Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Accuracy in Media Edition
Topic: Accuracy in Media

The resignation of Barack Obama would be a victory for the American people, create an opportunity for the restoration of the Constitution and the rule of law and allow citizens to regain control of the government. At the same time, the departure of Obama will elicit a torrent of revelations that will likely taint the highest officials in government, the leadership of both political parties and the upper echelons of the media.

Like Obama, the establishment considers itself too big to fail, but no government can survive if the interests of its officials conflict with those of the people.

It is time for Obama to resign and let a hopelessly corrupt government fail.

-- Lawrence Sellin, May 20 Accuracy in Media column

Dinesh D'Souza May Be Guilty, But The Obama Conspiracy To Get Him Lives At WND
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jerome Corsi has never been one to let the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy, and he certainly isn't about to when it comes to President Obama's purported war against Dinesh D'Souza.

Back in January, Corsi trotted out the producer of D'Souza's films, Gerald Molen, to claim that D'Souza's arrest on charges of making illegal campaign contributions is "political prosecution" comparable to the tactics used on the communist former Soviet Union to quell dissent. Now that D'Souza has not only pleaded guilty to making the illegal campaign donations but admitted he knew that what he was doing was illegal, Corsi and Molen won't let the conspiracy die a natural death, as Corsi wrote in a May 20 WND article:

Molen issued a statement after D’Souza’s court hearing Tuesday.

“This administration doesn’t see its opponents as dissenters but as enemies, and if they can’t refute you, they try to lock you up,” he said.

“Normally these types of offenses are resolved with fines or community service. I and the American people will be watching closely to make sure that justice is done in the sentencing portion.”

In January, Molen’s response to D’Souza’s indictment also was blunt.

“When Dinesh D’Souza can be prosecuted for making a movie, every American should ask themselves one question: ‘What will I do to preserve the First Amendment?’” Molen, the producer of “2016: Obama’s America,” told WND at the time.

Corsi didn't point out that D'Souza's guilty plea makes his earlier statement a fraud. He wasn't prosecuted for "making a movie," he was prosecuted for breaking the law.

Corsi and Molen do not explain why they believe Obama-haters should not be held responsible for their crimes.

MRC's Graham Doesn't Want The Ugly Truth Reported About A Republican
Topic: NewsBusters

As we've amply documented, the Media Research Center's ongoing "Tell the Truth!" campaign doesn't apply to unflattering news about its favored conservatives.

Tim Graham demonstrates this hypocrisy yet again in a May 17 NewsBusters post in which he complains that Politico is reporting the facts about conservative Oregon Senate candidate Monica Wehby:

Politico’s helping the Democrats wage war on women candidates right before the U.S. Senate primary in Oregon. First, John Bresnahan reported “GOP Senate candidate Monica Wehby was accused by her ex-boyfriend last year of ‘stalking’ him, entering his home without his permission and ‘harassing’ his employees, according to a Portland, Oregon police report.”

Wehby (pronounced "Webby") led incumbent Sen. Jeff Merkley (D) in one poll, so perhaps the liberals want to defeat her in the primary. Then Politico obtained a 911 call from Miller so they could call it the "Wehby saga," in which he said he was going to get a restraining order:

[...]

Liberal media types love to pound tables and complain about how the Supreme Court has allowed wealthy donors to make politics more brutal with negative ads. But what does Politico say when it's the wealthy media outlet sliming a candidate and their personal life?

At no point does Graham counter any of Politico's reporting -- he's merely complaining that facts are being reported.All Graham can do is complain that Politico's "running around and obtaining police reports and 911 calls looks a little like the way the Chicago Tribune cleared the path for Barack Obama to get elected to the Senate in 2004." Graham noted nothing inaccurate in that reporting either.

Further, this seems to be a pattern with Wehby -- she has also been accused of harrassing her ex-husband as they were divorcing.

Perhaps Graham should be grateful that the truth is coming out now instead of closer to a general election.

WND's Klein Slides Down the Radio Dial, Gives Larry Klayman A Forum
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein has moved his New York Sunday radio show from longtime powerhouse WABC to a station that doesn't even register in the ratings for New York radio and has to cut its brodcasting power by 90 percent at night. One reason for Klein's slide down the dial may be guests like Larry Klayman.

A May 18 WND article describes the latest nonsense Klayman peddled on Klein's show:

U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts may have been blackmailed to approve Obamacare after being spied on by the NSA and CIA, says Larry Klayman, the attorney who has come to be known as “the NSA slayer” for his successful legal battles against the National Security Agency.

