NEW ARTICLE -- NewsBusted: The Gwinn File
Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters blogger Dylan Gwinn not only writes about sports, he pushes homophobia and gets things spectacularly wrong. Read more >>

Be Careful What You Wish For, Bradlee Dean
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Bradlee Dean writes in his March 24 WorldNetDaily column:

Just down the street in Williamsburg were the head and arm restraint stocks, which were located right outside of the local courthouse. A historian and re-enactment actor was outside educating the people who had questions.

One question asked was: “What is the head and arm restraint stocks for?” The actor said that before and after the revolution, the local magistrates would administrate Ecclesiastical Law (Romans 13).

She went on to tell us that crime was not tolerated in the least bit by the colonies because they understood the price paid to establish their freedoms (John 15:13). The stocks were used for those who would lie or commit the act of perjury (lie under oath, Revelation 21:8).

The criminal would be punished by being thrown in jail for up to six months (1 John 3:4). A fine would have to be paid, and this all took place after their head and hands were placed in the stocks as a means of public punishment.

First, they would bind them, take the criminal’s ear and nail it with a long nail to the stock for one hour. After that hour was up, they would then go to the other side and nail the other ear to the stock for one hour.

When removing the nails, they would often slit the ear completely off, marking the offender so other colonies, as well as other cities or states, would understand that the person was not to be trusted. Thus, they fulfilled the true definition of “Earmark.”

She ended with saying that it was to teach the person to repent before God so he would not end up in hell (Matthew 3:2; Leviticus 19:17).

Can you imagine the “earmarks” we would see today in the American church, government or in businesses if these laws were still enforced? How they loved their freedoms by demonstrating zero tolerance for crime (Deuteronomy 23:14).

Dean seems to be longing for such severe punishment for lying, but given his lengthy record of perjurious falsehoods, he'd better be praying for mercy if he were ever subjected to such a system.

MRC Transgender Freakout Watch
Topic: Media Research Center

The mere idea of transgenders, for some reason, is a berzerk button at the Media Research Center, particular for MRC official Tim Graham. And Graham does his freakout thing once again in a March 25 NewsBustsers post:

The PBS NewsHour is nothing if not sensitive to the “LGBT community.” A Thursday night segment drew the online headline “How North Carolina signed a bill dubbed the most anti-LGBT law in the U.S.” Or, as the gay-left site Towleroad gushed over it, “PBS News Hour Takes Apart North Carolina’s Anti-LGBT Law: WATCH”.

The PBS anchor on this story was John Yang, an openly gay journalist who gave advice about being “Out on the Air” at last year’s convention of the activist National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association.  The guests were Time Warner Cable reporter Loretta Boniti and Dominic Holden, “national LGBT reporter for BuzzFeed news.”

Those opposed to say, letting men who “identify” as female use the ladies restroom, were barely noticed.

[...]

Notice how PBS uses all the usual leftist lingo. Their progressive groups are merely “legal rights groups” fighting for what Yang called an “anti-discrimination law” that “expanded protections for LGBTQ people, including letting transgender people choose which bathroom to use.”

[...]

Yang kept the PC lingo going asking if this is the new frontier for “LGBTQ rights.” The PC crowd may faint: He left out “Intersex” and “Asexual”! Why can't PBS go all the way to LGBTQIA?

Graham goes on to deny the discredited right-wing myth that sexual predators will exploit transgender non-discrimination laws to sneak into women's restrooms ... by citing alleged examples from an anti-abortion website and one he claims is "feminist-activist" but actually smears transgenders as "Transjacktivists." And actually, the anti-abortion website's example (involving a convicted sex offender who pretended to be transgender sexually assaulting women) is irrelevant to the issue at hand since it involved a homeless shelter, not a public restroom, and the incidents took place before a transgender accommodation law was passed. The anti-abortion website's article is strategically vague about the timing of the incident vis-a-vis the accommodation law.

Presumably, the kind of person Graham would like to voice the right wing's anti-transgender agenda on NPR and elsewhere is MRC intern Daniel Garza, who goes on the kind of anti-LGBT tirade that shows him to be prime MRC employment material in a March 28 post:

A time-tested, common-sense civic and cultural norm is currently under direct assault. Specifically, the inherent right to gender privacy, that fittingly separates men and women when it comes to access to public restrooms, has become the latest battlefield of the left.

