatures for at least the next two decades.

Easterbrook’s predictions were “right on the money” seven years before Al Gore and the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for warning that the Earth was facing catastrophic warming caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide, which Gore called a “planetary emergency.”

“When we check their projections against what actually happened in that time interval, they’re not even close. They’re off by a full degree in one decade, which is huge. That’s more than the entire amount of warming we’ve had in the past century. So their models have failed just miserably, nowhere near close. And maybe it’s luck, who knows, but mine have been right on the button,” Easterbrook told CNSNews.com.

“For the next 20 years, I predict global cooling of about 3/10ths of a degree Fahrenheit, as opposed to the one-degree warming predicted by the IPCC,” said Easterbrook, professor emeritus of geology at Western Washington University and  author of 150 scientific journal articles and 10 books, including “Evidence Based Climate Science,” which was published in 2011.

There's lots that Hollingsworth has gotten wrong here, starting with her declaration that Easterbrook is right about global cooling.

Skeptical Science serves up this chart showing Easterbrook's predictions of cooling (the green and blue lines) vs. actual temperatures (the jagged black line):

 

The red line is an IPCC prediction, which brings us to another thing Hollingsworth got wrong: uncritically repeating Easterbrook's claim that the IPCC predicted "one-degree warming." As Skeptical Science points out, the IPCC served up numerous analyses of temperature predictions, and Easterbrook cherry-picked one:
  • He chose a figure which represented model simulations of temperature responses only to greenhouse gas changes, which neglects for example the temperature response to the cooling effects of aerosols.
  • He chose a single model run with an anomalous temperature spike in 2011.
  • He only presented the data from 2000 to 2011, which concealed the fact that the temperature spike in 2011 was a short-term anomaly.
  • He exaggerated his distorted IPCC temperature rise by a factor of two.

Thus Easterbrook's claim that the IPCC TAR projected a 1°C global surface warming from 2000 to 2010 was not even remotely accurate.

As per usual, Hollingsworth couldn't be bothered to seek out any alternative views. Indeed, Hollingsworth even shared one fawning question she asked Easterbrook: “How does it feel to have been right?”

It's not a feeling Hollingsworth is apparently familiar with. But fortunately for her, her higher-ups at CNS don't appear to be judging her journalism on its accuracy, only on how faithfully she advances her employer's right-wing agenda.


Posted by Terry K. at 3:46 PM EST
WND Ignores Evidence That Stockman Is Lying About Being Libeled
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's Garth Kant is clearly Steve Stockman's favorite reporter. He knows Kant won't write anything negative about him, so he plies Kant with scoops, like his run for Senate.

So, Kant uses a Jan. 31 WND article to promote Stockman's filing of a libel lawsuit against a PAC supporting his Republican opponent, incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, that was "provided exclusively to WND." It reads like a Stockman press release, and Kant doesn't bother to obtain any response from the Cornyn camp. He writes:

According to Stockman, the Cornyn PAC operating under the name “Texans for a Conservative Majority” claims Stockman had been “jailed more than once,” was “charged with a felony” and “violated federal ethics laws.”

Stockman says all of those are false statements.

“The Cornyn supporters have committed libel per se against me, falsely and maliciously accusing me of a felony. Of course, I have never been charged with or committed any such act, and these anonymous Cornyn supporters know it,” said Stockman.

He added, “As a sitting member of the United States Congress, I find it unconscionable that another member’s supporters would make such reckless, malicious and false allegations.”

Since Kant is in stenographer mode, he won't tell you that the basic facts of those allegations are actually true.

A 1996 Texas Monthly profile of Stockman points out that "Stockman spent more than one weekend in jail for traffic violations, and once, after a girlfriend hid Valium in his underwear before he was incarcerated, he was charged with possession of a controlled substance, a felony that was later dropped." The Cornyn PAC's depiction may be devoid of context, but Stockman did, in fact, spend time in jail and was charged with a felony.

The claim that Stockman "violated federal ethics laws" is a logical conclusion, but it's not inaccurate. The Houston Chronicle reported that Stockman "has failed repeatedly to disclose business affiliations that stretch from Texas to the British Virgin Islands on his Congressional financial disclosure forms" and "Stockman, since his bankruptcy in 2002, created a number of businesses, some of which remain active but were not reported on Stockman’s financial disclosure form as required by federal law."

