Back in February of 2010 it became rumored that retired federal Judge Vaughn Walker – who presided over the case at the District level – was a practitioner of the homosexual lifestyle. It was further reported that he had a longtime male lover. Judge Walker refused to confirm or deny the rumors. At the time I was one of the few people to publicly call for his recusal. It’s inexplicable that attorneys defending Prop 8 didn’t make such a motion.
With Judge Walker’s recent admission that he does in fact practice homosexuality, the case for recusal has been proven. His ruling on the Prop 8 case should be immediately vacated as he possessed both an incontrovertible and disqualifying conflict of interest.
[...]
A few proponents of so-called “gay marriage” have slapped me in the face with the following red herring: “Why, using your logic a heterosexual judge would also have to recuse himself. No judge could ever preside over a case involving same-sex ‘marriage.’”
This is apples-to-oranges nonsense. On a case concerning the novel question of radically redefining marriage to include same-sex pairs, a heterosexual judge, by definition, would not possess a personal “interest that could be affected substantially by the outcome of the proceeding.” A heterosexual judge is precisely what federal law requires under such circumstances.
Aaron Klein's Conpsiracy Theory: Obama Will Add No-Fly Zone Over Gaza Topic: WorldNetDaily
An April 11 WorldNetDaily article invents out of whole cloth a conspiracy theory: that President Obama will impose a no-fly zone over the Gaza Strip.
What evidence does Klein have for this? None. All he offers is is usual guilt by association:
Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa served on the committee that invented the military doctrine used by President Obama as the main justification for U.S. and international airstrikes against Libya, WND has learned.
The discovery is particularly pertinent because on Sunday Moussa announced during a special meeting in Cairo that the Arab League plans to press the U.N. to impose a no-fly zone over the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip similar to the one imposed now on Libya.
That's it. That's all he has. Yet the headline on Klein's article reads, "Is this Obama's next target after Libya?"
And some people wonder why WND should be taken seriously.
Newsmax Can’t Quite Nail Down What Trump Will Be Announcing Topic: Newsmax
We've documented how Newsmax's Ronald Kessler has been one of the chief promoters of Donald Trump's presidential aspirations. Kessler's flattering treatment of Trump and his family appears to be part of a mutually beneficial relationship between the two -- Kessler has detailed a weekend spent at Trump's Palm Beach estate. But Kessler has had a problem nailing down exactly what step Trump will take next and where he got it.
A Newsmax column by Kessler, with the timestamp of 9:51 a.m. on April 13, asserted that Trump "plans to say" on the May 15 season finale of his show The Celebrity Apprentice that "he will be holding a press conference in the next few days. At that press conference in the Trump Tower in New York, Trump will be announcing his candidacy for the presidency."
That column disappeared a few hours later. Then, a column with a 7:45 p.m. timestamp appeared, slightly altering Kessler's claim to read that "Trump will be announcing whether he will run for the presidency." This version changed the date of the Celebrity Apprentice finale to May 22 and altered the headline to pronounce the claim an "exclusive":
Even though that column remained live as of this writing, a new Kessler column appeared, with the timestamp of 9:24 a.m. on April 14. This version deleted "Exclusive" from the headline and more extensively edited Kessler's claim about the Trump Tower press conference: "Although Trump refuses to confirm what he will announce, sources close to the real estate titan tell me that at that press conference Trump will be announcing his candidacy for the presidency."
The sourcing is new; Kessler had previously asserted it without stating where it came from.
Kessler's claim that Trump would announce something on The Celebrity Apprentice finale remained constant throughout all three versions, but statements from Trump and his camp -- as opposed to the anonymous sources Kessler is citing -- have been less than definitive. Mediaite reported that Trump said on a radio show that he's not actually allowed to announce such a thing on The Celebrity Apprentice, and he doesn't know from where rumors to the contrary came. Meanwhile, Trump aide Michael Cohen told Bloomberg that Trump "may" announce something.
