“You said at a recent Catholic Community Conference that your favorite word was ‘The Word, as in the word made flesh,’ and that we need to quote, ‘give voice to what that means in terms of public policy that would be in keeping with the Word.’ So, when was the Word made flesh? Was it at the Annunciation, when Jesus was conceived by the power of the Holy Sprit, as the Creed says, or was it at the Nativity when he was born of the Virgin Mary? And when did the Word get the right to life?”
When the answer Pelosi provided was deemed insufficient, CNS decided to press the issue:
CNSNews.com then sent an e-mail to the speaker’s press secretary, Nadeam Elshami, seeking to clarify the speaker’s answer. The e-mail said:
“Speaker Pelosi said at a Catholic Community Conference that her favorite word was ‘the Word’ as in ‘the Word made flesh’ and that we ‘need to [give] voice to what that means in terms of public policy.’ We’d like to clarify the speaker’s position on this: Did Jesus have the right to life from the moment of conception?”
In an e-mailed response, the press secretary wrote: “The speaker answered the question. Thanks.”
CNS doesn't seem to care about actual news, only in attacking the Obama administration with gotchas. As we'venoted, CNS even engages in gotcha Freedom of Information Act requests.
Chuck Norris writes in his Aug. 2 WorldNetDaily column:
Now, it finally is coming to light why back on Dec. 16, 2009, Obama signed an executive order "designating Interpol [International Criminal Police Organization] as a public international organization entitled to enjoy certain privileges, exemptions and immunities."
Glenn Beck spoke for a host of other government watchdogs back then, when he asked on the air on his Jan. 7 show, "We've been asking ever since it was signed: Why? Who can tell me what special-interest group asked for this? If it were about terror, why not tell us that when he signed it? This Congress attacks our CIA and FBI, but Interpol gets immunity? Why? It makes no sense."
It all comes down to one basic verb. Can you find it in the following paragraph?
Obama's executive order reads, "By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 1 of the International Organizations Immunities Act (22 U.S.C. 288), and in order to extend the appropriate privileges, exemptions and immunities to the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) ..."
There's the magic verb: "to extend"!
As I wrote in an earlier column on Interpol, is it also just coincidental that Interpol is exempt from typical American search-and-seizure laws?
Anyone still not connecting the dots?
In fact, as was detailed when Glenn Beck first pushed the claim, the executive order does not give Interpol the power to arrest U.S. citizens, and Interpol already had immunity from lawsuits in the U.S. -- granted by President Reagan! Further, Interpol is not a traditional police force that his officers who arrest people; its functions are mostly investigative and record-keeping, and local law enforcement is used to conduct any actual arrests.
NewsBusters' Selective Analysis of Clinton Wedding Coverage Topic: NewsBusters
An Aug. 2 NewsBusters post by Nathan Burchfiel offers a rather selective approach to examining coverage of Chelsea Clinton's wedding and complaining it got more coverage than Jenna Bush's wedding, implying that this was yet another example of liberal bias:
The broadcast networks - ABC, CBS and NBC - aired 87 stories about Clinton's July 31 nuptials between July 25 and August 1. Four major newspapers - The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and USA Today - printed 21 stories during the same time period.
[...]
NBC led all coverage of Clinton's wedding with 59 stories during the period examined, almost as many as all three networks combined reported on the wedding of former first daughter Jenna Bush in 2008. ABC, CBS and NBC aired a total of 59 stories about Bush's wedding during the same time period surrounding the May 11, 2008, event.
The 48-percent increase in coverage on the networks was similar to the 52-percent increase in coverage of Clinton's wedding over Bush's in the four major newspapers. The publications ran 21 stories about Bush's wedding compared to 32 about Clinton's.
Further, Fox News had a reporter on the scene in the town where they got married, filing numerous reports throughout the day, as "The Daily Show's" Jon Stewart highlighted.
While there arguably was overcoverage of Chelsea's wedding, let's not pretend, as Burchfiel does, that it was only the so-called "liberal media" that was doing it.
Cliff Kincaid Anti-Gay Freakout Watch Topic: Accuracy in Media
Cliff Kincaid's Aug. 1 Accuracy in Media column is obsessed with the sexuality of Bradley Manning, the soldier suspected of passing classified documents about the war in Afghanistan to WikiLeaks.
