WND Lets Disbarred Arpaio Attorney Portray Himself As A Victim Topic: WorldNetDaily
Remember when we wrote that WorldNetDaily would not cover the disbarment of Andrew Thomas, former Maricopa County attorney and doer of the bidding of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, until it had figured out how to spin things to minimize the damage to its biggest public-relations client? Well, WND figured out a way -- by letting Thomas spin things for himself.
In an April 21 article, Dave Tombers lets Thomas prattle on and on with self-aggrandizing blather about how he's the victim of a "witch hunt," as well as make charges of "a massive cover-up and, for me, genuinely a Dreyfus-like injustice."
Tombers makes sure to bury the details of Thomas' disbarment until the 33rd paragraph, filling most of the remainder with Thomas' blathering and rehashing the "more than 100 charges" Thomas brought against one Maricopa County supervisor, the malicious prosecution of whom was a key reason for his disbarment. Tombers also throws in some unsubstantiated charges he claims he's "learned":
WND has learned that as many as 11 county employees have been terminated in recent months for allegedly accepting bribes in a court tower construction scandal – one of the Thomas investigations that was stymied.
WND has also learned that the FDIC recently announced the loss of millions of dollars. There also are allegations that some $5.5 million was linked to county official Don Stapley, the subject of another Thomas investigation that was thwarted.
Tombers doesn't explain how he "learned" about this -- his article contains no substantive quotes from any source other than Thomas.
Tombers did a fine job of being a stenographer for Thomas (and, by extension, Arpaio) -- just another day for the Arpaio stenographers at WND.
Terry Jeffrey Keeps the CNS Anti-Obama Propaganda Train Rolling Topic: CNSNews.com
We've documented how Terry Jeffrey is no longer even pretending his CNSNews.com is a "news" operation, turning it into an anti-Obama propaganda mill. He does it again in an April 18 article:
In the 39 months since Barack Obama took the oath of office as president of the United States, the federal government’s debt has increased by $5,027,761,476,484.56.
[...]
The $5,027,761,476,484.56 that the debt has increased during Obama's presidency equals $16,043.39 for every one of the 313,385,295 people the Census Bureau now estimates live in the United States.
As we noted the last time Jeffrey did this, there's no journalistic reason for Jeffrey to replace the perfectly functional (and stylistically correct, AP-wise) word "trillion" with the full number down the penny. That's a political judgment Jeffrey made solely to illustrate his right-wing, anti-Obama agenda.
Jeffrey is being dishonest in another way too. Suggesting that Obama polices are solely responsible for all debt accumulated under his presidency ignores the fact that the legacy of policies implemented make up much of that debt.
NewsBusters' Sheppard Falsely Accuses Bill Maher of Telling Racist Joke Topic: NewsBusters
Mediaite notes that NewsBusters' Noel Sheppard, in an April 21 post, accused Bill Maher of telling a "racist joke about Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman" for a quip in which a judge granted Zimmerman permission to kill off the hot new boy band One Direction.
Sheppard had to issue a correction because, it turns out, he had no idea who One Direction is:
Now, to be fair to Maher, my ignorance of boy bands was showing Saturday.
This article was originally titled “Bill Maher Curses Out Audience for Not Laughing at Racist Joke About Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.” I didn’t realize the HBO Real Time host was referring to the popular British-Irish singing group.
I thank the eagle-eyed NewsBusters reader Erik for bringing this to my attention via email, and apologize to Maher for accusing him of making a racist joke about Martin and Zimmerman.
Sheppard does have a habit of writing before thinking, such as defending Michael Savage's smears of children with autism and even whining that President Obama did an introduction to a broadcast of "To Kill A Mockingbird."
WND's Farah Doesn't Understand How Lawsuits Work Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah writes in his April 20 WorldNetDaily column:
In the latest legal challenge of Obama’s eligibility last week, Obama’s campaign counsel, Alexandra Hill, argued in a New Jersey hearing against a request to produce the birth certificate as evidence in the case.
Rather than simply produce the document Obama claims is legitimate, with an image posted on the White House website, Hill argued that New Jersey law does not require Obama to present a valid birth certificate to establish his qualifications under Article 2, Section 1, of the U.S. Constitution to be on the New Jersey Democratic Party primary ballot.