Not surprisingly, Fusion, the hyper-left sister network of Univision, has gone off the deep end in support of this latest manifestation of the LGBTQRSTUVXYZ (so many letters it’s impossible to keep up so we might as well just list them all) agenda that it’s become a borderline obsession.

In recent days, Fusion has given favorable attention to subjects including but not limited to: a queer-friendly sex-ed guide, a celebration of a trans woman resisting police, San Francisco banning city employees from going to North Carolina and an article about a supermarket’s gender-neutral restrooms.

Most prominently though, has been Fusion’s constant push for acceptance of Trans people being able to decide what restroom they want to use.

Those who are trying to stand in the way of this latest offensive point out there is much at stake in the outcome of this battle. Not only is the right to privacy and decency for women and girls being threatened, but also a basic right to feel ostensibly safe in public areas, since the potential for more sexual assaults and sexual harassment would no doubt increase.

[...]

Where is such madness taking us, and where do we draw the line? For even more convoluted complexity you only need to take a look at nonbinary.org. Genders there include “faegender”, which is "When an individual’s gender changes with the seasons, equinoxes, and moon phases." As well as “kronosgender” described as “where you are a different gender at certain times of the day” and of course, “condigender”, where you basically only feel like a boy or girl under specific circumstances.

On second thought, maybe you better just hold it next time you need to use a public restroom.

In addition to Garza's entire rant being hateful and silly -- anyone who spouts "LGBTQRSTUVXYZ" as a way to mock those who do not conform to right-wing gender norms is simply interested in having a serious conversation on the subject -- Garza's description of  Fusion as "hyper-left" is just as meaningless; after all, the MRC thinks simply donating money to Democrats makes you "ultra-liberal," so its ideological scale is highly defective.

WND Repeats Fringe Right-Wing Group's Anti-LGBT Attack
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Cheryl Chumley dutifully transcribes in her March 23 WorldNetDaily article:

The American College of Pediatricians has issued a statement entitled “Gender ideology harms children,” pressing educators and lawmakers alike to resist embracing the agenda that’s been advanced by the LGBT movement – that encouraging gender transitions among children is acceptable medical practice.

The organization said the trend toward gender transitioning is tantamount to “child abuse.”

It wrote: “The [ACP] urges educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex. Facts – not ideology – determine reality.”

The group then ran down a list of facts that have been confused or overlooked in the policy discussions on transgender issues.

As CNSNews.com's Penny Starr also failed to do in her article on the group's claims, Chumley fails to mention that the American College of Pediatricians is a fringe right-wing group with a couple hundred members at most and should not be confused with the much larger, more legitimate American Academy of Pediatrics.

Chumley, like Starr, also fails to include the view of the legitimate medical establishment of the fringe group's anti-LGBT views, despite her boss Joseph Farah's self-proclaimed insistence that "WND reporters and editors are always encouraged and required to seek out multiple sources and contrary viewpoints in news articles." Instead, Chumley quotes her other boss, David Kupelian, trying to boost the fringe medical organization's credibility by claiming that "It’s great when an organization of medical professionals dares to defy political correctness and boldly stands up for truth and common sense" and ranting that "most of the medical associations in the U.S. have been infiltrated and taken over by the hard left."

Once again, WND's bid to add "real" reporters like Chumley and Douglas Ernst does not appear to be doing anything to help WND's subterranean levels of credibility.

MRC Denounces Media Coverage of Cruz 'Tabloid Smear' -- But Demanded Media Coverage of Tabloid Story on Edwards
Topic: Media Research Center

In a March 25 NewsBusters item, Media Research Center research director Rich Noyes complained: "Despite the complete lack of any evidence, and only unequivocal denials from women named in the story, a story based on what even the National Enquirer itself labeled only as 'rumors' against GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz found its way onto both the ABC and NBC evening newscasts on Friday." Noyes followed up the next day with more complaints about coverage of thte story, for which he again pointed out "there is still no on-the-record source or any other supporting evidence."

That's a big change from 2008, when the MRC demanded coverage of another tabloid story when it was similarly unsubstantiated.

