When reports surfaced of a 10-year-old girl in Ohio who had been raped but the extreme anti-abortion laws in the state proved to be so onerous that she was forced to go to Indiana to undergo the procedure, the Media Research Center -- particularly executive Tim Graham -- tried to throw shade at the claim. In a July 4 post, Graham complained that Republican Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, where abortion is similarly effectively illegal, "was harassed to support an abortion for a raped 10-year-old girl in Ohio." He cheered that Noem clung to approved anti-abortion narratives and that "Noem focused on the predator and then expressed the pro-life position that abortion after rape is adding a tragedy to a tragedy."

After President Biden referenced the story, Graham returned with a July 10 post that sought to portray it as a hoax and attacking Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler for not immediately calling Biden a liar after being unable to immediately substantiate the claim:

This story was "too good to check" for the liberal media -- a ten-year-old rape victim in Ohio having to travel to Indiana to get an abortion. On Saturday, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler noticed it when Joe Biden used it. "This is the account of a one-source story that quickly went viral around the world — and into the talking points of the president."

[...]

Kessler underlined "There is no indication that the newspaper made other attempts to confirm her account. The story’s lead reporter, Shari Rudavsky, did not respond to a query asking whether additional sourcing was obtained." The Star put out a lame statement that "the facts and sources...are clear." 

That's not transparency! That doesn't build confidence in newspapers! Kessler noted this one-source anecdote was treated as fact all over the globe, and he included CNN's Dana Bash.

[...]

If Donald Trump picked up a story like this, Kessler would assign Pinocchios. As usual, there were no Pinocchios for Biden, and his take on the "presidential imprimatur" on this possibly mythical event is so mild that you could interpret it as "Oh, it's a fact now."

We would remind Graham that he and his employer demanded that all media treat the Hunter Biden laptop story that surfaced before the 2020 presidential election as unimpeachable fact despite the fact that the laptop had not been independently verified by anyone outside of the pro-Trump activists who were pushing the story.

But the story was true after all -- a 10-year-old girl was raped. But because the alleged rapist is an undocumented immigrant, it suddenly became a story that could fit into the MRC's pile of stock right-wing narratives. So it changed the focus of the story on the perpetrator instead of the victim in a trio of posts on July 13 and 14:

• CBS & NBC Ignore 10-Year-Old Girl Raped by Illegal Alien
• CBS, NBC Omit Suspect Is Illegal Alien in Rape Case, Imply Ruling Will Cause More Teen Rapes
• GROSS: Twitter Omits Alleged Ohio Rapist Was an ‘Illegal Immigrant’

In that second article, Curtis Houck complained that CBS reporter Eliaine Quijano wanted to talk about things other than the alleged perpetrator's legal status: "Quijano cited '[t]he Indiana doctor who said she performed the abortion,' but skipped over how both her name (Caitlin Bernard) when mentioning the fact that she could face legal trouble for failing to report the rape to law enforcement." Houck didn't explain how Bernard's name was relevant to that particular telling of the story. And his allegation that Bernard "could face legal trouble for failing to report the rape to law enforcement" because it was reported the same day that, in fact, she did.

When the mother of the girl went on TV to defend the alleged rapist, the MRC found that more interesting as well.  Jorge Bonilla's eyes seemed to metaphorically light up at the prospect of more undocumented aliens he could disparage: "Based on that experience, I assess that: the mother's distressed defense of the rapist suggests she is also here illegally and fears deportation, the defendant is the family's sole source of income, there is a likelihood of other children in the home, and Mom is exposed to removal of the children under dependency proceedings (failure to protect). Kevin Tober followed with the usual MRC "non-right-wing media aren't covering angles beneficial to right-wing narratives" item, and Bonilla served up another post on the development.

Tober wrote up a post complaining that the girl being forced to go to another state to get an abortion was being held up as an example of post-Roe America: "Of course, this ignores the fact that Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost had previously stated the girl could’ve received an abortion under her unique circumstances." In fact, the Ohio law is so vaguely written that any doctor who performed an abortion could easily face criminal charges.

Graham spent his July 15 column whining that the story made the front page of USA Today; he didn't tell his readers he previously tried to portray it as a hoax. The next day, he was whining that conservatives were called out for trying to prove the story was a hoax, rehashing his previous complaints:

On Friday's PBS NewsHour, anchor William Brangham twisted around the horrible child rape in Ohio as something the Republicans tried to "make hay" of, somehow not a story that Democrats and the liberal media were the first to exploit. 

This began as a single-source story in the Indianapolis Star, and CNN's Dana Bash threw it in the face of Gov. Kristi Noem and tried to intimidate her about allowing the murder of a baby after rape. When Washington Post "Fact Checker" Glenn Kessler found the Star reporter and her abortionist source didn't want to talk, Republicans "made hay" of how the story might not be true. Then this controversy forced it to come out.

Graham did not apologize for doubting the story, nor did he admit he was one of the doubters. Alex Christy similarly whined in another July 16 post:

MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle hypocritically weaponized the case of a 10-year old girl who traveled from Ohio to Indiana to seek an abortion by declaring that it was actually conservatives who were “weaponizing this story” by not initially believing its veracity.

During a panel discussion, Ruhle expressed to former colleague and current Washington Post Live anchor Leigh Ann Caldwell, “the truth matters but only if you hear it. We say it all the time and I want our audience to understand this week, many, many people heard this awful, awful story in Ohio, a ten year old girl was raped and she had to flee to another state to seek abortion services. Why did she do that? Well, we all know, because Roe v. Wade was overturned.”

[...]

To help Ruhle and Caldwell, it was the left and the media that originally weaponized this story by asking Republicans to comment on the case even though they would still be called extremists even if they embraced rape and incest exceptions. It should also not be considered right-wing hackery to except journalists to do a better job confirming single-source stories before turning them into high-profile national narrative drivers, even if they ultimately end up being true.

Again: The MRC demanded that the Hunter Biden laptop story be promoted as stated from partisan right-wing campaign operatives without any independent verification.

Meanwhile, Jeffrey Lord served up his own bizarre spin on the story in a July 16 column claiming that it proved Donald Trump right when he smeared Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists: "In the zeal of both President Biden and his liberal media allies to target the repeal of Roe with the story of the 10 year old girl being raped, they are suddenly confronted by the fact that they have accidentally confirmed Trump’s point about some illegals crossing the border and, their background un-vetted, committing rape. Which is exactly what appears to have happened to that 10 year old girl."

According to the quote Lord himself cited, Trump didn't say "some" immigrants were rapists; he portrayed nearly all immigrants as criminals and rapists befor adding that "some, I assume, are good people."

Posted by Terry K. at 10:34 PM EDT

Updated: Sunday, September 18, 2022 3:25 PM EDT

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CNSNews.com has done its summer interns a disservice by letting them push fake news and partisan narratives instead of engaging in actual, fair-and-balanced joiurnalism. We saw this misuse again in a June 2 article by intern and "Investigative Journalism Fellow" Micky Wootten:

Attorney and former Ambassador C. Boyden Gray held a press briefing on the phone Wednesday to introduce a new lawsuit being filed against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over its claims that ivermectin is an ineffective treatment for COVID-19.

“Tomorrow we will be suing the FDA over its unlawful attempts to interfere with the practice of medicine, specifically, this crusade to halt the use of Ivermectin to treat COVID-19,” said Gray in a conference call with reporters. “This lawsuit is very important to preserve medical freedom and the doctor-patient relationship in the United States.”

[...]

