WorldNetDaily posted this link on its front page the other day with an oddly vague headline:

Why did WND write such an oddly vague headline? Because the Washington Post story being linked to isn't really about the Social Security number at all -- it's about Orly Taitz screwing up once again in court. From the article by Al Kamen:

Taitz is looking for information that would prove that Obama’s Social Security number was from Connecticut, not Hawaii, and is therefore fraudulent.

But she’s having some inexplicable problems complying with Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2(a)(1), which simply says that only the last four digits of a Social Security number should be used in any documents filed; the first five digits must be redacted.

Seems she repeatedly violated that rule by redacting the wrong numbers, sparking a blistering rebuke this week from Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the U.S. District Court here, who wrote that she was “wasting the Court’s time with nonsense,” which is “not the way [for her] to have any hope of prevailing in this case.”

“After making the somewhat hysterical claim . . . that there may be ‘an employee in this court who is intentionally sabotaging’ her,” Lamberth, a Reagan appointee, wrote in his order, Taitz then “engaged” a courtroom deputy clerk “in a lengthy, accusatory conversation.”

Taitz “is either toying with the court or displaying her own stupidity,” Lamberth said. “There is no logical explanation she can provide as to why she is now wasting the court’s time. ”

Kamen helpfully adds: "Memo to file: Send private note to Taitz to advise her that the last, the very last, federal judge she wants to provoke is Lamberth. Trust us on this."

Given that WND has a history of ignoring Taitz's lengthy record of shoddy legal work, it's easy to see why it wants the focus to be on Taitz's nuisance lawsuit.

WND would much rather tout Taitz's latest stunt, such as her pending raid on the Hawaii Department of Health with a subpoena to view the Obama birth certificate it has on file. Just a couple little problems with this thing:

First, the subpoena is being filed in the case above, which is a lawsuit against Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue regarding Obama's Social Security number. What does Obama's Hawaii birth certificate have to do with his Social Security number, since there's no evidence he was issued one at the time he was born? That's called non-germane evidence. Plus, Taitz has not offered evidence that she provided notice of the subpoena to Astrue as required by law, since he is the defendant in this case.

Second, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure regarding subpoenas state that "the issuing court must quash or modify a subpoena" that "requires disclosure of privileged or other protected matter, if no exception or waiver applies." The original copy of Obama's birth certificate is a protected document under federal health privacy laws. Unless Obama has signed a waiver making the document public -- we'd be shocked if he did for the benefit of Taitz -- the Hawaii DOH is under no obligation to respond to Taitz's subpoena.

In short, we have another Taitz screwup in the making that WND will cover up or whitewash.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:31 PM EDT

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An Aug. 2 CNSNews.com article by Penny Starr is quite upset that the U.S. Department of Education is using a SpongeBob SquarePants book to promote "the idea that global warming is man made." Starr is further baffled by a certain lack of adherence to reality in SpongeBob stories:

The author does not explain how a pool is built underwater, how vehicles submerged in the ocean can produce exhaust, or how tires burn and send smoke into the air from the bottom of the sea.

Yes, Starr really wrote that. She's also ignoring that, as Media Matters points out, there's nothing controversial about teaching children about the reality of global warming.

This gives us all the excuse we need to go down memory lane for a look at the last time the ConWeb went on a SpongeBob freak-out. In 2005, WorldNetDaily declared that a tolerance-promoting video for children featuring famous cartoon characters like SpongeBob SquarePants was designed to be used by "homosexual activists" to "surreptitiously indoctrinate young children into their lifestyle."

Posted by Terry K. at 4:20 PM EDT

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Joseph Farah does have a habit of recycling his old columns, and he has essentially done that twice in the last two days.