She further told Judge Jeff S. Masin: “We do not believe the president’s birth certificate is relevant to this case.”
Did you catch that?
The president’s birth certificate is not relevant to the case.
The judge agreed.
He explained that New Jersey law does not require Obama to produce any proof he is eligible to be president to be placed on the primary ballot.
New Jersey law, he explained, allows a nominating petition endorsing a particular person for president to be filed without the consent of the person endorsed. Masin said, “There is no obligation upon the person endorsed to prove his or her qualification for office.”
Once again, we have another official ruling that shows there is simply no mechanism in the United States of America for establishing the constitutional eligibility of a president or a presidential candidate.
Farah seems not to understand how the judicial system works in such a lawsuit. In this case, Hill took exactly the same approach any lawyer would do -- invoke the relevant law. For this lawsuit, that meant pointing out that there is no need for Obama to submit a birth certificate since New Jersey law does not require presidential candidates to prove their eligibility for office before being placed on the ballot. The lawyer made a proper request, and the judge properly granted it.
And, Farah being Farah, he portrays the justice system working as designed as some sort of conspiracy.
Indeed, as Dr. Conspiracy points out, the Constitution does not permit any mechanism to challenge eligibility through a legal process to begin before the election -- that's when voters themselves make the decision. After the election, the 20th Amendment provides a mechanism to challenge an election through Congress and the Electoral College.
Meanwhile, Farah inadvertently proves that he and WND have never approached the birther issue from a effort to find the truth but, rather, treated it as a witch hunt designed to entrap Obama:
It was in the midst of all this that I got a call from Corsi one morning. He told me his sources were telling him Obama was so desperate he was going to release a phony birth certificate to quell the controversy.
Within a week or 10 days, Obama did just that.
Obama, counting on a compliant media not asking any questions, not looking at the actual document, not questioning why he withheld it for so long, issued a bogus birth certificate. He didn’t overestimate the semi-official, state-sponsored press.
The document has been deemed fraudulent by virtually every forensic expert who has examined it. It has been characterized as a forgery by the only law enforcement investigation that has looked into it.
After WND’s forensics experts examined the document, the optimistic Corsi told me: “Now we’ve got Obama right where we want him. We forced him to release a fraudulent document. Now he will have to live with it.”
Of course, none of WND's "forensics experts" -- in fact, Corsi has admitted that no genuine credentialed forensic document examiners would touch it, and the the only two "experts" with forensics experience to have been quoted by WND both never claimed the document is a fake -- examined the actual "document" of Obama's birth certificate. They examined a PDF scan of it. And as we've detailed, the cold case posse "law enforcement investigation" didn't do any actual investigating at all, instead simply regurgitated WND conspiracy theories.
Farah ends up proving that latter point as well by quoting the head of the posse "investigation," Mike Zullo, as sounding as conspiratorial as Corsi (with whom he wrote about on the so-called investigation):
“What is emerging in the various state legal challenges to including President Obama on the presidential ballot appears to be an attempt by the White House to divorce itself from the Obama long-form birth certificate released,” said Mike Zullo.
Zullo questioned why the White House did not instruct Hill to champion the birth certificate as legitimate.
“The White House appears to be acting as if the Obama birth certificate is of no consequence in establishing the fact of Obama’s birth,” Zullo continued. “Instead of producing the birth certificate to the New Jersey secretary of state and arguing to Judge Masin that the document was legitimate, Obama’s legal counsel did everything she could to keep the document from coming into evidence. Why?”
Apparenly Zullo knows even less about the legal system than Farah does. And that's the way Farah probably likes it.
Newsmax's Ponte: Obama 'Had A Silver Spoon Not In His Mouth But Up His Nose' Topic: Newsmax
Lowell Ponte ramps up the Obama derangement in his April 20 Newsmax column:
"I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth," President Barack Obama told an Ohio audience this week, implicitly contrasting his up-by-affirmative-action life to that of his Republican rival Governor Mitt Romney, son of a prosperous automobile company executive and Michigan Governor.
Trouble is, President Obama as a young man had a silver spoon not in his mouth but up his nose.
In his precocious 1995 autobiography "Dreams From My Father," Mr. Obama told of how he did "a little blow, when [I] could afford it" (page 93 of the 2004 paperback edition).