As we noted at the time, the MRC's Tim Graham huffed that the media was ignoring the story of John Edwards having an affair (at a time when only the Enquirer had advanced it, the current state of the Cruz story), complaining that the media more quickly jumped on the Larry Craig airport restroom toe-tapping scandal -- which, unlike the Edwards story, involved an actual guilty plea in court to an actual criminal charge. Other NewsBusters bloggers complained that one news outlet banned its bloggers from repeating the story, and another whined about the "MSM wall of silence."

And even when the Edwards story was proven to be true after all, MRC chief Brent Bozell still ranted that the story didn't get the play of Republican scandals.

So this is the MRC's chance to  prove it doesn't have a double standard: It should promote the Cruz affair story as much as it demanded the so-called MSM promote the John Edwards affair story. Alas, at this writing the story is nowhere to be found on the front page of MRC's "news" outlet, CNSNews.com.

So, it appears the MRC is satisfied with hypocritical ranting instead of honesty.

A Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory So Nice, Cruz Says It (And MRC Quotes Him Saying It) Twice
Topic: Media Research Center

Republican presidential candidate and Senator Ted Cruz (Tex.) sat for an interview with CBS’s John Dickerson Friday afternoon in National Harbor, Maryland that aired on Face the Nation. Cruz lambasted the media for “hav[ing] a coronation” of Donald Trump as the GOP nominee so he could be viciously defeated by Hillary Clinton in November.

While discussing the possibility of a brokered Republican National Convention, Cruz pointed to how he’s remained close to Trump in the delegate count but at the same time, “the media wants to just have a coronation” of Trump “because the media knows Donald can't win the general, that Hillary would wallop him.”

-- Curtis Houck, March 6 MRC NewsBusters post

During his Super Tuesday election speech, Ted Cruz called out the media as Donald Trump surrogates, hitting them for the disparity in coverage given to Trump. Talking to supporters, Cruz denounced, “The mainstream media, the network suits who make the decisions, want Donald Trump as the Republican nominee.”

He added, “That's why they've given him hundreds of millions in free advertising because they are partisan Democrats ready for Hillary and they know that Donald may be the one person on the face of the Earth that Hillary Clinton can beat in the general election.” 

-- Scott Whitlock, March 15 MRC NewsBusters post

The idea that the "liberal media" is deliberately colluding to make Trump the Republican nominee so he'll be beaten by Hillary in November is a conspiracy promulgated by the Media Research Center.

At NewsBusters, Donating to Dems Makes You 'Ultra Liberal'
Topic: NewsBusters

The headline of P.J. Gladnick's Feb. 26 NewsBusters post blared, "New Republic Sold to Ultra Liberal Banking Heir Winthrop McCormack." In it, Gladnick ranted that "Winthrop McCormack is very reliably far left. A check of his political donations shows his money flows to far left causes and politicians with the safe (D) by their names."

As evidence of McCormack's "far left" leanings, Gladnick cites a newspaper article noting that he has "given at least $1.1 million to party candidates and groups associated with the Democrats since 2003, according to Open Secrets, the campaign finance watchdog site. On top of that, he also gave $1 million to an independent group in 2004 that sought to boost Democratic turnout."

No, really. That's it.

Apparently, simply donating money to Democrats makes you "ultra liberal" and "far left" as far as Gladnick and NewsBusters are concerned.

Mychal Massie Thesaurus Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Mychal Massie did some serious plundering of his thesaurus -- as he's wont to do -- for his March 21 WorldNetDaily column, letting loose with this bit of excess verbiage:

Today morally bankrupt calumniators controlled from the shadows by a camarilla of satanic marplots lead America. Diocletian was a more honorable man than those who are viewed as leaders today.

Massie even does a callback to this syllable dump later in the column: "In that I referenced Diocletian, I would be remiss if I omitted the lack of leadership in churches today as being synonymous with those in the church of Pergamum."

The other main feature of a Massie column aside from thesaurus-plundering is Obama derangement, and he delivers on that too: "Viewing Obama as anything other than “leader” in word only is akin to calling Idi Amin or Kim Jong-un generals because they plastered their chests with candy-machine medals."

Massie also claimed that "Obama gave his tacit stamp of approval when his then attorney general, Eric Holder, refused to indict members of the New Black Panther Party for one of the most flagrant acts of voter intimidation in over 40 years." In fact, as we've previously noted, nobody has ever come forward to say they were intimidated by the New Black Panthers standing outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008, which makes Massie look rather lucricrous for calling it "one of the most flagrant acts of voter intimidation in over 40 years."

