Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah started his Dec. 13 WorldNetDaily column this way:
When White House spokesman Josh Earnest claimed Donald Trump “disqualified himself” in his bid for the presidency by calling for a moratorium on Muslim immigration until Washington figures out how to screen out terrorists, I really expected a better Trump response.
“Disqualified?” Barack Obama making judgments about who’s “qualified” to be president? Isn’t this the guy who refused to release his long-form birth certificate to prove he was constitutionally eligible and legally qualified for the job? And then didn’t he release a document that shows all the earmarks of fraud? Wasn’t that the conclusion of the only law enforcement investigation into the document?
Actually, that "law enforcement investigation into the document" -- that would be the one by Joe Arpaio, Mike Zullo and the Cold Case Posse -- was a sham and a joke that promoted demonstrably false information that WND has yet to correct years after the fact. Zullo, by the way, is currently embroiled in a corruption investigation of Arpaio that is semi-related to his birther posse, in which he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights literally hundreds of times before suddenly changing his mind and "angrily defended his work."
Funny, WND hasn't reported on Zullo's current travails either. But never mind, Farah still wants to prove he's a birther:
Even if Obama’s fake birth certificate were real, which it clearly is not, it would still not prove his eligibility. It showed Obama was the son of a foreign student, not a U.S. citizen, and a woman probably too young to confer natural born citizenship upon her son.
Actually, as former Cold Case Posse member Brian Reilly has pointed out, the state of Hawaii has officially verified the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate, which officially puts the issue to rest. The purported anomalies in the PDF of Obama's birth certificate that the posse has promoted as evidence of fraud are easily duplicated by scanning the document using a common Xerox office scanner -- which the posse has never disproved despite having more than two years to do so. And guess what? WND has never reported on the existence of this evidence further discrediting the cold case posse.
But rather than admitting he's wrong, Farah just wants to change the subject:
Of course, that’s water under the bridge now. I’ve been quiet about the eligibility issue for a long time now. Obama managed to “fundamentally transform” the nation’s definition about constitutional eligibility – and, perhaps, that’s what he was aiming for. Now, the assumption is that any anchor baby is eligible to become president. You can’t even have an intelligent debate or discussion about the issue any longer.
Farah won't tell you, of course, that WND's own fundamental dishonesty in covering the issue -- Farah was much more interested in trying to personally destroy Obama than in reporting the truth -- is the reason why "you can’t even have an intelligent debate or discussion about the issue any longer."
If Farah wanted to approach the issue honestly and intelligently, he and WND would be applying the same "eligibility" standards to Ted Cruz that he did to Obama. But they're not. Indeed, Farah does not mention Cruz one in his column.
Farah then invokese again his birther revisionism, insisting that "It was never about whether someone had a birth certificate. It was always a question about what that document revealed about whether the person met the criteria." For someone who insists Obama's birth certificate isn't the issue, Farah sure has spent a lot of time obsessing over Obama's birth certificate.
Farah insists that "It’s really just a question of what 'natural born citizen' means that is at issue." But WND was dishonesty about that too, repeatedly denying that the Wong Kim Ark case is recognized as the controlling Supreme Court decision on the definition of "natural born citizen" -- solely because that ruling would not disqualify Obama under WND's exceedingly narrow definition (both parents being U.S. citizens) that has never been upheld in court.
But Farah wants you to think he's done with the birther stuff -- "water under the bridge" and "probably too late to do anything about the Obama fraud" and all that. He devotes the final third of his column to pushing the conspiracy theory that Obama is a secret Muslim who was born in Kenya by taking statements out of context and repeating other statements that are clearly incorrect.
And he concludes the column by shilling for his Hillary witch hunt -- which no sane person can trust because of his filthy dishonesty in obsessively pushing the bogus birther story.
Farah seems to think that no longer actively pursuing the birther story will restore WND's squandered credibility. Until he admits it was all a vendetta against Obama and apologizes for promulgating false information for (attempted) political gain, he doesn't have a chance in hell of ever being taken seriously again.