Gray, former White House counsel to President George H.W. Bush and founding partner of Boyden Gray & Associates, is representing Drs. Mary Talley Bowden, Paul E. Marik, and Robert L. Apter, who have faced obstructions to their practice due to their promotion of Ivermectin as an effective COVID treatment.

The lawsuit was filed June 2 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, where one of the doctors being represented, Dr. Mary Bowden, resides. 

Transcribing a conference call is hardly "investigative journalism," and that's all Wootten has done here -- he couldn't even be bothered to reach out to the FDA for a response to the lawsuit or even to explain or link to the FDA's stance against ivermectin. And he certainly wasn't going to tell readers that studies claiming that ivermectin works tend to get retracted for shoddy data.

Wootten also failed to examine the background of the plaintiffs for his readers -- presumably to hide how they're not really the most credible people when it comes to medicine. He noted that Bowden "was derided by Houston Methodist Hospital and forced to resign her privileges there as a result,” suggesting it was only due to her ivermectin advocacy; in fact, Bowden reportedly told patients that she had done research suggesting "the vaccine is not working," then falsely suggested and then walked back a claim that Methodist was not treating unvaccinated patients.

Marik, meanwhile, is an anti-vaxxer like Bowden and runs an organization that is dedicated to promoting non-approved COVID treatments like ivermectin -- which has shown itself to be something of a grift; according to STAT News, Marik's group charge $90 for an online appointment to get an ivermectin prescription and as much as $1,650 to meet with the group's founders. (The co-founder of Marik's group, Pierre Kory, got COVID despite following his own ivermectin-centric protocol.) Marik has also published research papers promoting ivermectin that have been retracted.

Wootten also made sure to inject his employer's partisan arratives into the "news" article:

CNS News asked the three doctors if they thought the mainstream media played any role in perpetuating the narrative against ivermectin.

According to Dr. Marik, “the mainstream media are responsible for perpetuating this misinformation and disinformation that has originated from the FDA,” which he attributes to the fact that the media “receive most of their advertising revenue from big pharma.”

Since Wootten made no effort to defend ivermectin as effective refused to debunk (let alone acknowledge) anything the FDA has published on it, there's no possible basis for Marik to attack accurate reporting on the ineffectiveness of ivermection as "misinformation and disinformation."

We've aready caught Wootten not living up to his title as "Investigative Journalism Fellow" when he uncritically repeated Tucker Carlson denying that the suicide deaths of law enforcement officers after the Capitol riot cannot be blamed on the riot when, in fact, the death of at least one officer has been ruled a line-of-duty death stemming from the injuries he received that day. Whatever CNS is teaching its interns to do, it ain't journalism.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:49 AM EDT

Updated: Sunday, July 31, 2022 11:55 AM EDT

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The Media Research Center is incapable of unequivocally criticizing a fellow conservative -- any criticism just be couched in whataboutism to push a narrative of equivalence with Democrats, no matter how foul the deed alleged. Case in point: Eric Greitens, former Missouri governor and current Republican candidate for a Senate seat in the state. We've already documented how Newsmax has tried to rehabilitate Greitens (with the help of columnist Bernard Kerik) despite the fact that he was forced to resign as governor over campaign finance improprieties and, more disturbing, an abusive sexual affair with shades of blackmail.

But in April, Greitens' ex-wife came forward with new accusations of domestic abuise -- something that caused even Newsmax to back off him. Meanwhile, Clay Waters rushed to play whataboutism in sn April 19 post:

New York Times political reporter Jonathan Weisman again singled out Republicans as solely to blame for some trait that is actually a bipartisan sin. Last month, Weisman singled out alleged support by GOP extremists for Russia against Ukraine.

In his Saturday report "As G.O.P. Candidates Face Accusations, Rivals Tread Carefully,” Weisman began with the sordid case of former Republican Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens and new allegations of domestic violence.

[...]

The name “Bill Clinton” somehow was unmentioned, a Democrat president who notoriously escaped allegations of sexual harassment and rape thanks to a compliant press that willingly smeared and disappeared his accusers.

Waters further harped on Clinton: "Again, Bill Clinton was credibly accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick, and of sexual harassment by Paula Jones and Kathleen Willey." In fact, Broaddrick lacks credibility because she spent 17 years denying a rape occurred -- even testifying under oath to that effect -- before flip-flopping as part of Republican wars against Clinton.

When Greitens released an ad in June that effectively advocated violence against RINOs -- Republicans in name only, in far-right parlance -- most Republicans criticized him. The MRC did too ... but also played whataboutism.A June 21 post by Mark Finkelstein spent much more time criticizing a former far-right Republican for not being a Trump toady like him than he did criticizing Greitens:

Joe Walsh is a washed-up Illinois politician and a chameleon. He's gone from being a liberal Republican to a hardcore Tea Partier and ardent Trump supporter, to becoming so fiercely anti-Trump that in addition to voting for Joe Biden in 2020, Walsh even announced, as our Tim Graham has noted, that he would vote for a "socialist" over Trump.

Walsh lasted just one term in Congress. And his 2020 "campaign" for the GOP presidential nomination didn't even last half as long as Kamala Harris' fleeting, failed effort on the Dem side.

So why does CNN regularly invite this loudmouth non-entity onto its air? Because he can be counted on to trash Republicans. On this morning's New Day, co-host Brianna Keilar interviewed Walsh regarding a controversial TV ad from Eric Greitens, who is seeking the Republican nomination for US senator from Missouri.

The ad depicts an armed Greitens saying that he's going "RINO hunting," and calling on voters to "join the MAGA crew. Get a RINO hunting permit. There's no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn't expire until we save our country."

It's an appalling take after several years of political violence. But Walsh exploited Greitens' misdeed to smear Republicans as a whole.

[...]

Note: as you'll see in the chyron, presumably to give him some credibility, CNN disingenuously still touts Walsh as an "(R)" and a "Former Presidential Candidate." Walsh quit the Republican party more than two years ago. And someone who dropped out after getting about 300 votes in the caucuses in his neighboring state of Iowa, and whose campaign lasted about as long as the half-life of a gnat, can rightly be called a PCINO: Presidential Candidate In Name Only!

That's a highly unbalanced take. Nicholas Fondacaro served up a similarly unbalanced on the same day:

The leading “hot topic” for ABC’sThe Viewon Tuesday, was the disgusting campaign ad put out by Republican Missouri U.S. Senate candidate Eric Greitens where he and a group of gun-toting cosplay soldiers wanted to “hunt” RINOs. This naturally, led the cast to ignore the widespread condemnation from the right and insist the right thought it was “funny” and had become “the party of violence!”

Completely ignoring the assassination attempt against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh just two weeks ago by a leftist extremist, co-host Joy Behar began the discussion by declaring “the Republican Party has become the party of insurrection, revolt, and violence. And they don't make any bones about it anymore.”

And noting that the Democrats had their “DINOs” in the form of Senators Joe Manchin (WV) and Kristen Sinema (AZ), Behar outrageously suggested they’ve never had threats made against them from the left. “You don't see us threatening their lives, the Democrats are not the party of violence. [Republicans] have become the party of violence!” she shrieked.

In reality, was part of the uncivil media machine that encouraged the kind of activity that opened Kavanaugh to the attack. And Manchin and Sinema have indeed been the target of hostile confrontations.

Fondacaro eventually conceded that "Republican Lindsey Granger was in hand to school Behar on the fact that there has been widespread condemnation of Greitens, including long before this current run at elected office. Behar couldn’t believe the facts." But it's clear that thte MRC cares much more abouty playing whataboutism than serving up a substantive criticism of Greitens.

