NewsBusters Can't Stop Portraying Discrimination Against Gays As 'Religious Liberty' Topic: NewsBusters
Ken Shepherd grumbles in a March 21 NewsBusters post:
MSNBC is at it yet again, slandering conservatives wishing to protect the religious liberties of business owners as "anti-gay" bigots.
The latest example comes with the headline for Adam Serwer's March 21 story, "Georgia Republicans tack anti-gay amendments onto unrelated bills."
As we've pointedout when Shepherd and his Media Research Center buddies have previously advanced this idea, there's a good reason such "religious liberty" bills are seen -- and accurately portrayed -- as anti-gay: The impetus for introducing them was to keep business owners from being forced to do anything that could possibly be considered support for gay marriage, like baking a cake or taking photos, allowing to skirt federal public-accomodation mandates.
Shepherd has previously framed the anti-gay discrimination that such laws would make possible as a "free-market remedy."
One Hollywood marriage was so disastrous that when she (Ethel Merman) wrote her autobiography, she left the chapter about her marriage to him (Ernest Borgnine) completely blank!
Pretend I’m doing that now to President Obama’s speech of Friday, Feb. 28, about Russian troop movements against Ukraine. I was wildly excited when I heard he was going to speak. I could see no reason for him to speak at all except to interrupt his Niagara of flaccid, empty, even cowardly foreign policy speeches and get rough, tough and real for a change. What a loser! This was the most flaccid, empty and cowardly ever. Forget it. Pretend this is all blank space until now!
The Obama administration has without fail, since day one, stood in direct contradiction to what the president and his minions appear to be advocating.
For example, just last week, Time reported, “Obama looks to boost young minorities,” while behind the back of young minorities he advocates their eradication through Planned Parenthood (concerning the topic of abortion).
Despite this, Obama publicly puts on a front that he is “his brother’s keeper” and wants to protect America’s youth by educating them.
One of the many things Obama says that annoys me no end is when he makes reference to the international community and pretends, one, that it actually exists and, two, that it possesses moral authority. Until he got the house key to the White House, one could argue that whatever morality existed in the world was mainly possessed by the United States. But he has seen to it that when he said that America was no more exceptional than any other nation, he fully intended to prove it by transforming it in his own repulsive image.
One has to look no further than those who support this administration to find that Obama’s allies are America’s enemies, which by definition is treason.
For example, Obama enjoys support from Cuba, China, Russia (all of which are communist nations) and the Muslim Brotherhood, America’s sworn enemy. In fact, Obama has the audacity to entertain America’s sworn enemies right within the White House in Washington, D.C.
This administration stands guilty as charged. No debate, no argument and no compromise through corrupt deliberation and/or interpretations.
This president has already identified himself as an enemy of the Constitution of the United States by his intentions and actions, through which he has violated it time and time again.
Today, We the People are confronted by a tyrant far worse than Bill Clinton. Obama is a socialist who has shown disdain and enmity not just for the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, Israel, but the Judeo-Christian heritage in general. He has attempted to further the interests of his ultra-leftist agenda at the expense of those he perceives are part of the rich white establishment, preferentially elevating “his people” over others who are not of his ilk and liking; turning upside down the discrimination he seeks to right for those dear to him.
In so doing, President Barack Hussein Obama has used every dirty and lawless trick in the book to try to achieve his distorted and perverse mission, giving rise to what he has coined and dismisses as “phony scandals.” And to thus far cover up these scandals, he and his minions have used the traditional means of which I speak to keep truth and justice from the American people.
The current occupant of the Oval Office seems to think that just because it works with his daughters, a time out is all it takes to make Putin toe the line. What Barack fails to grasp is that when Putin looks at his Obama Christmas card, he sees four females, not three, and he realizes that in a fight, Michelle is the only one he might have reason to worry about.
The White House says the president’s National Security Council has had almost daily meetings about the Ukrainian crisis, but it hasn’t said how many of those meetings had Obama in attendance. Of course, given modern technology, he can easily follow the action from the 17th tee at the Congressional Country Club golf course. Has “leading from behind” been replaced by hiding in the short rough?
Folks, it’s hard to take this man seriously as a “world leader,” and his approval rating has now fallen below 40 percent. Coming on top of the domestic policy disaster called Obamacare, this foreign-policy tailspin is undoubtedly contributing to the collapse of those poll numbers. Would you hire this man to run your pizza franchise?
I have a feeling even Barack Obama is surprised by how much he has been able to accomplish in tearing America down in less than six years. It’s because he had a lot of help before that six years began.
America was ripe for the taking.