Farah's July 29 column is a retread of a rant from June complaining about the Southern Policy Law Center. This time, it appears tohave been spawned by the SPLC hurting Farah's feelings by accurately describing WND as having "grown its influence by peddling paranoia about the president's birth certificate and AmeriCorps' 'domestic armies.'" At no point does Farah challenge the description -- thus conceding its accuracy -- but rather calls it an "epithet" and was off on yet another anti-SPLC rant about how it's purportedly "raising hundreds of millions of dollars through fanning the flames of phantom threats posed almost exclusively by those who love America and its Constitution."

Farah goes on to complain that SPLC chief Morris Dees "pays himself more than $280,000 a year from the 'charity.'" How much does Farah pay himself to run WND? That's not an answer we're likely to get voluntarily. Nevertheless, Farah may as well be talking about himself when he writes, "Fear-mongering is what the SPLC is all about – and turning it into a profit center."

Farah's July 31 column finds him still complaining that Rick Perry doesn't hate gays as much as he does, which is what Farah was doing three days earlier, even repeating his earlier assertion that gay marriage is grounds for secession:

In case you missed his remarks to Republican fat cats in Aspen, Perry said: "Our friends in New York six weeks ago passed a statute that said marriage can be between two people of the same sex. And you know what? That's New York, and that's their business, and that's fine with me. That is their call. If you believe in the 10th Amendment, stay out of their business."

So, let me get this straight, Gov. Perry. If the New York state legislature decided to legalize polygamy or to eliminate the age of consent so pedophiles could legally target "consenting" children, you would have no problem with that?

I assume your 10th Amendment-trumps-all position would be the same?

By the way, this is not just some hyper-theoretical question. You might recall, Gov. Perry, that Utah couldn't join the Union until it outlawed polygamy – the 10th Amendment notwithstanding. Do you think a territory that permitted same-sex marriages even 20 years ago would have been admitted into the national covenant?

Of course not. You know that, and I know that.

In fact, when an existing member of the Union redefines a sacred, 6,000-year-old cultural institution like marriage, the very building block of civilization, it is an implicit violation of the values of that national covenant. It's ground for the national political equivalent of divorce.

Farah repeated another old complaint against Perry for "his advocacy of mandatory HPV vaccines for children." As before, Farah does not explain why it's a bad thing to vaccinate children against a certain type of cancer.

Posted by Terry K. at 11:54 AM EDT

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It's a new month, so you know what that means: Another Afghan body-count article by Edwin Mora. This one carries the headline "64 Percent of U.S. Military Deaths in Afghanistan Happened on Obama’s Watch."

Of course, CNS wasn't putting headlines like that on articles about U.S. casualties in Iraq.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:59 AM EDT

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Chuck Norris writes in his July 31 WorldNetDaily column:

Last Monday, as President Obama spoke to the National Council of La Raza, he told his listeners something that should alarm every American. He confessed that he'd like to "bypass Congress and change the laws on my own." He added, "Believe me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting. I promise you."

He doesn't need to promise us. We believe him, because we've been watching his rogue behavior since the moment he entered office.

At no point does Norris reprint the full quote, which discredits his entire attack on Obama:

"The idea of doing things on my own is very tempting, I promise you, not just on immigration reform. But that's not how our system works. That's not how our democracy functions," Obama told the National Council of La Raza.

Of course, Norris (or whoever writes under his name) wouldn't have a column otherwise.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:23 AM EDT

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Equality Matters examines the MRC Culture & Media Institute report by Paul Wilson on how CNN is supposedly "in the tank for gay marriage." Among the shocking evidence Wilson cites: CNN has congratulated gays for having successful relationships and challenged the increasingly discredited idea of "ex-gay" therapy.

In other words, just another example of the MRC's anti-gay agenda.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:38 PM EDT

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It's time for WorldNetDaily columnnist Ellis Washington to spew some more nonsense:

Saul Alinsky is the father of community organizing, the Marxist-anarchist who so profoundly inspired generations of Democrat insurrectionists, including a young Barack Obama who in 1985 become a community organizer in Chicagoland and in the 1990s did legal work for ACORN, one of the most reactionary and fraudulent community organizations in America.