Indeed, the MRC's aim here is to pretend that Greitens' extremism isn't a substantial part of the conservative movement. Emma Schultz did just that in another June 21 post:

With the January 6 hearings well underway, the media and Democrats want to keep the focus on bashing the Republican Party and portraying them as an extremist party ahead of the midterm elections. So for Monday’s Don Lemon Tonight on CNN, Lemon and former Defense Secretary and Senator William Cohen added to the mix stating outright, that these people rely on violence and “write laws which advantage them to the great detriment of health, welfare, and safety of the American people.”

Referring to the Republicans supposedly “not condemning” a recent ad put out by Eric Greiten’s US Senate campaign encouraging voters to join in the fight for hunting RINOs (Republican in name only.)

Cohen went on to state that “candidates like these do not represent the best of this country,” for they “promote violence… promote lies, and dishonesty and dishonorable activity.” Completely ignoring the plethora of Republicans and Conservatives that have condemned Greitens.

[...]

Lemon himself has encouraged political violence himself, justifying the Black Lives Matter riots that took place over the summer of 2020, and promoting the Antifa terrorist group. Excusing the extreme violence at the time, Lemon described it as the “mechanism for a restructure of our country or for some sort of change.”

By that same definition, Schultz's boss, Brent Bozell, encoraged political violence by justifying the Capitol riot.

Meanwhile, Margaret Buckley couldn't even muster any criticism of Greitens' ad in her whataboutism take in a June 22 post:

The Democrat midterm gambit known as the House January 6 Committee held hearings Tuesday, spurring the host of MSNBC's Morning Joe to trash all Republicans on Tuesday morning. They used the desperate grab for attention by Republican Senate candidate Eric Greitens in Missouri as a way of trashing all Republicans and touting Democrats as the defenders of democracy. 

For context, Greitens thought that it would be a good idea to promote his candidacy by depicting himself going into a house armed with a gun and other men in tactical armor. You see, he was “RINO hunting.”  You can make your own conclusion about whether that tactic is going to work. But it works for MSNBC.

As always, co-host Joe Scarborough led the conversations by using their favorite F-word for Republicans: "Every Republican needs to call this out unless they want fascism to continue to rise in their party." Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson took it up a level higher by stating: “Yeah, Benito Mussolini would be proud. ” He even added that “this is not a legitimate political discourse, as the Republican Party might call it.”

[...]

However, the MSNBC show still missed the mark when critiquing the ad, especially when Scarborough stated that “Republicans don’t call it out.” These people are clearly failing to take a look at the bigger picture. The majority of people on the right do not condone ads like Greitens, and it has been criticized. And they are certainly not fascists. 

The way Scarborough and friends described it made it sound like that every Republican is like Greitens and hates democracy. And on a more hypocritical note, it seems like Scarborough has forgotten about all the violence committed by the oh-so peaceful left such as the assassination attempt on Justice Kavanaugh, and numerous attacks on churches and pro-life pregnancy centers. So, branding everyone on the right as violent is downright wrong and absurd.

Needless to say, Buckley didn't mention the anti-abortion movement's history of violence and murder.

Posted by Terry K. at 3:41 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, July 30, 2022 3:41 PM EDT

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In the midst of warning about vaguely defined things in "unknown territory" that night happen in the future in her June 24 WorldNetDaily column, Patride Lewis declared:

But ever since 2020 when governments across the entire globe united to forcibly lock down their populations, we've been veering into unknown territory. Or is it so unknown? Vaccine passports ("You're papers, please"), supply-chain disruptions, shortages of everything from fertilizer to baby formula, war in Europe, horrific weather extremes, electrical grid issues, civil tensions, riots, crop failures, avian flu, inflation, domestic terrorism from abortion radicals, diesel shortages … the list goes on, but you get the idea. People can handle one or two of these issues at a time, but all of them at once? Does that put us in unknown territory?

And these issues, let me remind you, are being presided over by one of the most incompetent administrations ever to darken the door of the White House. In fact, Biden is actually planning for the next pandemic as an excuse to seize more power.

Yes, apparently planning for the next pandemic -- which will happen eventually and is not a controversial thing to plan for -- by applying the lessons of the current one is apparently a bad thing, according to Lewis.

Her source for this was a post from something that used to be known as the Conservative Treehouse -- a peddler of far-right misinformation that was actually kicked off the WordPress blog platform for doing so -- but is not apparently now calling itself The Last Refuge featuring video clips of Biden saying he's requesting money to plan for response to the next pandemic. But the psudonymically-written post twisted the intent. It's introduced with this statement: "Earlier today, touting vaccines for babies and children 6months through 5 years of age, Joe Biden explained they needed more taxpayer money to give to pharmaceutical lobbyists to pay for vaccines and organize the next pandemic." We haven't watched the video, but we're pretty sure Biden said nothig about needing "more taxpayer money to give to pharmaceutical lobbyists."

A second video in the post was introduced by stating, "We The People are in an abusive relationship with Joe Biden’s government." Note that neither statement calls Biden president, presumably because they don't believe he was legally elected and are still in thrall to Donald Trump's lies about purported elecction fraud.

The rest of her column is paranoid prepper stuff like this: "All is NOT right in America and in many other places in the world. Something bad IS heading our way. In other words, it IS happening here. That's why people need to be ready to meet these challenges – physically, financially, and spiritually." About what you'd expect from someone who thinks Biden is sabotaging food manufacturing plants to turn Americans into socialists.

Posted by Terry K. at 10:44 AM EDT

Updated: Saturday, July 30, 2022 3:07 PM EDT

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The Media Research Center's hateful narrative on new White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is that she's an incompetent diversity hire, and Curtis Houck made sure to push it again in his biased writeup for the July 5 briefing, while again slobbering over Fox News' Peter Doocy for pushing right-wing talking points:

Holding her first press briefing since June 22, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre showed Tuesday that she hadn’t improved since her cringeworthy opening months in the top post. As part of that, she flailed when grilled by Fox’s Peter Doocy and Real Clear Politics’ Philip Wegmann over a 2018 voicemail from Hunter Biden’s laptop allegedly showing Joe Biden discussed business ventures with his son.

The now-President has repeatedly claimed he “never” discussed anything business-related with his son, so Doocy made sure to frame his question as one seeking comment not only about the voicemail, but the President having now been caught in a lie: “Why is there a voicemail of the President talking to his son about his overseas business dealings if the President has said he’s never spoken to his son about his overseas business dealings?”

As NewsBusters has reported, the liberal broadcast networks have completely ignored this bombshell.

Jean-Pierre replied that Biden’s position “stands,” but Doocy wasn’t having it. In turn, Jean-Pierre shut down and insisted she wouldn’t “talk about alleged materials from the laptop” in any capacity[.]

For the July 7 briefing, Houck had a meltdown over a non-right-wing reporter asking a reasonable question about diversity in hiring in the Biden administration -- which he screamed was "INSANE" in the headline -- before he got to the Doocy-fluffing: 

During Thursday’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre found herself facing a mountain of questions about WNBA star Brittney Griner’s unjustified detainment in Russia, but she saw plenty of others with some coming from the left on abortion and diversity and, of course, a helping of Peter Doocy.

Prior to Doocy Time, The Grio’s April Ryan fired off this insanity of a question concerning the vacancy at the top of the Secret Service:

Last question on the Secret Service director. Is equity and inclusion still a part of the President’s hiring practices when he looks at that spot because you have never had a Black man or someone — another color, I guess, be the head of that organization?

Jean-Pierre surprisingly didn’t bite, telling Ryan she won’t “get ahead of the process” even though “this is a President that prides on making sure that we have equity, that we have inclusion” and “an administration that looks like America.”