To recap: It took Kessler three tries to nail down his claim, and there are still questions about what Trump will do. It looks like there's no love lost; Trump is still tight enough with Newsmax to invoke its meaningless opt-in poll promoting his presidential prospects in an interview with Time magazine (which Newsmax is promoting in turn under the headline "Trump: Newsmax Poll Proves I'm Legit for 2012").
WND Admits It's Advising Trump On Birther Stuff Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've previously documented how Donald Trump's birtherism hews strangely close to what WorldNetDaily has been doing for the past few years. Turns out there's a reason for that: WND is advising Trump.
My colleague Kendra Marr reports that WorldNetDaily's birth certificate aficionado Joseph Farah has been on the phone with Donald Trump every day this week.
"We've have been speaking quite a bit,” he said.
Farah is enthused that the mainstream media is finally listening. “"It's irresistible theater, but he's actually winning support,"” he said.
WorldNetDaily first reached out to Trump as soon as he started publicaly talking about the conspiracy, offering to give him a birther primer and answer any questions about the topic. “"His people were very quick to respond,"” he said.
Farah has advised Trump to simply ask, “"Where is the birth certificate?"” The Donald's recent claim that Obama’s grandma in Kenya is on record saying he was born in Kenya is just troublesome, Farah said.
"When you start making assertions and ‘grandma said,’” you start getting yourself in a bind," Farah said. "I'm not sure that's what grandma said. That’s fuzzy."
WND has made numerousfalse claims on the birther issue -- including that Obama's grandmother said Obama was born in Kenya and that Obama's campaign has spent $2 million to defend the president from birther lawsuits -- so Farah may not be the most trustworthy source for Trump to be cribbing from.
CNS' Jeffrey Falsely Assigns Deficit Blame -- Again Topic: CNSNews.com
Terry Jeffrey writes in an April 13 CNSNews.com article, under the headline "Obama's Increasing Federal Debt $1,148 Per Month Per Household—Enough to Buy a Car or Pay Tuition at State College":
Under President Barack Obama, the federal debt has been increasing at a rate of $1,148 per month per American household.
Overall, according to the U.S. Treasury, the federal debt increased by $3,646,116,554,704.36 between Jan. 20, 2009, when Obama was inaugurated, and April 13, 2011, when he gave a major speech announcing a plan to deal with the debt.
Jeffrey, as we pointed out the last time he did this, is falsely attributing responsibility for all deficits since Obama took office to the Obama adeministration. In fact, much of the fiscal year 2009 deficit was driven by actions (like TARP and the Bush tax cuts) that occurred under the Bush administration.
We've detailed how WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah got all pissy with Salon's Justin Elliott for 1) pointing out that WND has supplied no evidence to support its claim that the entirety of the $2 million or so the Obama campaign has spent on lawyers since the 2008 election has gone toward fighting birther lawsuits, and 2) making a reasonable request that WND issue a formal correction to Jack Cashill's false claim that Obama was Photoshopped into a picture of his grandparents. The war of words between WND and Salon has dramatically escalated in the past 24 hours.
WND sent smearmongers Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott to go spelunking into Justin Elliott's past to try and dig up some dirt. All they could come up with was that he "has been a contributor to a think tank deeply tied to the White House that is funded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros." Read: He once wrote for the Center for American Progress' Campus Progress blog. They even perused Elliott's college newspaper work for evidence of ... something, apparently shocked to discover that he once argued that there are too many "white" editors on the staffs of college newspapers.
Salon responded to the invasion of privacy in kind by letting Alex Pareene take a whack at WND's petulant behavior:
WND was, I guess, not happy with my colleague's coverage of its unhappiness, because today it attempted to smear him in two separate but equally amusing articles. The first, by Farah himself, is just a lot of words calling Elliott a punk while never once actually acknowledging that WND's "$2 million" figure is false. No, WND is right because its "investigation" into the matter is a three-part series, and no one can possibly be wrong at such great length.
The best part of Farah's commentary is when he argues that Elliott is wrong and WND's reporter is right because of their respective bios. While Elliott has merely written for various places, WND's reporter was in the Army and is "one of the most remarkable young women I have ever met." Take that, Justin: Joseph Farah doesn't think you're remarkable!