During an appearance Sunday night on Aaron Klein’s New York City radio show on 970 The Answer, Klayman suggested the blackmail possibility when asked by a caller if the Supreme Court could be sued for its approval of the Affordable Care Act.

“Unfortunately, there’s no way to sue the Supreme Court for decisions that it makes. There should be, and there should be a way to remove these justices for making decisions like that,” explained Klayman, the founder of Judicial Watch who now heads Freedom Watch.

“But let’s take this possibility: Why did Chief Justice Roberts at the eleventh hour change his decision? He was going to side with the other justices and find that Obamacare was unconstitutional. Is it something that was dug up on him by the NSA or the CIA? Was that used against him to blackmail him?

“These are the kinds of things [the government is doing], and that’s why it’s so scary what’s going on with the NSA and the CIA. It can happen in a democracy. So that may help explain it, and perhaps we can reach these issues through the NSA cases that we brought, the NSA/CIA cases. I intend to get the truth on this.”

Of course, Klayman is not known for the truth -- he's known for his Obama derangement and being a terrible lawyer.

Perhaps if Klein didn't indulge crazy conspiracy theorists, he might still be at WABC.

MRC Censors Facts About IRS Documents
Topic: Media Research Center

Geoffrey Dickens breathlessly writes in a May 15 Media Research Center item:

On Wednesday Judicial Watch released a new batch of IRS documents that showed “extensive pressure on the IRS by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) to shut down conservative leaning organizations.” The documents also revealed the IRS’s handling of the Tea Party applications was directed out of the agency’s DC headquarters, contrary to initial claims that blamed low-level officials in Cincinnati.

While the news led Wednesday's Special Report with Bret Baier on FNC, coverage by the Big Three (ABC, NBC, CBS) networks on their Wednesday evening and Thursday morning shows? 0 seconds.

But Dickens isn't telling the full truth about the IRS documents, choosing only to parrot what the right-wing Judicial Watch said about them.

As Media Matters points out, Levin did not tell the IRS to "shut down conservative leaning organizations"; rather, he urged the IRS to "remind all 501(c)(4) organizations about their obligation to observe that restriction on their activities if they want to retain their tax exempt status." Another Levin email on the subject added, "This is not a partisan issue."

Despite the lack of factual basis, MRC chief Brent Bozell regurgitated it in a Fox News appearance.

If all Dickens and Bozell can do is repeat right-wing talking points instead of actual facts, they're not very good media watchdogs, are they?

WND's Fletcher Thinks Walid Shoebat Is A Bible Scholar
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Walid Shoebat is an utterly discredited far-right ideologue with a shady past he may be fibbing about. So why does WorldNetDaily keep treating him as credible?

Jim Fletcher treats Shoebat as a Bible scholar worth listening to in a May 18 WND article:

A prominent Bible-prophecy teacher claims the true site of the biblical Tower of Babel is in Saudi Arabia and the concept of “Mystery Babylon” actually refers to Mecca, not the Vatican, as some researchers of Scripture claim.

Walid Shoebat, a former PLO operative, tells fellow Christians they’re looking in the wrong place when trying to understand the identity of the people who make up the worldview outlined in Revelation 17:1-5.

[...]

Shoebat contends the Bible’s references to cities point to Arabia.

“When it comes to the destruction of end-days Babylon, Scripture makes no mention of any of the ancient Babylonian cities: Nineveh, Ur, Babel, Erech, Accad, Sumer, Assur, Calneh, Mari, Karana, Ellpi, Eridu, Kish, or Tikrit. All of the literal references in Scripture are in Arabia.”

Fletcher does include a comment from a "veteran prophecy teacher" who states that "There is no such thing as ‘Mystery Babylon,’ according to the grammar of the Greek text." But Fletcher still devotes most of his article to Shoebat, despite never bothering to outline what Shoebat's qualifications are to make pronouncements about Biblical prophecy.

Indeed, someone with Shoebat's dubious background probably shouldn't be trusted at all. But Fletcher won't tell us that.

CNS' Afghanistan Body Count Obsession Returns
Topic: CNSNews.com

Ali Meyer writes in a May 19 CNSNews.com article:

Since October 2001, when the Afghanistan war began, 1,798 children and 1,107 widows had their loved ones pass away in the conflict, according to CNSNews.com’s database of U.S. casualties.

In the more than 12 years that have passed since U.S. troops first entered Afghanistan, 2,195 service personnel have given their lives in and around Afghanistan in support of U.S. military activities in that country. Those 2,195 men and women left behind a combined 2,905 widows and children -- 2,083 of those widows and children, or 71.7%, came after President Barack Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009.