A few minutes later, Doocy began with gargantuan result out of the new Monmouth University poll:“Why do you think it is that 88 percent of people in this country polled by Monmouth think that the country is on the wrong track?” Jean-Pierre stuck to her cringeworthy talking points, insisting President Biden “understands what the American people are going through,” including the fact that “gas prices are high because of Putin's tax hike.”

After she insisted the White House has “a plan” while Republicans would rather “take away rights from the American people,” Doocy hit her with a reality check: “But do you think it's possible that your plans just is not popular with the American people right now?”

Jean-Pierre not only denied that’s the case, but went down the path of tone-deafness when she tried to simultaneously claim “[w]e understand what” “are feeling” even though “we are stronger economically than we have been in history.”

That anyone at the MRC thinks Griner's detention in Russia on dubious drug charges is "unjustified" is news to us. Houck might want to have a chat with the sports blogger he supervises, Jay Maxson, who is cheering how Griner is rotting in a disgusting Russian prison.

Scott Whitlock did the Doocy-fluffing honors in his writeup of the July 8 briefing:

Fox News journalist Peter Doocy and Karine Jean-Pierre went round and round on Friday as the White House Press Secretary repeatedly refused to condemn harassing Supreme Court justices, like Brett Kavanaugh, eating out at restaurants. At one point she just dismissed, “That is what a democracy is.”

Doocy started off with a fairly straight forward question: “Does the President think it’s appropriate for abortion-rights protesters to intimidate Supreme Court justices when they are out to eat? Like Brett Kavanaugh who had to sneak out of a steakhouse last night.” 

Jean-Pierre insisted that the White House is against “violence” and “intimidation.” She didn’t explain how hounding a justice out of a restaurant isn’t intimidation.

Houck didn't explain how Kavanaugh could have been "intimidated" by the protesters given that he never saw or heard them or that they did not threaten violence.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:34 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, August 1, 2022 12:34 AM EDT

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WorldNetDaily hates Muslims, and that hatred came to the fore again in a July 4 article by Joe Kovacs:

An author and reporter for a popular news site in Israel says "the Temple of the antichrist" already exists, and is standing right now amid Muslim structures on Jerusalem's Temple Mount.

The stunning claim comes from Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz, senior reporter for Israel365 News, who has just released a semi-fictionalized book titled "The Master of Return and the Eleventh Light," providing a "personal look inside the world of the ultra-Orthodox settlers and how they are doing intense personal spiritual work to bring the final redemption – and how the Arabs are murdering us for precisely that reason."

In an interview for the book, Berkowitz took direct aim at the end-times view many Christians hold.

"I hear the Christians talk about the antichrist and the fake Temple that will arise in the end of days," Berkowitz said.

"Christians used to believe this was the Vatican, which I can understand. Rome stole all the Temple vessels and the Vatican is patterned after the Temple. The Vatican and the Jewish Temple cannot coexist because the Vatican came to replace the Temple."

"What I find a little strange is that no Christian has ever suggested that the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa, which were built directly on top of the ruins of the Temple Jesus walked in, are the Temple of the antichrist. Judaism does not have a concept of the Temple of the antichrist, but to me, it seems pretty obvious that the Muslim structures are the Temple of the antichrist."

If you've been inculcated to hate Muslims in general and Arabs in particular, then yes, you will be likely to find a way to beliefe that a Muslim mosque is the "Temple of the antichrist."

Kovacs did not cite Berkowitz offering any factual information to back up his claim. Instead, he gave Berkowitz a platform to insist that, despite all the evidence presented, he's not "anti-Arab":

Asked if his book is anti-Arab, Berkowitz said: "Absolutely not. I don't think I wrote a single anti-Arab thing. They do murder Jews but I don't see Arabs as inherently evil or the source of Israel's troubles. People who are on the outside think that 'settlers' (I use that term grudgingly) hate Arabs and live where they do in order to have a constant supply of fresh Arab children to eat for breakfast.

"I lived in Gush Etzion for 15 years and I can assure you that every single Jew who lives there does so at great personal expense for one reason; they love the God of Israel. That is the message of the book and I think that is the aspect of Israel that the media refuse to present. People who support Palestinians don't care how much suffering they bring to the Palestinians. But they absolutely oppose the Bible and the possibility that God is keeping his covenant with the children of Jacob."

Kovacs also let Berkowitz whine that "other authors are having their works dismissed by publishers if they mention Jews suffering from Arab terrorism, not going along with the narrative of Palestinians suffering under the 'occupation.'"

At no point did Kovacs talk to anyone else to offer a more realistic and less Islamophobic view of events in Israel or Berkowitz's hateful worldview.

Posted by Terry K. at 3:47 PM EDT

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In May, the uber-Catholics at CNSNews.com cheered when a bishop denied her Communion over her refusal to impose her Catholic faith on the entire country by outlawing abortion. Whwen Pelosi went to the Vatican and met with Pope Francis, they had a little meltdown.

It was foreshadowed in a June 16 article in which intern Janey Olohan was dispatched to Pelosi's weekly press confrenece to ask her a well-rehearsed right-wing gotcha question: "St. John Paul II said in Evangelium Vitae that abortion is murder. Pope Francis told the Pontifical Academy for Life that abortion is 'truly murder.' Do you agree with St. John Paul II and Pope Francis that abortion is murder?" Pelosi knew better than to play along with a clearly biased reporter:

Pelosi replied: "What I agree on is that whatever I believe or agree with the popes on is not necessarily what public policy should be in the United States, as people make their own judgments, honor their own responsibilities, and tend to the needs of their families."

An anonymously written June 29 article reported on the visit and its purported hypocrisy:

Pope Francis met today at the Vatican with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) and her husband Paul Pelosi, just two days after the speaker had publicly declared her commitment to pushing Congress to enact legislation “to enshrine Roe v. Wade into the law of the land.”

The Supreme Court last Friday released its opinion in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health, which declared that there is no federal constitutional right to abortion and that it is, therefore, up to the states to determine their own abortion laws.

On Monday, Pelosi released a “dear colleague” letter she had sent to other Democrats in the House of Representatives that day. The letter expressed her views on how the House should respond to the Dobbs decision.

“Our Caucus has been exploring avenues to protect the health and freedom of American women,” said Pelosi.

“Among them,” she said, “is legislation that: …Once again passes the Women’s Health Protection Act: landmark legislation to enshrine Roe v. Wade into the law of the land.”

Dishonest Catholic and right-wing ragebot Bill Donohue vented his spleen in a column the same day, pretending to be aghast that Pelosi receive Communion at the Vatican:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who rejects the Catholic Church's teachings on abortion, marriage, and sexuality, received Holy Communion on June 29 at a papal Mass in St. Peter's Basilica. The pope was in attendance, but did not give out Communion.

Pelosi's stunt was done to undercut her bishop, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone: he has told her not to present herself for Communion, citing her lust for abortion rights.

Some will blame the Vatican for what happened; others will blame Pelosi; still others will blame Cordileone. There is only one person to blame — Pelosi.

[...]

Pelosi waiting in line to receive Communion is akin to a murderer waiting in line to pay his respects to his victim at a Catholic wake. The analogy is poignant in more ways than one. 

Donohue didn't mention that a single bishop's denial of communion is not binding on other dioceses -- or that Pope Francis himself specifically said not to deny Communion to or excommunicate anyone solely on the issue of abortion.

Another anonymously written article, on July 1, seemed miffed that Pelosi got even more quality time with the pope:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday visited the “Christian community” of Sant’Egidio in Rome after visiting the Vatican and told the people there that she had “had the pleasure of attending Mass this morning with His Holiness.”

