Joseph Farah is suchaliar, one has to wonder what the motivation is. Is he pathological, or does he merely lack a conscience, taking the view that the end justifies the means in making money in promoting right-wing extremism?
Whatever the reason, he is clearly unable to stop. Farah adds another arrow to his quiverful of lies about Elena Kagan in a June 29 WorldNetDaily article in which he falsely smears Kagan as "a person who thinks it's OK to ban books," screeching, "Do you want a book banner on the Supreme Court?"
Here's Farah's alleged evidence to support his claim:
As solicitor general, Kagan defended before the Supreme Court a campaign finance law that could ban books and would ban pamphlets that would promote federal political candidacies or oppose them. While Kagan pointed out the law had never been applied to books, she acknowledged her support for the provision to consider such advocacy books as campaign contributions.
The facts are quite different the the pack of lies Farah is peddling. First, Farah thinks "could" and "will" mean the same thing -- apparently, he learned nothing about grammar in his career as a journalist. Second, the campaign finance law Kagan argued to uphold (in the Citizens United case) did not ban all books and pamphlets, as Farah suggests; it addressed only election spending by corporations and unions.
Further, Kagan never argued for banning books. While WND correctly notes that Kagan "pointed out the law had never been applied to books," it conveniently omitted that Kagan also said that because federal law had never banned books, it likely could not do so, and that any attempt would be unlikely to stand up in court.
Specifically, Kagan said, "Nobody has ever suggested -- nobody in Congress, nobody in the administrative apparatus has ever suggested that books pose any kind of corruption problem." Kinda shoots down Farah's claim that Kagan's a "book banner," doesn't it?
Farah pads out the article with the discredited lies that "Kagan is a radical antimilitary and proabortion zealot."
Farah then jumps to crass commercialism, begging his readers to send him $24.95 so he can send anti-Kagan letters to each member of the Senate.
So, compulsive or craven? We're not sure, but there is definitely something amoral going on with Farah. Nobody can spread such deliberate lies without deliberate intent.
WND, CNS Push Attack Du Jour on Kagan Topic: CNSNews.com
In the ConWeb, it's just one attack after another on Elena Kagan, and the facts really don't matter. Take today's attack, for instance.
What the ConWeb is howling about now is that back in the 1990s, when she was working in the Clinton administration, Kagan made suggested edits to a statement the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists planned to issue on the subject of the intact dilatation and extraction (D&X) abortion, aka so-called "partial-birth abortion."
CNSNews.com promoted this in a long, long June 29 article by Jane McGrath (whose main job is being an Obama-bashing blogger at Townhall.com). McGrath claimed that the draft ACOG statement "contradicted the argument President Clinton had been making to defend his opposition to a ban on partial-birth abortion." Which it didn't, of course. While the draft statement stated that ACOG "could identify no circumstances under which this procedure, as defined above, would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman" -- a claim that remained in the final version of the statement -- it went on to state that making intact D&X illegal "may outlaw techniques that are critical to the lives and health of American women." Kagan's edits mainly consisted of making the latter claim more explicit, stating that intact D&X may be the best option for some women.
McGrath goes on to uncritically quote an anti-abortion activist claiming that because of this, Kagan somehow "'deserves the blame' for delaying enactment of the partial-birth abortion ban."
WorldNetDaily anti-abort columnist Jill Stanek seized on the issue, misleadingly claiming that ACOG's draft was "unhelpful" and that Kagan "changed it to suit Clinton's pro-abortion agenda." Stanek went on to howl that "ACOG accepted a revision of its medical opinion from a political hack."
WND liked Stanek's column so much it rewrote it into a "news" article. WND, as per usual, makes no effort to do anything more with it, like obtain opinions from others on the issue.
But don't worry. As this attack crashes and burns, the ConWeb is sure to concoct a new one tomorrow.