Kincaid asserts that "reliable reports suggest" Manning "was not only a homosexual but was considering a sex change." Then again, Kincaid considers a guy who thinks the Nazi party began as a "private homosexual military force" to be reliable, so perhaps his judgment on such issues is less than stellar.
As could be expected, Kincaid uses manning to argue against repeal of the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, another Kincaid obsession:
In a clear indication that the law was being ignored by the Obama Administration, the evidence demonstrates that Manning was continuing to serve after openly flaunting his homosexuality, including on Facebook.
Who in the Obama Administration—and the Department of Defense—was aware of his conduct and looked the other way? Was Manning given a pass because his “lifestyle” was considered to be in favor and acceptable under the Obama Administration?
Now, because of the obvious mishandling of this homosexual ticking time bomb, it appears that the United States, its soldiers, and relations with countries in the region will pay the price. Lives—and a war on terrorism in Afghanistan—could be lost.
The revelations of Manning’s openly pro-homosexual conduct suggest that a more liberal Department of Defense policy, in deference to the wishes of the Commander-in-Chief, had already been in effect and has now backfired in a big way. The result could be not only the loss of the lives of U.S. soldiers, as a result of the enemy understanding U.S. intelligence sources and methods, but damaged relations with Afghanistan and Pakistan and a possible U.S. military defeat in the region as a whole.
[...]
It will be interesting to see how the pro-homosexual U.S. media deal with the shocking revelations about Manning—and whether they investigate whether he was part of a secret homosexual network in the military that is currently working with WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, once part of a group called the “International Subversives.”
That's just wild, hate-driven speculation. But Kincaid wants to see gays dead, so that's to be expected.
WND Abandons $99 Fee for Corsi Newsletter Topic: WorldNetDaily
Apparently Jerome Corsi's insights aren't worth $99 after all.
WorldNetDaily announced on Aug. 1 that it was eliminating the $99 annual fee for Corsi's Red Alert newsletter. While the likely reason for doing so is that an embarrassing small number of people actually subscribed, WND isn't about to admit that in public, so it frames the whole thing as Corsi and WND editor Joseph Farah having "decided recently to offer their own 'stimulus package' to readers – good financial advice and insight from a trusted source for FREE."
Which leads us to the other likely reason there no longer is a fee -- Corsi isn't a "trusted source" who offered good advice. As we detailed, Corsi has routinely botched economic issues, and Red Alert tended toward the conspiratorial, as with Corsi's claim that President Obama was "trying to cause a panic" over swine flu in order "to use the pandemic panic to create enough fear that the American public will acquiesce to the passage of Obamacare."
The evaporation of this revenue stream may be another reason Corsi took a side job for a company that insists on disassociating itself from his personal views. That disclaimer appears again in the WND article announcing the dropping of the subscription fee.
We tried to subscribe to Red Alert not that it's free, but the activation link we were sent doesn't work and we can't access any articles on the website. Perhaps such crappy technical maintenance is another reason why keeping the pay wall wasn't worth it.
NewsBusters' Double Standard on Criticizing The ADL Topic: NewsBusters
An Aug. 2 NewsBusters post by Ken Shepherd claims that Time's Joe Klein engaged in "self-righteous bluster" in criticizing Anti-Defamation League head Abe Foxman "for his opposition to a planned Islamic center just blocks from Ground Zero in lower Manhattan." Shepherd's post carries the headline, "Joe Klein Defames ADL Leader As Intolerant for Questioning Appropriateness of Mosque Near Ground Zero."
But what was NewsBusters doing earlier this year? Defaming Foxman for committing the conservative sin of criticizing Rush Limbaugh.
A Jan. 24 post by Lachlan Markay attacked Foxman and the ADL for daring to "deride Limbaugh for supposedly offensive comments that they themselves have supported," in this case Limbaugh's statement that Jews who voted for Obama may be feeling "buyer's remorse" because the Obama adminstration is "assaulting bankers"and "a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish." According to Markay, "ADL demonstrated profound hypocrisy in criticizing Limbaugh for simply recounting stereotypes of the Jewish community used throughout history as the basis for often violent campaigns against Jews."
Markay even brought in noted defamer Ben Shapiro (the beneficiary of another instance of MRC's selective outrage) for support, quoting him further defaming Foxman: "The Jews don't have many friends outside the conservative movement in the United States. When Foxman attacks those friends, he endangers Jews far more than he protects them. And that is a betrayal of his mission and the trust that so much of the Jewish community has placed in him."
