Media Matters notes that during a May 8 appearance on Sean Hannity's Fox News show, the MRC's Brent Bozell said of Guantánamo detainees: "There's no one there who should be released." In fact, the Bush administration reclassified a group of detainees belonging to the Uighur ethnic group as "no longer enemy combatants."
Bozell's appearance was on a panel that included at least one non-conservative, but we'll assume that it followed the template by failing to identify Bozell as a conservative. (It's impossible to tell from the heavily edited segment posted on NewsBusters, but we'll let history be our guide).
First, it is no longer possible to doubt that [Nancy] Pelosi knew as of September 4, 2002 that the CIA included water-boarding among its tools for interrogating high-value terrorists like al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah. She knew this because, according to then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss, R-FL, he and Pelosi received a detailed classified briefing from the agency.
[...]
In view of these facts, Pelosi’s April 23, 2009, claim that “we were not - I repeat - were not told that water-boarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used” was untrue and she knew it to be untrue.
In fact, the CIA document to which the Examiner is referring does not prove that Pelosi was briefed on the use of waterboarding against Zubaydah, only stating that she was briefed on "use of EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques] on Abu Zubaydah."
Further, the Examiner fails to note that, as we've detailed, the CIA report was accompanied by a letter from CIA chief Leon Panetta stating that the report is, in part, based on "notes that summarized the best recollections of those individuals" who did the briefings, and that the committee to which the report was submitted "will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened." In other words, the CIA isn't vouching for the accuracy of the claims in the report.
The editorial also states that waterboarding of detainees such as Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed "further deadly terrorist attacks were thereby prevented from taking place in this country. A CIA spokesman confirmed to CNSnews.com, for example, the May 30, 2005, Justice Department memo describing how the 'second wave' attack on Los Angeles was unraveled." But as we've also detailed, CNS has failed to report that the Bush administration has claimed that the Los Angeles plot was foiled a year before Mohammed was captured, which would mean that his waterboarding could not have "unraveled" the plot.
CNS Non-Disclosure Watch Topic: CNSNews.com
A May 11 CNSNews.com article by Fred Lucas noted that "The Cardinal Newman Society, a national student Catholic group, has circulated a petition that has gained almost 360,000 signatures asking Notre Dame not to have Obama speak and not to award him an honorary degree" without mentioning that CNS president Brent Bozell is on the Cardinal Newman Society board of directors.
WND Hiding Allegations Against Ortiz Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've detailed how WorldNetDaily uncritically reported allegations made by litigious Obama birth certificate obsessive Orly Taitz against her former webmaster while making little effort to allow that person to respond to the charges -- even though the response was on the person's website for the taking.
We've also noted that a complaint has been filed against Taitz with the California bar, accusing her of unethical behavior and making false and misleading claims in court filings.
It's been three weeks since both the complaint and the webmaster issue first became public -- and WND still has yet to tell the full story on them.
Here's something else that we don't expect WND to write about anytime soon -- a intra-birther war.
Philip Berg, who filed some of the earliest legal actions over the birth certificate -- which WND first endeavored to shoot down until it decided that Berg's legal actions served its anti-Obama agenda -- has filed a lawsuit against Taitz, accusing her and various associates of "harrassing" Berg and fellow plaintiffs (among them Taitz's former webmaster), and filing "falsified police and law enforcement reports" regarding her claims against the former webmaster. Berg notes in his filing that "Taitz is no stranger to falsifying stories and falsely claiming to be the victim of 'hacking' of her websites" and accuses Taitz of plagiarizing the briefs he filed in his birth certificate-related actions for her own filings.
Berg also claims that an investigator working for Taitz dug up alleged information about an employee of Berg's and "sent the information to Taitz and a reporter with World Net Daily" complete with the employee's full Social Security number, which neither the investigator nor Taitz had "permissible purpose to obtain."
Berg seeks a judgment against Taitz and the other defendants of $432 million (computed as $3,000 for each of the 140,000 emails sent out by Taitz and others containing the employee's Social Security number), plus $11.5 million from each defendent in compensatory and punitive damages. And that's just for the Social Security number disclosure; there are also specific slander, libel, invasion of privacy, harassmentand other claims seeking millions more in damages.