“We had the pleasure of attending Mass this morning with His Holiness and many, many, many leaders of the Church,” said Pelosi.

“And [Pope] Francis’ name always reminds me of St. Francis saying: ‘We preach the Gospel; sometimes, use words.’  We also pray that—ask God in his anthem, in his song of St. Francis, to make us all instruments of God’s peace,” she said.

So in the spirit of St. Francis, which is the name of His Holiness and my city of San Francisco, I thank you for preaching the Gospel, sometimes using words,” she said.

The article somehow managed to avoid shoehorning in Pelosi's stance on abortion.

Posted by Terry K. at 2:17 PM EDT

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As it did with Ricky Gervais and J.K. Rowling, the Media Research Cented flip-flopped from hate to love with Dave Chappelle when he decided to traffic in transphobia, defending every unfunny bit of trans-bashing that came out of his mouth -- and it has continued to do so in 2022. In a Jan. 3 post, Matt Philbin got mad because comedian Patton Oswalt apologized for hanging out with Chappelle:

Patton Oswalt wants you to know he holds all the correct opinions. Really. No, Oswalt personally hasn’t cancelled his old friend Dave Chappelle (“Sssss, Booo!”), but it’s because he’s pretty sure Chappelle can continue “evolving” to the higher plane where Oswalt and other enlightened lefties dwell in beatific complacency.

At Chapelle’s invitation, Oswalt recently appeared at the former’s show, doing an impromptu standup set. But then he posted to Instagram pics of the two backstage. Bad move.

See, several months ago, Chapelle ran afoul of the Transgender Industrial Complex by publicly saying sensible things about biology. He agreed with “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists” (TERFs) about women having lady parts. 

There was, as you’d expect, BIG drama, and Chappelle is persona non grata to the better sort of woke activists. Worse, the comic refused to debase himself and apologize. In fact, he was rather defiant.

So Oswalt’s picture was not well received. Think of Stalinists reacting to a junior Politburo member showing off a chummy snapshot with Leon Trotsky.

Oswalt is no Chappelle (and he’s no Patton either) so he immediately issued a craven apology that managed to patronize the trans movement while demeaning his pal Dave.

Yes, spewing hate at transgender people equals "saying sensible things about biology" in Philbin's hateful little world.

In a Feb. 26 post, Christian Toto cheered that Netflix, which aired Chappelle's earlier transphobic special, continued to stand by him in "a direct blow to Cancel Culture, Inc."

When Chappelle was attacked on stage by a man allegedly triggered by his anti-transgender "jokes," the MRC did a round of pearl-clutching. Elise Ehrhard fretted in a May 5 post that the alleged assailant "had a "connection" with the transgender community" and huffed, "The transgender movement has been particularly aggressive in attacking anyone who questions their gender narrative, as everyone from J.K. Rowling to Jordan Peterson can attest." Perhaps transgender people wouldn't be so angry if people like Ehrhard didn't dismiss their existence as people by insisting they merely have a "gender narrative."

Toto returned for a May 7 post whining that Chappelle was attacked for merely telling jokes and that other comedians might not be able to tell bad transphobic "jokes":

The left and journalists alike have pounded Dave Chappelle for telling the wrong kind of jokes. The furor didn’t start with The Closer, the comedian’s most recent Netflix special, but it picked up sizable momentum following its Oct. 5, 2021 release.

Long story short: Chappelle yukked about the trans community in ways said community, and its “allies,” didn’t like.

Did we just see the natural results of that ensuing rage?

[...]

Comedians already self censor for fear of offending the woke mob. Desus & Mero, the Showtime power duo, admitted just that even though they align almost perfectly with the progressive narrative.

Others do so out of fear, and understandably so. A Chappelle or Bill Burr can survive if they never told another joke again, in theory, given their ample income. A blue-collar comic can’t say the same.

Now, comedians have to worry about more than Cancel Culture. What if the wrong joke upsets the wrong comedy club patron, and he or she decides to rush the stage in response?

It may be wiser to avoid jokes that push boundaries than put oneself at risk.

Once again, the comedy world has suffered a sizable blow.

Yes, unfunny jokes that punch down at people would indeed "push boundaries." But Toto never expalined how any of Chappelle's transphobic jokes are actually funny, nor did he reprint any of those alleged jokes to justify their humor. Also, the MRC doesn't give the "they're only jokes" defense to folks who make fun of their feilow right-wingers -- witness its archives of outrage at Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers.

Earlier this month, Chappelle quietly drooped a special on Netflix that wasn't actually a comedy special but, rather, a speech he gave at high school alma mater which was going to name its theater after him but thought better of it after the transphobia controversy; he spent a good part of it ranting about his critics and insisting they missed the "artistic nuance" of his anti-trans humor and denounced the students who fought against naming the theater after him "instruments of oppression." Needless to say, the MRC loved it.Wallace White cheered in a July 8 post:

No one runs liberals up a wall with comedy quite like Dave Chappelle has in his widely acclaimed Netflix specials The Closer and Sticks and Stones. After lots of leftist backlash from previous shows, he once again stands his ground against PC culture in a surprise release on Netflix titled Dave Chappelle: What’s in a Name? according to The Daily Beast July 7.

This new 40-minute “speech” is a follow-up to his rejection of an offer from Duke Ellington School for the Arts, his alma mater, to put his name on the theater after he had a contentious Q&A session with the schools students, who accused him of being a “bigot” and “childish,” in addition to hurling accusatory statements like “Your comedy kills.” His new special is in the theater at the school where the Q&A happened, and features serious critique with his trademark stand-up skills mixed in.

[...]

He sums up his attitude to speech policing, saying “The more you say I can’t say something, the more urgent it is for me to say it. It has nothing to do with what you’re saying I can’t say. It has everything to do with my right and my freedom of artistic expression.”

Right on the money.

He calls on the kids at the Q&A to be self-aware about whether their words were genuine conclusions they came to themselves, or if they were parroting propaganda fed to them. He says, “I know those kids didn’t come up with those words. I’ve heard those words before,“ and “These kids didn’t understand that they were instruments of oppression.”

A bunch of high school kids were simply being megaphones of liberal talking points instead of thinking for themselves. Dave Chappelle wants them to realize that, and teach them the value of freedom and how it can be used for good, like in his case, a good laugh.

Like Toto, White didn't explain how any of Chappelle's transphobia is actually funny. But he "runs liberals up a wall," and owning the libs (or pretending you are while just spewing hate) is all that matters to the MRC.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:58 PM EDT

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Jane Orient reminds us of the anti-vaxxer nature -- not just of COVID vaccines but of all of them -- in her June 27 WorldNetDaily column ranting that people should be exempted from getting vaccines for any reason or no reason at all:

An exemption is something people get from military service or jury duty – a civil obligation that serves the common good, that is, the good of everyone.

Everyone benefits when the country is secure from a hostile invasion and from having a guaranteed right to trial by jury. Not everyone is fit to serve, and some have more important obligations, or conscientious objections. Therefore, we allow for exemptions even though people have a civic duty to participate in essential functions if they can.

But for medical treatments, the person prescribing the treatment must get permission. Operating on a person, injecting him, or even touching him without permission is assault and battery, except when there is a life-threatening emergency or an imminent danger to others. One does not need an exemption to forgo a medical treatment. One simply declines to get it.

Except with mandated vaccines.

Even if theoretically allowed, vaccine exemptions may be impossible to obtain. In some schools or enterprises, virtually all medical exemptions are denied. The person may have to present documentation of an almost fatal reaction to previously receiving a component of the vaccine. Many doctors refuse to help because of realistic fear of being delicensed if they support "too many" or "inappropriate" exemptions.