"Blow" is street slang for cocaine, which in fashionable left-liberal circles has traditionally been inhaled directly into the nostrils from a tiny spoon, often silver, often worn as part of a necklace.
It would be wise for Obama to drop any future references to silver spoons.
Ponte follows this with:
For months Obama has had his attack dogs nipping at Mr. Romney's heels over a trip long ago in which the Massachusetts governor transported the family dog in a carrier on the roof of his car.
Days ago the Daily Caller, followed quickly by ABC's best reporter Jake Tapper, told of a passage in "Dreams From My Father" in which President Obama describes his experience eating dog meat as a child in Indonesia.
Obama describes the flesh of "man's best friend" as "tough."
Imagine that you are a dog. Would you prefer to vote for someone who drove your kind around the roof of a car in a safe carrier, an experience the Romney family says the dog enjoyed?
Or would you vote instead for someone who enjoyed feasting on the body of a fellow dog killed for its meat?
It gives the idea of Obama chowing down a hot dog a whole new meaning.
And that's not all, for Ponte latches onto another Obama conspiracy:
In fairness to President Obama, some scholars doubt that he wrote his autobiography. It is written with a literary skill far beyond anything else from his pen. Some researchers find striking similarities between its language and style and that found in books by Obama associate Bill Ayers, a founder of the radical left Weather Underground.
Sorry, Lowell, Jack Cashill is not a "scholar." And even most conservatives think the the whole ghostwriting thing is a crock.
MRC, AIM Endorse Bishop's Hitler Smear of Obama Topic: CNSNews.com
When Catholic bishop Daniel Jenky went Godwin and claimed that President Obama "seems intent on following a similar path" as Hitler and Stalin, certain parts of the ConWeb unsurprisingly approved -- particularly the Media Research Center.
In an April 17 CNS blog post, Craig Bannister uncritically repeated Jenky's attack, demonstrating his ignorance in the process by transcribing Jenky's reference to a "Kulturkampf" as "Kultur Kamp."
In an April 19 NewsBusters post, Scott Whitlock bashed MSNBC's Chris Matthews for having "piously proclaimed that liberals would never compare a conservative to a dictator such as Joseph Stalin," then complained that "MSNBC host Martin Bashir outrageously linked Rick Santorum to genocidal murderer Joseph Stalin." Whitlock didn't even mention Jenky's attack, let alone explain how it, unlike Bashir's remark, is some not "outrageous."
In an April 20 NewsBusters post, Tim Graham snarked that Jenky "the utter gall and audacity to make comparisons between that secular saint President Obama and church-oppressing dictators like Hitler and Stalin." Graham declared that "You can't be 'oppressed' in America by the Catholic Church," though he didn't offer any evidence of how anything Obama is purportedly doing equals Stalin-esque "oppression." Graham also mentioned Bashir's remarks without explaining why the twoshould be treated differently.
Meanwhile, at Accuracy in Media, Cliff Kincaid devoted a column to praising the attack, declaring that Janky is "an educated Catholic Bishop with knowledge of history and a commitment to religious freedom" who, thus, knows what he's talking about and should have some immunity for issuing such a rank insult:
It will be interesting to see whether the national media cover these sensational charges in a fair and balanced manner. Or will “the malice of the media,” to use the Bishop’s words, take over?
What is "fair and balanced" about likening someone to Hitler and Stalin? Kincaid doesn't explain.
Media Matters has gotten a hold of the Media Research Center's latest fundraising letter, in which Brent Bozell and Co. go completely paranoid over George Soros. Bozell rather flamboyantly declares that the MRC is "a direct threat to his media empire -- THE ONLY THREAT REALLY."
As we've documented, the MRC has vastly overstated the influence Soros wields over media while ignoring the fact that a handful of conservative billionaires have sunk much more money into their media outlets in a single year than Soros has spent in a decade.
NewsBusters: Obama Is Just As Offensive As Ted Nugent! Topic: NewsBusters
Yes, Brad Wilmouth wrote this in an April 21 NewsBusters post:
Uniquely among the broadcast network evening newscasts, Wednesday's NBC Nightly News highlighted controversial comments about President Obama recently made by conservative rocker Ted Nugent, even bringing up another controversial clip from 2007.
But correspondent Andrea Mitchell failed to mention that Obama has his own history of using violent metaphors, as, during the 2008 campaign, then-Senator Obama gave a speech in which he spoke of bringing a gun to a knife fight.