We're not taking sides in this battle, since both of them are pursuing a false cause with their nuisance lawsuits. It's worth noting, however, that even though this story broke nearly a week ago, WND has yet to report it -- just like all the other news that makes Taitz look bad. It has, however, found time for a May 9 article by Bob Unruh touting Taitz's claims that "she'll be returning to the high court, this time seeking a petition for the extraordinary writ of mandamus" over the birth certificate.
No mention, of course, of Berg's lawsuit against her, let alone the California bar complaint. And WND has made no further effort to tell the webmaster's side of the story.
Why is WND protecting Ortiz? What relationship do the two have? Important questions -- but since we're dealing with a "news" organization that brazenlylies to the public, questions we won't get answers to anytime soon.
WND Still Lying About Hate-Crimes Bill, Snaps at Those Who Tell the Truth Topic: WorldNetDaily
A May 9 WorldNetDaily article by Bob Unruh repeats the lie that a hate-crimes bill currently in Congress "actually was written so that it protects pedophiles and others with alternative sexual orientations such as voyeurism and exhibitionism." Unruh also repeats Matt Barber's lie that Matthew Shepard "was killed during a robbery for drug money gone awry."
An unbylined May 10 WND article walks it back a bit, claiming that "critics say" the bill "provides special protections for pedophiles and others with alternative 'gender identities' such as voyeurism and exhibitionism." But that's a lie by omission -- it fails to explain that the "critics" -- all right-wing activists like Janet Porter, as well as Barber's employer, Liberty Counsel -- are wrong.
Meanwhile, an opt-in WND poll also perpetuates the lie with the question, "Do you believe the Pedophile Protection Act will stand as the law of the land?" Here are some of the comments by WND readers on the poll's thread, many of whom have been indoctrinated with WND's lie:
Congress should be our elected leaders of the highest moral values in the land. Instead we are saddled with men hating feminists, women hating homosexuals, tax cheats, marital cheaters and those who hate the U S Constitution. This bill will eventually pass, because the more perverts in Congress help other perverts...the less they themselves attract attention. As a nation we need to defeat this bill...and then put a bounty on the head of every sitting member of our so-called U S Congress.
The government creates more categories of victims every year. Here is just a few of our class of victims: Illegal Immigrants, Homosexuals, Muslims, and now pedophiles if the liberals get their way. These are now the protected heroes of our society.
Americans are in for a major shock. The NAMBLA and, LGBT militants fully intend to force their very sick version of immorality upon this nation. All opposition will be SHOUTED down. Dissent is forbidden. All those not supporting these sex fiends are demonstrably imbecilic and will be silenced. They may be less than 10% of the populace but the ruling dems are most definitely on their side. They're queer, they're here and at children they leer.
I resent the fact that homosexuals want to be special. Anyone who commits a crime against another is full of hate at that moment. Why should a homosexual or anyone with a perverted behavior be more important than a little child, a wife, a husband, etc?
Matthew Shepherd was not killed because he was gay. He was killed because two thugs were trying to rob him. This is the truth that many prefer not to believe...but it is the truth.
Satan understands that this current generation still has a connection to Biblical truth, but the youth in this country is almost devoid of moral absolutes, as is most of the left. Do not be fooled by the chatter of psychiatrists and so-called experts, they suffer from more demonic influence than they can ever imagine. Ephesians 6:12
This one bill advances the pervert agenda and eliminates most free speech at the same time. Of particular interest is the roll of Black congressmen in all of these recent measures, including the despicable Alcee Hastings, the vile John Conyers, and all the traitors of the Black Caucus. Add to this the Black mayors who have virtually destroyed many American cities, the illegal alien in the Black House, and his attorney general who is eager to imprison and murder all patriots and Christians. Many Whites, already victimized by high taxes to pay welfare benefits, victimized by Black criminals, and victimized by affirmative action, will likely begin to feel just a tad resentful. The elites always follow the divide and conquer strategy.
I would pray that it doesn't but from what I have seen so far with the kenyan born islamic loser's agenda I think they will try to get it as such. When the law starts protecting child rapists over our children then parents will start taking the matter into their own hands and I think we will see a lot of vigilantes correcting the situation.