It may be easier to get a religious exemption, but one may have to prove the validity or sincerity of one's faith. Who has the legitimate authority to judge that?

Because there's basically no legitmiate faith that credibly opposes vaccines? She continued:

This situation is backwards. For a prescription drug or for many lab tests, you must have a physician's order. The doctor is legally obliged to have a patient-physician relationship with you and to be responsible for side effects or for following up on test results. But who is ordering your COVID jab or your COVID test? Is that person qualified to be your doctor? Even if he is, you are under no obligation to follow your physician's advice, and patients frequently don't.

Who gave officials or employers or pharmacies an exemption from getting a physician's order?

Orient's longtime anti-vaxxer activism shows she cares more about politics than medicine, which would seem to be a disqualifer for her to be a legitimate medical doctor.  Yet she continued to whine:

We no longer treat persons with Hansen's disease (leprosy) like lepers. (Fortunately, it is now curable and not very contagious.) We do, however, treat incompletely vaccinated children like lepers, excluding them from school or social activities. Unlike HIV disease or untreated Hansen's disease, the "vaccine preventable" childhood diseases are contagious for only a few days in a child's entire life, and most are usually mild. You cannot get measles or other disease from a child who does not currently have it. After recovery, the child has better immunity than a vaccinated child.

We draft unwilling persons into vaccination for the "common good" – to protect the hypothetical immunocompromised child who can't be vaccinated, just in case there's a disease outbreak, and that child might get infected by an unvaccinated child rather than by a vaccinated person whose immunity wore off. Instead of shielding the vulnerable, we force everyone to take the risk of a serious or even fatal adverse reaction to something they believe offers them no compensating benefit. An unvaccinated but healthy person is not an imminent danger.

Government has exempted itself from the Constitution, and physicians have exempted themselves from the Oath of Hippocrates.

It's time for citizens and patients to deny these self-conferred exemptions and to assert their right to grant or withhold permission for medical treatment, according to their own values and risk-benefit assessment.

Just one problem with that: People who are being scared into doing their own "research" on vaccines by anti-vaxxers like Orient tend to fall into rabbit holes of misinformation. There's no reason for a layperson to have to figure out the complexities of science and medicine , and there's no reason not to trust a credible medical professional regarding vaccines, which have been repeatedly proven safe.

Orient simply wants to perpetuate misinformation to keep her misinformation organziation -- the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons -- alive, largely because it pays her well to spread misinformation about vaccines. That's a conflict of interest -- not to mention dangerous medicine.

P.S. Orient's reference to leprosy is highly ironic since the journal her AAPS publishes is notorious for a discredited article by a non-physician blaming illegal immigrants for an explosion of diseases, partiularly leprosy. The author had claimed there were 7,000 new cases of leprosy in the U.S. in a three-year period; in fact, that number occurred over 30 years. Orient has yet to correct the article, despite the falsehood having been exposed 15 years ago when it was repeated by then-CNN host Lou Dobbs.

Posted by Terry K. at 6:37 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, July 28, 2022 7:35 PM EDT

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The Media Research Center has a bit of a complex -- still! 50 years after the fact! -- about the Watergate scandal, which it now slots into its victimhood narrative in portraying Richard Nixon as a victim of the media; meanwhile, Tim Graham displayed a soft spot for unrepentant criminal G. Gordon Liddy. So as the 50 anniversary of the Watergate break-in that triggerred the scandal was noted, the MRC made sure to complain. Alex Christy complained in a June 15 post that Woodward and Bernstein talked about it on TV:

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein joined CBS The Late Show host Stephen Colbert on Tuesday to reminiscence for four segments about the fall of Richard Nixon during Watergate and assuage Colbert’s fears about the future of democracy by citing their roles in that process.

The first two segments were full of comparisons between Nixon and Donald Trump as well as lamenting that today’s Republicans did not stand up to Trump in the way they did under Nixon. Naturally, the trio ignored the precedent Democrats set during the Clinton impeachment, but Colbert was still concerned about the future of democracy. In the third segment, he asked Woodward, “We're in another moment of great peril, as you say in your book Peril. What is your feeling about the future of this experiment we call American democracy?”

Two days later, Aidan Moorehouse complained that Bernstein opined about Donald Trump's Capitol insurrection:

To say Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward have an ax to grind against Donald Trump would be the understatement of the century. If any more proof was needed, Bernstein made the outrageous claim on CNN’s Friday morning New Day that Donald Trump’s actions in the leadup to and during January 6 were worse than Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy.

[...]

Just think about this comparison for a minute. Bernstein is seriously comparing Donald Trump’s — admittedly legally dubious — efforts to prevent the electoral college results from being certified and to be sent back to the states for recertification with the aim of remaining in office, to the unilateral secession of eleven states with the primary aim of preserving the institution of slavery.

Following Bernstein’s logic, what that would make Trump supporters? Are they also engaged in sedition by the very act of supporting the man politically? 

If Moorehouse can't work up anyoutrage over Trump's attempted overthrow of a government and interference in the election than tepidly calling it "admittedly legally dubious" -- and his employer is attacking attempts to hold the insurrectionists and those who enabled them accountable as a political witch hunt -- then, yes, there is something a bit sedition-y about that.If the MRC is afraid to abandon Trump out of fear of losing political power, then that's a bit sedition-y as well.

Graham returned to whine about a Watergate special in a June 19 post:

On Friday’s CBS Mornings,Watergate: High Crimes in the White House.They tied it into the new anti-Trump hearings. Co-host Tony Dokoupil began: “As the January 6 hearings continue in Washington, the Watergate story continues to echo today offering potential lessons about the current political landscape.”

Yes, the lesson is that CBS News is still using the guise of “news” to promote Democrats and punish Republicans. They brought in Lesley Stahl, who started 50 years ago at CBS News, to connect the Watergate hearings to the January 6 hearings:

[...]

No one on the CBS set is going to suggest that no, the Senate Watergate Committee was assembled by letting the Republican minority choose its committee members, unlike the Pelosi-handpicked Republicans on the January 6 panel.

And Graham is certainly notgoing to remind people that the Republican minority did have the chance to appoint committee members but House minority leader Kevin McCarthy threw a fit and took his ball and went home rather than have to choose members who didn't support the insurrecction. (Also, note that Graham dismissed the special as "ponderous" despite not having actually watched it.)

After the folks on CBS noted that Nixon was a moderate, Graham whined: "But CBS and the rest of the liberal media found the supposed mountain top of their profession by forcing moderate Nixon to resign. To this day, they don’t quite understand why half the country doesn’t find them to be objective or 'mainstream' in their journalistic pursuits." Graham didn't mention that Nixon was caught red-handed coordinating the Watergate cover-up -- or that a "moderate" Republican like Nixon would be hounded out of the Republican Party today... and that he and the MRC would lead that harassment campaign.

The MRC has been engaging in Watergate revisionism for years;  for instance, a 2005 item, insisted that Watergate was actually about "how to take down a Republican President for political gain and personal profit."

Posted by Terry K. at 2:11 PM EDT

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As we've noted, when the employment numbers are too good for President Biden, CNSNews.com shifts focus to cherry-picked numbers that can be made to look not as good. That was the case for June's numbers , when 372,000 new jobs were added. The main article by Susan Jones buried that under the confusing headline "BLS: Labor Force Participation, -0.1%; Not in Labor Force, +510,000; Employed, -315,000":

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates three-quarters of a point on June 15, and Chairman Jerome Powell said another rate hike may happen this month.

But so far, the labor market remains strong, despite some softening last month in labor force participation, the number of employed Americans, and the number of people not in the labor force.

