Last time we checked in with Mychal Massie, he introduced us to the (nonexistent) word "Erebusic." In his Nov. 21 WorldNetDaily column, he throws a couple more 50-cent words at us:

sanious marplots

endogamic

Seeing what springs from Massie's thesaurus-rummaging is much more interesting than his columns themselves. 

Posted by Terry K. at 6:32 PM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

Notoriously inaccurate blogger Dan Riehl -- last seen here falsely smearing George Allen "macaca" target S.R. Sidarth -- turns in his first NewsBusters post in a month, a complaint that the New York Times failed to note that a group of day laborers who had filed a lawsuit against a Long Island town accusing town officials of harrassing them filed as "John Does" out of fear of retaliation by law enforcement or immigration authorities. First, Riehl serves up his usual ranting:

Isn't that an unusual, if not telling aspect of the story? You don't even have to identify yourself to get justice in America today? Because you might not be a citizen? I suppose anyone in the world can walk into an American court and allege discrimination, maybe al Qaeda will be next.

Then, he adds a little Clinton fear-mongering on the side:

As an aside, with Bush on board with the open borders crowd, it could easily lead to animosity toward the GO [sic] in 08, or even a third party candidate for President in 08, splitting the vote on the Right and welcoming Hillary into the White House. Arguably, it was Perot who may have helped elect a Clinton the first time around.

We'd complain about NewsBusters deigning to publish such a ill-informed screedmeister like Riehl, but he serves a much higher purpose of an example of the kind of people the MRC believes are qualified to speak for it. And besides, Riehl's general idiocy makes NewsBusters that much entertaining to read.

Posted by Terry K. at 4:16 PM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

A Nov. 21 WorldNetDaily column by Gary DeMar likens homosexuality to rape and a dog returning to its own vomit. The ostensible trigger for this tirade was a "children's book about two male penguins that raise a baby penguin" that he says is "being pushed as a homosexual primer to soften up young minds for the more scholarly propaganda." DeMar chooses to extrapolate an argument that some animal species engage in homosexual behavior to all animal behavior, saying that if we accept some as "natural," we must accept all:

If we should follow the animal world regarding homosexual penguins and thereby regard human homosexual behavior as normal, then we must be consistent and follow the animal world regarding rape, eating our young and eating our neighbors – and decriminalize these behaviors as well.

DeMar heads a group called American Vision, whose mission is "Equipping and Empowering Christians to Restore America’s Biblical Foundation." You'll find the usual anti-gay stuff there, such as a call to boycott Wal-Mart because it donated to a "homosexual organization promoting same-sex marriage in the workplace."

Posted by Terry K. at 9:34 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

A Nov. 20 NewsMax article by Ronald Kessler breaks away from his typical Bush sycophancy to tell the heartwarming tale of the nearly $1 million Lynne Cheney has made for charity by writing children's books. But it wouldn't be Kessler without a little sucking up to Bush:

As noted in my book "Laura Bush: An Intimate Portrait of the First Lady," Laura's favorite course at Southern Methodist University was a one-semester review of children's literature taught by Dr. Harryette Ehrhardt.

Posted by Terry K. at 4:02 PM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

In a Nov. 20 WorldNetDaily column, Aaron Klein is "horrified" that his Nov. 14 article on a $2 million ransom allegedly paid for the release of Fox News employees Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig, who were kidnapped in Gaza last summer, was widely interpreted to mean that Fox News itself paid the ransom.

"My report made very clear the sources did not know where the money originated. No source stated or implied the money came from Fox News," Klein wrote, adding:

Unfortunately, many used my article to claim Fox News paid the ransom – a contention I never made or implied. As the researcher of this piece, I can state categorically I don't believe Fox News paid any money or knew any money was paid. As outlined in my article, the indications are the exchange was brokered by a government or political party since certain quid pro quos were reportedly made, such as assurances against further kidnappings of Americans.

The problem is that, his purported caveats notwithstanding, Klein did not "make it clear"; nowhere in his original article did he explicitly state that Fox News was not the source of the alleged ransom. Even though Klein insists that "[n]o source stated or implied the money came from Fox News," his article is indeed murkily written enough to imply exactly that (as we previously noted).

Klein also states that "Off the record, Fox News sources admitted it was possible the terror gangs were paid off by an entity involved in the negotiations and that the news channel did not know about it." But Klein never told his readers that "the news channel did not know about" the ransom. From the article:

A spokeswoman for Fox News Channel told WND she could not provide an official statement about whether Fox was aware of money paid to free its two employees.

A source at Fox told WND many parties were involved with the freedom of Centanni and Wiig, including the U.S. government, and that it was possible money was paid.

And while Klein repeatedly claims in his column that the source of the ransom money was "unknown," the word "unknown" does not appear in his original article. In fact, he writes that one terrorist official "said he 'knows' the money came from the U.S. as part of a deal to free Centanni and Wiig but could not identify exactly which organization or government entity transferred the cash" -- which can certainly be interpreted as an implication of Fox News.