But I’ll just bet he is surprised sometimes how easy it all was.
I have no doubt he wonders some days why he doesn’t have more real opposition – whether he is being set up.
But most days he is probably more inclined, as a narcissist and ego-maniac, to believe he’s invincible, a man of destiny, maybe even anointed by some force for a time such as this.
He may think he can do whatever he wants and get away with it.
Wouldn’t you think like that if you had lived his life?
Not News At The MRC: Catholic Activist's Demand That Liberal College Profs Be Shot Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center loves to play gotcha by cherry-picking random right-wing-friendly stories and bashing the "liberal media" for not reporting them. For example:
You'd think that the MRC reports all news and doesn't ignore incidents that don't conform to its right-wing agenda. That, of course, would be wrong.
Case in point: The MRC has had a friendly relationship with Austin Ruse of the right-wing Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM). He has been a signatory to two MRC-circulated open letters -- one demanding that President Obama fire Harry Knox as a member of the Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships for alleged "anti-Catholic" remarks (which were actually just criticism of the Catholic Church's stance on homosexuality), and a letter to the broadcast networks demanding that they "stop censoring coverage of the trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell."
Ruse has also been regularly quoted at CNSNews.com, opining on such issues as the United Nations and gender identity. So you'd think that if Ruse makes the news, it would be news to the MRC.
Earlier this month, while serving as guest host for fellow right-wing Sandy Rios' radio show, Ruse said that “the hard left, human-hating people that run modern universities” should “all be taken out and shot.” Ruse initially responded to criticism of his remarks by calling his critics “dumb,” “stupid” and “idiots.”
But then Ruse started feeling real heat: The American Family Association, which runs Rios' show, cut ties with him, and one Catholic leader resigned from C-FAM over the remarks. That prompted to issue a more abject apology, insisting that his death threat "was not intended to be taken literally" and hypocritically claiming that "I have dedicated my life and career to ending violence."
Despite this controversy, no MRC site has reported on it, not even its purported "news" organization, CNS.
Given that the MRC's first instinct when Rush Limbaugh went on a three-day misognystic tirade against Sandra Fluke was to start an "I Stand With Rush" website, this censorship really isn't a surprise. And given theprominence of Catholics such as Brent Bozell and Terry Jeffrey in running the MRC, their silence is nothing more than cowardice.
More Non-Disclosure From WND's Farah Topic: WorldNetDaily
When Joseph Farah wants his readers to save the country, it generallyinvolves buying something from WorldNetDaily. But Farah takes non-disclosure to a new level in his March 19 WND column:
So, is there any expectation things will change in 2015 if and when Republicans win control of both houses of Congress?
Not unless Republican voters are selective in whom they nominate to run for seats up for grabs.
Those decisions won’t be made in November. Those decisions are being made now. Some of them – too many really – have already been made.
The time to mobilize, then, to take America back is not next fall. It’s right now. That is the central thesis of a new book called “Takeover” by conservative founding father Richard Viguerie, a political genius instrumental in the presidential sweeps of Ronald Reagan and one of my personal political and marketing mentors.
Viguerie doesn’t just tell us what the objective is. His book is a guide to achieving it. No one better understands that establishment Republicans are not the solution, they are the problem.
If there is one political book you read this year, make certain it is “Takeover” by Richard Viguerie.
Not only has Farah somehow forgotten to disclose that WND is publishing Viguerie's book, he failed to mention that he and Viguerie serve together on the board of the Takeover Super PAC along with WND's Jerome Corsi and other right-wingers.
Not only is Farah being an unethical journalist by getting involved in partisan politics, he's hiding his partisan poltical activity from his readers. Anyone surprised?
MRC Still Botching Bozell-Graham Byline; Column Itself Isn't Any Better Topic: Media Research Center
CNSNews.com continues to cheat Tim Graham out of a proper byline for ghostwriting Brent Bozell's column. As we've noted, CNS has moved to giving Bozell and Graham separate bylines instead of a shared one, which means the column appears twice in CNS' archive.
(Meanwhile, Bozell and Graham get a shared byline at NewsBusters, while the main MRC website has simply stopped posting their column -- only one has been posted since the ghostwriting ruse was exposed, and none in the past month.)
But just because the byline is more accurate doesn't mean anything else is. Bozell and Graham write in their March 21 column:
"The Laramie Project" is an agitprop play compiled from real-life interviews that indicted the entire state of Wyoming as homophobic and therefore responsible for the murder of Matthew Shepard. One character announced it was just like "the Germans who looked the other way are guilty of the deaths of the Jews, the gypsies and the homosexuals."