Rather hilariously, the people who are trying to tell the truth in the thread are getting flagged by the forum monitor. One person, writing under the name KevinVT2, pointed out: "No one buys the argument that pedophilia is a sexual orientation, that's why nobody bought [Rep. Steve] King's amendment. It was pure propaganda to associate pedophilia with sexual orientation." Appended to the end of his post is a message from the montior, Mikaia: "Kevin, I will allow your to debate as long as you stay civil, don't make false accusations or name calling. Keep it on topic please. Thank you. -Mikaia."
Another person, "Squidbiscuit," wrote, "Once again WND wants to scare the pants off of every one by calling this something it is not. It has nothing to do with protecting pedophiles." That got a quick rejoinder from Mikaia as well: "The topic and the question is: 'Do you believe the Pedophile Protection Act will stand as the law of the land?' If you are going to post please post on topic and not about the other posters. The posters have a right to discuss the poll question."
If people are not allowed to use WND forums to correct lies being told by WND, doesn't that mean WND is engaging in censorship?
Sheppard's Double Standard on Linking Veterans to Violence Topic: NewsBusters
How times change.
It was just a few weeks ago that NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard bashed a Department of Homeland Security report noting that, among other things, returning Iraq war veterans who are "facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks." In an April 14 NewsBusters post, Sheppard said the report "read like the paranoid accusations of liberal bloggers and leftwing shills on MSNBC and elsewhere."
Meanwhile, a CBS sports analyst, writing for a Dallas city magazine, appeared to back that up by stating that "if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Osama bin Laden, there`s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death." But Sheppard couldn't bring himself to offer a forceful condemnation of the remarks -- instead, he equivocates and justifies. From a May 9 NewsBusters post:
Unfortunately, missing in all the outrage was some context. Now, readers are advised that I am by no means condoning what Feherty wrote. Depicting an American soldier killing elected officials is certainly going over the line. Let's be clear about that.
However, this "D" magazine issue devoted a good deal of space for Dallas writers to offer their opinions of how the area will be impacted by George W. Bush's return.
[...]
So, before his comments about Pelosi and Reid, Feherty advocated the death of pro-lifers, child molesters, and those opposed to gay marriage.
[...]
As such, Feherty's point, however callously made, was that the media have been unduly harsh on Bush, and that despite all the anti-war sentiments, folks in the press have improperly represented the military's view of the former President, and have withheld from the public the contempt our soldiers feel for elected officials that have undermined their efforts.
Does that make Feherty's picture in that elevator any more acceptable?
To Sheppard, apparently it does.
As a special bonus, Sheppard repeats the false claim that the "far left" Media Matters (disclosure: our employer) is "George Soros funded."
WND's Washington Back in Full Obama Derangement Topic: WorldNetDaily
We were worried that Ellis Washington would no longer be able to channel the Obama-hate he has been spewing over the past year or so after writing a few columns on other subjects (though done in a similarly hateful manner.)
We needn't have worried. Washington is back in full Obama-hate effect in his May 9 column. He begins by quoting his own erroneous assertion from an earlier column that the character of Goldstein in George Orwell's "1984" was Big Brother's "minister of propaganda" (in fact, Goldstein was quite the opposite: the purported enemy of the state upon whom Big Brother's Two Minutes Hate was focused).
We're in for a fun ride, folks. Indeed, here's the first actual paragraph:
What do you call a man, a leader, a president of the greatest country in the history of the world that daily ignores constitutional strictures like separation of powers, which limits executive power? What do you call a pathological narcissist that daily creates vast, new totalitarian powers for himself by executive decree while the slavish Democrats, the irrelevant Republicans and the servile liberal media bow to his every will? How would you characterize Wall Street, private corporations, education, medicine, housing and energy who collectively tremble in fear if they don't obey his latest unconstitutional commands, that they will be the next recipient of his vengeful wrath?
Oh, but it gets better:
To a rational person who loves America and respects the traditions of the Founding Fathers, anti-federalism and executive restraint, the headlines are gut-wrenching, but to a proud fascist like President B. Hussein Obama, those dire headlines above read like the soothing, euphonious strains of a Wagnerian opera. And like Wagner's primo uomo, "Siegfried," a man who literally went to hell and back to learn how to fear, only more socialism, anarchy and nihilism can set the proper pretext for this Grand Finale. Only in Chaos Theory can the stage be adequately prepared for Obama Inc. to appear stage left to save America. Yet there is no salvation, no redemption – only a hellish, eternal nightmare that he himself created!