Klein then switches to suck-up mode, claiming, "I am horrified people have falsified and misrepresented my article to attack Fox News," and adding that "I have enormous respect for [Fox News chief Roger] Ailes." He laments that
"Unfortunately, many used my article to claim Fox News paid the ransom – a contention I never made or implied." (Again, he did imply it.) Klein concluded:

I was not asked by WND nor Fox News Channel to print this clarification. In fact, both news organizations seem to have largely moved on. But as a reporter, I cannot stand idly by while others misrepresent and falsify my words to wrongly smear America's best cable news network.

Is Klein looking to get a job with Fox News someday? He might have a better chance if he would just stop being so defensive and admit that his article suggested that Fox News paid the ransom, even if he didn't actually say that Fox did. He can then devote even more of his attention to smearing Ehud Olmert.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:34 AM EST

Updated: Monday, November 20, 2006 1:17 PM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

In his Nov. 18 WorldNetDaily column, Joseph Farah expresses his displeasure that the IRS is conducting an audit of a church for its criticism of the Iraq war and other Bush administration policies. Reminding us that "I was a victim of just this kind of official harassment at the hands of the IRS during the Clinton administration," Farah concluded, "It is no more justifiable for a Republican administration to use the IRS as a political attack dog than it is for a Democratic White House. It is no more constitutional. It is no more moral. It is no more American when perpetrated by President Bush's administration."

What took him so long to figure this out?

A year and a half ago, we noted that the Bush IRS was accused of conducting politically motivated audits of groups, such as the NAACP, that had been critical of the Bush administration; a month ago, we noted other groups being targeted. But Farah has not recognized that controversy. It's only when a church was involved -- albeit a church whose pastor, Farah writes, "sounds like a polar opposite of me in many ways" -- that he suddenly is concerned about it.

It's not that hard to scoop WND, but given that it considers itself "a watchdog exposing government waste, fraud, corruption and abuse of power," we'll take pride in a year-and-a-half-long jump start.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:17 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

A Nov. 16 WorldNetDaily article by Mary Jo Anderson on a vote to legalize same-sex marriage in South Africa almost exclusively features criticism of the decision -- not surprising giving the author's anti-gay bias; she wrote a anti-gay marriage book (sold by WND, of course) called "Male and Female He Made Them" -- but she also includes some misleading, incomplete information.

Anderson wrote:

Medical workers also questioned the new law.

South Africa has over five million HIV-positive citizens, including infants born with the virus. Criticism swirls around the government's failure to treat sufficient numbers of HIV patients with appropriate drugs.

"They keep on moving the goalposts over the number of people receiving anti-retroviral drugs," noted Diane Kohler Barnard, the health spokeswoman for the Democratic Alliance, an opposition party to the ruling African National Congress.

A couple of problems: The "medical worker" Anderson quotes is not questioning the same-sex marriage law; she's questioning the availability of AIDS-fighting drugs, which Anderson doesn't indicate has anything to do with the new law.

Further, Anderson's attempt to bring up HIV seems a very clumsy to work in the filthy-gay angle without discussing the facts involving the demographics of HIV victims in Africa -- which indicate an epidemic among heterosexuals. Her noting of "infants born with the virus" belies that clumsiness; in fact, according to the international charity AVERT, the HIV prevalence rate among pregnant women was 30.2 percent -- a clear indicator that HIV in South Africa is not limited to the homosexual community. Further:

• One research study states that "[t]he pattern of HIV transmission in our region has changed from homosexual to heterosexual."
• A 2002 article in the International Journal of Epidemiology states: "Since establishing a foothold in South Africa, the heterosexual HIV epidemic has had a distinctive character—‘explosive' spread with no sign of a ‘saturation' plateau and predominance in women at younger age." 

Since heterosexuals in South Africa are apparently much more at risk for HIV than gays, there was no reason for Anderson to bring it up in a story about gay marriage, other than to take a gratuitous, inaccurate guilt-by-association swipe at gays.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:46 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

A major theme at NewsBusters the past few days is accusing the MSM of withholding negative news about Democrats until after the November elections, presumably to give the Dems a better shot at winning. The lead target of this is Rep. John Murtha. This little conspiracy theory is best summed up by Tim Graham in a Nov. 18 post:

For about a year, John Murtha was portrayed by the liberal media as a bold Marine hero of the anti-war movement. So why did they almost never mention Murtha's sleazy role as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Abscam probe? And why is it important now? If the question was Murtha's fitness to be House Majority Leader, surely it was known that Murtha was running for that post before the midterm elections. The media withholding this story line until it fit with the timing of the Democratic Party's mainstream defines a liberal media bias. It was certainly considered bad form when our CNSNews.com wrote about it in January:

But as we detailed back then, CNS editor in chief David Thibault essentially admitted that the stories were a partisan attack on Murtha in retaliation for his anti-war stance, and they were seen as such by pretty much everyone, given that the main sources for those articles were Murtha's political enemies. And the issue of Murtha running for the majority leader post was moot before the election because he first had to win re-election and the Democrats had to take control of the House (a prospect that the MRC boys were discounting at the time, if we remember correctly). Of course, as we've noted, CNS kept up its partisan attacks on Murtha before the election by giving lots of attention to Murtha's critics.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:16 PM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

In his Nov. 17 WorldNetDaily column, Joseph Farah lamented losses in the November midterm election by three "members of Congress who understand the Constitution and abide by it." One of them was Rep. Richard Pombo, Farah's co-author on the book "This Land Is Our Land" (and contradicting standard WND practice, Farah does disclose this):

Pombo is chairman of the House Resources Committee, where he spent much of his time trying to overhaul one of the most ridiculous pieces of legislation in the history of our country – the Endangered Species Act.

Pombo was targeted with millions of dollars by environmentalist extremist groups that don't really care about conservation or endangered animals but do care about government control and political power.

After all the shock expressed by Americans over eminent domain in the last two years, men like Pombo, who have been fighting for personal property rights for decades, should have been returned to power, not turned out. But this was a strange election cycle, indeed. It was quite an upset.

He is a good man. He will be missed not just by people in his congressional district, but by all freedom-loving Americans.

But by dismissing Pombo's loss as the result of "a strange election cycle" and being the target of "environmentalist extremist groups," Farah fails to acknowledge another noteworthy reason he lost: allegations of corruption. Pombo has been linked to disgraced ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and accused of using federal funds to pay for a 10-day family trip in an RV through several national parks. In fact, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) -- whom WND authoritatively cited for its allegations of corruption against John Murtha -- called Pombo one of the 13 most corrupt Members of Congress. 

Posted by Terry K. at 2:08 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

A Nov. 17 WorldNetDaily article by Aaron Klein is the latest in a line of articles to cite anonymous Israeli military sources to criticize Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert and his prosecution of the fight against extremists in Gaza.

This made us think of an April column by the Washington Times' Tony Blankley, in which he suggests that retired U.S. military officials are guilty of sedition for criticizing the Bush administration's prosecution of the Iraq war. As support, Blankley cites the Uniform Code of Military Justice:

Article 88 -- Contempt toward officials Text.

"Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct."

This got us to wondering: Does Israel's military have similar sedition laws? The anonymous "military officials" certainly have as their goal the undermining of Olmert's authority to wage war as a head of state -- an undermining Klein is all to happy to abet given his own longtime hostility toward Olmert.

We're not familiar enough with the Israeli military to know for sure. But if military criticism of civilian leaders is considered seditious and treasonous in the U.S., it most likely is similarly so in Israel as well. As as we've previously noted, WND writers have previously denounced criticism of Bush's conduct of the Iraq war; why should that policy change just because WND doesn't like the person in charge?

Posted by Terry K. at 11:00 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

It's nice (we think) to discover that we're on the same wavelength as NewsMax's Ronald Kessler.

Coinciding nicely with our new item detailing Kessler's Bush administration sycophancy, Kessler serves up a new NewsMax article that reinforces our view. This time, he's featuring Republican strategist Mary Matalin insisting that "[t]he Democrats' takeover of Congress is the 'last gasp of liberals' " and complaining that the Bush administration has gotten "credit for nothing that goes right and blame for everything that goes wrong."

Posted by Terry K. at 10:51 PM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

A Nov. 17 NewsBusters post by Warner Todd Huston repeats his unsupported contention that Rep. John Murtha is "extreme," then misleadingly described his position on Iraq. Huston wrote that the media "refused to portray Murtha's position as 'extreme', even as he supports pulling out of Iraq immediately."

But as we noted, Murtha's position on Iraq is to pull out at the "earliest practicable date" -- which, despite Huston's suggestion, is not synonymous with "immediately."

Posted by Terry K. at 11:35 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

In his Nov. 17 WorldNetDaily column, Kevin McCullough goes on a tirade against Sen. Barack Obama. Headlined "Why is Obama's evil in Rick Warren's pulpit?" and taking off on an invitation for Obama to speak at the church where the "Purpose-Driven Life" author is pastor, McCullough asks "Why would Warren marry the moral equivalency of his pulpit – a sacred place of honor in evangelical tradition – to the inhumane, sick and sinister evil that Obama has worked for as a legislator?" McCullough adds: "Warren is ready to turn over the spiritual mantle to a man who represents the views of Satan at worst or progressive anti-God liberals at best in most of his public positions on the greatest moral tests of our time."