Farah Pretends Fundamentally Flawed Attack Video Is True Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah used his June 29 WorldNetDaily column to defend Rep. Michele Bachmann from criticism over her appearance in a Coral Ridge Ministries-produced video on socialism claiming that "the envy-inflamed ideas of Marx and others are at war with the family, the church, and with God and His Word." Farah, unsurprisingly, insists that such a claim is "undeniably and provably true."
But Farah's really upset that a news article criticized another Coral Ridge video trying to link Charles Darwin to the Holocaust by noting it was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League:
The Anti-Defamation League diminishes itself for blasting it. It is 100 percent true and well-documented. It is an established fact that the Nazi genocide was firmly based on Darwinism. If you have any doubts, just see the fascinating documentary for yourself. But, keep in mind, Bachmann had nothing to do with it! She is a part of a different documentary critiquing socialism.
Well, not quite. As we detailed in 2006, the basic premise of the video -- that Darwin's theory of evolution directly led to the Holocaust -- falsely conflates evolution with social Darwinism, the survival-of-the-fittest concept that existed long before Darwin.
Further, Coral Ridge reportedly misled at least one scientist interviewed for the video claiming that he was interviewed about a book he wrote and was not told he would appear in a Darwin-bashing video. Afther the scientist raised concerns about how he was being portrayed, Coral Ridge reportedly removed him from later editions of the video.
WND also studiously ignored criticism of the video from its fellow right-wingers. For example, a writer at the Alan Keyes-linked Renew America apologized for promoting it, pointing out that Coral Ridge pastor D. James Kennedy's statement "No Darwin, No Hitler" is "not a true statement."
WND was a huge promoter of the video and whitewashed the controversy about Coral Ridge's ethics. WND's promotion just happened to coincide with Coral Ridge's promotion of WND managing editor David Kupelian's WND-published book "The Marketing of Evil," featuring it on its televised services, airing an interview with Kupelian, and giving away copies of a "special paperback edition" of the book to Coral Ridge donors.
Oh, and to put the utterly craven cherry on top of this, WND sellsboth Coral Ridge videos, links for which are scattered throughout Farah's column.
WND Poorly Defends Birther Hero From Racist 'Smears' Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Joe Kovacs runs to the defense of birtherhero Tim Adams in in a June 28 article, portraying him as "the victim of a vicious smear campaign," which includes the allegation that he's a "racist." But Kovacs never address the core evidence to support that allegation.
After first quoting Adams saying that "I was, among other claims made by these 'concerned citizens,' a Nazi, a skinhead, a racist, and a host of other epithets" and that "I have never been a part of any racialist group, nor espoused any racist doctrines, not that that matters to them," Kovacs inserts a video from MSNBC's "Countdown" in which Keith Olbermann lays out the case of Adam's racist ties -- attending a convention of the openly racist Council of Conservative Citizens, where he was interviewed by self-proclaimed "pro-white" radio host James Edwards.
Suddenly, it's diversion time for Kovacs, who chooses to obsess over Olbermann's use of a plural instead of tackling the core issue:
"Oops! You're quoting white supremacists about a black president," Olbermann said. "Well done, WorldNetDaily!"
WND's story from which Olbermann was reading quoted Adams only based on WND's own, exclusive, hour-long phone interview with the former elections official, and mentioned no one else making any similar claim about Obama's hospital-generated birth certificate being non-existent.
Adams, did, however, initially make his allegation June 5 on a show hosted by James Edwards of WLRM Radio in Memphis, Tenn. The show's website describes Edwards – not Tim Adams – as having an "unapologetically pro-white viewpoint."
Kovacs' effort to divorce Adams from Edwards by claiming that Edwards' website didn't describe Adams as "pro-white" is as laughable as it is lame. It probably didn't describe Jerome Corsi that way either when he appeared on Edwards' show (not that Kovacs will mention that little nugget of fact anytime soon).
At no point in the article does Kovacs ask Adams to explain why he was at a CofCC convention (or even that he was there in the first place) or why he chose to be interviewed by a "pro-white" radio host.