The play packs a political punch, and the left has seen to it that it has been widely performed at colleges and even high schools across America for years. But last year, the accepted narrative began to unravel. Author Stephen Jimenez produced years of research that argued Shepard's killers Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson were not heterosexual monsters after all.
"A manager of a gay bar in Denver recalls seeing photos of McKinney and Henderson in the papers and recognizing them as patrons of his bar. He recounts his shock at realizing 'these guys who killed that kid came from inside our own community.'" It was a gay-on-gay murder. That would make the political message — the very essence of the play — fraudulent.
But on the left, an effective yarn is never having to say you're sorry. Forget the reporting; stick with the legend.
Bozell and Graham are embracing Jimenez's Shepard revisionism. As we noted when Bozell (and, we presume, Graham) promoted Jimenez's book on the case, it flies against established facts in the case, including that one of the killer not only denied having sex with Shepard, he mounted a "gay panic" defense at his trial.
Further, as Media Matters points out, Jimenez is also a friend of the defense attorney of one of the killers, which further raises questions about his objectivity.
Now that the right has an "effective yarn" to discount Shepard 's death, Bozell and Graham are sticking with that legend and don't care much for actual reporting.
WND's Unruh Lazily And Dishonestly Reports On Birther Lawsuit Dismissal Topic: WorldNetDaily
One telltale sign WorldNetDaily is about to bamboozle you: the story's headline doesn't convey the actual news being reported.
Thus, WND presented a March 21 article by Bob Unruh under the headline "Breaking: Judge rules on Obama eligibility; 7-2 majority in state's high court announces decision on constitutional question."
In other words: the birthers lost yet another court challenge. If the birthers had won, that would surely be in the headline.
The bamboozlement continues in Unruh's opening paragraph: "One of the last remaining court battles over Barack Obama’s presidential eligibility has gone down in flames in a 7-2 decision by the Alabama Supreme Court to render 'no opinion.'"
Wrong. The court did issue an opinion -- it affirmed a lower court decision dismissing the lawsuit by Hugh McInnish and Virgil Goode demanding that the Alabama Secretary of State verify Obama’s eligibility to be on the 2012 Alabama presidential ballot. It simply chose not to explain its decision, though two of the judges issued concurring opinions pointing out that there is no statutory obligation for the Alabama Secretary of State to verify the eligibility of a presidential candidate.
Unruh didn't mention those opinions, though. Instead, he quotes extensively from the opinions of the two judges who dissented, Roy Moore and Tom Parker, even though their opinions are moot. Unruh also touted Moore's previous opinion that "he had seen no convincing evidence that Obama is a 'natural born citizen' and considerable evidence that suggests he is not" -- which should have disqualifed him from judging the McInnish case.
Most of the rest of Unruh's article is lazy rehashing of earlier so-called evidence to prove that Barack Obama's birth certificate is fake without any mention that said evidence has been discredited.
It's all the laziness and dishonesty we've come to expect from Unruh and WND on birther issues.
CNS Promotes Catholic League, Doesn't Disclose Bozell Is On The Board Topic: CNSNews.com
Barbara Hollingsworth devotes a March 21 CNSNews.com article to an interview with the Catholic League's William Donohue in which he promotes his boycott of Samuel Adams and Guinness beers for not sponsoring St. Patrick's Day parades in Boston and New York because parade organizers refused to let gays march.
Hollingsworth devotes all but two paragraphs of her 26-paragraph article to Donahue, waiting until the final two paragraphs to include comments from, or attempts to contact, the brewers Donohue is targeting.
What Hollingsworth fails to mention, of course, is that her boss, Brent Bozell, is on the advisory board of Donohue's group.
Failure to disclose that conflict of interest is unethical journalism. But given that Hollingsworth devotes her article to serving as a stenographer for Donohue, journalism isn't exactly the most important thing on her mind.
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Erik Rush Edition Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Erik Rush is once again failing to bring his Obama-derangement A-game to his highest profile outlet.
In his WND column this week, Rush merely suggests that Obama is "calculating, treasonous international criminal with the agenda of rivaling history’s most notorious tyrants." But on his internet show this week, he goes much further.
As Right Wing Watch documents, Rush cites an anonymous "source" who claims that the missing Malaysian airliner was hijacked on Obama's orders, flown to a U.S. base in Diego Garcia in order to interrogate technicians aboard who wanted to “abscond to China,” after which everyone on the flight “murdered,” except for the pilots, who were spared because they are "pro-Islamist." Rush then adds: "At least, that’s what my source tells me. And they haven’t been wrong yet."