Why is McCullough engaging in such a bizarre anti-Obama rant? He is a supporter of abortion rights and gay marriage. In McCullough's pretty little mind, this comes out as Obama's "long history of defying the intended morality of Scripture," supporting "the advance of the radical homosexual activist lobby in its pursuit to destroy traditional marriage" and "continued funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in our nation's inner cities, which are performing genocide against the populations of African Americans living there." McCullough adds that Obama "has also solidly backed the advancement of all "hate crimes" legislation, which ultimately may be used to silence clergy who believe according to their own convictions that homosexual behavior is wrong and preach so from biblical texts," but he offers no evidence that this is the case.

McCullough concludes by asking his readers to "call Rick Warren and ask him why Barack Obama's evil worldview will be given the high honor of addressing the faithful."

McCullough has previously attacked Obama. In a July 21 column, he claimed that Obama "implied that Bush wanted to take away the right of black people to cast a vote" during a speech before the NAACP. This gave him license to launch into the old right-wing talking point trope that Democrats opposed the civil rights movement, adding "This is part of what makes Barack Obama's willful misleading of the attendees to the NAACP so laughable, so sinister, so evil.

In a Nov. 5, 2004, column, McCullough wrote of one pastor's support for "Barrack [sic] Obama, who by every measure is someone who supports the radical homosexual agenda, partial-birth abortion, and even born-alive abortion." 

Posted by Terry K. at 9:36 AM EST

Updated: Friday, November 17, 2006 11:39 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

From our where-are-they-now file: Marc Morano, former CNSNews.com reporter and current director of communications for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (that would be on the Republican side of things, meaning that he may be looking for a new job very shortly), was in Kenya this week for the United Nations conference on climate change. As we've noted, Morano has used his Senate job to make misleading claims about global warming -- he and his boss Sen. James Inhofe, oppose the idea that humans have anything to do with global warming.

A Nov. 14 Associated Press article notes that Morano is keeping up the fight:

A spokesman for the U.S. senator who described global warming as a hoax showed up at a gathering of believers Tuesday, claiming scientific dissent on the issue was being suppressed and demonized.

One scholar shot back that the Senate aide must be living on another planet. The exchange took place at the UN conference on climate change, which has drawn more than 5,000 diplomats, activists and scientists to consider new steps in combating global warming.

"The skeptics who get vocal are vilified," said Marc Morano, director of communications for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The committee chairman, Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, has enraged environmentalists by calling global warming alarmist and a hoax.

Morano was invited to be part of a panel discussion on how best to convey the issue of climate change in the media. His fellow panelists, including Jules Boykoff of Pacific University in Oregon, argued that skeptics actually get too much attention in the press.

[...]

"The shrillness of these skeptics and their numbers have been on the decline," Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, told The Associated Press before the panel discussion.

But Morano referred to the two-week UN conference as an "echo chamber" where "the media and climate alarmists demonize climate skeptics."

Morano continues to bring the same standard of accuracy and fairness to his Senate job as he did at CNS. Remember, he co-wrote CNS' attacks on John Murtha earlier this year, which hauled out the disgruntled and the dead to smear Murtha.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:03 AM EST

Share This Post

Permalink

A Nov. 15 Media Research Center "Media Reality Check" by Rich Noyes lapses into Republican talking points -- not necessarily reflective of reality -- by describing Rep. John Murtha's proposal for withdrawal from Iraq as a "cut-and-run prescription" and "defeatism." Nowhere does Noyes actually state what exactly Murtha's proposal was -- to withdraw troops at the "earliest practicable date," nor does Noyes explain how withdrawal at the "earliest practicable date" equals "cut and run."

Noyes also claims that "ABC’s John Donvan, who fawned over Murtha in a January 2 Nightline interview, contended that by disagreeing with Murtha, 'the White House and its supporters set out to immediately smear Murtha’s standing as an American.' " But Noyes doesn't repeat what the White House said about Murtha's proposal, which lends credence to that description. Then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Murtha was "endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party" and "surrender[ing] to the terrorists."

Noyes also noted that "Karl Rove criticized Murtha and John Kerry’s defeatism" treating defeatism as an uncontested fact (as did another reference to "Murtha's defeatist rhetoric") rather than as merely Rove's opinion. Noyes also failed to repeat Rove's specific claim -- perhaps because it was false. As Time's Joe Klein noted, Rove was accusing Murtha and Kerry of wanting to "cut and run" -- the playbook from which Noyes cribbed -- adding that terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi wouldn't have been nailed if we had pulled out of Iraq. Klein adds:

Rove's assertion was scurrilous and inaccurate. Al-Zarqawi had been eliminated through terrific intelligence work and air power, neither of which required a substantial U.S. ground presence in Iraq.

Noyes' article is a "reality check" only if you consider Republican talking points to be reality.

Posted by Terry K. at 7:03 PM EST

Share This Post

Permalink