Kant doesn't supply a copy of Stockman's libel suit, nor does he detail Stockman's evidence that the claims are false -- he merely regurgitates Stockman's assertions that they are. But that's the kind of thing that happens when you're the PR flack for a politician: He won't tell you that the politician is lying.


Posted by Terry K. at 8:05 AM EST
Sunday, February 2, 2014
D'Souza's Crime Not A 'Big Deal' To MRC's Bozell
Topic: Media Research Center

Brent Bozell used to care about the rule of law. For instance, in 1999 he praised "the House managers' principled advocacy of the rule of law" in the impeachment vote on President Clinton. In 2009, he asserted that "The Obama Administration acted in complete disregard of the rule of law" in the auto bailout.

But when it comes to crimes committed by conservatives, well, the rule of law doesn't matter so much. He is quoted opining on the arrest of Dinesh D'Souza for campaign finance violations in a Jan. 31 WorldNetDaily article:

“Let’s assume Dinesh D’Souza is guilty, and I mean 100 percent guilty. What is he guilty of? Circumventing FEC dictates by directing [$15,000] to a Senate candidate of his choice. Big deal,” Bozell told WND.

“First, in a multi-million Senate campaign, this is a fraction of a fraction. It ‘buys’ a can of soda pop, and that’s about it.["]

That's right -- because a conservative broke the law, it's no big deal to Bozell.

Bozell goes on to equivocate D'Souza's offense with much worse ones allegedly committed by Presidents Clinton and Obama:

["]Second, and more importantly, compare this ‘crime’ with Bill Clinton, who raised millions of dollars from questionable at best, and illegal at worst sources, including felons and Chinese Communist generals. Compare it to Barack Obama, who raised millions upon millions from who-knows-who-or-where to this day. Nothing ever came of their fundraising abuses, abuses one thousandfold larger than anything attributed to D’Souza. And yet he was arrested and forced to post a $500,000 bond.

“It is astonishing. Given all the other abuses of power swirling around this administration, so many of them finding their origins in the ‘Justice’ Department, do I see deliberate persecution against conservatives? I am not conspiratorial by nature, but I will say unequivocally, you better believe it.”

The fact that Bozell must equivocate away D'Souza's crime is a sign that he will not criticize another conservative for committing offense. Rush Limbaugh already knows about that right-wing benefit.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:20 PM EST
WND Tries to Frame Police Shooting As 'The Next Trayvon'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

An unbylined Jan. 25 WorldNetDaily article does its best to portray the shooting death of a black man by a white policeman in North Carolina as "the next Trayvon." But that would be the WND-Jack Cashill version of the Trayvon Martin case, in which the black male was a total thug and deserved to be shot.

The article cheers that a grand jury did not indict the officer, Randall Kerrick, on a charge of voluntary manslaughter, calling the case "politically pressured" and the manslaughter charge "overcharged." But a few days later, Kerrick was charged, prompting WND to sneerin a Jan. 27 article "If at first you fail to indict, try, try again,' claiming the indictment came after "civil-rights activists loudly marched outside the Charlotte courthouse."

In both articles, WND frames the incident to make the victim, Jonathan Ferrell, as deserving to be shot because he "refused to obey orders to stop and show his hands after police responded to a robbery call." WND also asserts that "witnesses" claimed that Ferrell was "drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana in the hours before he crashed his car" in the incident that led to his shooting. WND offers no source for the information, but it's Undermined -- and simultaneously gets a warrantless racial spin -- when WND adds that "The police chief, who is African-American, still has not released the results of the toxicology report."

WND also quotes "black radio" -- again, no source is provided for this information, or what exactly "black radio" means -- calling a woman who called police on Ferrell after she allegedly though he was trying to break into her house, a "racist b—-" guilty of a "hate crime."

But WND curiously ignores the fact that an investigation of the shooting by the police department Kerrick works for found the shooting to be "excessive":

"The evidence revealed that Mr. Ferrell did advance on Officer Kerrick and the investigation showed that the subsequent shooting of Mr. Ferrell was excessive," police said in a statement on September 14, the day of the shooting. "Our investigation has shown that Officer Kerrick did not have a lawful right to discharge his weapon during this encounter."

