Topic: WorldNetDaily
Is WorldNetDaily, after months of fawning over Orly Taitz, finally criticizing her? Well, yes and no -- but mostly no.
A Sept. 6 WND article by Drew Zahn notes that "Lucas Smith, the man who tried to sell an alleged Barack Obama Kenyan birth certificate on eBay, has filed court papers in a high-profile eligibility case insisting – under threat of perjury – that the Obama birth certificate in his possession is the genuine article." That case is one filed by Taitz. But Zahn curiously waits until the 11th paragraph to explain why he made a big deal about Smith filing "under the threat of perjury": "an investigation by Jerome Corsi maintains the document is a forgery."
Actually, we reported that Smith's "birth certificate" is an apparent forgery long before Corsi or anyone else at WND did.
While Zahn focuses on Smith and his apparent exposure to perjury, he says nothing about Taitz's similar exposure. After all, it's arguably an ethical violation for Taitz to file a document she knows or should know to be a forgery. Indeed, Zahn makes no mention of Taitz filing Corsi's debunking of Smith's "birth certificate."
Zahn's article marks the first time in a month that WND has quoted Taitz, since WND's embrace of another "Kenyan birth certificate" touted by Taitz went up in flames.
WND seems to be more wary of Taitz, but it clearly isn't ready to directly confront her history of shoddy legal work on birther cases -- of which the filing of a "birth certificate" she should know to be a forgery is but the latest example.
WND followed up with a Sept. 6 article suggesting that there is "panic in D.C." because the U.S. Justice Department has filed an order to have Taitz's lawsuit dismissed on procedural grounds -- even though that's a perfectly valid legal procedure. The article, like Zahn's, downplays the fact that WND itself determined that Smith's "birth certificate," filed as a part of this lawsuit, is a fraud -- it's not mentioned until the 18th paragraph.
If WND really cared about journalism, the lede of these articles would be that Taitz is putting herself in legal jeopardy by knowingly filing fraudulent documents in court. But as we all know, it doesn't.
