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Sunday, February 2, 2014
D'Souza's Crime Not A 'Big Deal' To MRC's Bozell
Topic: Media Research Center

Brent Bozell used to care about the rule of law. For instance, in 1999 he praised "the House managers' principled advocacy of the rule of law" in the impeachment vote on President Clinton. In 2009, he asserted that "The Obama Administration acted in complete disregard of the rule of law" in the auto bailout.

But when it comes to crimes committed by conservatives, well, the rule of law doesn't matter so much. He is quoted opining on the arrest of Dinesh D'Souza for campaign finance violations in a Jan. 31 WorldNetDaily article:

“Let’s assume Dinesh D’Souza is guilty, and I mean 100 percent guilty. What is he guilty of? Circumventing FEC dictates by directing [$15,000] to a Senate candidate of his choice. Big deal,” Bozell told WND.

“First, in a multi-million Senate campaign, this is a fraction of a fraction. It ‘buys’ a can of soda pop, and that’s about it.["]

That's right -- because a conservative broke the law, it's no big deal to Bozell.

Bozell goes on to equivocate D'Souza's offense with much worse ones allegedly committed by Presidents Clinton and Obama:

["]Second, and more importantly, compare this ‘crime’ with Bill Clinton, who raised millions of dollars from questionable at best, and illegal at worst sources, including felons and Chinese Communist generals. Compare it to Barack Obama, who raised millions upon millions from who-knows-who-or-where to this day. Nothing ever came of their fundraising abuses, abuses one thousandfold larger than anything attributed to D’Souza. And yet he was arrested and forced to post a $500,000 bond.

“It is astonishing. Given all the other abuses of power swirling around this administration, so many of them finding their origins in the ‘Justice’ Department, do I see deliberate persecution against conservatives? I am not conspiratorial by nature, but I will say unequivocally, you better believe it.”

The fact that Bozell must equivocate away D'Souza's crime is a sign that he will not criticize another conservative for committing offense. Rush Limbaugh already knows about that right-wing benefit.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:20 PM EST
WND Tries to Frame Police Shooting As 'The Next Trayvon'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

An unbylined Jan. 25 WorldNetDaily article does its best to portray the shooting death of a black man by a white policeman in North Carolina as "the next Trayvon." But that would be the WND-Jack Cashill version of the Trayvon Martin case, in which the black male was a total thug and deserved to be shot.

The article cheers that a grand jury did not indict the officer, Randall Kerrick, on a charge of voluntary manslaughter, calling the case "politically pressured" and the manslaughter charge "overcharged." But a few days later, Kerrick was charged, prompting WND to sneerin a Jan. 27 article "If at first you fail to indict, try, try again,' claiming the indictment came after "civil-rights activists loudly marched outside the Charlotte courthouse."

In both articles, WND frames the incident to make the victim, Jonathan Ferrell, as deserving to be shot because he "refused to obey orders to stop and show his hands after police responded to a robbery call." WND also asserts that "witnesses" claimed that Ferrell was "drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana in the hours before he crashed his car" in the incident that led to his shooting. WND offers no source for the information, but it's Undermined -- and simultaneously gets a warrantless racial spin -- when WND adds that "The police chief, who is African-American, still has not released the results of the toxicology report."

WND also quotes "black radio" -- again, no source is provided for this information, or what exactly "black radio" means -- calling a woman who called police on Ferrell after she allegedly though he was trying to break into her house, a "racist b—-" guilty of a "hate crime."

But WND curiously ignores the fact that an investigation of the shooting by the police department Kerrick works for found the shooting to be "excessive":

"The evidence revealed that Mr. Ferrell did advance on Officer Kerrick and the investigation showed that the subsequent shooting of Mr. Ferrell was excessive," police said in a statement on September 14, the day of the shooting. "Our investigation has shown that Officer Kerrick did not have a lawful right to discharge his weapon during this encounter."