Alinsky also inspired a former first lady and would-be president, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who in 1969 wrote her senior thesis at Wellesley extolling this villain who influenced generations of community organizations like – ACLU, La Raza, NOW, NAMBLA, PETA, AFL-CIO, NAACP, ACORN, Congressional Black Caucus, Human Rights Campaign, George Soros-funded socialist groups, LGBT agenda (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) and many other liberal mafia pressure groups.

The NAACP is no different from NAMBLA? Really?

Washington goes on to repeat the falsehood that Alinsky "dedicate[d]" his book "Rules for Radicals" to Lucifer. In fact, the book is dedicated to his wife, Irene; the reference to Lucifer appears on a page of quotes as "an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical."

But Washingotn is not done spewing:

One will never understand who President Obama is, the man, unless you have a rudimentary understanding of history, politics, philosophy and economics. Obama is the liberal establishment's dream: the apotheosis and embodiment of all the fascist, atheist, anti-intellectual, nitwit liberal ideas pontificated in college lecture halls, spoken in university faculty lounges and written in books and academic journals few people have ever read.

Socialists like Barack and Michelle Obama, Rahm Emmanuel, David Axelrod, Hillary Clinton, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Wasserman-Schultz, Cornel West, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Obama's Supreme Court nominees, Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, despite their Ivy League pedigree, show virtually no moral understanding of law, history, politics, economics or philosophy, no critical thinking or logic skills and appear to have accepted utterly the vile, myopic propaganda of their Marxist professors without question.

This groupthink mentality reminds me of FDR's adoption of Mussolini's aphorism: "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State."

What Washington really means is that he's upset these people aren't as far-right as he is.

And, as you'd expect, Washington offers no proof that FDR "adopted" that aphorism.

Posted by Terry K. at 3:23 PM EDT

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Newsmax's Vito Fossella rehabilitation program continues apace with an Aug. 1 interview allowing Fossella to opine about the debt ceiling deal.

Martin Gould and Ashley Martella identified Fossella as someone "who served in the New York state House for six terms before a brief stint in Washington." As before, Newsmax doesn't mention why Fossella's stint in Washington was so brief: He left office in disgrace after a DUI arrest led to the revelation that Fossella had a mistress in Washington and fathered a child with her.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:00 PM EDT

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WorldNetDaily has been on quite the anti-gay tear of late, and it's not just Joseph Farah complaing that Rick Perry doesn't hate gays enough.

WND has reliably freaked out over the California law requiring the teaching of the contributions of gays and lesbians, repeatedly calling it "'gay' indoctrination" (yes, WND still insists on putting "gay" in scare quotes) and giving anti-gay activists plenty of space to vent their rage. A July 26 article by Bob Unruh is a typical example. Many of the WND articles on the California law, like this one, include this boilerplate attack on Harvey Milk:

In honoring Milk, schools are advocating for the acceptance of what Milk sought: the entire homosexual, bisexual and cross-dressing agenda; a refusal to acknowledge sexually transmitted diseases spread by the behavior; his behavior as "a sexual predator of teenage boys, most of them runaways with drug problems"; advocacy for multiple sexual relationships at one time; and "lying to get ahead"; according to SaveCalifornia.com, a leading statewide pro-family organization promoting moral virtues for the common good.

Funny, we don't recall WND similarly claiming that honoring the Founding Fathers means acceptance of personal behavior like owning slaves. And Unruh's depiction of SaveCalifornia.comis laughably benign; it's a rabidly anti-gay group that pushes typical right-wing gay-bashing attitudes on homosexuality.

A July 26 WND article by Daniel Carl claims that "An Air Force staff sergeant with more than 12 years of military service reports he may be medically discharged for failing to support the indoctrination" -- there's that word again -- "planned under President Obama's push to create an atmosphere of openly homosexual behavior in the military ranks." WND keeps up its usual biased language, claiming that repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is "promotion of homosexuals in the military," baselessly claiming that it is "viewed widely as a payoff to homosexuals who supported him during the 2008 election."