The real meat of WND's response, though, is in this post that "reveals" Justin Elliott's ties to ... George Soros. See, Elliott contributed to CampusProgress.org, which is published by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank founded with money from George Soros. So ... Soros! Ooga booga!
This investigation was written by Aaron Klein, who is WND's Jerusalem Bureau Chief. Oh, and: "With research by Brenda J. Elliott." It took two people, one of them a foreign correspondent, to Google Justin. Just like how it took two people to edit Barack Obama's Wikipedia page to include birther conspiracy theories and then write a story accusing Wikipedia of bias after people removed those edits, which is something Mr. Klein and a "researcher" did in 2009.
Pareene then dismantled WND's history of self-discrediting behavior:
WorldNetDaily is a magnet for the dumbest, dullest wingnuts in America. Even its lawyer is a buffoon. Last year, WND sued the White House Correspondents' Association because WND's disreputable conspiracy website was only given one table at the Correspondents Dinner. (They do have a White House correspondent, actually. It's Les Kinsolving, a tragicomedy of a man who is invited to briefings solely to be called on when the press secretary wants to answer a stupid question about who wrote the president's memoir instead of a serious question about reality.) Anyway, their lawyer was Larry Klayman, who is not allowed to appear before courts in much of the United States because of his "total disregard for the judicial process."
Here is a story from WorldNetDaily: "Soy is making kids 'gay.'" It is in six parts. The original headline was "A devil food is turning our kids into homosexuals." WorldNetDaily demands your respect! It is a serious news organization!
[...]
There is no end to the idiotic things printed at WorldNetDaily. Here's Obama's Kenyan birth certificate. Here's a piece on how al-Qaida is sneaking nukes into the U.S. through the unsecured Mexican border in tandem with street gangs. Here's white supremacist Vox Day asking why the media refuses to report that a mentally ill person claims to have had gay sex with Barack Obama.
WorldNetDaily knows its (large!) audience of halfwits will eat up any garbage it's served, and, better yet, the rubes will buy any trash that's for sale. (Tea-stained flags, anyone?)
Thanks to that substantial audience of the nation's stupidest and most fearful elderly people, WND is actually an influential member in good standing of the conservative movement; the RNC rents its massive email list. Because of that usefulness to the party, Farah and his buddies are allowed to persist in the delusion that they are sane and perhaps even respectable. But everyone knows they're frauds and crackpots. It takes five minutes of reading that bottomless repository of feverish bullshit to figure that out.
How will Farah react to someone who reflects his own behavior back at him? We can hardly wait to see.
When Wisconsin’s top paper inquired about the whereabouts of Gov. Scott Walker this week, they turned to one of the leading political news websites in the nation.
“Who knew that Gov. Scott Walker had headed out on a national tour to help raise money for Republican senators facing possible recalls?” a story in the Milwaukee Journal asked Tuesday.
The answer: “Newsmax did.”
The story went on to detail the revelations in Newsmax’s exclusive interview with Walker Friday. In the story, Walker discussed his national tour to drum up support for his fight against powerful unions seeking to set back his efforts at budgetary reform.
But Newsmax missed the point -- presumably deliberately, to maximize the self-promotion -- of what was written at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Newsmax got the newspaper's name wrong). A newspaper blog post was highlighting the Newsmax interview because it was the first evidence most people in Wisconsin had that Walker had left the state. The post continued:
So where is Walker going as part of this national tour? Who went with him to Florida? Did he hold any fundraisers for his own campaign while there?
Walker's campaign isn't saying.
In a statement issued by a staffer at the Republican Party, the governor's campaign refused to answer any of those questions, saying only that Walker is defending the Republican senators "who stayed in Wisconsin and stood up for middle class taxpayers by making the tough choices to balance our budget."
Not a word inthe Newsmax article about Walker's refusal to disclose what apparently private activities he may be doing on the state's dime.