As has happened so often in CNS' Afghanistan body count obsession, two words are missing from Meyer's article: "Bush" and "Iraq." Meyer does not identify the president who presided over more than 4,000 U.S. troop deaths in Iraq -- or 28.3 percent of the deaths in Afghanistan -- nor has CNS made an effort to count up the widows and orphans of troops killed in Iraq.

WND's Klayman Already Pushing Revisionist History of Bundy Ranch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

The Bundy Ranch saga isn't even two months old, and already WorldNetDaily's Larry Klayman is trying to peddle a revisionist history of it:

A New York Times poll taken in 2011 – before a slate of Obama’s “phony scandals” hit in a major way, from Obamacare, to Fast and Furious, to IRS-gate, to Benghazi-gate, to Extortion 17-gate, to the mother of all scandals, NSA-gate – showed that over 90 percent of the American people have a deep distrust of government. And, this was heightened among many of us during the recent events at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada, where armed Obama Bureau of Land Management thugs, disguised as government officers, used heavy weaponry, including machine guns, clubs, armored vehicles and drones to try to force the Bundys off their land in a power play likely designed to turn the land over to “friends” of Majority Senate Leader Harry Reid and his Las Vegas attorney son. Fortunately, for the time being, American patriots came to the defense of the Bundys and exercised their Second Amendment rights to have the government stand down. Unfortunately, Cliven Bundy, the ranch’s owner, made some rather ill-thought comments about African-Americans, giving the government apparent license to now threaten prosecution of those citizens who stood their ground in defense of property rights and the use of excessive force.

First: The BLM did not try to force Bundy off his own land -- it confiscated some of Bundy's cattle for illegally grazing on federal land.

Second: Even the right-wing Breitbart conceded, the federal land in question was nowhere near the Bundy Ranch, and there was no "land grab."

Third, the reason that the militia thugs are being threatened with prosecution is because they are acting like thugs. The militia have set up their own checkpoints to verify the residency of anybody passing through, one leader declared that a reporter didn't deserve First Amendment rights, and even the locals want them gone.

It seems the militia thugs are the ones currently denying people's rights. What does Klayman have to say about that?

MRC Whiffs On Purported 'Radical Environmentalism' In 'Godzilla' Film
Topic: Media Research Center

Sean Long writes in a May 16 Media Research Center Business & Media Institute item:

It is a sad day when the iconic Godzilla becomes a vessel for extreme environmentalism.

Gareth Edwards’ remake of the classic “Godzilla” pushed a strong environmental message where three massive monsters serve as nature’s brutal revenge against mankind’s abuse of the earth. The film which opened on May 16, sent multiple messages including anti-nuclear power and the message that “humanity has abused” the world and “deserved” Godzilla’s attack, according to the director.

[...]

Edwards also tried to exploit fear of global warming. While refraining from making this message explicit, The Daily Beast also reported Edwards saying that “stories have been used for a long time to smuggle the morals of the day inside them, and today, people are worried about global warming.”

A few media outlets have noticed the radical environmental messages in the new “Godzilla,” movie including the Latin Times’s Phillip Martinez who called “Godzilla” a “life lesson on how man has ‘tarnished’ nature.”

Long quotes only interviews about the film, and he gives no indication he has actually seen the film he's critiquing.

By contrast, another ConWeb writer did see the film before writing about it, and he couldn't find that supposedly radical message. Drew Zahn writes in his WorldNetDaily review:

What didn’t finally arrive in the movie, however, was the purported environmentalist message I was expecting, based on other commentaries. The whole, “shove global warming down your throat” message never materialized.

True, there is a line in the film, “The arrogance of man is thinking nature is in our control and not the other way around,” but, of course, that could be interpreted any number of ways. And there is a general sense of dread about nuclear weaponry (which was a significant theme in the original series of films, begun in 1954).

But a careful examination of Director Edwards’ words reveals his ideas don’t fit quite so neatly into hyperpartisan boxes.

[...]

As for the huge, environmentalist message? If Edwards was trying a preach a message about how evil humanity is and how we’re in danger of disaster from our carbon footprint … he failed.

On the other hand, if he was trying to make an entertaining monster movie that honors the legend of Godzilla … he succeeded wonderfully.

Perhaps that should be a lesson to Long: See the movie before you bash it.

Logrolling In Our Time, Jim Fletcher Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Jim Fletcher's moderately unethical habit of giving ridiculously positive reviews of books published by WorldNetDaily -- the company that just so happens to publish his column -- continues apace with a couple of recent columns.