We don't recall Massie being similarly outraged over a different group of armed people standing outside a polling place. But then, this was a group of anti-immigration "Minutemen."

NewsBusters' Gwinn Thinks Plan B Equals 'Killing A Baby'
Topic: NewsBusters

NewsBusters' Dylan Gwinn is not the sharpest knife in the media-criticism drawer -- he tends to let his right-wing talking points get ahead of the facts. This time, he gets medicine wrong in a March 21 post ranting about a TV show that broached the subject of the morning-after pill Plan B, which he declares is "killing a baby":

The lie, of course, is that Plan B is not killing a baby.

Despite what pro-Plan B/pro-abortion activists will claim, Plan B alters the endometrium, preventing the fertilized egg from attaching to the woman’s womb. Thus, basically starving the egg from getting the vital nutrients it needs to survive.

Gwinn seems not to know the difference between a fertilized egg and a fully-formed baby, which he suggests is being "killed" by the taking of said pill.

Also, he doesn't know how Plan B typically works. As we've pointed out, the main way it works is by preventing fertilization in the first place. It's also unclear whether Plan B actually alters the endometrium, preventing a fertilized egg from implanting. Medical experts have noted if that actually occured, the pill's success rate would be higher.

Further, it's believed that between 60 and 80 percent of fertilized eggs never implant, meaning that a lot of "babies" are already being "killed" through natural processes (or by God, whichever you prefer). 

Will Gwinn get similarly upset by that?

Carl Gallups Busted For Promoting Another Conspiracy Theory; WND In Cleanup Mode Again
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Last year, WorldNetDaily had to clean up after right-wing pastor, WND author, Donald Trump supporter and birther Carl Gallups after his promulgating the idea that President Obama is the Antichrist became a liability. Now Gallups has gotten in trouble again, and it's time for another (unbylined) bailout article:

Pastor, former law enforcement officer and talk show host Carl Gallups is firing back at an international smear campaign by liberal media outlets around the world claiming he denied the Sandy Hook school shooting took place.

“I am not a Sandy Hook ‘truther,'” Gallups told WND.

And he said people should consider the source and possible motive. After all, he’s endorsed GOP presidential primary front-runner Donald Trump, and a condemn-by-association strategy could be in play.

So what did Gallups do? From the article:

Gallups explained the media was focusing on an interview he did with a man who claimed a picture of the father of one of the victims looked remarkably similar to a picture of one of the FBI agents at the scene. It was in that context, Gallups said, he referred to Sandy Hook as a “hoax,” giving the perspective of his guest.

“I can state, right now, that not only have I never said categorically that the Sandy Hook tragedy is a complete fabrication or hoax, right now, I’m denying that it was a hoax,” Gallups said.

“That doesn’t prevent me from asking questions. That doesn’t prevent me from saying, ‘Here’s a part of that whole scenario that is odd.’ When I’m behind that microphone interviewing people, I’m a radio host and an investigative reporter and so I make no apologies for asking those questions.”

As a former law enforcement officer, Gallups said he is used to examining all aspects of a case. He said several aspects of the case in Sandy Hook were unusual in his own professional experience. However, he does not deny the attacks took place, nor does he say it was simply made up.

“No one will find anywhere in writing or any audio clip taken in context, that I have ever claimed Sandy Hook is a complete hoax from top to bottom,” Gallups told WND. “I have always said, from the beginning, as many people were saying, that there are many things about the case that are strange."

As he did with the Obama Antichrist claim, he's complaining because he got busted for promoting a crazy conspiracy theory.

The WND article is marvelously vague on what exactly Gallups did, since it fails to link to the interview in question. In fact, he did much more than conduct an interview; Gallup's PPSIMMONS website posted at least five articles by the pseudonymous "Barry Soetoro, Esq." claiming the Sandy Hook massacre was a "gun-grab HOAX." He followed that up with the interview with "Soetoro" in which he clearly agrees with with the conspiracy theory and doesn't challenge it. Media Matters points out that Gallups has also said that the evidence showing Sandy Hook was staged is "indisputable" and a "smoking gun" and that that the whole thing "stinks to high heaven."