Whatever Rush is smoking, we'd like to get our hands on some of it -- after all, nobody who's sober could have invented such an outlandish scenario.
CNS' Charlie Daniels Distorts Obama's Comments on Constitution Topic: CNSNews.com
Charlie Daniels writes in a March 18 CNSNews.com column:
President Obama has made the statement that the U.S. Constitution is a flawed document.
It is not a president's job to decide the merits of the Constitution but rather to enforce it as it is, or convene enough states to call for a constitutional convention and change it. It is not in his purvey or power to decide whether to enforce and defend it, it is in his oath of office and when he in any way refuses to abide by every sentence in the document, he violates his oath.
Daniels thus becomes the latest right-winger to willfully misinterpret what Obama said in a 2001 interview.
To support his claim about Obama, Daniels links to a 2008 Newsmax article quoting Obama saying that the Constitution is "a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now" but also "reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.” Newsmax adds that "Obama did not elaborate on the 'fundamental flaw' that persists."
But as we've documented, when you look at the context of the interview, the "fundamental flaw" Obama was referring to was the Constitution's tolerance of slavery.
Is Daniels saying that Obama or any president should have tolerated a Constitution that permitted slavery? Sure seems that way.
More Obama Lies From WND's Farah, Now With Added Out-Of-Context Numbers Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah has always been a shameless liar, and he does it again in his March 18 WorldNetDaily column:
Who says Barack Obama isn’t doing all he can to help his country?
There are some cynics out there who don’t believe it. Some even suggest he’s doing his best to wreck it.
The facts suggest otherwise.
If the gospels of Matthew and Luke are correct, and one’s heart is where one’s treasure is, then Obama truly loves his country.
What am I talking about?
For several years now, WND has been tracking the administration’s investment in what Michelle Obama calls her husband’s “home country in Kenya.” I don’t call it that, mind you – never have. That’s what Obama’s wife calls it.
You gotta love how Farah makes a false statement -- that for Obama, Kenya is "his country" -- and then five paragraphs later denies he has done such a thing and blames it on Obama's wife.
Anyway, the point of the article is to sum up WND's selective reporting on "projects and spending Obama has directed to Kenya." No context is provided, of course; Farah can't be bothered to tell us any actual funding figures for previous years or funding for other countries in Africa. He's just cherry-picked these numbers and wants you to think that they mean something even though they're utterly devoid of context.
MRC's Graham Keeps Up The Misguided Pierce-Rage Topic: NewsBusters
Tim Graham and the Media Reserarch Center have been misportraying an article about Ted Kennedy for more than a decade now, and they're certainly not going to stop now.
In a March 10 NewsBusters post bashing "left-wing crazy man Charles Pierce," Graham adds that "Pierce is the (unintentional) funny man who imagined Chappaquiddick victim Mary Jo Kopechne thanking Ted Kennedy in her old age...'if she had lived.'"
As we've repeatedlydocumented, Pierce was not praising Kennedy -- the full context, and Pierce's declared intent, was to show that the Chappaquiddick incident effectively keeps him from having the "moral credibility" to be elected president.
But the truth doesn't pay at the MRC -- fitting a narrative. And Graham is apparently going to keep cramming Pierce in his discredited narrative no matter what.
WND's Unruh Still Whitewashing Phill Kline's Misconduct Topic: WorldNetDaily
Bob Unruh has been a dutiful stenographer for anti-abortion zealout Phill Kline. Unruh's whitewashing continues in a March 15 WND article:
Former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, whose law license was suspended by the state Supreme Court because of rules violations in a politically charged case where one of his investigation targets had partied with then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, is calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to cut through the biases held by state court officials and overturn the decision.
The petition to the U.S. Supreme Court has been filed by the Life Legal Defense Fund on behalf of Kline, who was punished as a result of his incendiary work to investigate and bring into compliance with the law the abortion industry in his state.
The legal ethics case was brought against him after complaints from abortion industry players who had been under investigation for refusing to comply with the state’s abortion reporting laws.
Yeah, Unruh would love to have you believe that Kline is being persecuted for his anti-abortion activism. But that would be a lie. As we've documented, Kline was found to have violated 11 rules governing the professional conduct of attorneys during his tenure as Kansas attorney general and a later post as a district attorney.The court cited three aggravating factors to support the indefinite suspension: selfish motive, a pattern of misconduct and his refusal to acknowledge the wrongful nature of any of his misconduct.
Instead, Unruh would have you believe that Kline merely committed "minor, if not irrelevant, inaccuracies." Unruh is playing stenographer again, this time lovingly detailing an appeal Kline's suspension while refusing to tell the full story or even letting any Kline critic have the floor for even a single paragraph.