Who’s The No. 1 Promoter Of Trump 2012? Newsmax! Topic: Newsmax
Donald Trump has more than Fox News to thank for creating buzz around his testing the waters for a presidential campaign (and associated spreading of discredited birther conspiracy theories about President Obama). Newsmax was an early and enthusiastic promoter of Trump’s presidential ambitions, and a Newsmax reporter helped pave the way for Trump to speak at a major conservative get-together.
NewsBusters Fact-Check: Kyl Misquoted Saying A Different False Claim Topic: NewsBusters
Matt Hadro turned a sad little bit of "fact-checking" in an April 8 NewsBusters post: that Sen. Jon Kyl was accused of making a different false claim than the one he made.
During an interview of Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, CNN anchor Deborah Feyerick not only failed to ask Richards any tough questions about federal funding of the organization, but entirely misquoted the claim of Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) that 90 percent of Planned Parenthood services are abortions.
Feyerick began the segment attributing to Kyl a bizarre claim that 90 percent of Planned Parenthood's funding goes to abortions. Obviously, that was red meat for Richards who dismantled the faux statement claiming that no federal funding goes to abortions.
The following is what Sen. Kyl said on the Senate floor: "Everybody goes to clinics, to hospitals, to doctors and so on. Some people go to Planned Parenthood. But you don't have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol and your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that's well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does."Sen. Kyl did not say that 90 percent of funding goes to abortions at Planned Parenthood, but that 90 percent of its services are abortions, another argument entirely.
Hadro doesn't mention that the claim he insists Kyl actually made is wrong too. As PolitiFact details, Kyl's claim that abortion is "well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does" is egregiously false on the basis of total services the group provides; on a per-client basis, abortion makes up only 3 percent of services.
Even the aggressively anti-abortion website LifeNews, has to resort to such far-out comparisons as abortion to adoption referrals or prenatal care to come up with any ratio that approximates the 90-percent figure Kyl cited -- and it still wouldn't prove Kyl correct, however much it purports to divine the "intent of Kyl's remarks."
Hadro also calls the claim that no federal money Planned Parenthood receives goes toward abortion a "faux statement," but he offers no evidence to back it up -- perhaps because that itself is a faux statement. The federal government has long mandated that no federal funding go toward abortion.
NEW ARTICLE: Out There, Exhibit 53: Noel Sheppard's School of Headline Cliches Topic: NewsBusters
If liberals haven't been smacked down, they've been schooled -- bits of headline-ese the NewsBusters blogger invokes repeatedly. Read more >>
Farah Still Attacking Writer Who Pointed Out WND's Lack of Evidence Topic: WorldNetDaily
In his April 13 WorldNetDaily column, Joseph Farah does the only thing he knows how to do when confronted by the fact that his "news" organization has gotten facts wrong: act petulant and attack his accuser.
This time, the person on the receiving end is Salon's Justin Elliott. His offense: asking if Donald Trump was correct to claim that President Obama has spent millions of dollars to fight lawsuits over his birth certificate. As we've noted, WND has proven only that the Obama campaign paid money to a law firm but not that all of the money -- or even any of it -- went toward fighting birther-related lawsuits.
First, Farah claimed that Elliott gave him "all of one hour and 26 minutes to respond" to the query before publishing his article -- an utterly hypocritical assertion given that WND frequentlyfails to even bother obtaining both sides to many of the "news" articles it runs, let alone give that side sufficient time to respond.
Farah then asserted that "Obama has used the cover of his taxpayer-supported office to devote far more than $2 million in financial resources to cover up whatever he's hiding on his birth certificate" -- but as before, he offers no evidence to back up this claim. Then, after noting that Elliott reported that "this figure is based on shoddy reporting by a discredited birther website and lacks any evidence to back it up," he asserts: "Never once in his article does Elliott explain how WND has been 'discredited' or why reporter Chelsea Schilling's series is 'shoddy.' So much for "backing up the lead," as we say in the news business."
In fact, Elliott did exactly that in his Salon article:
The implication of the WND stories -- though not explicitly stated -- is that because Perkins Coie worked on a birther suit, and because the Obama campaign paid Perkins Coie $1.7 million, therefore the campaign paid $1.7 million fighting birther suits. That's an obvious logical fallacy.