Kovacs' cowardice continues: He notes that "if anyone is racist against blacks on this issue, Adams says it is those who suggest Obama is not eligible to hold office," but doesn't ask Adams if he thinks the birther kings at WND are racist.
Kovacs parroted once again Adams' story that he was a "senior election clerk" who "had a secretary, private office, two assistants and about 50 temp workers" working under him, and that he had access to "numerous government databases" and "unfettered Internet access, something else the workers didn't possess," but he ignored anyone who contradicted Adams' story. Like Glen Takahashi, whom Kovacs cited as verifying that Adams was a senior elections clerk. Dave Weigel wrote:
I checked with Glen Takahashi, the administrator of the Honolulu City Clerk's office, and while he verified that Adams worked there, he explained – gently making it clear he did not want to "call anyone a liar" -- that Adams never actually had access to information about Barack Obama.
"Our office does not have access to birth records," Takahashi said. "That's handled by the state of Hawaii Department of Health. Where he's getting that, I don't know. Put it this way: Barack Obama was not trying to register to vote in Hawaii. He is, as far as I know, not a registered voter here. So no one was looking that up."
Takahashi explained that the "senior elections clerk" job that Adams held was a low-level data entry position dealing with voter registration and absentee ballots -- Adams was one of dozens of temporary employees who staffed the pre-election rush. And he contradicted Adams's claims that Obama's lack of a birth certificate was an "open secret" or that voters contacted the office to ask about it.
"To be honest, I fielded no questions about that," Takahashi said. "Why would anyone ask us? We don't have those records."
That would seem to undermine Adams' story, but Kovacs doesn't want his readers to know about it.
Of course, tellinglies and hidingthetruth about Obama and his birth have been WND's modus operandi all along.
David Limbaugh Falsely Claims FDR Made Economy Worse Topic: Newsmax
In attacking President Obama yet again, David Limbaugh writes in his June 29 syndicated column, published by WorldNetDaily and Newsmax: "Obama is wholly impervious to the historical record documenting the failure of FDR's pump priming during the Depression, which exacerbated rather than ameliorated the economic problems."
In fact, unemployment dropped consistently under New Deal programs. Most experts agree that when FDR tried to raise taxes and cut the budget in 1937, the economy faltered again.
CNSNews.com's anti-Kagan crusade continues -- and merges with its recently discovered tool of using Freedom of Information Act request to play gotcha with government officials -- with a June 28 article by Terry Jeffrey trying to create a scandal where there isn't one.
CNS is trying to figure out which issues Elena Kagan would have recuse herself from as a Supreme Court justice based on her work as solicitor general, so it filed an FOIA request with the solicitor general's office demanding records by Kagan mostly in reference to health care reform.
Of course, recusal is a non-issue -- Jeffrey offers no evidence that Kagan has refused to recuse as necessary in the past and, as even Jeffrey points out, Kagan has recused herself from her work as solicitor general due to her Surpreme Court nomination. Nevertheless, Jeffrey finds it significant that the office is seeking "clarification" on CNS' broad request for documents regarding "the administration’s health-care reform plan," putting the "delay" in the opening paragraph and, thus, suggesting that it is intentional stalling.
Jeffrey is trying to create a controversy where there isn't one. Anyonesurprised?
Is The MRC Trying to Destroy Weigel? Topic: Media Research Center
There's a reason why the folks at the Media Research Center were happy to dance on the grave of David Weigel's career at the Washington Post: the MRC was working behind the scenes to help dig the grave.
Starting last month, Dan Gainor, vice president for business and culture at the Media Research Center, the conservative media watchdog group, went on something of a crusade.
Angered by a joke that David Weigel made about Matt Drudge on his Twitter feed, Gainor contacted conservative groups asking them to stop cooperating with Weigel, who had recently taken his blog about the conservative movement to the Washington Post.