WND couldn't help but let its hate show in a July 26 article by Drew Zahn with the headline slur "Hope and change 2011: Now homo and change." This particular freakout is over the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network receiving federal money to create a pilot program of "safe spaces" for gay students in schools. Zahn absurdly portrays "critics" as claiming that "the program's aim is more about 'fast-tracking' students into the homosexual lifestyle." Zahn made no apparent effort to contact GLSEN for a response to the criticism.

WND followed that up with a July 31 column by the rabidly anti-gay Linda Harvey, who portrayed the "safe spaces" as "an unobstructed road into the 'gay' lifestyle," bizarrely adding, "What's next, off-setting the national debt by selling our children into prostitution?"

In the midst of this anti-gay freakout, WND ran a reader poll question: "Are America's political and cultural institutions now promoting homosexuality?" Given that WND's editorial policy has indoctrinated its readers into believing that anything that does not condemn homosexuality "promotes" it, it's not surprising that nearly everyone answers yes, with the chief answer being, "Yes, and America will pay a dear price for rejecting her core, founding values."

Putting the cherry of paranoia on WND's gay-bashing is a July 30 article by Unruh claiming that 'The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has begun watching a blog posted by a Christian who was forced to flee Brazil because of the conflict between that nation's pro-homosexual 'hate crimes' agenda and his advocacy for traditional marriage." Neither WND nor the blogger seem not to have considered the possibility that a DHS employee is actually a fan of the blogger's hateful rantings, which are largely cut-and-paste articles from other sources and are about on part with WND's own anti-gay agenda.

It's less about the level of the gay-bashing rhetoric than it is about the innate paranoia of the blogger and WND. Remember, WND can't stop lying to its readers about the nature of President Obama's reference to a "national civilian security force." WND seems to believe that feeding paranoia keeps it in business, so it must do all it can to keep the freakout level up, and this blogger is a useful tool to that effect.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:20 AM EDT

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NewsBusters is still pumping out its approvals of liberals being insulted as its twisted idea of "media criticism."

A July 26 post by Jack Coleman carried the headline "Al Sharpton Rendered Inane During Tussle with GOP Congressman." Coleman added underneath it: "Granted, you may not have noticed any difference." Coleman then asserted that Sharpton "tried to get the better of Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., and ran into the immovable object of a smarter opponent."

A July 29 post by Noel Sheppard declared Joe Scarborough's assertion that one only cares about the opinion of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman if "you’re a blogger, and you’re still living in your mom’s basement, and you got Cheetos all over the keyboard, you type in your underwear" to be "well-deserved" -- so much so that he repeats the statement. Of course, the same thing could be said about the clownish, mendacious misleader Sheppard.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:12 AM EDT

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Buried within a July 28 WorldNetDaily article by Jerome Corsi on Barack Obama's birth certificate is this interesting claim:

Without access to the original document, dozens of traditionally trained court-authorized forensic document examiners approached by WND have refused to render an opinion.

Corsi seems to be conceding that WND's small army of people opining on the PDF of the birth certificate are not "traditionally trained court-authorized forensic document examiners" and, thus, don't really know what they're talking about. Indeed, as the Obama Conspiracy blog points out, the only two "experts" with forensics experience to have been quoted by WND both never claimed the document is a fake. 

The most recent expert WND cites bears this out. In a July 26 article, Corsi touts the supposed expertise of Tom Harrison, whom Corsi describes as "a software designer with more than 30 years experience in graphic design" and "a 58 year-old Dartmouth graduate with a background in mathematics, physics and computer science." No expertise in forensic document analysis is cited. Harrison's analysis is apparently based on how it looks in Adobe Illustrator -- which is meaningless since Illustrator was not used to create the PDF being examined.