Non-farm payrolls added 372,000 jobs in June, well above the consensus estimate of around 268,000 and about even with the 384,000 jobs (revised) added in May, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday.

Notable job growth last month occurred in professional and business services, leisure and hospitality, and health care.

The number of employed Americans interrupted its previous upward march, settling at 158,111,000 in June, down 315,000 from the May number.

But the number of unemployed Americans -- those without a job who have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks and are currently available for work -- has steadily declined during Biden's presidency, reaching a Biden-era low of 5,912,000 in June.

Jones remained obsessed with claiming how much better things were under Donald Trump: "The participation rate was 61.4 percent when Joe Biden took office as the pandemic raged. Today's number, 62.2 percent, is still below the Trump-era high of 63.4 percent in February 2020, just before COVID shut things down."

That was joined by the usual sidebar from editor Terry Jeffrey on government employement, and he found a negative number to cheer:

The number of people working for the federal government declined by 13,000 in June, dropping from 2,866,000 in May to 2,853,000,according to the employment report released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Overall government employment in the United States declined by only 9,000 from May to June as local governments added workers.

He also seemed happy that the number of government workers is less than it was under Trump: "In February 2020, there were 22,879,000 working for government in the United States—compared to the 22,215,000 working for government in June 2022.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:35 AM EDT

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When several staffers for CBS' "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" were arrested in June inside a congressional office building, the Media Research Center cranked up the hype machine. In the first post on the incident on June 18, Tim Graham immediately leapt to Capitol riot comparisons:

Fox News reported on Friday night the U.S. Capitol Police arrested a group of staffers with CBS's The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and were charged with unlawful entry after they allegedly illegally entered a House Office Building on Thursday night.

[...]

Remember that people who merely entered the Capitol on January 6 were charged with "parading" or "entering a restricted building" and some have served several weeks in jail.

Graham failed to mention the obvious fact that the Colbert staffers weren't part of a violent mob egged on by a president who refused to face reality that was aiming to overthrow the government and murder the vice president. Nevertheless, Graham whined in a separate tweet that "'CBS Saturday Morning' waited 20 minutes before noting Colbert staffers were arrested at the Capitol."

Scott Whitlock fleshed out Graham's tweet in a June 20 post complaining that CBS wasn't sufficiently covering this huge news story:

Seven staffers of far-left Late Show host Stephen Colbert were arrested last week at the Capitol for unlawful entry as they likely attempted to harass Republicans. Since the news broke late on Friday, an embarrassed CBS has allowed just 65 seconds total. All of it on CBS Saturday Morning. The network didn’t return to the incident over the weekend or on Monday. 

CBS Morning hosts Gayle King, Tony Dokoupil and Nate Burleson love to play clips of Colbert, but they allowed no recap on Monday. ABC allowed similarly skimpy coverage. Just 25 seconds on Saturday’s Good Morning America. NBC has ignored it. 

On CBS Saturday Morning, co-host Michelle Miller tried to soften the blow by making jokes, noting that one of the detained was Robert Smiegel, the man behind Triumph the Insult Comic [Dog]:

[...]

You can guess that Colbert will find some way to explain this all away. The vile host has compared Republicans to Nazis and suggested that half of the GOP agree with the mass shooting in Buffalo.

You can also guess that the MRC would throw a fit when Colbert did that. And that's exactly what Graham did in a June 21 post:

On Monday's Late Show, CBS host Stephen Colbert addressed the arrest of seven staffers filming after-hours in the Longworth House Office Building in his opening monologue. He made light of how they were committing "first-degree puppetry" and then blamed the sensitivity of the Capitol Police on "Putin's puppet" for causing the January 6 riots. 

Colbert explained that after two full days of filming in congressional office buildings, "After they’d finished their interviews, [my staffers] were doing some last-minute puppetry and jokey make-em-ups in a hallway, when Triumph and my folks were approached and detained by Capitol Police." He didn't address Fox News reporting his team had been "escorted out of the Jan. 6 committee hearing earlier in the day because they did not have proper press credentials."

But he did mock Fox News this way: "The Capitol Police are much more cautious than they were, say, 18 months ago, and for a very good reason. If you don't know what that reason is, I know what news network you watch." The crowd laughed and roared.

Because they know that Fox News, like the MRC, is desperately trying to pretend the Capitol riot hearings aren't news?

Graham then huffed that it was "moral preening" for Colbert to call out people like him for likening his staffers' arrest to the Capitol riot, as Colbert pointed out that "drawing any equivalence between rioters storming our Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral ballots and a cigar-chomping toy dog, is a shameful and grotesque insult to the memory of everyone who died, and obscenely trivializes the service and the courage the Capitol Police showed on that terrible day." Graham put that part in boldface, so you know he was feeling quite seen by that.

Later that day, Kevin Tober devoted a post to Fox News stenography: "Less than twenty-four hours since pseudo comedian Stephen Colbert attempted to make light of his staff breaking into the United States Capitol building in a hypocritical attempt to film a 'comedy' skit attacking Republicans for the January 6 riots, Fox News host Tucker Carlson slammed Colbert for his hypocrisy."

All of that moral preening from the MRC, however, went for naught: On July 18, it was reported that all charges against the Colbert staffers were being dropped. It turns out they didn't forcibly break into the building, as the MRC suggested, but were let in by a congressional aide, which was legal; the only problem was that the aide didn't accompany the staffers during the entirety of their visit, which is required. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said in a statement that "We do not believe it is probable that the Office would be able to obtain and sustain convictions on these charges."

You will not be surprised that no post by Graham or his underlings reporting on this development appears at NewsBusters. Nor was there anything at the MRC's "news" operation, CNSNews.com. The only mention we could find on any MRC website was a July 19 MRCTV post by Brtittany Hughes, who whined: "While a number of January 6 'insurrectionists' are still in D.C. jail awaiting trial, all charges have been dropped against a group of Hollywood leftists who were caught in June hanging out inside the U.S. Capitol after being told to leave." Like Graham, Hughes refused to acknowledge there is a difference between not having proper press credentials and being part of an insurrectionist mob.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:23 PM EDT

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Art Moore, WorldNetDaily's chief COVID misinformer, particularly loves to misinform about COVID-related studies  that can be twisted to pushWND's anti-vaccine agenda. He did it again in a June 21 article, under the screaming headline "Study: COVID vax INCREASES risk of infection":

A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that two doses of the mRNA vaccines increased the risk of COVID-19 infection during the omicron wave.

And researchers further confirmed that those infected without having been vaccinated for COVID-19 acquired natural immunity from infection, the Epoch Times reported.

he study, published June 15, examined the omicron wave in Qatar from about December 2021 to February 2022. It compared vaccination rates and immunity among more than 100,000 omicron infected and non-infected individuals.

The results support a recent study from Israel finding natural immunity waned much more slowly than immunity from vaccination.

The new Qatar study found unvaccinated people with prior infection had a 46.1 and 50 percent immunity against the two subvariants of the omicron variant. But those with no previous infection who received two doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine had negative immunity against both subvariants, meaning their risk of contracting COVID-19 was higher than an average person.