“We encouraged conservatives not to deal with him,” he said. “We contacted other conservative organizations and said, ‘This guy is no friend of the conservative movement. We recommend that you deny him access.’ Some did.”
When MRC asked the Heritage Foundation to disinvite Weigel from its weekly Tuesday blogger briefing, Rob Bluey, the briefing’s organizer, said the meeting was on the record and occasionally attended by liberal journalists, and declined to go along with the group’s request.
Most of the group’s other efforts also failed, but the MRC’s reservations about Weigel — voiced in an early letter to Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli, and given public airing on Post Ombudsman Andy Alexander’s piece on the affair on Friday — have played a major role in shaping the debate over whether the Post made the right move in accepting Weigel’s resignation in the wake of leaked emails in which he disparaged prominent conservative figures.
So the MRC was actively trying to interfere with Weigel's job. Working behind the scenes to blacklist someone it doesn't like goes far beyond the "media research" and criticism the MRC purports to do -- it's political activism. On top of that, as Eric Boehlert notes, it's an attempt to hide conservatives from media scrutiny by trying to keep them only in right-leaning media, where their views will never be challenged unless they commit the sin of not being conservative enough (which the MRC frequently does).
But did the MRC do more? Given the antipathy toward Weigel by Gainor and other MRC employees, one has to wonder if the MRC played a role in making sure Weigel's Jourolist emails were made public -- after all, they play right into the MRC's talking points against Weigel.
Gainor has not denied working to undermine Weigel; in a May 28 NewsBusters post, he repeats Politico's claim that he was on "something of a crusade" against Weigel, but he does not contradict it. So it begs the question of what else Gainor or other MRC employees did.
Perhaps it's time that Gainor and the MRC come clean about their behind-the-scenes tactics.
P.S. Gainor, like most at the MRC, have yet to provide any example (personal, off-the-record views aside) of how Weigel's reporting was inaccurate or even "biased."
Klein's Attacks on Gregorian Get Even More Lame (And Conspiratorial) Topic: WorldNetDaily
Last week, we detailed the lack of substance in WorldNetDaily reporter Aaron Klein's desperate guilt-by-association smear of Vartan Gregorian, a member of President Obama's Commission on White House Fellowships who in Klein's fevered mind is an Islamic extremist who is "closely tied to the Muslim leaders behind a proposed controversial Islamic cultural center to be built near the site of the 9/11 attacks" -- never mind that Gregorian is a universally respected scholar who formerly headed the New York Public Library and Brown University and who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bush.
Any further attacks on Gregorian can only get more lame from there, and darn if Klein doesn't prove it.
Klein trotted out his latest guilt-by-association smear in a June 27 WND article: "Gregorian served on the selection committee of the Annenberg Foundation, which funded Ayers' Chicago Annenberg Challenge with a $49.2 million, 2-to-1 matching challenge grant over five years."
That's it. That's the substance of it.
But that statement appeared in the fifth paragraph of Klein's article. Because Klein isn't satisfied by substance, what you read before you come across that statement is inaccurate and unsubstantiated innuendo:
A scholar and charity head appointed to President Obama's White House Fellowships Commission served as a point man in granting $49.2 million in startup capital to an education-reform project founded by Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers and chaired by Obama.
Documentation shows the White House fellow, Vartan Gregorian, was central in Ayers' recruitment of Obama to serve as the first chairman of the project, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge -- a job in which Obama worked closely on a regular basis with Ayers.
Obama also later touted his job at the project as qualifying him to run for public office, as WND previously reported.
The main claim Klein makes -- that Ayers recruited Obama to head the CAC -- is unsubstantiated. As we pointed out when Klein made the same claim in his Obama-bashing book, The New York Times reported that, "according to several people involved," Ayers "played no role" in choosing Obama. Klein offers no evidence to contradict that claim.