But then, Unruh is not a journalist -- he's a lazy stenographer.
MRC Pretends Obama Is Giving Away The Internet Topic: Media Research Center
A March 17 Media Research Center item by Scott Whitlock is headlined "Networks Yawn as Obama Administration Gives Away the Internet." Whitlock touts how "Fox News extensively covered this development, but the network morning and evening shows ignored the monumental decision," concluding that "BC, NBC and CBS couldn't be bothered with wondering if giving away the internet is a good idea."
Perhaps that's because Obama is not, in fact, "giving away the internet."
As we noted when GOP operative Brad Blakeman went on a similar tear about it, the plan to transfer ICANN, the body that manages Internet names and addresses, to international control has been in the works since 1998, and it was always the plan that the U.S. would eventually relinquish control over ICANN.
In touting Fox News' coverage of the subject, Whitlock ignores the fact that Fox got it wrong by framing it as Obama "giving away the internet."Whitlock also invokes Mike Huckabee's criticism of Obama's alleged "giving away the Internet" without explaining what expertise, if any (and we're certainly not aware of any), that Huckabee has on the subject.
NEW ARTICLE: WND's Military Coup Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Michael Maloof tried to get less-than-stable ex-military officers to bash President Obama -- at least until it became clear that what they really wanted was to overthrow the president. Read more >>
WND's Latest Desperate Grab At Credibility Fails Miserably Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily spent much of the past year touting how some previously unknown website proclaimed it to be "trustworthy" (conveniently ignoring the child-sex charges against a minister at the church that ran the website). Now WND is making another desperate grab for credibility.
Less than 48 hours after Ranker.com added a new category for “Top Websites 2014,” a small but enthusiastic band of WND fans made it No. 1 – topping Google, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook and Netflix among many other more well-known giants.
Though only a few hundred votes had been cast, the expression of Internet users is not without precedent, says Joseph Farah, founder of WND.com.
[...]
“What does all this mean?” asked Farah rhetorically. “It doesn’t mean we’re the biggest website, of course – not even close with behemoths like Google and YouTube around. But it is a measure of loyalty and passion. WND has always evoked those qualities – and, I hope, always will.”
Tellingly, WND does not include a link to the Ranker.com list in its article. That's because if it did, it would be clear that the ranking is utterly meaningless.
It's also a very volatile list. As of this writing, WND is ranked 33rd out of the 36 websites listed. The top of the list is now dominated by gay-themed websites and blogs -- mainly because the currently top-ranked site, the gay blog Joe.My.God., had his readers freep the poll. It seems that Joe.My.God.'s readers are much more loyal and passionate than WND's.
Despite Farah touting the temporary ranking as one of "loyalty and passion," it was nothing of the sort. The screenshot at Joe.My.God of WND at the top of the list showed that it received only 68 positive votes. As of this writing, WND has received only 71 positive votes and a whopping 3,405 negative votes.
Note one other thing: Ranker lists the person who submitted each website to the list. The person who submitted WND? Joseph Farah.
There are myriad reasons nobody believes WND, and desperate grabs at credibility are just one of them.
P.S. That minister, by the way, was found guilty of the child sex charges and sentenced to 20 years in prison. WND, which published a December 2012 article by Bob Unruh taking the minister's side and portraying his prosecution as anti-Christian bias, did not cover the trial or sentencing.
Ken Shepherd grumbles in a March 21 NewsBusters post:
One Hollywood marriage was so disastrous that when she (Ethel Merman) wrote her autobiography, she left the chapter about her marriage to him (Ernest Borgnine) completely blank!
The Media Research Center loves to play gotcha by cherry-picking random right-wing-friendly stories and bashing the "liberal media" for not reporting them. For example:
When Joseph Farah wants his readers to save the country, it 
CNSNews.com continues to cheat Tim Graham out of a proper byline for ghostwriting Brent Bozell's column. As we've 
One telltale sign WorldNetDaily is about to bamboozle you: the story's headline doesn't convey the actual news being reported.
Barbara Hollingsworth devotes a March 21 CNSNews.com 
WorldNetDaily's Erik Rush is once again 
Charlie Daniels writes in a March 18 CNSNews.com 
Joseph Farah has always been a 
Tim Graham and the Media Reserarch Center have been misportraying an article about Ted Kennedy for more than a decade now, and they're certainly not going to stop now.
Bob Unruh has been a dutiful stenographer for anti-abortion zealout Phill Kline. Unruh's whitewashing continues in a March 15 WND 
A March 17 Media Research Center 
WorldNetDaily spent much of the past year 