That would seem to be an important finding of fact that WND somehow found not to be newsworthy. But that's just another reason nobody believes WND.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:19 PM EST
Saturday, February 1, 2014
CNS' Jeffrey Blames John Holdren For Decline In Electricity Use
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey spends his Jan. 29 column having a sad that electricity consumption in America is declining:

Americans may look back in a few decades and see that 2007 was the year that production of electricity peaked in the United States and our nation began powering down.

This may make many on the environmentalist left — including President Barack Obama's top science and technology adviser — very happy.

But it will not make life better for you, your children or your grandchildren.

According to data published by the Energy Information Administration, the United States generated a total of approximately 4,157 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2007. We had never produced that much before. We have never produced that much since.

In 2012, the last full year for which there is data, the United States produced 4,048 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity — down 2.6 percent from 2007.

In the first nine months of 2013, the United States produced 3,078 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity — down from the 3,096 the United States produced in first nine months of 2012.

Strangely, Jeffrey doesn't mention the main reason for the decline: increased efficiency. The Associated Press reports:

Because of more energy-efficient housing, appliances and gadgets, power usage is on track to decline in 2013 for the third year in a row, to its lowest point since 2001, even though our lives are more electrified.

[...]

Big appliances such as refrigerators and air conditioners have gotten more efficient thanks to federal energy standards that get stricter every few years as technology evolves.

A typical room air conditioner — one of the biggest power hogs in the home — uses 20 per cent less electricity per hour of full operation than it did in 2001, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers.

Central air conditioners, refrigerators, dishwashers, water heaters, washing machines and dryers also have gotten more efficient.

Other devices are using less juice, too. Some 40-inch LED televisions bought today use 80 per cent less power than the cathode ray tube televisions of the past. Some use just $8 worth of electricity over a year when used five hours a day — less than a 60-watt incandescent bulb would use.

Those incandescent light bulbs are being replaced with compact fluorescent bulbs and LEDs that use 70 to 80 per cent less power. According to the Energy Department, widespread use of LED bulbs could save output equivalent to that of 44 large power plants by 2027.

The move to mobile also is helping. Desktop computers with big CRT monitors are being replaced with laptops, tablet computers and smart phones, and these mobile devices are specifically designed to sip power to prolong battery life.

It costs $1.36 to power an iPad for a year, compared with $28.21 for a desktop computer, according to the Electric Power Research Institute.

Instead of telling his readers the facts, Jeffrey indulges in a favorite CNS obsession: John Holdren. Somehow this is all his fault:

As President Obama moves forward with his plans for America's future energy production and economic well-being, Americans should remember that Obama's science and technology adviser declared 19 years ago that "a world of zero net physical growth" was something that "needs to be faced up to eventually."

Yeah, efficient use of electricity has absolutely nothing to do with it.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:16 PM EST
WND's Corsi to Bill Ayers: Please Stop Trolling Me On Obama Book Authorship!
Topic: WorldNetDaily

For years, Bill Ayers has been trolling Jerome Corsi, Jack Cashill, and other birthers who claim that he ghost-wrote Barack Obama's book "Dreams From My Father."

Well, Corsi has finally had enough. Taking advantage of a debate between Ayers and accused felon Dinesh D'Souza, Corsi approached Ayers and begged him to stop trolling people about the book. 

It went about as well as you'd expect. Art Moore writes in a Jan. 30 WND article:

The conversation took a familiar path, but toward the end, Corsi tried to cut through the irony, pointing out to Ayers that he typically says he wrote it and will split the royalties with anyone who can prove it.

Corsi asserted that Ayers’ familiar, ironic reply was a declaration that he doesn’t really mean what he’s saying, that he was “taking it back.”

“No, it does not take it back,” Ayers insisted.

“It doesn’t?” asked Corsi.

“No,” Ayers said.

“You wrote it?”

“I wrote it,” Ayers said.