Because that central claim is dubious, Klein's secondary claim -- that Gregorian was "central" to Obama being appointed to the CAC -- is even more dubious. Klein's evidence here is a letter in which Gregorian, as head of Annenberg's selection committee, asked Ayers to "compose the governing board" of the Challenge's collaborative project with "people who reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of Chicago." As a result, Klein wrote, "Ayers and other founding Challenge members then recruited Obama to serve as the project chairman." But Klein offers no evidence that Obama was specifically mentioned by Gregorian, nor does he offer evidence that the CAC was specifically looking for a black man or other minority to lead it.
Which brings us to where it gets really dumb. The underlying implication of Klein's article is that Obama appointed Gregorian to the board of the President's Commission on White House Fellowships in gratitude for Gregorian funding the CAC and, thus, helping to pad Obama's resume. This implication was made explicit in the front-page promo for Klein's article, which asked, "Ayers-Obama link: Is this the payoff?"
Because nothing screams "payoff" more than an appointment to a minor government board.
If this is Klein's idea of a "payoff," what does he think President Bush awarding Gregorian the Presidential Medal of Freedom is? We don't know, because Klein has curiously omitted mentioning that Gregorian has received it.
Oh, and Klein pads out his article by repeating the lame and baseless smears of his original attack on Gregorian, thus compounding the lameness.
There is a relentless war being waged against American men that literally spans the entire extent of their lives. From the womb, in which a woman's "right" to abort a male baby for being male is defended but a similar right to abort a female baby for being female is vehemently opposed, to the grave, wherein the disparate impact of old age is ignored despite women living 5.2 years longer than men on the average, men are systematically, structurally and unstintingly under assault.
Most men understand this on some level, but like the nice dependable man who can't figure out why attractive women repeatedly reject him in favor of unemployed losers with criminal records, they are incapable of doing anything about it because they simply can't believe that women truly do not think or behave like men.
[...]
Young Sam understands that he is under attack on the basis of his sex, even if he has no idea why. Moreover, he even recognizes the direct link between the ideology of female superiority and political left-liberalism that escapes so many adult political analysts. He does not need to read this column because he already knows that he is in a war that was neither of his making nor of his choosing.
But most men, especially men of the Baby Boom and World War II generations, do not understand this because they have bought into the myth of equality that was marketed to them under false pretenses by the ideologists of female superiority. And yet, it is not only an observable, provable and scientifically established fact that there is no such thing as material equality between the sexes, it is also an observable and provable fact that legal equality between the sexes does not exist, either. Nor is there spiritual equality of the sexes under any of the major religions of the West, the Christian concept of Original Sin notwithstanding.
The first step in winning any war is recognizing that whereas it takes two to tango, it only takes one side to start a war. Men have been in unthinking and instinctive retreat before the implacable onslaught of female ideologues for 80 years, which has now reached the point that the very foundations of Western civilization have crumbled and are approaching collapse. And unless men realize that they are engaged in a war that they did not choose, the civilization they constructed so painstakingly over many centuries will devolve into the primitive grass-hut matriarchy from whence it came.
The MRC Ramps Up for Kagan-Bashing Topic: Media Research Center
CNSNews.com is not the only Media Research Center unit that has dedicated itself to bashing Elena Kagan with the advent of her confirmation hearing. The whole organization is taking part.
The MRC primed its attacks with a June 24 "Media Reality Check" by Rich Noyes complaining that the media was not reporting discredited right-wing attacks on Kagan. That's not what he actually said, of course. He started off complaining that the broadcast networks offered little recent coverage of Kagan (which is true as far as it goes), then highlighted "topics that the broadcast networks have either ignored or downplayed." That's where the right-wing complaining comes in.
The very first item on Noyes' list is "Kagan’s senior thesis on the demise of the Socialist Party in the early 1900s, which she labeled 'sad,'" and her Daily Princetonian op-ed "where she openly described herself a 'liberal' and wailed about the 'anonymous but moral majority-backed avengers of innocent life.'" Noyes didn't explain why Kagan should be held accountable 30 years later for statements she made in college.
