Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily just keeps latching onto people it thinks are poster boys for its far-right agenda, whose questionable backgrounds WND must then bury in order to make the poster-boy stuff plausible. WND did it first with a homeschooling family run by a controlling, abusive father, and then with a Oath Keepers member who's a suspect in a child abuse case.
Now, WND has found another piece of work to champion, the full truth about whom it must once again hide. From an Oct. 28 WND article by Brian Fitzpatrick:
Filing a complaint about President Obama's eligibility has led retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Walter Fitzpatrick III into some very deep waters.
The 58-year-old Naval Academy graduate is now paying the price for fighting City Hall. Fitzpatrick was arrested Wednesday for missing a court date, and he now sits in jail after allegedly being beaten and tasered by Monroe County, Tenn., deputies.
"I've been told he's been beaten up pretty good, enough to require X-rays," freelance reporter J.B. Williams told WND.
So Brian Fitzpatrick has essentially claimed that Walter Fitzpatrick was jailed for questioning Obama's "eligibility." Only that's not the case.
After a lot of conspiracy-mongering about purported "corruption in the county courts and sheriff's office," as exemplifed by the claim that "state law places a two-year limit on the term of a grand jury foreman, but Monroe County grand jury foreman Gary Pettway has occupied the office for 27 years" -- really, that's the only actual alleged offense cited -- Brian Fitzpatrick finally hints at the truth in the 18th paragraph of his article: "In April, Fitzpatrick attempted to execute a citizen's arrest of Pettway at the county courthouse, resulting in his own arrest for allegedly inciting a riot."
Fortunately, the Associated Press tells the story that WND won't -- specifically, that the jailing of Walter Fitzpatrick had nothing at all to do with his birther tendencies:
Fitzpatrick is charged along with Darren W. Huff, 40, a former militia member from Dallas, Ga., accused of inciting a riot at the Monroe County Courthouse in April while coming to Fitzpatrick's defense after Fitzpatrick's intrusion on the closed grand jury session.
Huff, who also faces related federal charges, was among about a dozen armed people who gathered at the courthouse. Records show Huff had said that he and others planned to take over the courthouse in Madisonville and arrest "domestic enemies of the United States engaged in treason."
Fitzpatrick disrupted the grand jury in a failed attempt to arrest Gary Pettway, who Fitzpatrick claims was unlawfully serving as foreman after serving continuously for almost three decades.
Blackwood previously dismissed a defense motion that Fitzpatrick and Huff were indicted by a "tainted" grand jury process and refused to dismiss felony and misdemeanor charges that include civil rights intimidation.
Ironically, Brian Fitzpatrick links to this very same AP article -- but only for the puprose of repeating the claim by a local district attorney who "said in a previous court filing that rulings in such challenges of grand juror qualifications show there is 'no limit on the number of two-year terms for which a foreman may be reappointed.'" The rest of the article is completely ignored.
This is the state of journalism at WND. Recent hire Brian Fitzpatrick has demonstrated all too well his ability to live down to those standards.