Moore repeats a lot of dishonest boilerplate, claiming that Cashill performed an "extensive literary analysis" that proved Ayers' involvement without mentioning the actual literary experts who shot down Cashill's conspiracy theory. He also touts how biographer Christoper Andersen (whose name Moor misspells) reported that Obama "sought the help of Ayers" with the book without mentioning that Andersen explicitly denied that he ever claimed that Ayers wrote the book, which is what Cashill has claimed all along.

But what else would you expect from a "news" organization that allows Bill Ayers to live rent-free in their collective heads?


Posted by Terry K. at 12:06 AM EST
Friday, January 31, 2014
Pot, Kettle, Black, Brent Bozell Edition
Topic: Media Research Center

Brent Bozell used one of his regular Fox News appearances to rant about MSNBC, claiming that it "is a network that once a week has a scurrilous personal character-assassination attack against conservatives."

You read that right -- the guy who called Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead" is complaining that others engage in "scurrilous personal character-assassination."

Apparently, only conservatives are allowed to do that. Bozell should explain why he shouldn't apply his standards to himself.


Posted by Terry K. at 6:48 PM EST
WND's Farber Baselessly Smears Obama As 'Just Like Stalin'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Barry Farber rants in a Jan. 28 WorldNetDaily column, under the headline "Obama's purge of generals: just like Stalin's":

Give a sentient American a pen and a legal-size pad and ask him to take his time and list Obama’s 10 worst mistakes. Obamacare would be there. So would misuse of the IRS. Then stimuli that didn’t stimulate, green dollars plunging down green energy rat-holes, the many-sided catastrophes of Benghazi, the caving in to Iran on sanctions in a craven manner unbefitting a superpower, and possibly even bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia. Then there’s the idiotic, narcissistic gifts Obama gave the queen of England.

Absent from most Americans’ lists would be the firing of all those loyal, experienced and downright good American generals and the trashing of the American military. Some might hit on the inability of lady Marines to do three pull-ups. Or military abortions, or women in combat. For some reason the massive firing of generals fails to horse-collar America’s attention. And Obama’s at it full-throttle.

Big mistake. Bad mistake. There’s no more effective way to trash a military silently and non-violently than firing the good generals and making the unfired ones afraid to tweet.

And just who are these supposedly "good" generals? Farber doesn't tell us. But the Washington Post does:

Air Force Maj. Gen. Stephen D. Schmidt was unquestionably among the latter in the view of some staff members under his thumb. A profane screamer, he ran through six executive officers and aide-de-camps in a year. He retired this month after an Air Force inquiry concluded that he was “cruel and oppressive” and mistreated subordinates.

More than a dozen people who worked with Brig. Gen. Scott F. “Rock” Donahue, a retired commander with the Army Corps of Engineers, reported him as a verbally abusive taskmaster. One was so desperate to escape from division headquarters in San Francisco that he asked for a transfer to Iraq. An Army investigation cited the general for “exhibiting paranoia” and making officers cry.

Troops who served under Army Brig. Gen. Eugene Mascolo of the Connecticut National Guard, described him as “dictatorial,” “unglued” and a master of “profanity-fused outbursts.” An Army investigation found widespread evidence of “verbal mistreatment.” He received a written reprimand but remains in the National Guard.

[...]

Army Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O’Reilly, the commander of the Missile Defense Agency, retired in January 2013 after a Defense Department inspector-general report found that he bullied subordinates. Numerous people testified that O’Reilly was intelligent, even brilliant, but that he browbeat them with obscenities at high volume. “Management by blowtorch and pliers,” one witness told investigators.

[...]

In February 2011, after an investigation, the Army inspector general found that Brig. Gen. Scott Donahue, the former Army Corps of Engineers commander, regularly mistreated his subordinates and that he was to blame for a “tense working environment.”

It seems the generals are acting much more Stalin-esque than Obama is. It's frightening that Farber apparently believes this is "good" behavior.

Farber seems to want to join the rest of WND in fomenting a miltary coup against Obama.