Noyes also cited "Kagan’s handling of the Citizens United case as Solicitor General," which he claims is evidence of "openness to regulating political speech." Noyes didn't mention the fact that Kagan was acting on behalf of the government, not necessarily expressing her personal views.
Finally, Noyes referenced that "Kagan blocked the U.S. military from using the school’s Office of Career Services because of the ban on open homosexuals serving in the armed forces, a policy Kagan said she 'abhorred.'" That description leaves out a lot of detail, and the MRC has misled about it in the past.
That's the lens the MRC is looking at this week's coverage of Kagan -- how much said coverage advances right-wing talking points. More on this later.
With the death of Sen. Robert Byrd, we thought we'd take a look back at Newsmax's treatement of the senator.
As we detailed in 2005, Newsmax was obsessed with making sure Byrd's long-ago association with the KKK was mentioned as often as possible, repeatedly referring to him as "Robert 'KKK' Byrd." It attacked Byrd over the association even as it whitewashed Trent Lott's segregationist-friendly remarks.
Times change: Newsmax so far has not gone out of its way to highlight it, and it even published a wire story of testimonials to Byrd.
CNS Repeats False Claim Kagan Is 'Anti-Military' Topic: CNSNews.com
In a June 28 CNSNews.com article that's yetanotherattack on Elena Kagan, Fred Lucas uncriticially quotes from a letter from the group Military Families United claiming that Kagan has a "perceived anti-military bias" over her purported "failure to comply with federal law" on allowing military recruiters at Harvard Law School.
The claim that Kagan is "anti-military" is objectively false -- something Lucas couldn't be bothered to report.
Lucas also described Military Families United as "a non-partisan non-profit group." That's debatable since its website clearly seems to be right-leaning through the views that it takes, on top of attacking Kagan:
A June 23 statement from Kirk Lippold, the group's senior military fellow, came to the defense of ousted Gen. Stanley McChrystal, claiming his comments in Rolling Stone magazine, while "admittedly unprofessional and impertinent," "clearly do not constitute the necessary broad grounds for dismissal."
In a Feb. 22 press release, Lippold parroted right-wing talking points on Justice Department attorneys who had previously represented Guantánamo Bay detainees.
Lucas also misstated Kagan's actions in the controversy over military recruiters at Harvard Law School, stating that Kagan "reversed the policy" to accept recruiters at the school after the Solomon Amendment was passed. In fact, Kagan reversed the policy for only one semester, and only after an appeals court reversed the Solomon Amendment.
Lucas also uncritically quoted Republican Rep. Jeff Sessions claiming, "Simply put, Harvard was legally bound by the Solomon Amendment every single day that Ms. Kagan was dean," but no evidence is offered to support it, nor is the mitigating factor of the appeals court reversal mentioned.
NewsBusters Smears Maddow By Taking Her Out of Context Topic: NewsBusters
In a June 26 NewsBusters post, Jack Coleman accused Rachel Maddow "asking permission of her audience, which also occupies the fringe left, if it's 'OK' to ridicule al Qaeda," adding, "Suffice it to say, the notion of destroying al Qaeda never gets out of committee with this crowd."
Coleman's evidence for this is a statement by Maddow on her June 21 show: "I know that al Qaeda is al Qaeda, right? But is it OK to point out that they're ridiculous, that their propaganda is inadvertently funny, as in ha ha I'm laughing at you?" But Coleman quotes only this statement, and the accompanying video shows only this statement.
In fact, Maddow's statement placed in the full context of what she said shows that Maddow was pointing out that the media was ridiculing al-Qaeda enough, that it is instead being portrayed as the "mightly al-Qaeda" despite its amateurish recruiting videos:
Here's the thing I always forget about al-Qaeda. For all their murderous intent and demonstrated capacity for all their global plotting, for all the deadly serious implications of them getting access to even more deadly means of targeting us than they have already figured out, for all the truly scary things we have already figured out about al-Qaeda, it is easy to forget that on their own terms, they're often freaking ridiculous.