That would seem to be an important finding of fact that WND somehow found not to be newsworthy. But that's just another reason nobody believes WND.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:19 PM EST
Saturday, February 1, 2014
CNS' Jeffrey Blames John Holdren For Decline In Electricity Use
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey spends his Jan. 29 column having a sad that electricity consumption in America is declining:

Americans may look back in a few decades and see that 2007 was the year that production of electricity peaked in the United States and our nation began powering down.

This may make many on the environmentalist left — including President Barack Obama's top science and technology adviser — very happy.

But it will not make life better for you, your children or your grandchildren.

According to data published by the Energy Information Administration, the United States generated a total of approximately 4,157 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2007. We had never produced that much before. We have never produced that much since.

In 2012, the last full year for which there is data, the United States produced 4,048 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity — down 2.6 percent from 2007.

In the first nine months of 2013, the United States produced 3,078 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity — down from the 3,096 the United States produced in first nine months of 2012.

Strangely, Jeffrey doesn't mention the main reason for the decline: increased efficiency. The Associated Press reports:

Because of more energy-efficient housing, appliances and gadgets, power usage is on track to decline in 2013 for the third year in a row, to its lowest point since 2001, even though our lives are more electrified.

[...]

Big appliances such as refrigerators and air conditioners have gotten more efficient thanks to federal energy standards that get stricter every few years as technology evolves.

A typical room air conditioner — one of the biggest power hogs in the home — uses 20 per cent less electricity per hour of full operation than it did in 2001, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers.

Central air conditioners, refrigerators, dishwashers, water heaters, washing machines and dryers also have gotten more efficient.

Other devices are using less juice, too. Some 40-inch LED televisions bought today use 80 per cent less power than the cathode ray tube televisions of the past. Some use just $8 worth of electricity over a year when used five hours a day — less than a 60-watt incandescent bulb would use.

Those incandescent light bulbs are being replaced with compact fluorescent bulbs and LEDs that use 70 to 80 per cent less power. According to the Energy Department, widespread use of LED bulbs could save output equivalent to that of 44 large power plants by 2027.

The move to mobile also is helping. Desktop computers with big CRT monitors are being replaced with laptops, tablet computers and smart phones, and these mobile devices are specifically designed to sip power to prolong battery life.

It costs $1.36 to power an iPad for a year, compared with $28.21 for a desktop computer, according to the Electric Power Research Institute.

Instead of telling his readers the facts, Jeffrey indulges in a favorite CNS obsession: John Holdren. Somehow this is all his fault:

As President Obama moves forward with his plans for America's future energy production and economic well-being, Americans should remember that Obama's science and technology adviser declared 19 years ago that "a world of zero net physical growth" was something that "needs to be faced up to eventually."

Yeah, efficient use of electricity has absolutely nothing to do with it.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:16 PM EST
WND's Corsi to Bill Ayers: Please Stop Trolling Me On Obama Book Authorship!
Topic: WorldNetDaily

For years, Bill Ayers has been trolling Jerome Corsi, Jack Cashill, and other birthers who claim that he ghost-wrote Barack Obama's book "Dreams From My Father."

Well, Corsi has finally had enough. Taking advantage of a debate between Ayers and accused felon Dinesh D'Souza, Corsi approached Ayers and begged him to stop trolling people about the book. 

It went about as well as you'd expect. Art Moore writes in a Jan. 30 WND article:

The conversation took a familiar path, but toward the end, Corsi tried to cut through the irony, pointing out to Ayers that he typically says he wrote it and will split the royalties with anyone who can prove it.

Corsi asserted that Ayers’ familiar, ironic reply was a declaration that he doesn’t really mean what he’s saying, that he was “taking it back.”

“No, it does not take it back,” Ayers insisted.

“It doesn’t?” asked Corsi.

“No,” Ayers said.

“You wrote it?”

“I wrote it,” Ayers said.

Moore repeats a lot of dishonest boilerplate, claiming that Cashill performed an "extensive literary analysis" that proved Ayers' involvement without mentioning the actual literary experts who shot down Cashill's conspiracy theory. He also touts how biographer Christoper Andersen (whose name Moor misspells) reported that Obama "sought the help of Ayers" with the book without mentioning that Andersen explicitly denied that he ever claimed that Ayers wrote the book, which is what Cashill has claimed all along.

But what else would you expect from a "news" organization that allows Bill Ayers to live rent-free in their collective heads?