Obama is just as offensive as Ted Nugent? Really?
Interestingly, Wilmouth quotes only one of the "controversial" things Nugent said, and he completely ignores the apparent death threat of Nugent's statement that he will either be dead or in jail if Obama is re-elected.
Wilmouth also euphemistically notes that NBC aired "a clip of Nugent attacking Obama and Hillary Clinton at a concert in 2007," but was careful not to mention what he actually said: Obama is a "piece of shit" who should "suck on my machine gun," and Clinton is a "worthless bitch."
Of coruse, given that the MRC all but endorsed Rush Limbaugh's sliming of Sandra Fluke as a "slut," it's likely that Wilmouth agrees with Nugent's assessment, though he's clearly too gutless to say so in public.
CNS' Jeffrey Puts Words In Obama's Mouth Again Topic: CNSNews.com
CNS keepsup its dishonest habit of putting words in the mouths of President Obama and others its right-wing agenda opposes with an April 19 article by editor Terry Jeffrey that begins this way:
"You don’t want to buy it, fine. We’ll fine you into oblivion."
That, says a lawyer representing a number of Catholic institutions, is what the Obama administration will say to his clients if the federal courts do not strike down a regulation the administration has issued that requires all health insurance plans to cover sterilizations and artificial contraceptives, including those that induce abortions.
At no point does Jeffrey lift a finger to do any actual reporting and, you know, contact the Obama administration to see if they think this is an accurate characterization of the administration's position on the issue.
Which, by the way, it isn't. The administration has announced that for those religious-affiliated institutions that object to covering contraception for moral reasons, that will be paid for by their insurance companies, not the institutions.
But then, if you're putting false statements in someone's mouth, why wouldn't you keep on lying?
Our Challenge to Brent Bozell Topic: Media Research Center
The hypocritical NewsBusters freakout over a "Daily Show" segment that briefly touched upon the idea of "vagina mangers" seemed too stupid for the Media Research Center not to do something further with -- and we were right.
Today, Media Research Center President Brent Bozell publicly dared The Daily Show host Jon Stewart to desecrate either the Koran or the Torah on national television in the same manner he offended millions of American Christians by portraying the Nativity as an accessory for female genitals. Bozell makes the challenge well aware that Stewart’s brand of “comedy” applies only to liberal-approved anti-Christian bigotry.
“Come on, Jon. We dare you to prove you are an equal opportunity bigot. Your grotesque stunt displaying a Nativity scene in a vulgar manner to take a jab at Fox News is but the latest in a long line of unacceptable behavior and hypocrisy when it comes to the media’s treatment of traditional Christianity. Doing something similar with the Koran or the Torah is equally offensive. Since you’re so brave to offend Christians, are you equally brave to offend Muslims and Jews? We dare you.
Bozell continued:
"Stewart thought he was being cute when he displayed a manger scene in front of a woman’s genitals to mock those allegedly ignoring the 'war on women.' If he’s such a daring political comedian, he should demonstrate his boldness by performing the same routine, but this time with a Koran and the Torah.
"Otherwise he is not only a bigot but also an outright coward.”
Here's a little dare for Bozell: Man up, stop bending over for Rush Limbaugh, and explicitly denounce him for his three-day tirade of denigration against Sandra Fluke, and demand that he return his MRC "William F. Buckley, Jr. Award for Media Excellence."
We already know Bozell is an outright coward, and he is a misogynist by proxy for his tepid, mealy-mouthed faux protestations of Limbaugh ("Let’s all agree Limbaugh crossed a line" is hardly the profile in courage that was called for here). Unless he can stand up to his fellow right-wing ideologues for what is right in the form of basic human decency, he will never be anything more than a spineless twit.
WND Goes Gaga for Nugent's Obama Derangement Topic: WorldNetDaily
What gets the folks at WorldNetDaily off? Spewing hate at President Obama.
That seems to be the explanation behind WND's disturbingly enthusiastic embrace of Ted Nugent's most recent nasty attacks on Obama and other administration officials, in particular his assertion that "if Barack Obama becomes the president in November, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year." It flooded the zone in defense of Nugent, promoting the dubious idea that this wasn't actually a threat against Obama's life:
In none of these articles, however, did WND mention Nugent's earlier declaration that Obama is a "piece of shit" who should "suck on my machine gun" -- which is even harder to deny is a death threat -- or calling Hillary Clinton a "worthless bitch."