[clip of Adam Gadahn video]
That's not from The Onion doing a satire of a dorky American kid making a fake jihad video. This is actually the new al-Qaeda video.
Maddow goes on to reference "the al-Qaeda AV club," adding, "These guys are like the reject pile at talk radio tryouts." You'd think the latter statement would be more offensive to Coleman than the statement he highlighted; instead, he had to take Maddow out of context to smear her.
As if blatanting misrepresenting Maddow by taking her words out of context wasn't bad enough, Coleman goes on to suggest that Maddow is rooting for deaths of U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, claiming she was "oddly upbeat" in noting deaths of Australian troops to her guest, former Petraeus adviser and Australian native David Kilkullen.
Again, Coleman takes this out of context. Maddow's full interview of Kilkullen focuses on the mostly separate goals in Afghanistan of destroying al-Qaeda and nation-building. Maddow's statement on the Australian deaths can only be descibed as "upbeat" only if you divorce it from its full context -- which Coleman did.
AIM Publishes Cowardly Army Officer's Anti-Obama Screed Topic: Accuracy in Media
On June 25, Accuracy in Media published a wild anti-Obama screed by someone named Jonah Knox, which sneered at the "Obama and his ruling liberal elite," wholeheartedly endorsed Gen. Stanley McChrystal's attacks on Obama, and oddly complained that "the Right cannot identify that there is a war, doesn’t realize that there are no rules of engagement, and cannot even identify who the domestic enemy is."
But most of the writer's venom was directed at Obama, in the form of "things that we once did not do (and which still break the law or rules) but which the liberals have normalized through unilaterally and unapologetically doing." On his list:
It is now acceptable to appoint a homosexual advocate as a “safe schools czar” and boast of it. Those who condemn such perverts and their advocates are deemed “hateful” and of “leading a vicious smear campaign.” Telling the truth is now a smear.
It is acceptable for the president to try to force the troops, involved in two wars, to accept open homosexuals in the ranks so that a political special interest group can be appeased.
It is now acceptable to have a U.S. President who is personal friends with a communist terrorist.
It is now acceptable to have a U.S. President who goes around the world “apologizing” for America and debasing it.
It is now acceptable for elected officials such as Senator Harry Reid to disparage our troops and give comfort to the enemy.
It is now acceptable to beat an old woman on live TV and “protest” against laws attempting to preserve the last vestiges of morality (see the homosexual reaction to the Proposition 8 measure in California).
It is now acceptable to attack a beauty pageant contestant with the most vulgar of language because she did not completely embrace the sodomite agenda.
It's not until the very end of the column that we learn the real truth about the writer:
Jonah Knox is the pseudonym for a noncommissioned officer and analyst in the United States Army Reserves.
That's right -- the writer won't put his real name on his attack and stand by his words.
What a coward. Real men stand by their words in public.
AIM, of course, is enabling this coward, which makes Cliff Kincaid and company cowardly too.
WND Also Promoted Homophobic Rabbi Topic: WorldNetDaily
We've detailed how CNSNews.com promoted attacks on Elena Kagan by rabidly homophobic rabbi Yehuda Levin. CNS is not the only ConWeb component to have promoted Levin, and you will not be at all surprised to learn who it is.
WorldNetDaily -- which is presumably comfortable with Levin's views given its own anti-gay agenda -- has promoted Levin's anti-gay attacks, most recently on June 16, in which it approvingly quoted Levin bizarrely claiming that repealing the military's don't-ask-don't-tell policy would be a rebellion against God:
"Decent Bible-believing family people have been increasingly outraged by the cravenness of many politicians in their mad dash to turn timeless values on their heads, by advancing homosexual adoption, domestic partnerships, civil unions, 'marriage' and 'Heather Has Two Mommies,'" [Levin] wrote.