Posted by Terry K. at 12:06 AM EST
Friday, January 31, 2014
Pot, Kettle, Black, Brent Bozell Edition
Topic: Media Research Center

Brent Bozell used one of his regular Fox News appearances to rant about MSNBC, claiming that it "is a network that once a week has a scurrilous personal character-assassination attack against conservatives."

You read that right -- the guy who called Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead" is complaining that others engage in "scurrilous personal character-assassination."

Apparently, only conservatives are allowed to do that. Bozell should explain why he shouldn't apply his standards to himself.


Posted by Terry K. at 6:48 PM EST
WND's Farber Baselessly Smears Obama As 'Just Like Stalin'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Barry Farber rants in a Jan. 28 WorldNetDaily column, under the headline "Obama's purge of generals: just like Stalin's":

Give a sentient American a pen and a legal-size pad and ask him to take his time and list Obama’s 10 worst mistakes. Obamacare would be there. So would misuse of the IRS. Then stimuli that didn’t stimulate, green dollars plunging down green energy rat-holes, the many-sided catastrophes of Benghazi, the caving in to Iran on sanctions in a craven manner unbefitting a superpower, and possibly even bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia. Then there’s the idiotic, narcissistic gifts Obama gave the queen of England.

Absent from most Americans’ lists would be the firing of all those loyal, experienced and downright good American generals and the trashing of the American military. Some might hit on the inability of lady Marines to do three pull-ups. Or military abortions, or women in combat. For some reason the massive firing of generals fails to horse-collar America’s attention. And Obama’s at it full-throttle.

Big mistake. Bad mistake. There’s no more effective way to trash a military silently and non-violently than firing the good generals and making the unfired ones afraid to tweet.

And just who are these supposedly "good" generals? Farber doesn't tell us. But the Washington Post does:

Air Force Maj. Gen. Stephen D. Schmidt was unquestionably among the latter in the view of some staff members under his thumb. A profane screamer, he ran through six executive officers and aide-de-camps in a year. He retired this month after an Air Force inquiry concluded that he was “cruel and oppressive” and mistreated subordinates.

More than a dozen people who worked with Brig. Gen. Scott F. “Rock” Donahue, a retired commander with the Army Corps of Engineers, reported him as a verbally abusive taskmaster. One was so desperate to escape from division headquarters in San Francisco that he asked for a transfer to Iraq. An Army investigation cited the general for “exhibiting paranoia” and making officers cry.

Troops who served under Army Brig. Gen. Eugene Mascolo of the Connecticut National Guard, described him as “dictatorial,” “unglued” and a master of “profanity-fused outbursts.” An Army investigation found widespread evidence of “verbal mistreatment.” He received a written reprimand but remains in the National Guard.

[...]

Army Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O’Reilly, the commander of the Missile Defense Agency, retired in January 2013 after a Defense Department inspector-general report found that he bullied subordinates. Numerous people testified that O’Reilly was intelligent, even brilliant, but that he browbeat them with obscenities at high volume. “Management by blowtorch and pliers,” one witness told investigators.

[...]

In February 2011, after an investigation, the Army inspector general found that Brig. Gen. Scott Donahue, the former Army Corps of Engineers commander, regularly mistreated his subordinates and that he was to blame for a “tense working environment.”

It seems the generals are acting much more Stalin-esque than Obama is. It's frightening that Farber apparently believes this is "good" behavior.

Farber seems to want to join the rest of WND in fomenting a miltary coup against Obama.


Posted by Terry K. at 5:46 PM EST
MRC's Graham: NY Times Is 'Effete' For Questioning The Super Bowl
Topic: NewsBusters

Media Research Center director of media analysis Tim Graham turns in another choice bit of "media analysis" in a Jan. 26 NewsBusters post headlined "Effete New York Times Asks: 'Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?'"

Yes, Graham thinks it's "effete" to say anything negative about pro football. We're surprised he didn't use words like "swishy" or "effeminate" -- that would have more directly conveyed the homophobic intent of his words.

Meanwhile, Graham starts his rant proper by devoting an entire paragraph to a non sequitur about ... abortion? Oh, yeah, and a personal attack on the writer:

The New York Times has a very strange sense of morality. Abortion at any time for any reason is never savage. When the Kermit Gosnell case erupted, the Times could only editorialize it was irrelevant: “What does the trial of a Philadelphia doctor who is accused of performing illegal late-term abortions by inducing labor and then killing viable fetuses have to do with the debate over legal abortion?”