Moore's first mistake here was to trust the Epoch Times, the right-wing Falun Gong-run newspaper that is a firehose of COVID misinformation. The article Moore is cribbing from is behind a paywall, but we're not going to give the Epoch Times money or an email address to unlock it.it's clear that Moore did no fact-checking of the article before copying-and-pasting out of it to make his own, because what Moore wrote is wildly misleading. The key results as reported in the study are these:

The effectiveness of previous infection alone against symptomatic BA.2 infection was 46.1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 39.5 to 51.9). The effectiveness of vaccination with two doses of BNT162b2 and no previous infection was negligible (−1.1%; 95% CI, −7.1 to 4.6), but nearly all persons had received their second dose more than 6 months earlier. The effectiveness of three doses of BNT162b2 and no previous infection was 52.2% (95% CI, 48.1 to 55.9). The effectiveness of previous infection and two doses of BNT162b2 was 55.1% (95% CI, 50.9 to 58.9), and the effectiveness of previous infection and three doses of BNT162b2 was 77.3% (95% CI, 72.4 to 81.4). Previous infection alone, BNT162b2 vaccination alone, and hybrid immunity all showed strong effectiveness (>70%) against severe, critical, or fatal Covid-19 due to BA.2 infection. Similar results were observed in analyses of effectiveness against BA.1 infection and of vaccination with mRNA-1273.

BNT162b2 is the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID vaccine, mRNA-1273 is the Moderna vaccine.

Translation, which Moore didn't make clear at all: The risk of infection by Omicron variant BA.2 is effectively the same for someone who only got the initial two-vaccine series as someone who had gotten no vaccine or previous infection -- -1.1% is efffectively the same as zero, so it's deceitful for Moore to portray it as a significantly higher risk. This isn't surprising because Omicron has mutated to evade the protection of the original vaccines, which were best attuned to the original strain -- something Moore failed to explain to his readers; all the better to fearmonger about vaccines.

Moore also censored other results that don't fit into his anti-vaccine narrative. The results also stated that the highest rate of effectiveness against infection was for those who had a previous infection and were fully vaccinated. The study also stated that vaccination alone offered similar protection as prior infection and infection/vaccination against severe, critical, or fatal COVID due to BA.2, which Moore also censored.

Moore's article was published while WND was still begging for money to stay alive for a while longer. Do those who donated to WND's campaign really feel they're Being truthfully and accurately informed? Because the record says no.

Posted by Terry K. at 6:40 PM EDT

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Newsmax columnist Michael Reagan spent a lot of time ranting after May's spate of mass shootings -- not about the prominent role guns played in them, of course, but about others talking about that role and other things that clash with right-wing narratives. When President Biden pointed out that the perpetrator of the Buffalo massacre, Reagan used his May 20 column to play whataboutism by hyping masscares committed by non-white people:

But as usual he was very selective when pointing out recent examples of racially motivated mass murders. No mention of the angry "Black supremacist" who plowed through a parade of white men, women and children at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisc., last year, killing six and injuring 60.

No mention of the mentally troubled Black man — another racist "Black supremacist" who openly hated whites, Asians and even some Blacks —< who shot up a New York City subway train last month and injured 10 people.

 

No mention of another apparently mentally troubled Black man who’s accused of shooting but not killing three Korean women in a Dallas hair salon last week.

And you know the Bidens won’t be visiting the Geneva Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods in Southern California to show their sympathy for the deadly shooting that happened there earlier this week.

The Asian shooter — an American citizen born in Taiwan — planned to kill many members of the congregation, who are Taiwanese, because he doesn’t think Taiwan should be independent of China.

Like the other shootings, that potential mass shooting, which was stopped when members of the church overpowered the shooter, did not fit the Biden-media narrative that the only kind of racism in America is white and that mass murderers come in only one color and one kind of politics.

The reaction to the Buffalo tragedy by Biden, the Democrats and the liberal media was the usual "We need more, more, still more gun laws."

But how about enforcing the d**n gun laws we’ve already got?

How about putting some teeth in so-called "Red Flag" laws?

After the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre, Reagan rushed to defend guns again in his May 28 column, invoking some of his earlier COVID insanity for good measure:

In his vile speech just after the Uvalde murders, Biden yelled, "Deer aren’t running through the forest with Kevlar vests on, for God’s sake."

Which is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand, the Second Amendment isn’t a hunting amendment. It’s a freedom amendment.

Regardless of what they say, the assurances they give and the fake sincerity with which the announcement is made, we can’t trust the government when it comes to our basic God-given rights.

COVID-19 proved that.

Twitter pundit Peachy Keenan explained the situation in only 240 characters: "The trouble with 'common sense gun legislation' is that the people who turned '15 days to stop the spread' into 'get the vaccine or we take you off the organ transplant list' are the same ones who swear they don’t want to take all our guns."

And, yes, liberals were somehow to blame for this massacre:

What no one on the left wants to discuss is the cultural sickness discussed earlier that is currently plaguing America. A sickness the left has done much to create.

The Uvalde, Texas shooter, like the Parkland, Florida shooter, like the Sandy Hook, (in Newton Connecticut) shooter and so many more had no father in his life.

None of them had a positive male role model in their lives to teach them how to live.

What they did have was dope-smoking and a poisonous social media and online gaming culture producing violent results.

Instead of looking at the motivation of these murderers, the left focuses on the tool used.

Reagan didn't mention that the perpetrator would not have been able to murder so many children if he didn't have that gun. He did, sprurpsingly, diverge from right-wing dogma and appear to endorse red-flag laws in his June 4 column -- though, weirdly, of the do-it-yourself variety, not if the government is involved:

We also learned that the 18-year-old killer, as is so often the case, was known by his family, the authorities and his schoolmates to be a mentally unstable and scary gun nut, yet no one "red-flagged" him as a potential threat to himself or others.

And how many times have we heard stories about how the parents of future mass murderers continued to let them have access to guns even after it had become obvious to them that their children were dangerously disturbed?

What we’ve seen over and over again in these mass shootings is that everyone’s waiting for someone else to do the right things, but then no one does the right things.

[...]

No one expects Biden to know what he’s talking about when he talks about guns, and the dishonest major media are too much on the gun-control team to discuss other sensible, doable ways of preventing future school shootings.

Putting well-armed security guards in our schools is extremely important, obviously, but it is parents who are the first line of defense.

If you realize your kid is out of control and truly dangerous, take their guns away.

Give them to a neighbor. Lock them in a safe.

And please don’t wait for the government, the school principal or anyone else to red flag your child as a threat to themselves or others.

Do the right thing. Throw the red flag yourself.

Despite his own status as a right-wing celebrity prop for Reagan acolytes, he mocked Matthew McCouaughey for being one in speaking out against guns in his June 10 column -- while, again surprisingly, agreeing with much of what he said:

McConaughey got — and deserved — praise for much of what he said in the White House briefing room on Tuesday.

Sure, he was a celebrity prop being exploited by President Biden and House Democrats to sell their hysterical and unconstitutional gun control ideas to the American public.

But while McConaughey is definitely no closet conservative Republican, he owns and shoots guns and is not a stereotypical Hollywood liberal who wants to disarm every American citizen — except their own bodyguards, of course.

In a city full of Democrats exploiting the latest national tragedy for their own political gain, McConaughey came across as refreshingly reasonable, sensible and bipartisan on several gun-control issues.

Most Americans would agree with him that you should be 21 before you are allowed to buy an AR-15.

Most Americans would agree with him that there should be a cooling off period between the time you buy a handgun and the time you get it.

And most Americans would also favor his call for the increased use of “red flag” laws that allow authorities to take guns away from mentally disturbed persons who are a threat to themselves or the rest of us.

McConaughey’s rational approach to solving a highly contentious and seemingly unsolvable political issue reminded me of another movie actor I knew pretty well – Ronald Reagan.

Reagan then went on to claim that his father would have supported such restrictions -- but he didn't mention that his fellow right-wingers and even the gun lobby oppose red-flag laws, and they also object to raising the age to buy an AR-15. So much for common-sense solutions.

Posted by Terry K. at 2:53 PM EDT

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