Funny how Foxman is an apostate when he engages in conservative incorrectness, but absolutely valuable when he happens to dovetail with right-wing talking points.
Remember Seinfeld? It was one of the most successful TV series in the history of American television. The show revolved around Jerry Seinfeld and his buddy George Costanza.
George was the ultimate loser. Everything he did was a colossal failure.
One day that all changed. George was hired by George Steinbrenner and the world champion New York Yankees. He had hit the lottery — important job, big money, and beautiful women. Seinfeld was in shock. “George how did you do it?”
“Simple,” George said. “One day I woke up and realized I was the world’s most pathetic loser. So I decided to do the opposite of everything I’ve ever done. Every thought, opinion, decision — I now do the opposite. And suddenly, I’m a winner!”
As one of America’s strongest critics of President Obama, I am constantly asked “What would you do differently if you were president?”
The answer is simple: EVERYTHING! It’s the Seinfeld solution.
Obama is George Costanza. Every decision he makes poisons America. Obama is killing the American dream. To save America, we have to do the opposite of everything Obama is doing.
[...]
Yes, Obama is our very own George Costanza. Except that Obama is a Marxist, and he’s not lovable. Obama is leading America towards tragedy, insolvency and bankruptcy.
Amanpour Too Foreign for MRC's Baker Topic: Media Research Center
Media Research Center vice president Brent Baker spent an Aug. 1 NewsBusters post complaining about how foreign new ABC "This Week" host Christiane Amanpour is, grousing that she is bring a "foreigner's perspective" to the show and insisting that she "treated her lack of knowledge and familiarity with U.S. politics as an asset and the current New York City resident seemed to say that after more than two decades of covering the world she had decided to allow herself to deal with U.S. politics."
More Logrolling From Kessler, Keene Topic: Newsmax
Ronald Kessler shows once again how he earned that Robert Novak Journalist of the Year Award from the American Conservative Union earlier this year -- by fluffing ACU chief David Keene.
Kessler's Aug. 2 Newsmax column gives Keene free rein to bash President Obama as "on the verge of being an unelectable president like Jimmy Carter." Kessler fawningly describes Keene as "one of the country’s most astute political observers" and touts how the ACU "1 million members" and "runs the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington."Kessler, of course, doesn't mention that Keene gave him that prestigious award at this year's CPAC.
Such lack of disclosure is considered a breach of journalistic ethics -- but then, adhering to ethics isn't why Kessler got that award.
Discredited Author Attacks Kinsey Again Topic: WorldNetDaily
A few years back, we detailed how WND managing editor David Kupelian relied on the work of rabidly anti-Kinsey "researcher" Judith Reisman to attack "mad sex scientist" Alfred Kinsey, even though the Kinsey-bashing point Kupelian was pushing had been discredited.
Well, Reisman is back, and WND has her.
WND is publishing Reisman's new book, "Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague of Corruption and Contagion on America." Guess what it's about?
Since 1948, Dr. Alfred Kinsey has been lauded as a scientific pioneer whose enlightened sexual research freed America’s repressed libido. But the so-called freedoms and new morality he “blessed” America with have proven devastating to this country’s social and moral fabric.
In "Sexual Sabotage," Dr. Judith Reisman, the preeminent Kinsey whistleblower, returns to tell the story of how the “K Bomb” was launched from a gothic limestone Indiana University building, its time-released detonation set to silently emit erototoxic radioactivity into our atmosphere – unto the generations.
During World War II and the decades that followed, Kinsey and his Indiana cohorts sabotaged our nation by entering our libraries and schools as "sex educators" – ridiculing marriage, fidelity, and chastity. They preached widespread sexual experimentation, succeeded in nationwide fraud campaigns, and gutted the tough laws that kept pornography and predators at bay.
Laying out the treacherous acts of Kinsey and Co., Dr. Reisman unveils critical new insights as to where our country went wrong, and how we can and must repudiate the soul-and-body-destroying sexual anarchy Kinsey gave us in the name of "liberation." In so doing, she says, we will reclaim the kind of noble moral character for our country – and ourselves – that is truly liberating.
"Erototoxin" is a concept of Reisman's invention, her term for the chemicals in the brain -- testosterone, oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin -- stimulated by pornography. (There is, of course, no scientific basis for this.)