But on Sunday, the Times Magazine published a column titled “Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?” Writer Steve Almond, best known previously for resigning an adjunct professorship at Boston College because Condoleezza Rice was picked for commencement speaker, argued that sending men to the NFL was like sending our underclass soldiers off to war in Afghanistan (don't miss the part about the late Pat Tillman)[.]

When you're hurling insults at the publication and personally attacking the writer before you ever get around to addressing what the writer wrote, like Graham did, you've undermined your case for engaging in legitimate criticism.


Posted by Terry K. at 3:13 PM EST
WND's Unruh Botches Facts In Promoting Climate Deniers
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Bob Unruh breathlessly writes in a Jan. 27 WorldNetDaily article:

An independent data analyst whose work has been published by Principia Scientific, where scientists deliberate and debate, throwing out predetermined political results in favor of the truth in the data, says the global warming activists are at it again.

They’re manipulating the data.

In this case, lowering the historical temperatures for years prior to 2000. Which makes the temperatures after that look like they’ve risen. Which makes it look like global warming.

“A newly uncovered and monumental calculating error in official U.S. government climate data shows beyond doubt that climate scientists unjustifiably added a whopping one degree of phantom warming to the official ‘raw’ temperature record,” the report says.

It comes from the discovery by independent data analyst Steven Goddard, who did a study of the official U.S. temperature records used by NASA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and others.

Because Unruh cares about reporting only one side of the story, he repeats several misleading claims and falsehoods.

Unruh is simply repeating boilerplate Principia Scientific propaganda designed to obscure the fact that it's a site for global warming skeptics, which means there is, in fact, a predetermined result to the research it publishes. Principia Scientific's first chairman was noted denier Tim Ball.

Further, Steven Goddard is not only not an "independent data analyst," that's not even his real name. DeSmog Blog notes that Goddard is a pseudonym, and that he's best known for botching data to claim that Arctic Sea ice is not receding when, in fact, the opposite was true.

So we have an anonymous writer known for shoddy research making a claim at a biased website. Funny how Unruh couldn't be bothered to report those facts to his readers.

Unruh also touts how "well-known scientist Art Robinson" (a buddy of WND managing editor David Kupelian) has "gathered the signatures of 31,487 scientists who agree that there is 'no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.'" As we've previously noted, few of these scientists have any formal training in climate science, so their views are essentially meaningless to the overall debate over climate change.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:40 AM EST
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Newsmax Gets Into the AP Headline-Rewriting Business
Topic: Newsmax

CNSNews.com has normally been the one to rewrite Associated Press headlines to add right-wing slant. Now, Newsmax is getting in on the game.

A Jan. 28 AP story was sent out with the headline "New DHS chief endorses 'earned' citizenship idea." But after Newsmax got a hold of it, the headline read "Obama's New DHS Chief: Amnesty for Illegals 'Matter of National Security'."

The DHS chief said nothing about "amnesty for illegals." The only reference to "amnesty" in the article came during a reference to how Republicans have criticized immigration reform as "back-door amnesty." Indeed, as we've noted, because the proposed path to citizenship in immigration reform includes numerous conditions before citizenship would be made available, it is not, by definition, "amnesty."

Posted by Terry K. at 10:48 PM EST
WND's Farah Just Can't Stop Peddling Birther Lies
Topic: WorldNetDaily

We know Joseph Farah is an unrepentant liar. He has proven once again that he can tell those lies repeatedly while thinking he can continue to get away with it.

In a Jan. 29 WorldNetDaily column aimed at the critics of his selective birther obsession -- it applies to Obama, not Ted Cruz -- Farah writes:

Now I have seen dozens of blog postings and “news stories” about my commentary, and they all pretty much say the same thing – suggesting or outright stating that I peddled a theory that Obama was born abroad. This is patently untrue.

In the hundreds of thousands of words I have written and spoken on this subject, I have never theorized Obama was born abroad.

Farah is telling a baldfaced lie, which he's trying to parse by saying he "never theorized" that Obama was born abroad. As we've documented, Farah has repeatedly touted a discredited claim that Obama's grandmother was born in Kenya, and the website he operates published a "Kenyan birth certificate" for Obama he couldn't be bothered to authenticate before publication (it was a fake). 

Farah may very narrowly portray such claims as something other than "theorizing," but it's utterly dishonest for him to claim he never promoted the idea.