How gaga has WND gone for Nugent's raging hatred? It created a petition (read: email harvesting scheme) to support him. The petition insists that Nugent "was only using metaphors to accentuate his irrefutable message: America is in deep trouble, and its citizens must act." Again, no mention of the "suck my machine gun" attack.
And then, because it wouldn't be WND if it didn't try to cash in on this somehow, there's this slide-out graphic on WND's front page:
WND's Massie: If Obama Had A Son, He'd Look Like A Murderous Thug Topic: WorldNetDaily
Mychal Massie headlined his April 16 WorldNetDaily column "If Obama had son, he'd look like Shawn Tyson." Massie helpfully informs us who Tyson is:
Obama and his Justice Department were silent when 25-year-old James Cooper and 24-year-old James Kouzaris were brutally murdered by 17-year-old Shawn Tyson, a black thug, as they begged for their lives. They were white tourists who had been out drinking and stumbled into Tyson’s Sarasota, Fla., neighborhood. Tyson’s plan was to rob them, but finding they had no money, he murdered them.
Referencing Martin, Obama said: “You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” I think it bears noting that if Obama had a son, he would also look like the boys who set Allen Coon on fire and Shawn Tyson. Don’t their families and the American people – whom Obama took an oath to represent – deserve the same concern he shows for black hoodlums?
In other word: Massie is saying that Obama's son would look like a murderous thug.
Massie doesn't mention that, by his theory, his own son would look like a murderous thug too.
Of course, Massie is no stranger to such outbreaks of Obama derangement.
Newsmax's Wead Still Clinging to Idea of Ron Paul Presidency Topic: Newsmax
Doug Wead just can't quit Ron Paul.
Wead has regularlyused his Newsmax column to promote Paul's presidential prospects. And even though Mitt Romney has all but locked up the Republican nomination, Wead is still touting Paul.
In his April 12 column, Paul touted how Paul "met quietly" with evangelical leaders after a recent rally, going on to suggest that evangelicals disenchanged with Rick Santorum's withdrawal from the race may move their support to Paul, "as their best voice of protest and the best way to force Romney to deal with them."
Somewhat admirable devotion to a lost cause, Doug.
NEW ARTICLE: Brent Bozell's Vendetta Against NBC Topic: Media Research Center
The MRC chief is trying to enlist his right-wing buddies in Congress to harass and destroy a business in order to further his partisan anti-media agenda. Read more >>
As we've documented, WorldNetDaily -- as the public-relations arm of Joe Arpaio's -- is simply not going to report any unpleasant news about the Arizona sheriff.
That's why you will read nowhere at WND that Andrew Thomas, the former Maricopa County attorney who worked closely with Arpaio for several years, has been disbarred for abusing his powers as a prosecutor to target his political enemies -- which also happened to be Arpaio's political enemies.
Given WND's role as Apraio's stenographer, you will also not be surprised that WND has previously come to Thomas' defense.
An unbylined Oct. 28 article claimed that Thomas and two associates were simply trying to "follow the book and apply the law to actions by the system’s power brokers and others." citing a local newspaper blogger who claimed that Thomas was "the victim of a witch hunt." The article goes on to declare the bar association's charging document against Thomas and his associates "apparently politically charged" and quotes in full a resolution by local Republicans denouncing it.
It's hard to spin away disbarment to Arpaio's satisfaction. Indeed, Talking Points Memo argues that this could be the scandal that ultimately brings Arpaio down. Arpaio is mentioned 48 times in the Arizona Supreme Court’s disciplinary panel ruling to disbar Thomas.
IT seems clear that if Arpaio goes down, WND's current stab at making its birther obsession -- putting the veneer of credibility on it by an Arpaio-led "investigation" that merely regurgitated WND's own conspiracy theories -- does as well.
That's why WND won't tell you about Thomas' fate.
UPDATE: Dr. Conspiracy observes regarding the disbarment ruling against Thomas: "What is most disturbing from the point of view of this blog is the fact that the County Attorney and the Sheriff’s office made a false statement of probable cause to further their own interests and not the cause of justice. Sound familiar?"