Indeed, just last month Roll Call published a look at the Obama campaign's post-election legal spending -- now totaling $2.8 million, most of it to Perkins Coie. DNC National Press Secretary Hari Sevugan told the paper: "The campaign has incurred ordinary legal expenses related to the wind-down of its operations and other legal services which all campaigns incur and which are proportional to the unprecedented size of this campaign."
So, having ignored and misrepresented the issue, it was insult time, his usual response to criticism. Farah smeared Elliott as a "sissified, left-wing blogger" who is "pretending to do journalism," published his bio from his previous employer, and compared it to that of Chelsea Schilling, who wrote the original WND articles, laughably embellished by Farah "because she's too modest to tell you herself." Farah writes that Schilling is "one of the most remarkable young women I have ever met" and "is like a daughter to me."
What Farah won't tell you: Schilling has a mile-long rap sheet of falsehoods and misinformation in her work for WND.
What Farah also won't tell you: how pissy he got when Elliott asked why WND made Jack Cashill's false claim about a picture of Obama's grandparents simply disappear instead of publishing a formal correction. Farah called Ellott a "worm" during that exchange.
Farah asked readers to compare the two bios (despite the obvious bias in one of them), adding: "Which one would you rather have dinner with? Which one would you most trust to babysit your kids? Which one would you most likely hire if you had the choice? Which one seems more trustworthy?"
Trustworthy? That pretty much rules out Farah and Schilling, doesn't it?
Farah concludes by stating that "we stand by Schilling's three reports – every word of them." At no point did he or Schilling provide evidence that every cent of the money the Obama campaign paid to a law firm went toward birther claims -- then or now.
As I've said before (and will say again): We must remember that this isn't about Barack Hussein Obama. A minority of shiftless, callow malcontents have capitalized on the indolence and good nature of the American people in order to manifest their decades-long quest for power. The upshot of the processes they implemented is an administration that has appropriated authority reserved for the legislature and judiciary. This was ostensibly done to address severe economic distress, which was actually brought on by some who became principals in this administration. Activists and thugs in collusion with said administration maneuver to foment civil unrest and further economic upheaval as they clandestinely re-write our Constitution. This president's fast and furious spending has some convinced it is actually his intention to utterly decimate the U.S. economically.
Mr. President, this has gone on long enough. You have refused to be candid with the American people whose trust you evidently desire and whom you are required to represent honorably. You have, in effect, erected a wall behind which you give the distinct impression of hiding. There are far too many questions you resolutely decline to answer, far too many mysteries which, by a modicum of simple disclosures, you could easily dispel in a single day. Indeed, so many riddles and puzzles have accumulated about you that, if they are not addressed, they will inevitably bring your presidency into increasing disrepute. At some point, the sphinx must speak.
Jews and Iranians, having been very successful in the United States, both financially and socially, have much political power to exert. Jews – at least the non-leftist ones – have sought in the past to use this political power and have succeeded in large part. Through lobbying and other means, in the past they have "convinced" most American lawmakers and government officials at least not to harm Israel. But now, with a President Barack Hussein Obama, who is a latent anti-Semite Israel hater, the task has become much more difficult. Obama and his compromised secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, have recently threatened Israel by stating that they, along with the "Quartet" – which also is composed of the United Nations, Russia and the European Union – will impose a Palestinian state on the Jewish nation, if it does not accede to Palestinian demands.
As for Iranian freedom, the "mullah in chief" would rather get down on his knees and beg for understanding and forgiveness of America from the Muslims in Tehran than take a strong stand and support the Iranian freedom movement.
In the 1979 TV movie "The Birth of the Beatles," there's a scene at the end where three of the band members dump drummer Pete Best and replace him with Ringo Starr before traveling to America.
"He's not a Beatle," Lennon says of Best. "He's not one of us."
Well, after two years as president, a growing number of Americans have come to the same conclusion about Barack Hussein Obama.
He's not one of us.
[...]