Washington comes up with a few more notorious characters to which he likens Obama:
Obama is utterly a revolutionary figure following a long, ignoble tradition of former great tyrants like Nebuchadnezzar, Caesar, Muhammad, Henry VIII, Napoleon, Mussolini, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Putin, Chavez and others. Obama Inc. thinks in grand, over-arching, totalizing themes rather than simply single programs as Clinton did with gays in the military or national health care in 1993. No, no, no – one program, even one-seventh of America's entire multi-trillion dollar economy, is much too small for Obama Inc. to be bothered with.
Then comes Washington's concluding spew:
One hundred ten days after taken the oath as president of the United States, who would have thought that Obama Inc., led by this unremarkable pol, this intellectually vacuous fascist from Harvard, could have achieved so much, so soon, yet here we are in the midst of a burgeoning totalitarian State equal in every respect but the year of George Orwell's "1984" – nevertheless we appear too stupid to realize where we are.
Ignorance (I don't know) and apathy (I don't care) are the twin narcotic drugs Obama Inc. has used to lobotomize America over the past 100 days, but his Machiavellian tactics go further back 100 years to Woodrow Wilson, who, according to Jonah Goldberg's excellent book, "Liberal Fascism," was America's first fascist president. Interestingly, Wilson's fascism (1913) predated Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution (1917) by four years and Mussolini's fascism (1922) by nine years.
Finally, precursors of Obama Inc. could be heard 330 years ago in the writings of the great English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) who prophesied a tyrannical political figure like Obama in his magnum opus, "Leviathan" (1651) and summarized his entire oeuvre in one telling, succinct last utterance from his deathbed – A great leap into the dark.
Unless this narcissist, Manchurian Candidate is stopped, America will soon be plunged into a new Dark Age called Obama Inc.
Remember when Newsmax's Christopher Ruddy promised that during his May 7 Obama-bashing webinar that he "will be making an announcement that will absolutely shock you into action . . . I promise it"? Well, the webinar has come and gone, he has made his announcement, and it's ...
What would you do if I walked up and handed you a check for a million dollars?
Instantly giving you a 7-figure financial cushion.
You could blow it on exotic cars . . . a mansion . . . or maybe on some worthless extravagance.
Or you could take steps to turn that million into an even larger pile of cash?
The kind of money that will help protect you, your family, and the generations that follow.
From the coming Obama inflation nightmare.
Today you can take steps to begin to make your million-dollar daydream become a reality. Today your financial future is once again in your own hands and not those of Wall Street or Washington.
Today, you can take back your piece of the American Dream.
I believe so strongly in this mission -- this may shock you -- I’m going to put $1 million dollars of my own money “on the line” to do it!
[...]
And here’s what I will do for you: you will be given the opportunity to grow your own wealth -- as I grow mine.
And, I’m going to be 100% upfront and transparent about how I do it.
First, the idea of creating a fund whose holdings and trades are publicly disclosed isn't that new -- Jim Cramer has been doing it for years. In Ruddy's case, he plans to "implementing a proprietary investment strategy my Chief Financial Analyst has developed over the last 22 years to grow this $1 million safely . . . easily . . . and most importantly -- MASSIVELY!" Ruddy adds that he's "aiming for a 50% to 70% return in the next 12 months!"
Second, it's not quite "his" money. Note that the check is made out on the account of Newsmax Media, not Ruddy's personal account. Ruddy may be majority owner of Newsmax, but Richard Mellon Scaife owns the rest. That means he'sputting his partner's money into this venture as well.
Despite the populist, anti-Obama tone of the email, it's ultimately a business proposition -- Ruddy wants to sell you the stock picks he's using in his million-dollar portfolio. Only those who pay Ruddy's "charter membership fee" of $1,295 (which, of course, he claims is a discount off the "regular membership rate" and a steal for the value of the package he's offering, which he claims to be worth $6,818) will get access to them.
The fact that Ruddy has a million bucks he can afford to lose on this seems to demonstrate just how lucrative the ConWeb can be.