Posted by Terry K. at 5:46 PM EST
MRC's Graham: NY Times Is 'Effete' For Questioning The Super Bowl
Topic: NewsBusters

Media Research Center director of media analysis Tim Graham turns in another choice bit of "media analysis" in a Jan. 26 NewsBusters post headlined "Effete New York Times Asks: 'Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?'"

Yes, Graham thinks it's "effete" to say anything negative about pro football. We're surprised he didn't use words like "swishy" or "effeminate" -- that would have more directly conveyed the homophobic intent of his words.

Meanwhile, Graham starts his rant proper by devoting an entire paragraph to a non sequitur about ... abortion? Oh, yeah, and a personal attack on the writer:

The New York Times has a very strange sense of morality. Abortion at any time for any reason is never savage. When the Kermit Gosnell case erupted, the Times could only editorialize it was irrelevant: “What does the trial of a Philadelphia doctor who is accused of performing illegal late-term abortions by inducing labor and then killing viable fetuses have to do with the debate over legal abortion?”

But on Sunday, the Times Magazine published a column titled “Is It Immoral to Watch the Super Bowl?” Writer Steve Almond, best known previously for resigning an adjunct professorship at Boston College because Condoleezza Rice was picked for commencement speaker, argued that sending men to the NFL was like sending our underclass soldiers off to war in Afghanistan (don't miss the part about the late Pat Tillman)[.]

When you're hurling insults at the publication and personally attacking the writer before you ever get around to addressing what the writer wrote, like Graham did, you've undermined your case for engaging in legitimate criticism.


Posted by Terry K. at 3:13 PM EST
WND's Unruh Botches Facts In Promoting Climate Deniers
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Bob Unruh breathlessly writes in a Jan. 27 WorldNetDaily article:

An independent data analyst whose work has been published by Principia Scientific, where scientists deliberate and debate, throwing out predetermined political results in favor of the truth in the data, says the global warming activists are at it again.

They’re manipulating the data.

In this case, lowering the historical temperatures for years prior to 2000. Which makes the temperatures after that look like they’ve risen. Which makes it look like global warming.

“A newly uncovered and monumental calculating error in official U.S. government climate data shows beyond doubt that climate scientists unjustifiably added a whopping one degree of phantom warming to the official ‘raw’ temperature record,” the report says.

It comes from the discovery by independent data analyst Steven Goddard, who did a study of the official U.S. temperature records used by NASA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and others.

Because Unruh cares about reporting only one side of the story, he repeats several misleading claims and falsehoods.

Unruh is simply repeating boilerplate Principia Scientific propaganda designed to obscure the fact that it's a site for global warming skeptics, which means there is, in fact, a predetermined result to the research it publishes. Principia Scientific's first chairman was noted denier Tim Ball.

Further, Steven Goddard is not only not an "independent data analyst," that's not even his real name. DeSmog Blog notes that Goddard is a pseudonym, and that he's best known for botching data to claim that Arctic Sea ice is not receding when, in fact, the opposite was true.

So we have an anonymous writer known for shoddy research making a claim at a biased website. Funny how Unruh couldn't be bothered to report those facts to his readers.

Unruh also touts how "well-known scientist Art Robinson" (a buddy of WND managing editor David Kupelian) has "gathered the signatures of 31,487 scientists who agree that there is 'no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.'" As we've previously noted, few of these scientists have any formal training in climate science, so their views are essentially meaningless to the overall debate over climate change.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:40 AM EST
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Newsmax Gets Into the AP Headline-Rewriting Business
Topic: Newsmax

CNSNews.com has normally been the one to rewrite Associated Press headlines to add right-wing slant. Now, Newsmax is getting in on the game.

A Jan. 28 AP story was sent out with the headline "New DHS chief endorses 'earned' citizenship idea." But after Newsmax got a hold of it, the headline read "Obama's New DHS Chief: Amnesty for Illegals 'Matter of National Security'."

The DHS chief said nothing about "amnesty for illegals." The only reference to "amnesty" in the article came during a reference to how Republicans have criticized immigration reform as "back-door amnesty." Indeed, as we've noted, because the proposed path to citizenship in immigration reform includes numerous conditions before citizenship would be made available, it is not, by definition, "amnesty."