One thing we do know is that the president's name is Barack Hussein Obama, although we're told that we're racist or xenophobic or something terribly awful if we ever even mention his middle name.
All right, then let's start calling him Barack Who's-he? Obama.
Obama takes sides in the Islamic world only when the dissidents are hostile to U.S. interests or seeking to overthrow a U.S. ally, not when they support U.S. goals. This Islamist tilt is also seen in many of his appointments, particularly in the State Department and national-security staff.
We do not have to think Obama is a secret Muslim to call him out on his pro-Islamist foreign policy. Plenty of American leftists have been in that camp for decades. In fact, what seems to be happening in U.S. politics is a three-party merger of leftist ideology, one-world multiculturalism and Islamist interests. What is emerging is a strange stew of leftist sympathies for every policy tilt that is anti-capitalist and pro-Third World wealth transfers. Let's call it multicultural socialism until a better name comes along.
Have you ever asked yourself the question: How in the world does Barack Hussein Obama get away with the things he does and the decisions he makes without even a peep from the mainstream media?
Obama has sat back and watched the price of gasoline double since he took office; he put 87,000 oil workers in the gulf out of work with an arbitrary stroke of the pen and doubled the national debt without a word of explanation. The press reported nothing more than his brilliance in these matters.
With the help of the wicked witch of San Francisco, he destroyed the best health-care system in the world while ignoring the will of the people. He sent U.S. Air Force equipment and personnel to bomb Libya without congressional approval, and the press heralded him as a great humanitarian. Never mind that half the world believed he should return his Nobel Peace Prize. Where was the critical analysis from the press so essential to a free and open democracy?
[...]
Just imagine for a moment what George W. Bush would have been put through if he had made the same mistakes or unconstitutional moves. George Bush stopped playing golf when the troops were on the ground. Mr. Obama began. But I won't belabor the point. The double standard exists, and its seems we are all powerless to challenge it.
Newsmax's 'Special Article' In Parade Was An Ad Topic: Newsmax
Last week, Newsmax sent to its mailing list a promotion for a Pat Boone-endorsed "heart rate monitor watch" that touted an upcoming appearance in the Parade magazine Sunday newspaper supplement:
We have some exciting news!
This weekend some 66 million Americans will read Parade magazine with their Sunday newspaper — and Newsmax will be there!
Parade is running a special article featuring the legendary Pat Boone and his big secret to staying young. Boone teamed up with Newsmax on the piece to come up with a special offer for our popular Heart Rate Monitor Watch!
Well, the Sunday edition of Parade came, and the "special article" turned out to be ... an ad.
The text of the ad is posted on the Newsmax website. It's the usual loss-leader promotion Newsmax specializes in, selling the lead item cheap with trial subscriptions of various Newsmax publications thrown in for free -- which you must unsubscribe from in order to avoid being charged for a full subscription.
Newsmax presumably knows the difference between a news article and an ad, and it was dishonest of them to portray the Boone ad as a "special article."
Trump’s Birtherism Follows In WorldNetDaily’s Footsteps Topic: WorldNetDaily
If Donald Trump’s litany of discredited birther claims sounds a bit familiar, that’s because they are: WorldNetDaily has been pushing this stuff for years. Indeed, some of the biggest -- and most inaccurate -- birther claims Trump has made have also been promoted at WND.
A rising star in the Republican Party, Rep. Paul Ryan’s good looks have not gone unnoticed by the ladies.
Ryan’s new budget proposal which would reduce the deficit by $4.4 trillion has everyone talking. However the ladies aren’t commenting on Ryan’s impressive economic policies.
Remarks made on a public bulletin board online called Turnstep.com include the observation, “He has the prettiest eyes in politics.” Numerous blogs refer to the 41 year old as “the GOP heartthrob.”
A father of three and seventh-term congressman, Ryan is also well known for his workout routine, called P90X. Associated Press reports the Ryan also holds exercise sessions for his colleagues, sometimes as often as five times per week.
We haven't seen this level of creepy fawning from Newsmax since Ron Kessler met Mitt Romney's wife.