Here's one sample of Harrison's "expert" analysis: "Grabbed and moved around as objects, the two groups of dots can be placed at the top of the document, giving the appearance of a large butterfly chasing a smaller butterfly, as seen in Exhibit 14." Uh, sure.

Corsi's admission that no trained forensic document expert will rule the PDF to be a fake pretty much destroys WND's credibility on this issue. Adding another to the parade of so-called experts who can't even be bothered to do something so simple as to examine the PDF in the program in which it was created does nothing to counter that lack of credibility.

Posted by Terry K. at 10:31 PM EDT

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An Aug. 1 MRCTV (formerly Eyeblast.tv) video clip of CBS' Norah O'Donnell asking a question during a White House press briefing carries the headline, "CBS News' Norah O'Donnell: 'Where are the Tax Revenues?', 'We Got Nothing'."

But that headline is selectively edited to falsely suggest that O'Donnell was expressing her personal views on the subject of the debt ceiling deal. In fact, as the full transcript of the exchange shows, O'Donnell was asking White House press secretary Jay Carney to respond to what "some Democrats" are saying about the deal, not relaying her personal views.

Posted by Terry K. at 7:26 PM EDT

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Joseph Farah invokes the "No True Scotsman" fallacy in his July 28 WorldNetDaily column, claiming that Anders Breivik could not possibly be a Christian because Christians don't kill people like that:

Breivik has never been a part of a Christian fundamentalist church or faith. Instead, he casts himself as not very religious, and the only church he ever attended regularly was the state church. And while he considers himself at war with Islam and multiculturalism in Europe, he seriously considered an alliance with radical Muslims to wreak mayhem, havoc and bloodshed in his perverted cause.

[...]

Like many extremists before him, Breivik's goal was to kill as many people as possible to set off a wider conflagration that could and would only be settled by violence.

Breivik demonstrates his lack of understanding of the most basic Christian principles, like Jesus' warning to Peter in the Gospel of Matthew (26:52): "Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword."

What does Breivik make of this clear warning? Amazingly, he sees it as a command by Jesus to use the sword against His enemies when it was just the opposite.

What you won't find in Farah's column, of course, is any acknowledgement that WND is cited six times in Breivik's manifesto, including one of Farah's own columns, eadlined "The Bible and self-defense," in which he explains that "The Bible couldn't be clearer on the right – even the duty – we have as believers to self-defense." Farah says he wrote the column as a follow-up to a previous column in which he issued a "plea to Americans ... to buy firearms as a first step to fighting terrorism" as a response to Christians who "wrote challenging my prescription as unbiblical, unscriptural and ungodly." Farah includes numerous Bible verses he claims supports his point.

If Farah was an honest journalist, he would have acknowledged the presence of his work in the manifesto of a terrorist and explain himself to his readers. But since Farah is not an honest journalist, hell will freeze over before that happens.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:21 PM EDT

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Various branches of the Media Research Center are promoting the defamation lawsuit that sue-happy defamer Larry Klayman filed on behalf of evangelist Bradlee Dean against Rachel Maddow.

A July 27 CNSNews.com article by Melanie Hunter uncritically repeats assertions by Klayman and Dean, including that "According to Dean, Maddow deliberately ignored the disclaimer on Dean’s Web site that he himself was not calling for the execution of gays." In fact, Maddow did state that Dean "later clarified that he didn't really mean to sanction murder of gay people."

Meanwhile, a July 28 NewsBusters post by Jack Coleman also rehashes the plaintiffs' claims, making sure to note that Maddow is "openly gay." Unlike Hunter, though, Coleman did correctly state that Maddow noted Dean's disclaimer, as well has hint at Dean's history of anti-gay rhetoric.

That's a lot of attention for a lawsuit that likely will get tossed out of court pretty quickly, if Klayman's recent history is any indication.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:34 AM EDT

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