The boys at NewsBusters aren't the only ones engaged in Heathering those who fail to strictly toe the right-wing line. In her May 8 WorldNetDaily column, unsubtly headlined "A cow is born," Ilana Mercer takes aim at the "cow" in question -- Meghan McCain:
Just as you thought American pop-politics could go no lower, a woman with real curb appeal appears on the political scene. Meghan McCain might just be the greatest ditz to date to emerge from that big tent Republicans keep touting.
[...]
Meghan is like a dripping tap. If you've read the first few lines of a blog post, you've read all two diarrheic pages of it.
Ms. McCain's favorite, young Republican candidate is some "hottie" who believes in "the capital system," appeals to minorities and is wise to the use of the paparazzi (an absolute must).
[...]
As hopeless, Republicans have failed to make the only valid case against Meghan, and that is that she is really really stupid. (Laura Ingraham practically apologized for lampooning the girl's unmistakable moronity.) It is no accident that the woman studs her conversation with mind-numbing commonplaces and humbugs.
Ann Coulter could have easily dispatched of the ding-dong, as she did Keith Olbermann. A couple of masterful syllogisms mixed in with a few devastating facts, and that would be it. Alas, by denying Ms. McCain the satisfaction, Annie Orkin has left us with a pest-control problem.
Did I mention that the cerebrally challenged Ms. McCain hopes to unseat Ms. Coulter as the new, improved conservative Queen Bee? She writes: "I hope viewers understand Ann Coulter is not the woman we Republicans need representing us right now." The implication being, dot, dot, dot.
[...]
Clearly, Meghan McCain is not working with much ─ and is eminently qualified to dim debate in the Age of the Idiot.
A familial predisposition, it would seem. John McCain finished 894th out of 899 at the Naval Academy and lost five jets. As IQ ace Steve Sailer once quipped, "To lose one plane over Vietnam may be regarded as a heroic tragedy; to lose five planes here and there looks like carelessness."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mercer is not the first WND columnist to name-check Sailer, best known for his support of eugenics and who wrote of blacks stranded in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina: "The plain fact is that they tend to possess poorer native judgment than members of better-educated groups. Thus they need stricter moral guidance from society."
Newsmax Ignores Disclaimer on Torture Briefing Docs Topic: Newsmax
A May 7 Newsmax article asserted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "lied" when she said she wasn't briefed about how waterboarding was used about specific detainees, claiming that a recently released report from the National Intelligence Director's office "refutes in considerable detail Pelosi’s statement last month that she was never told about the use of waterboarding or other special interrogation tactics."
But Newsmax fails to note that a letter from CIA head Leon Panetta accompanied the report as submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee stating that the report is based on, in part, "notes that summarized the best recollections of those individuals" who did the briefings, and that the committee "will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened."
In other words, even the CIA won't vouch for the reliability of the report. But Newsmax won't tell you that.
UPDATE: A May 8 Newsmax article by Chris Gonsalves repeats Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra's call "for the release of more CIA documents, and perhaps even congressional hearings, to determine what fellow lawmakers such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about CIA interrogation methods like waterboarding." At no point does Golsalves mention the cover letter from Panetta raising questions about the report's reliability, or the fact that, as Greg Sargent noted, Hoekstra himself has a copy of it.
Some Catholic members of the Obama administration were invited to attend the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. According to the Washington Times, those invited included Joe Biden, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and DHS Chief Janet Napolitano.
Since Obama wasn't going to be there, none of them knew who they should pray to anyway. So they just skipped the event and stayed at the White House where they could pray to, er, with, their boss.
WND Still Perpetuating Hate-Crimes Lies Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily seems to be backing away from the outrightlie by uncritically declaring that the hate-crimes bill "would provide special protections for pedophiles." One would hope it's because they know it's a lie and they're dishonoring God by telling falsehoods, but we doubt it.
A May 8 WND article by Bob Unruh tempers things a bit, stating that the bill "has been dubbed the 'Pedophile Protection Act.'" But Unruh is still behaving unethically by repeating purported evidence that the bill protects pedophiles -- as we've detailed, a false claim -- but refusing to allow anyone to refute the claim by telling the truth. Unruh also uncritically repeats Matt Barber's false claim that Matthew Shepard "was killed during a robbery for drug money gone awry" while failing to note that one of Shepard's killers used a gay-panic defenseduring their murder trial.