So, yes, Gallups did say Sandy Hook was made up, making his denial a lie. If you are uncritically promoting the idea that Sandy Hook was a hoax, you are, in fact, a hoaxster.

Naturally, Gallups tries to build a conspiracy theory out of being busted for promoting a conspiracy theory:

“I’m a small cog in the wheel but I am a cog,” Gallups said. “So they went after me. What they are trying to do now is put pressure on him [Trump] to denounce me, like I’m some David Duke kind of guy.”

Gallups believes there is an agenda at work.

“As I said to the one reporter who bothered to interview me, ‘Does you interviewing me make you a Sandy Hook truther?'” Gallups asked rhetorically.

Despite being the subject of a deeply hostile international media campaign, Gallups said he is undaunted.

“It truly doesn’t bother me on a personal level and I won’t back down,” he said. “Consider the source – we are dealing with liberal media sources trying to marginalize an evangelical pastor and Donald Trump. Who can possibly say they are surprised?

“It’s extremely disappointing because none of those people bothered to call me and ask me what I thought about Sandy Hook or whatever else they wanted to talk about. They just made up a narrative because they couldn’t find anything else and they wanted it to stick.”

There's also one more thing this article throws in that, while trying to build Gallups' credibility, actually does the opposite:

Gallups recently met with fellow lawman and Trump supporter Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff. At the meeting, he was sworn in as a “Special Deputy for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.”

Gallups says he takes his past as a law enforcement officer very seriously and uses his experience to inform everything he says.

His experiences are part of the reason Gallups has endorsed Trump.

Huh? Actually, that "special deputy" designation is Arpaio's reward to Gallups for being a birther dead-ender. He regularly hosts birther "cold case posse" Mike Zullo on his little radio show to further the idea that the evidence proving once and for all that Obama is a Muslim from Kenya (or something) will be released any day now.

This deputization occured earlier this month, and coincided with a meeting with Arpaio, where he got just enough to keep the birther propaganda machine going. As Dr. Conspiracy notes, it's likely more of the same nothing that's been promulgated by Arpaio, Zullo and Gallups for years.

Now that WND has forsaken birtherism to support Ted Cruz, Gallups is, after Donald Trump, probably the most prominent active birther. Funny that WND doesn't want to tell its readers about that.

CNS Promotes Fringe, Foreign Medical Groups' Anti-Gay Attacks
Topic: CNSNews.com

Penny Starr writes in a March 16 CNSNews.com article:

The American College of Pediatricians issued a position statement last month entitled “Gender Ideology Harms Children,” which will be followed by a peer-reviewed statement on the subject that’s expected to be released by summer, the college told CNSNews.com.

“The American College of Pediatricians urges educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex,” the statement issued on Feb. 2 stated. “Facts – not ideology – determine reality.”

The statement – written by Dr. Michelle A. Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians, Dr. Quentin Van Meter, vice president of the American College of Pediatricians and a pediatric endocrinologist, and Dr. Paul McHugh, university distinguished service professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and the former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital – cites eight reasons why “gender ideology” instead of treatment based on biological facts is harmful to children.

The presence of non-pediatrictian McHugh in this statement is a huge red flag that this is more of a political statement than a medical one. McHugh --  whose anti-transgender rantings CNS managing editor Michael W. Chapman has promoted -- is an old man trading on his former affiliation with Johns Hopkins to create credibility on the right for his out-of-the-medical-mainstream anti-gay beliefs.

Starr waits until the end to quote the mission statement of the American College of Pediatricians, which also reveals it to be a political organization masquerading as a medical one, declaring that "we recognize the basic father-mother family unit, within the context of marriage, to be the optimal setting for childhood development."

But Starr doesn't mention that the group is a bit of a sham. Hemant Mehta writes that the group has maybe a couple hundred members and banks on confusion with the much larger -- and legitimate -- American Academy of Pediatrics.

Needless to say, Starr doesn't bother to talk with any actual peditricians who might offer an opposing view -- because balanced "news" articles are not what she's into writing.

This isn't even the only recent anti-gay attack on CNS invoking a so-called medical organization. A March 18 article by Chapman highlights how "The Indonesian Psychiatric Association (IPA) has officially announced that homosexuals and bisexuals are 'people with psychiatric problems,' and that transgender people have 'mental disorders,' conditions that can be treated."