In a WND article promoting Reisman book, WND editor Joseph Farah shills for it:
"Ever found yourself utterly repulsed by the latest immoral outrage – few of which are even cleverly disguised these days – and wondered, 'How on earth did America succumb to such degradation,'" asks Joseph Farah, founder and publisher of WND Books. "Judith answers that question with more alarming – and empowering – insight than anyone has yet."
[...]
"So much emphasis and energy are directed to the fight to return America to lawful, constitutional government – and rightly so,” said Farah, whose latest book, "The Tea Party Manifesto," covers such subjects. "But without understanding exactly how we traded our moral birthright for the bitter porridge of perversion, we won't realize how truly intense this fight is. And we'll fail to see that it's America's future – our most innocent and most vulnerable – who are directly targeted by the forces Judith is determined to expose."
Itseems that Reisman is promoting new dubious theories in her book as well:
Big Pharma and Big Porn – emboldened by the academic cover Kinsey's work provided – conspire in a cycle of saturating society in images of perversion, creating debased addictions that soon render men impotent, then marketing to them anti-impotency prescriptions. Mass media delivers both the disease and "the cure," as was always the intent, reports "Sexual Sabotage."
One of the things Reisman's book purports to do, besides hurling more factually dubious attacks at Kinsey, is "Why a return to pre-'50s American morality is more essential now than ever." You mean when women had few rights in marriage and gays were imprisoned merely for being gay?
That's the kind of thing that makes Reisman fit in with WND's anti-gay agenda. Somehow we suspect that she, like WND's Molotov Mitchell, endorses Uganda's proposed kill-the-gays law.
Farah Incompletely Quotes Klein Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah's July 31 WorldNetDaily column repeats the contention, as reported in an earlier WND article, that according to Aaron Klein's anti-Obama book, that it "doesn't matter" where President Obama was born because he's not a "natural born citizen."
Like the earlier article, Farah doesn't mention Klein's contention that Obama was, in fact, born in Hawaii. Nor does Farah, like Klein, mention the existence of arguments in favor of Obama being a "natural born citizen."
This is part of Farah's efforts to shift the argument away from Obama's citizenship to his eligibility, while pretending that citizenship was never an issue.
Ed Brayton picks up on something we neglected to mention when pointing out Ellis Washington's Obama Derangement Syndrome in his July 24 WorldNetDaily column.
Washington begins his column with something purporting to be a quote from Obama: "I found solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and animosity against my mother's race." Of course, Obama has never said any such thing. When Brayton asked Washington to correct it, Washington refused, replying, "Remember a quote can be a paraphrase of one's ideas and sentiments."
Well, no, it can't. A paraphrase is not a quote.
Earlier this year, Brayton caught Washington in another lie. Washington's end-of-column bio at WND states that he is "former editor of the Michigan Law Review." Not so much, Brayton writes: "e was never even a student at the U of M Law School. As an undergrad, he was chosen from three students to take a temporary job with the law review (replacing someone who had health problems, I believe) where he did mostly cite-checking and footnote checking. And it looks like it only lasted for one issue. 'Former editor' makes it sound as though he was the actual editor; he was not."
With such prevarication, it's no wonder Washington can't hold a full-time job.
Right now, a year and a half after Barack Obama's election as president, many Americans are experiencing what I experienced a second and a half after being confronted by an armed robber. Maybe in the broad sweep of history, years are like seconds. Or, perhaps we've all just been so indoctrinated and confused by leftist education, media and culture that it takes a while to recognize a smiling revolutionary for what he really is. In any event, for millions of us, the two seconds of denial and wishful thinking are ending as we approach the November midterms, while finally coming to grips with the outrageous reality staring us in the face:
We're being robbed. Though we've tried in vain to view what's happening as something other than what it is, the truth is, our wealth, our liberty, our lives, our happiness – and our country itself – are being stolen. If you think that's even a slight exaggeration, you really haven't been paying attention.
Obama and the far-left leaders of Congress are standing before us, not with ski masks, but with the masks of arrogant deceivers. They smile, they reassure, they act as though they care about us – but it's all one big cynical pretense. Virtually everything they do, and want to do, is irrational and destructive, violating the laws of the land, of economics and of common sense.