How can a "news" organization that so blatantly lies to its readers be taken seriously?
Selective Outrage at the WJC Topic: Western Journalism Center
The latest winner of the Claude Rains Memorial Gambling Awareness Award is the Western Journalism Center's Caleb Heimlich, who in a May 5 WJC blog post is shocked -- shocked! -- that people in the Obama administration watch MSNBC:
Today Kareem Dale, Obama’s special assistant to the president for arts and culture and a key White House advisor on disability policy stated that “at the white house, we always like to say we love MSNBC…”
That is quite a shocking development. The White House watches the network that shills for them on a daily basis.
[...]
I am comforted to know that the President is watching the channel that parrots everything he says.
Was Heimlich -- or Floyd Brown or anyone else at the WJC -- similarly shocked (or comforted) to learn that the Bush administration kept its TVs tuned to Fox News, which shilled for him on a daily basis? Or that a Fox News host served in the Bush administration?Or that Vice President Dick Cheney demanded on out-of-town trips that all TVs in his hotel suite be pre-tuned to Fox News?
Somehow we suspect that neither Heimlich nor Brown were able to get themselves terribly worked up about that. Which, of course, nullifies what Heimlich has to say now.
More Obama (And Souter) Smears From Ellis Washington Topic: WorldNetDaily
Ellis Washington has toned down his Obama smears of late (gosh, you think we had something to do with that?), focusing recentcolumns on another bit of craziness, the purported need to abolish the exclusionary rule (something even libertarians oppose doing).
But Washington clearly can't restrain himself for long -- in his May 6 WorldNetDaily column, he references "Chairman Maobama" and calls Obama a "sophist and Manchurian Candidate."
Obama's not the target of this column, though; that would be Justice David Souter, whom Washington describes, along with Arlen Specter, as "two well-known traitors of the Republican Party; two proud enemies against America's most sacred and enduring principles like truth, loyalty, justice, godliness and respect for the original intent of the Constitution's framers." But Washington was just getting warmed up:
I am one of the few writers today to openly speculate that Souter's cloistered, monastic existence with mother dearest ostensibly gave this man a bitter resentment toward the American people, which impaired his ability to rightly judge on the weighty issues that hundreds of millions of people would be compelled by law to follow.
[...]
When Obama referred to Souter as "a fair-minded, independent judge who defied labels," that is a big lie. Souter is a liberal activist judge who believes that the Constitution is a "living document" that can be manipulated at-will to fit a radical, secular, socialist agenda. As far as relying on the constitutional text for judicial guidance is concerned, Souter's 19-year legacy on the Court showed him to be a modern-day Benedict Arnold.
There is not one judicial opinion that I've read of the hundreds Souter authored, concurred in, or dissented that is in any manner respectful of the original intent of the Constitution's framers.
[...]
For almost 20 years, Souter reveled and delighted in ramming his radical liberal activist opinions down the throats of the conservatives, the Christian right and the majority of American citizens who still believed that a judge's only legitimate duty is to interpret the Constitution according to the original intent of the Constitution's framers, not to show "empathy" and legislate from the bench as Souter has done.
Justice Souter's entire judicial legacy on the Supreme Court amounts to the cold, duplicitous kiss of a Judas.
And that's why I spell traitor S-O-U-T-E-R.
I think what we have here is a case of Souter Derangement Syndrome.
In his May 7 CNSNews.com column, professional gay-basher Matt Barber asserts that the federal hate-crimes bill "would grant special federal resources and preferred minority status to pedophiles, homosexuals, cross-dressers and... a host of other APA recognized “sexual orientations” (i.e., deviant sexual fetishes and perversions).
As we've pointed out, that is a lie. Pedophilia or any of the other "deviant sexual fetishes and perversions" are not considered sexual orientations, disabilities or gender identities under federal law, nor are they defined as such under the hate-crimes bill, so they are not protected.
Barber repeats another related lie: that "the most famous supposed 'hate crimes' victim of all, Matthew Shepard ... was killed during a robbery for drug money gone awry." Barber, in perpetrating a false revisionism, has chosen to take the word of a known liar and convicted murderer over that of authorities who know that the killers mounted a gay-panic defense at trial. Funny that Barber overlooks that little fact.