Farah also spends time rehashing more birther fantasies:

This is precisely why it was so important to pay attention to the precedent Obama set by refusing to release his birth certificate for two years and then releasing one that was labeled fraudulent by the only law enforcement investigators who have examined it, as well as dozens of document experts.

More lies. Obama released a legally valid birth certificate in 2008, one that even WND proclaimed to be "authentic" before it decided it was politically advantageous to do otherwise, thus forcing it to redefine "authentic" in an editor's note applied months after the fact.

As far as that investigation that found Obama's long-form birth certificate to be "fraudulent," that was manipulated into existence by WND, includes birther extraordinaire Jerome Corsi as a de facto "investigator," its finances and procedures are shrouded in mystery, and its conclusions have been discredited.

But Farah won't tell you any of that because, again, he is an unrepentant liar.

Farah's bamboozlement continues:

So what was my beef?

One problem has always been, and remains today, that we don’t know where he was born because he has never released an unchallenged birth certificate.

A second problem remains that even if the birth certificate is accurate and authentic, it still leaves open the question of his “natural born citizen” status because it states his father was a Kenyan citizen, unable to confer “natural born citizen” status on his son.

A third problem is that his listed mother was unable to confer that status on her son because she was a minor – too young. She hadn’t lived as a citizen in the country long enough. She later left for Indonesia and took her son with her to Indonesia where he was adopted by an Indonesian citizen.

First: Obama's birth certificate has been "challenged" only by people like Farah and Corsi who will never accept any documentation for Obama as legitimate.

Second: Farah has apparently forgotten that WND published an article admitting that the Constitution does not define "natural born citizen," and the Supreme Court has never weighed in. Thus, he cannot claim that Obama is ineligible because his father was not an American citizen.

Third: The idea that Obama's mother was "too young" to confer citizenship upon Obama is a clause that applies only to a child born abroad -- which Farah has never been able to prove he was.

But having spent years propagating a sleazy, partisan,, and completely false campaign of personal destruction for the sole purpose of making the birth certificate Obama's Vince Foster, Farah suddenly wants to wash his hands of it, declaring, "I really don’t want to talk about Obama’s eligibility any more."

Sorry, dude, that's not how it works. Until WND publishes the truth about the dishonesty of its birther crusade and apologizes for making years of false attacks, Farah does not get to walk away from the wreckage he created.

The only reason Farah is giving up the ghost now is because he has so ruined WND with perpetuating birther falsehoods that nobody believes it. If Farah wants people to trust his website, he needs to come clean.

But, again, Farah is an unrepentant liar, so the odds of that happening are pretty dismal -- even if the continued dishonesty forces WND out of business


Posted by Terry K. at 6:55 PM EST
CNS Obesses Over Gay Man Charged With Child Porn, Buries GOP Staffer Charged With Child Porn
Topic: CNSNews.com

A Jan. 28 CNSNews.com article by Michael Chapman serves up in "graphic and disturbing" nearly 1,300 words about a "gay icon" in San Francisco who pleaded guilty to felony child pornography possession.

By contrast, CNS has provided no original coverage whatsoever of the case of Ryan Loskarn, the chief of staff to Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, who was charged in December with possession of child pornography. The criminal complaint against Loskarn reported that Loskarn had purchased several videos of child pornography.

Last week, Loskarn committed suicide. This week, Loskarn's survivors posted his suicide note on the Internet.

But to Chapman and CNS, this apparently is not news, even though it's considered a "local story" for CNS' Washington-area offices and could be covered with little effort, while Chapman's story on the "gay icon" case took place in San Francisco and largely cribbed from newspapers there.

All references to Loskarn in CNS' database are wire articles; it's unclear whether CNS deemed his story newsworthy enough to post any of the articles on its front page.

It's also unclear why Chapman and CNS consider a  story about a San Francisco man charged with child porn to be more newsworthy than a top aide to a Republican senator charged with child porn. We bet it has something to do with the "gay icon" stuff -- by contrast, tawdry behavior by conservatives must be hidden.

Chapman's obsession got cross-promoted at NewsBusters, where Tim Graham  wrote a post headlined "Pedophiles Are Not National News -- When They're Gay Rights Pioneers." He didn't mention that at CNS, pedophiles are not national news when they are conservatives.


Posted by Terry K. at 3:35 PM EST

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