"The next slice of the salami – the koshering of volitional homosexual activity, along with all aspects of the homosexual culture, throughout the U.S. military – constitutes a rebellion against G-d and demoralizes both military and civilian society," he added. "We condemn the inherent antipathy, intolerance and even belligerence toward the essential religious liberties of Bible adherents."
[...]
"Passage of such evil legislation would expedite our hurtling towards Sodom and Gomorrah," he wrote. "It would also threaten to repel Divine Grace from our military's struggles and beyond. We call upon the Senate to unapologetically filibuster this legislation. We also ask all people of faith to adhere to our previous declaration that it is forbidden to vote for office-seekers who support the homosexual agenda."
This is not the only anti-gay attacks by Levin WND has promoted. A March 2005 WND article by Aaron Klein quotes Levin -- then head of something called Jews for Morality -- attacking the mayor of Jerusalem for not opposing a "world homosexual event" scheduled to take place in the city: "Your 'tolerant' behavior only emboldened the homosexuals, and now radical activists from all over the world are preparing to come to Jerusalem in massive numbers to publicly desecrate the city with their abominations."
In 2006 Klein, in the midst of uncritically promoting claims that "Israel's troubles in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and the Hezbollah rockets slamming daily into major Israeli population centers" were caused by Israel's "tacit support for a homosexual parade slated for next month in Jerusalem," highlighted Levin's anti-gay activism:
Meanwhile, Yehuda Levin, a member of the Rabbinical Alliance of America, has come to Israel specifically to prevent the homosexual celebration from taking place. He said a homosexual parade is akin to a parade of "prostitutes promoting prostitution, or adulterers encouraging others to try adultery at least once in their life."
"Israel is the Holy Land, not the homo-land," Levin told WND.
Levin has been posting signs across Jerusalem urging citizens, politicians and Israel's chief rabbinate to use all legal means to prevent the festival.
"We'll use our bodies if we have to," Levin says.
WND has practically been Levin's PR agent (though it curiously has not yet reported on Levin's attacks on Kagan).
An October 2000 article promoting the "excommunication" of Sen. Joe Lieberman, quoting Levin claiming that "many Jews are embarrassed by Lieberman's comments" on abortion and homosexuality "but are unsure of what to think or do since he is part of their community." The article did not explain by what authority the group that excommunicated Lieberman (the New York Torah Court) had to do so, from exactly what it was Lieberman was excommunicated from, and how binding that "excommunication" was.
in October 2000, WND quoted Levin defending the Vatican from claims that it shouldn't be in the United Nations, playing the Nazi card in the process: "Half a century ago, my family was the victim of a movement which wanted to rid the world of Jews, and Jewish teachings and Jewish values. Today, the extremists seek to disallow and disenfranchise the Catholic community and their ideas. Often it is the Catholic presence which reflects our traditional Jewish teaching on respect for life and family. I call upon the U.N. and her members to reject this censorship, reject the bigotry, and reject this hate of the Vatican and of the Jewish pro-life and family [traditions] it expresses. Sixty years ago our people asked, 'Where were you for the Jews?' Today we ask the world, 'Where are you for the Catholics?'"
In 2003 it highlighted Levin's support of Roy Moore, then the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who was under fire for placing a monument with a copy of the 10 Commandments on the grounds of the Alabama Supreme Court building.
Levin has consistently promoted right-wing talking points and is as extreme as WND (if not more) on the subject of gays, so it's completely unshocking that WND would embrace him.
In 2004 it touted Levin's attacks on the idea of Arlen Specter being named chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee as "he wrong man, in the wrong place, at the wrong time": "Specter will not look kindly on judicial candidates who do not toe the line on his liberal ideas. He wants judges on the bench who will advance his degenerate agenda of abortion-on-demand, radical homosexual rights, rapacious lawyers, tax increases and the rape of America's constitutional liberties."