'Chapman didn't explain why this group's alleged expertise should be trusted, but hetried to boost the group's credibility by claiming "The announcement was reported in several media outlets, including The Jakarta Post, The Guardian, and The Christian Post."

But Chapman made sure not to mention that the Guardian also pointed out that "For almost half a century, the global medical profession’s consensus is that homosexuality is a healthy variation of sexual orientation. The medical community also rejects the idea that transgender people suffer from a mental health disorder."

Chapman also failed to mention that, according to the Guardian, Human Rights Watch "had documented arbitrary arrests, harassment, threats, and violence against LGBT people in Indonesia this year" and that it called on the Indonesian government to "take a leadership position by stating publicly that the rights of all Indonesians need to be respected, including those of LGBT people, and by committing to reforms that protect instead of persecute this marginalised minority."

The fact that CNS must resort to fringe and foreign "medical" groups to find backing for its anti-gay agenda show just how far out of the mainstream it has become.

Joseph Farah's Award Fail
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Back in December, as part of its bid to create some semblence of credibility, WorldNetDaily promoted the then-upcoming Western Conservative Conference, which was not only to be graced by Donald Trump, but was also going to be the place where "WND founder and CEO Joseph Farah will receive the Western Center for Journalism’s Hero of Freedom Award during a dinner gala celebrating the 25th anniversary of Farah’s founding of the WCJ." Not only that, "Rush Limbaugh has been invited to present the award." The conference was to be co-hosted by Floyd Brown, who now heads the Farah-founded Western Journalism Center, making this award a total logrolling effort.

The conference was scheduled for last weekend, but we saw hide nor hair of Farah being given this sad little award at WND. We wondered what happened.

Turns out it didn't happen at all -- the award, or the conference itself.

The conference's website features a notification that "Due to an unfortunate medical issue we are not able to go forward with the Western Conservative Conference on March 18–19t, [sic] 2016." The website does not explain whose "unfortunate medical issue" caused the conference's cancellation, or how a single illness could derail a conference that promised not only the star power of Trump, Farah and Limbaugh but "former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., former NRA president Sandy Froman, and Scottie Nell Hughes of the Tea Party News Network."

The vagueness of the announcement suggests that the conference's cancellation was actually due to a lack of people signing up to take part and/or the backing out of one or more of the headliners. Farah probably isn't one of them since he likely really wanted that silly little award, no matter how incestuous.

Instead, Farah's hands are empty, and WND is as discredited as ever.

NEW ARTICLE: The Semi-Birthers At The MRC
Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center writers didn't exactly support Obama birtherism, but they didn't exactly denounce it either. Only when eligibility questions popped up around Ted Cruz did the MRC get passionate on the subject. Read more >>

WND Strangely Trying to Shield Michele Bachmann From 'Obama Is The Antichrist' Claim
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WND has renounced birtherism (albeit for politically expedient reasons). What deeply held belief will it renounce next (for politically expedient reasons)?

A March 17 WND article by Bob Unruh gives us the answer:

Multiple headlines on YouTube claim former Rep. Michele Bachmann believes Barack Obama is the Antichrist.

There’s “Michele Bachmann warns Obama will reveal he’s the Antichrist.”

The popular (7,000 views) “Lunatic Bachmann Says Obama Is About To Reveal Himself As Anti-Christ.”

And “Michele Bachmann WARNS The ANTICHRIST Will Take Over UN (OBAMA’S REAL AGENDA).”

However, the former lawmaker from Minnesota told WND, “I did not say President Obama is the Antichrist, nor did I infer that he is.”

Bachmann said she’s asked YouTube to take down the inaccurate statements but has not received a response.

[...]

Politicians expect criticism of their positions and statements, but now, as a former politician, Bachmann says she is just trying to get YouTube to halt the outright fabrications.

The claim that she identified Obama as the Antichrist, she said, is beyond the pale.

“I think President Obama has done more to hurt our nation than any other American president in our nation’s history. He changed world history by enabling Iran, the world’s chief sponsor of anti-Israel/anti-American terrorism, to quickly get a nuclear bomb and the means to deliver it to the U.S.,” she said.

“Barack Obama’s legacy is the establishment of lawlessness in the United States. He has deeply damaged both the American and global economies. He has deliberately stoked hatred between people based upon the color of their skin.