Fletcher raves in a May 7 WND column:

James Rogan is nothing if not a skilled storyteller, and in the telling of his own story – a memorable memoir titled “Rough Edges” – the judge and former attorney and U.S. congressman hearkens back to a type of American that built this country and made it great. “Rough Edges” is a powerful tale of hardscrabble beginnings, a wobbly early adulthood and finally, a successful life making a difference in the lives of others.

Guess who published Rogan's book? WND, of course.

Fletcher follows with a May 13 column to sing the praises of WND's favorite race-baiter, Colin Flaherty:

Flaherty’s book is the kind all Americans need to read. For one thing, it might save your life. We must face facts, and the fact is, racial violence against whites is reaching lethal levels. If the mainstream media masks that fact, the rest of us through word of mouth can alert our friends and family to be on guard.

In “White Girl Bleed A Lot,” Flaherty pulls the ski mask off the face of racial violence, noting that “games” like “Beat Whitey Night,” or the better-known “Knockout Game,” are a scourge in more than 50 American cities. This violence has escalated sharply since 2010.

[...]

Flaherty, a very clever writer, also humorously coaches readers to counter the icy reception from liberal relatives: He encourages the book giver to shout out, “Read 17! 22!”

It’s an effective strategy. Overall, readers should simply shout the title of this important book to as many in their circles as they can.

Needless to say, WND published Flaherty's book too. That important fact is missing from both of Fletcher's columns.

As far as we know, Fletcher has never panned a WND-published book. Nor should anyone expect him to -- that's not what he's being paid to do.

Meanwhile ...
Topic: Accuracy in Media
Right Wing Watch does an able job of shooting down James Simpson's Accuracy in Media column alleging that voter fraud is a massive, “existential threat to our American Republic,” despite the fact that he provides no examples of large-scale voter fraud.

WND's Farber Rants About Non-Existent 'Voter Fraud'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Barry Farber rants in a May 13 WorldNetDaily column:

As a commentator, I often revisit that little American girl who asked her father during the Vietnam War, “What if they gave a war and nobody showed up?”

You’re grown up now, Baby. And it’s already happened! At least the attackers have shown up big-time, but we defenders have yet to take the field.

One single fraudulent vote is an “attack” on our democratic system. Massive voter fraud is a massive attack. The website Watchdog.com tells us that a group known as the Virginia Voters Alliance counted 44,000 voters registered in Maryland as well as Virginia. An additional 40 to 60 thousand dead voters were found to be on the active voters list in that one state of Virginia, according to the Social Security Administration. It’s not just Chicago any more.

Actually, none of that is evidence of "voter fraud." Dead people on voter rolls is fairly common, as is people who might be registered in two places -- in the case of Maryland and Virginia, both states surround Washington, D.C., and it's not uncommon for people to move between the two states.

Not only is it not "voter fraud," it's not even voter registration fraud in the vast majority of the cases -- there's simply a need to clean up voter rolls to removed duplicates and the dead.

While Farber insists that arguments against voter ID laws are "comically weak," the type of voter fraud this would counter is virtually nonexistent.

MRC Touts Birther's Endorsement of MRC
Topic: Media Research Center

Ken Oliver-Mendez devotes a May 16 NewsBusters post to an interview with Sen. Ted Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz:

As a travelling pastor, Rev. Rafael Cruz, father of Sen. Ted Cruz, is in a unique position to sense where the political winds are blowing in this mid-term election year. During a visit to the Media Research Center, the elder Cruz said that with just over five months to go between now and Election Day, he sees major conservative gains ahead, including the retirement of Sen. Harry Reid as Majority Leader that would come with Republicans winning control of the United States Senate.

Oliver-Mendez also promotes the elder Cruz's endorsement of the MRC: “You are doing something that is absolutely necessary in this country when we have so much of the liberal media that they have ceased to be broadcasters, they have ceased to be really journalists and they have become mouthpieces for the administration. They have apparently no concern for truth – all they want to do is promote the talking points of the administration – so you are standing in the gap.”

What Oliver-Mendez didn't do, however, is mention the elder Cruz's history of inflammatory statements, which include saying that President Obama is a Marxist who should go "back to Kenya," falsely claiming that “the first bill President Obama signed into law was to legalize third trimester abortions" (in fact, it was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and he has never signed any law approving third-trimester abortions), and asserting that gay marriage is some kind of government conspiracy.

Oliver-Mendez runs MRC Latino, the MRC's Hispanic media-monitoring operation. Between this and the MRC's longtime hostility to Hispanics and their issues, the success of this venture seems rather dubious.