I think I've finally figured out who Obama really is. Not his identity and citizenship, which – unlike any other president in history – remains a mystery. No, I mean who he is. Here's a very brief biography:
"Smeagol's original name was Trahald, the Anglicized equivalent of which is Smeagol. ... In the day of his … coming of age, he went fishing with his cousin Deagol. While fishing, Deagol saw something glittering under the surface of the water, dove in after it, and came up with a glittering gold ring. Before even knowing the qualities of the beautiful ring, Smeagol's desire to own it overtook him. ... He soon developed many undesirable qualities, like stealing, eavesdropping, and being sneaky whenever he had the opportunity. ..." (TheOneRing.net)
Smeagol, of course, is Gollum, the pathetic creature in "The Lord of the Rings" who lived underground with the one ring that held the power over all the others. The ring consumed him, and in the end destroyed him. (Even if you disagree with this analogy, you must admit to the physical similarities between Gollum and Obama, no?)
And now that we have the Kenyan Kid in the White House – a Marxist who has set back race relations in the U.S. 40 years – today's stupid-tubish topic of choice is racism. Listening to all the make-believe racism silliness is like being in a time machine and going back to the 1960s. It's enough to make one yawn with excitement.
Following the continuum from the ancient cult of Gnosticism, to humanism and secular liberalism formed during the Enlightenment, to the 20th-century Progressive Movement, to post-modern times under President Barack Obama, we are faced with the fact that Obama is the embodiment of the Gnostic heresy.
Shapiro Misleads About Black Farmers' Settlement Topic: CNSNews.com
Ben Shapiro's July 29 syndicated column, published at CNSNews.com, attacks Shirley Sherrod as a "Marxist" as well as a "racial separatist and quasi-shakedown artist." He continues:
Along with her racist husband Charles Sherrod (“We must stop the white man and his Uncle Tom from stealing our elections”), Shirley founded New Communities, Inc. in 1969 with money from the Office of Economic Opportunity. New Communities was essentially a commune-style black farm that failed to turn any sort of profit. The USDA didn’t give it further loans. So, the Sherrods sued as part of the Pigford v. Glickman class action suit, an enormous lawsuit against the USDA by black farmers. The government settled the case for billions of dollars, awarding New Communities $13 million, including $150,000 each for Charles and Shirley for “pain and suffering.” It was the single largest payout in the settlement.
Pigford itself is, at least in large part, a scam. According to Rep. Steve King, who I interviewed on my radio show, the vast majority of payouts under Pigford are fraudulent. In excess of 80,000 “black farmers” have taken advantage of the Pigford settlement, despite the fact that during the period the lawsuit covers, there were only 16,000 black farmers in the entire country.
Shapiro misleads about the number of farmers involved. The 16,000 number is the number of black farmers that received money under the original Pigford settlement -- not the number of "black farmers in the entire country." But notification and communication errorskept some farmers from being included under that settlement, so earlier this year, the Obama administration announced a $1.25 billion settlement to cover those farmers.
Approximately 80,000 farmers have applied for money under this settlement, known as Pigford II -- where Shapiro is presumably getting his latter number from -- but Congress has yet to fund the appropriation, and even the head of the National Black Farmers Association has said that only about half of that 80,000 will receive money, presumably because claims will be investigated before money is paid out.
A company working on behalf of a Las Vegas newspaper has filed a spate of copyright-infringement lawsuits against as many as 80 individuals and publications since March, and now bloggers reveal the CEO may have crossed paths with Barack and Michelle Obama during their stints at a Chicago law firm.
According to Wired.com, copyright group Righthaven has filed more than 80 federal lawsuits against websites and bloggers who posted articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
[...]
According to his online work profile, Steven A. Gibson, CEO of Righthaven, studied law at the Chicago-Kent University of Law and graduated with honors in 1990. The Godlike Productions blog noted Gibson worked as an associate at corporate law firm Sidley Austin LLP – the Chicago firm where Obama met his wife.
As WND reported, Michelle Obama was an associate at Sidley Austin from 1988 to 1991. Her specialty was marketing and intellectual property.
That's right -- WND is claiming that Gibson is doing the bidding of the Obama administration by enforcing copyrights -- an issue of intellectual property rights, not a political issue -- because he might have worked with one Obama or another 20 years ago.
Another thing WND fails to mention, presumably because it's inconvenient to its anti-Obama agenda: The Las Vegas Review-Journal, under the leadership of publisher Sherman Frederick, is a staunchly conservative and rabidly anti-Obama newspaper.