Posted by Terry K. at 10:48 PM EST
WND's Farah Just Can't Stop Peddling Birther Lies
Topic: WorldNetDaily

We know Joseph Farah is an unrepentant liar. He has proven once again that he can tell those lies repeatedly while thinking he can continue to get away with it.

In a Jan. 29 WorldNetDaily column aimed at the critics of his selective birther obsession -- it applies to Obama, not Ted Cruz -- Farah writes:

Now I have seen dozens of blog postings and “news stories” about my commentary, and they all pretty much say the same thing – suggesting or outright stating that I peddled a theory that Obama was born abroad. This is patently untrue.

In the hundreds of thousands of words I have written and spoken on this subject, I have never theorized Obama was born abroad.

Farah is telling a baldfaced lie, which he's trying to parse by saying he "never theorized" that Obama was born abroad. As we've documented, Farah has repeatedly touted a discredited claim that Obama's grandmother was born in Kenya, and the website he operates published a "Kenyan birth certificate" for Obama he couldn't be bothered to authenticate before publication (it was a fake). 

Farah may very narrowly portray such claims as something other than "theorizing," but it's utterly dishonest for him to claim he never promoted the idea.

Farah also spends time rehashing more birther fantasies:

This is precisely why it was so important to pay attention to the precedent Obama set by refusing to release his birth certificate for two years and then releasing one that was labeled fraudulent by the only law enforcement investigators who have examined it, as well as dozens of document experts.

More lies. Obama released a legally valid birth certificate in 2008, one that even WND proclaimed to be "authentic" before it decided it was politically advantageous to do otherwise, thus forcing it to redefine "authentic" in an editor's note applied months after the fact.

As far as that investigation that found Obama's long-form birth certificate to be "fraudulent," that was manipulated into existence by WND, includes birther extraordinaire Jerome Corsi as a de facto "investigator," its finances and procedures are shrouded in mystery, and its conclusions have been discredited.

But Farah won't tell you any of that because, again, he is an unrepentant liar.

Farah's bamboozlement continues:

So what was my beef?

One problem has always been, and remains today, that we don’t know where he was born because he has never released an unchallenged birth certificate.

A second problem remains that even if the birth certificate is accurate and authentic, it still leaves open the question of his “natural born citizen” status because it states his father was a Kenyan citizen, unable to confer “natural born citizen” status on his son.

A third problem is that his listed mother was unable to confer that status on her son because she was a minor – too young. She hadn’t lived as a citizen in the country long enough. She later left for Indonesia and took her son with her to Indonesia where he was adopted by an Indonesian citizen.

First: Obama's birth certificate has been "challenged" only by people like Farah and Corsi who will never accept any documentation for Obama as legitimate.

Second: Farah has apparently forgotten that WND published an article admitting that the Constitution does not define "natural born citizen," and the Supreme Court has never weighed in. Thus, he cannot claim that Obama is ineligible because his father was not an American citizen.

Third: The idea that Obama's mother was "too young" to confer citizenship upon Obama is a clause that applies only to a child born abroad -- which Farah has never been able to prove he was.

But having spent years propagating a sleazy, partisan,, and completely false campaign of personal destruction for the sole purpose of making the birth certificate Obama's Vince Foster, Farah suddenly wants to wash his hands of it, declaring, "I really don’t want to talk about Obama’s eligibility any more."

Sorry, dude, that's not how it works. Until WND publishes the truth about the dishonesty of its birther crusade and apologizes for making years of false attacks, Farah does not get to walk away from the wreckage he created.

The only reason Farah is giving up the ghost now is because he has so ruined WND with perpetuating birther falsehoods that nobody believes it. If Farah wants people to trust his website, he needs to come clean.