WND's Unruh Takes Up Colin Flaherty's Race-Baiting Baton
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It seems that WorldNetDaily has dismissed race-baiter extraordinaire Colin Flaherty as a correspondent -- as we've noted, he has apparently taken his talents to Breitbart. WND appears to have decided it can handle its race-baiting needs in-house.

Taking up Flaherty's race-baiting baton at WND is Bob Unruh, who wrote a May 15 article about how "a black teenager is facing charges as an adult for what authorities are describing as the revenge arson of the home of a white woman and her two children." As Flaherty so often did, Unruh asserted there is a "racial factor" to the crime but does not prove it.

But Flaherty remains at WND in spirit -- WND did publish Flaherty's race-baiting book, "White Girl Bleed A Lot," after all, and thus Unruh must promote it: "A surging number of black mob attacks, mostly on white victims, has been in the news for several years, and specific incidents have been documented in author Colin Flaherty’s book, 'White Girl Bleed A Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It.'"

The race-baiter is dead at WND. Long live the race-baiter.

Suddenly MRC Is A 'Religious' Organization, Sues To Exempt Itself From Obamacare Mandate
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center has decided it's a religious organization. According to who? The Media Research Center.

The MRC announced May 15 that it has "self-certified as a religious organization" and its's suing the federal government to get exempted from Obamacare's contraception mandate:

Today the Media Research Center (MRC) announced that it has filed a motion in US District Court for a preliminary injunction seeking to block enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate, which forces people of faith to subsidize health insurance plans that include abortion inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization. A hearing has been set for June 6.

“This lawsuit is about religious freedom and the conscience rights of individuals to operate their enterprises free from government coercion, reprisal, or punishment,” MRC Founder and President Brent Bozell said. “The Obamacare mandate destroys the ability of free people to practice their faith in their everyday lives and forces them to either reject their faith or face crippling government imposed fines and punishment; in our case over $4.5 million dollars per year. We do not stop being religious, moral people the moment we walk out of our houses of worship.”

The MRC contends that under ACA rules it has self-certified as a religious organization and is therefore exempt from the mandate. The MRC is the first organization that has asked the court to affirm its "self-certification.”

For nearly three decades, the MRC has been the nation’s premier defender of pro-life views and Judeo-Christian values from attacks by the liberal media. Bozell and other employees of the MRC practice and live by Judeo-Christian values, and believe abortion, whether through the actions of an abortionist or a drug, is the taking of innocent human life. Under the First Amendment, the MRC and its employees have the right to practice and abide by their faith in their everyday lives including in the operations of their mission-oriented non-profit organization.

The MRC starts things off with a lie -- morning-after pills are not "abortion inducing drugs."

Second, the MRC's mission statement says nothing about religion:

Since 1987, the Media Research Center has been the nation’s premier media watchdog. We don’t endorse politicians and we don’t lobby for legislation. MRC’s sole mission is to expose and neutralize the propaganda arm of the Left: the national news media. This makes the MRC’s work unique within the conservative movement.

The Media Research Center’s unwavering commitment to neutralizing left-wing bias in the news media and popular culture has influenced how millions of Americans perceive so-called objective reporting.

Integrating cutting-edge news monitoring capabilities with a sophisticated marketing operation, MRC reaches nearly 170 million Americans each week to educate them about left-wing bias in the media.

The Media Research Center is a research and education organization operating under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions are tax-deductible to the maximum extent of the law. The MRC receives no government grants or contracts nor do we have an endowment. We raise our funds each year from individuals, foundations, and corporations.

Only the MRC's Culture & Media Institute has a declared mission that involves religion, claiming it's "dedicated to correcting misconceptions in the media about social conservatism and religious faith."

Third, if living by "Judeo-Christian values" is a requirement for employment at the MRC -- as one might expect from a "religious organization" -- the MRC should have no problem releasing its employment records to demonstrate that Christianity, if not the Catholicism followed by many top MRC leaders, is an ironclad requirement for employment there. It should also be able to demonstrate that it has relieved people of employment, or not hired them at all, for being insufficiently Christian.

Oh, wait -- doesn't discrimination on the basis of religion violate federal civil rights laws? Yes, yes it does.

It seems the MRC has put itself in a bit of a pickle with this lawsuit. If it proves it's a religious organization, it has to fundamentally alter its mission -- and, thus further marginalize itself. Why should the larger conservative movement pay attention to a media-bias group that can only examine the issue from a religious viewpoint?

If the MRC is unable to prove it's the religious organization it's "self-certified" itself to be, it has to explain why it has engaged in hiring discrimination.

We'll be watching this.