Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah is such a liar, one has to wonder what the motivation is. Is he pathological, or does he merely lack a conscience, taking the view that the end justifies the means in making money in promoting right-wing extremism?
Whatever the reason, he is clearly unable to stop. Farah adds another arrow to his quiverful of lies about Elena Kagan in a June 29 WorldNetDaily article in which he falsely smears Kagan as "a person who thinks it's OK to ban books," screeching, "Do you want a book banner on the Supreme Court?"
Here's Farah's alleged evidence to support his claim:
As solicitor general, Kagan defended before the Supreme Court a campaign finance law that could ban books and would ban pamphlets that would promote federal political candidacies or oppose them. While Kagan pointed out the law had never been applied to books, she acknowledged her support for the provision to consider such advocacy books as campaign contributions.
The facts are quite different the the pack of lies Farah is peddling. First, Farah thinks "could" and "will" mean the same thing -- apparently, he learned nothing about grammar in his career as a journalist. Second, the campaign finance law Kagan argued to uphold (in the Citizens United case) did not ban all books and pamphlets, as Farah suggests; it addressed only election spending by corporations and unions.
Further, Kagan never argued for banning books. While WND correctly notes that Kagan "pointed out the law had never been applied to books," it conveniently omitted that Kagan also said that because federal law had never banned books, it likely could not do so, and that any attempt would be unlikely to stand up in court.
Specifically, Kagan said, "Nobody has ever suggested -- nobody in Congress, nobody in the administrative apparatus has ever suggested that books pose any kind of corruption problem." Kinda shoots down Farah's claim that Kagan's a "book banner," doesn't it?
Farah pads out the article with the discredited lies that "Kagan is a radical antimilitary and proabortion zealot."
Farah then jumps to crass commercialism, begging his readers to send him $24.95 so he can send anti-Kagan letters to each member of the Senate.
So, compulsive or craven? We're not sure, but there is definitely something amoral going on with Farah. Nobody can spread such deliberate lies without deliberate intent.