But, again, Farah is an unrepentant liar, so the odds of that happening are pretty dismal -- even if the continued dishonesty forces WND out of business


Posted by Terry K. at 6:55 PM EST
CNS Obesses Over Gay Man Charged With Child Porn, Buries GOP Staffer Charged With Child Porn
Topic: CNSNews.com

A Jan. 28 CNSNews.com article by Michael Chapman serves up in "graphic and disturbing" nearly 1,300 words about a "gay icon" in San Francisco who pleaded guilty to felony child pornography possession.

By contrast, CNS has provided no original coverage whatsoever of the case of Ryan Loskarn, the chief of staff to Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander, who was charged in December with possession of child pornography. The criminal complaint against Loskarn reported that Loskarn had purchased several videos of child pornography.

Last week, Loskarn committed suicide. This week, Loskarn's survivors posted his suicide note on the Internet.

But to Chapman and CNS, this apparently is not news, even though it's considered a "local story" for CNS' Washington-area offices and could be covered with little effort, while Chapman's story on the "gay icon" case took place in San Francisco and largely cribbed from newspapers there.

All references to Loskarn in CNS' database are wire articles; it's unclear whether CNS deemed his story newsworthy enough to post any of the articles on its front page.

It's also unclear why Chapman and CNS consider a  story about a San Francisco man charged with child porn to be more newsworthy than a top aide to a Republican senator charged with child porn. We bet it has something to do with the "gay icon" stuff -- by contrast, tawdry behavior by conservatives must be hidden.

Chapman's obsession got cross-promoted at NewsBusters, where Tim Graham  wrote a post headlined "Pedophiles Are Not National News -- When They're Gay Rights Pioneers." He didn't mention that at CNS, pedophiles are not national news when they are conservatives.


Posted by Terry K. at 3:35 PM EST
Bob Unruh's One-Sided 'Truth About Amnesty'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Bob Unruh's Jan. 27 WorldNetDaily article promises the "truth about amnesty." Since it's an Unruh article, we're pretty sure the truth is the farthest thing from Unruh's mind.

Indeed, as usual, Unruh is interested in reporting only one side of the story, and it's the side that falsely calls immigration reform "amnesty" -- the word appears in the article 10 times. Much of Unruh's article is handed over to Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, which Unruh fails to identify as an anti-immigration group.

And as usual, Unruh can't be bothered to seek out any alternative view.But then, WND's not paying him to do a thorough job of reporting -- just a highly biased one that conforms to WND's right-wing agenda.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:08 AM EST
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
MRC's Graham: Pro-Choice Activists Want 'The Full Gosnell'
Topic: NewsBusters

In Tim Graham's black-and-white worldview, if you're not totally opposed to abortion, you must favor infanticide.

That's basically what Graham is arguing in a Jan. 25 NewsBusters post:

MSNBC's furor over Mike Huckabee's remarks on women and the Democrats boiled over on "Now with Alex Wagner" on Thursday afternoon. Radical feminist "comedians" Sarah Silverman and Lizz Winstead were promoted once again for their "V to Shining V" crusade for "Lady Parts Justice" -- that is, untrammeled abortion, the full Gosnell.

Graham provides no evidence that the "radical feminist 'comedians'" to whom he's referring have ever endorsed what Kermit Gosnell did, let alone speak his name.

A black-and-white worldview is not always a good thing -- and it's an especially bad thing when you, like Graham, are supposed to be a Director of Media Analysis. How much "analysis" did Graham put into making that uninformed snap judgment?


Posted by Terry K. at 7:01 PM EST
WND's Simpson Unhappy That Abortions Mean We Can't Prove Women Don't KNow How To Say No To Sex
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Before Roe, women who got pregnant and regretted it had to go to abortionists who did their work out of sight of the law. Those who could afford it went out of the country. Others resorted to a variety of self-induced abortions – that’s where the phrase “coat-hanger” abortion came from. Not a pretty picture for the mother or the unborn.

That was also the day of the “shotgun wedding,” a daughter gets – as they used to say – “knocked up,” and Daddy forces the guy to marry her.

With Roe, that’s pretty much gone out of style, and so has the “coat-hanger” solution.