“In fact it is difficult to identify any positive legacy he will leave the American people. That being said, I do not believe Obama is the Antichrist,” she told WND.

Unruh doesn't mention that the idea of Obama being the Antichrist was popularized by WND itself. It has promoted columnists Hal Lindsey and Joel Richardson llinking Obama with the Antichrist, as well as a video made by Carl Gallups (then hiding behind his PPSimmons pseudonym) claiming that the Bible actually tells us that Obama is the Antichrist.

Last August, WND gave Gallups a platform to walk things back -- he insists that he really doesn't believe Obama is the Antichrist, only an antichrist, and he again refused to apologize for making the video, calling it "thought-provoking."

Unruh doesn't explain why this particular accusation is now ideological poison at WND -- it's been trying to distance itself from the claim it once enthusiastically promoted for a while now. And he also doesn't explain why the statements Bachmann did make on the subject, while not explicitly claiming Obama is the Antichrist, should not be interpreted as suggesting that.

Unruh huffed that "One would have to make a number of unsupported assumptions to conclude that a statement by host Eric Barger indicated that." But he's fuzzy on the origin of the claim, and he fails to link to the Raw Story article on Bachmann's interview with radio hosts Barger and Jan Markell he blames for helping to forward the story.

In it, Bachmann talks with Barger and Markell about a questionable report claiming that Obama wants to become secretary-general of the United Nations after leaving office. Raw Story continues:

“Obama would only go into an empowered, powerful UN, powerful enough to see the United States come under the UN’s authority,” Bachmann said.

[...]

Markell found the reporting credible enough to form the basis of a wild conspiracy theory about Obama becoming “king of the world.”

“The whole idea of Obama being able to extend his presidency, even enhance it and expand it, I don’t think I need to say what I’m thinking because I think a lot of the listeners are thinking the same thing, and we all are too, and as you shake your head you wonder what’s coming next,” Barger added.

The implication, of course, is that Obama is the biblical Antichrist — a suggestion Bachmann herself has made before.

Unruh also quotes Markell vouching for Bachmann's non-Antichrist-ness -- but he apparently failed to ask he why discussion of Obama being "king of the world" should not be interpreted as veiled talk of Obama being the Antichrist.

(And Unruh waits until near the end of his article to obliquely note that Markell co-wrote a WND-published book.)

It seems like Unruh's article is just another effort to rebuild WND's credibility by tamping down its well-earned reputation for Obama-hate and conspiracy theories. And it's done as dishonestly as we've come to expect from WND.

MRC Mocks Idea That Transgenders For Cruz Is Like 'Jews For Hitler,' Ignores Cruz Hung Out With Pastor Who Wants To Kill Gays
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center got a bit of mileage out of "The View's" Joy Behar declaring that "Transgenders for Cruz is like Jews for Hitler":

Kristine Marsh complained that "The media’s attacks on presidential candidate Ted Cruz have been unprecedented, with comparisons to Nazis, the KKK, even a major newspaper using an image of a gun pointed towards his head."

The Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard promoted the clip in his weekly MRC-derived column, featuring this quote from MRC VP of research Brent Baker: "Classic example of excessive hyperbole exposing the prejudice of a media personality. So, since Ted Cruz is not an advocate for the specific rights and new laws transgender activists want imposed, that means he's planning a transgender Holocaust? Besides, I thought it was Trump who is the new Hitler according the media?"

But Marsh, Bedard and Baker all ignore evidence that Behar's statement might not be as hyperbolic as it seems. All they have to do is look at the anti-LGBT sentiments of the people who are supporting Cruz.

Last November, Cruz and other GOP presidential candidates attended a forum hosted by right-wing pastor Kevin Swanson who used said forum to advocate for executing gays. As we noted at the time, the MRC completely ignored Swanson's declaration, and it was not until three months later that Cruz bothered to try and distance himself from Swanson's remarks.

Cruz has aalso accumulated the endorsements of numerous anti-LGBT activists, including Sandy Rios and Linda Harvey.

Perhaps Marsh, Bedard and Baker can explain why an LGBT person would want to vote for someone who hangs out with such folks, at least one of whom has advocated their execution -- and why they shouldn't fear for their lives if Cruz is elected.