As one young woman who supports abortion on demand told a radio reporter in San Francisco today, “It’s important women have a choice … a coat hanger will not be my only option.”

Of course, it never was the only option, but it was a quick, down-and-dirty way to get rid of the evidence that the woman in question didn’t know how to say “no” and mean it – and the guy didn’t care.

Frankly, it’s a story as old as mankind.

-- Barbara Simpson, Jan. 26 WorldNetDaily column


Posted by Terry K. at 5:43 PM EST
Updated: Wednesday, January 29, 2014 5:44 PM EST
Newsmax's Hirsen Joins the D'Souza Conspiracy; Is He Running Interference For A Friend?
Topic: Newsmax

James Hirsen gets all conspiratorial in his Jan. 28 Newsmax column:

When reports surfaced regarding Dinesh D’Souza’s inictment on charges of violating federal campaign finance laws, some serious questions were raised about the criminal investigation of the author and filmmaker.

Although the FBI and Justice Department did not explicitly reveal to which election the charges had referred, Federal Election Commission records indicated that the only political candidate to which D’Souza had ever donated was Wendy Long, a former New York senatorial candidate.

[...]

An intriguing question is why an individual with the educational background and intelligence of D’Souza would risk criminal prosecution to make a relatively small donation in a contest that involved tens of millions of dollars. After all, much larger sums of money are routinely given to campaigns through other legal vehicles including political action committees and nonprofit entities.

It may be because the violation was too blatant to ignore. Gawker examined the campaign contribution records of Wendy Long, the candidate D'Souza apparently donated to, and found that large donations well over the legal amount were made to Long's campaign on the same day in the names of D'Souza's personal assistant and (we are not making this up) the husband of D'Souza's mistress. Long’s campaign later reattributed half of the mistress’ husband’s donation to the mistress, then for some reason ultimately returned it to her. That refund is what appears to have triggered the routine FBI review that led to the charges.

But Hirsen is apparently not familiar with Occam's Razor, for he continues his conspiracy-mongering:

The discovery of D’Souza’s alleged wrongdoings are claimed to be the product of routine FBI investigations of campaign filings by various candidates. Questions remain, however, as to how investigators made the decision to look into D’Souza’s activities in the first place.

D'Souza’s prosecutor is an Indian-American Democrat, Preet Bharara, who formerly worked for New York Sen. Charles Schumer. Schumer’s close ties with the Obama administration helped to place Bharara in the powerful U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

Becuase D’Souza is best known for having produced the documentary “2016: Obama’s America,” which portrays President Barack Obama in a rather unflattering light, Gerald Molen, who was a co-producer on the project, expressed the suspisions of numerous Obama critics regarding the idictment, saying that it amounts to a “selective prosecution,” implicitly raising the spectre that the criminal charges may be a political retaliation against D’Souza.

Because the charges against D’Souza surfaced following the highly visible media reports surrounding the Internal Revenue Service’s alleged targeting of Tea Party groups, the timing of the indictment is somewhat curious.

Additional questions still linger as to why the administration is launching a public prosecution of a high-profile critic over a relatively minor amount of money that was given to an insignificant candidate in a no-win political race?

The existence of so many questions indicate a lack of curiosity on Hirsen's part. Or, as with his defense of Mel Gibson, he may be running interference for a friend.

In an August 2012 Newsmax column, Hirsen slobbered all over D'Souza's anti-Obama film "2016: Obama's America," praising its box office performance and quoting its producer, Gerald Molen. Hirsen also touted the film, as well as Molen's credentials as a producer of "Schindler's List," in an April 2012 article as well as a July 2012 article.

Hirsen was obviously clued in about the film early enough to do some pre-release publicity for it. That suggests an undisclosed relationship between him and Molen and/or D'Souza.

Hirsen waited years -- and admist continued bad behavior by the star -- to disclose his relationship to Newsmax readers. If he has such a relationship with Molen or D'Souza, the time to disclose it is now.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:51 PM EST

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