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Monday, June 10, 2013
Noel Sheppard Loves It When Liberals Are Censored
Topic: NewsBusters

In a June 8 NewsBusters post, Noel Sheppard takes a perverse glee in Fox News' Neil Cavuto petulantly shouting down a guest he didn't agree with:

Now THAT’S what I’m talking about.

Fox News host Neil Cavuto on Saturday cut the mic of the incredibly "offensive" and "obnoxious" liberal shill Julian Epstein for refusing to have a serious discussion about the current White House scandals and instead insisting on echoing Democrat talking points[.]

[...]

When Epstein continued to speak, Cavuto said, “Cut his mic. Guys, cut his mic, he’s going nowhere fast. Cut his mic.”

Cavuto then moved onto to Stein before once again saying, “Cut his damn mic!”

Which raises a question: Julian Epstein is a shill willing to say anything without any regard for its veracity to advance Democrats. As such, why would Cavuto have him on?

He’s a broken record of Democrat talking points – nothing more, nothing less. As a result, he adds absolutely nothing to the discussion - never has, never will.

His place is on MSNBC where he can repeat the White House line with all the other parrots.

Therefore, unless the folks on Fox like these kinds of fights on Saturday mornings, maybe they should think better of scheduling people such as Julian Epstein.

Certainly, there have to be many far more intellectually honest people on the left interested in having a meaningful discussion about the important issues facing the nation than this shameless shill.

Funny that Sheppard doesn't ding Cavuto for repeating right-wing talking points attacking the Obama administration. Indeed, Sheppard fails to mention Epstein's accurate statement that Cavuto is "playing the Obama-hater game."

This is the kind of media Sheppard -- and, by extension, the Media Research Center -- wants, a media where only conservative viewpoints are forwarded and liberals are ridiculed and shouted down.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:21 PM EDT
WND Is Taking the Video Plunge (With Molotov Mitchell)
Topic: WorldNetDaily

What is WorldNetDaily's next big move after its four-year campaign to personally destroy Barack Obama resulted in nothing but the destruction of any credibility it may have had?

Take on the cloak of religion and move into video.

The latter is made clear in a form of a weird reality series dreamed up by Molotov Mitchell, as described in a June 5 WND article:

Produced by Molotov Mitchell, head of Illuminati Pictures, “Zero to Superhero” follows the travails of Urquhart, an overweight (341 pounds) and unremarkable 32-year-old, as he pursues his dream of becoming a real-life superhero.

“But this show isn’t just about a guy ‘dressing-up’ in costume,” explained Joseph Farah, co-founder and CEO of WND. “It’s about a group of specialists getting together and actually training and equipping a superhero-wannabe from the ground up.”

Led by Mitchell, the hand-picked specialists will take Jeeves through intense fitness training, drill into him new skills (like Krav Maga, the hand-to-hand combat technique used by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency) and outfit him with cutting-edge tools.

“We’re going beyond comic books and caricatures,” Mitchell said. “We’ve never seen what actual superhero-making would look like. It will be incredible to watch Jeeves drop tons of weight. It will be amazing to see him learn incredible fighting skills and face his worst fears.”

[...]

When asked what’s next for Urquhart, Mitchell gave WND a sneak peek at what’s in store for the would-be superhero: “After he’s lost the weight, after he’s a proficient fighter, Jeeves plans to patrol the streets of Durham, reporting crime and assisting people in need.

Will Mr. Urquhart be beating up gays as part of ol' Molotov's desire to achieve "the abolition of homosexuality"? Guess we'll have to watch to see.

Or -- given that Mitchell is also responsible for the likes of hate-spewing, homophobic, painfully unfunny "comedy" videos starring his wife, D.J. Dolce -- perhaps not.

But at the end of that article is a clue to the bigger agenda WND wants to pursue -- and, presumably, try to make people forget about its self-disgracing birther obsession in the process:

For WND-TV, “Zero to Superhero” is the beginning of higher goals as well.

George Escobar, WND’s vice president of film and television and an award-winning filmmaker in his own right, explains WND-TV is planning to launch several new online programs and hopes “Zero to Superhero” will become the kind of “breakout hit” that only serves to expand WND’s audience.

Yes, WND is apparently going full force into churning out video content. As for the religious aspect, that's made clear in another June 5 WND article:

WND announced today that it will host the annual Advent Film Workshop at its new studio facilities in Chantilly, Va., June 14-15.

Advent co-founders George Escobar and Michael Snyder will lead the workshop. Hour-long sessions include: film funding, micro-budget producing, hiring professional actors, effective marketing and distribution techniques, story development secrets and film career planning for filmmakers of all ages.

“We are excited about this new chapter in our film training program,” Escobar said. “Previously we’ve held the workshop at Patrick Henry College, the home of our first feature film, ‘Come What May.’ Now we have the additional opportunity to work alongside WND, a powerhouse in online independent news, attracting over 7 million unique visitors a month and more than 40 million pageviews.”

By the way, Chantilly is located not too far from WND editor Joseph Farah's residence elsewhere in Fairfax County, Va., which has the second-highest median household income in the country.

One wonders where WND is getting the money to do this in the aftermath of making itself into a national laughingstock for its birther obession, not to mention doing so in a fairly high-rent area of the country. Perhaps it's coming from "The Isaiah 9:10 judgment," a WND-produced film riding the coattails of the religious prophecy book "The Harbinger."

In addition to his WND work, Escobar (who directed "The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment") also heads Advent Film Group, a maker of right-wing-leaning Christian films and documentaries.  His company made a film in 2009 called "Come What May," which was inspired by a moot court case on abortion that was argued by the moot court team of Patrick Henry College. The school -- which caters to evangelical Christian homeschooled children, and which at least one child of Joseph Farah has attended -- helped in the making of the film to the extent that college founder and president Michael Farris has a starring role.

Everyone's getting into online video these days. But with Molotov Mitchell playing a key role in WND's take on it, perhaps Farah should save some of his prayers from his Obama-bashing 9/11 day of prayer for hoping that Mitchell's patented hate doesn't drag the whole operation down. But since Farah seems quite comfortable with the bottom-scraping level of his website, maybe a sleazy, hateful video operation is exactly what he wants.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:11 AM EDT
Updated: Monday, June 10, 2013 2:28 AM EDT
Sunday, June 9, 2013
MRC Slams Disney for Not Hating Gays Enough
Topic: Media Research Center

In a June 3 Media Research Center Culture & Media Insitute article, Lauren Enk has a fit over a Salon article asking why Disney hasn't yet created a gay cartoon character. If anything, Enk argues, Disney has been too accomodating to the "gay bandwagon":

Never mind that Disney’s theme parks have already hopped on the gay bandwagon by hosting massive gay celebrations called “Gay Days.”  And apparently it doesn’t matter that Disney Channel president Gary Marsh admitted their shows include possibly-gay characters “for the audience to interpret.”  That’s not quite enough for Davidson; she claims Marsh is just “shaking off any role or responsibility in providing gay visibility.”

Her  attack on Disney’s heterosexuality wasn’t a surprise to find on Salon, of course, which is just keeping up it’s reputation for celebrating all things that push the gay agenda in gender portrayals.

But then again, Disney has shown signs in the past of caving to whatever political agenda hits the mainstream, and gender-bending cartoons are already starting to surface elsewhere. If the pressure keeps mounting, perhaps a Princess Boy will be next in the line-up of Disney’s leading ladies.

Enk also sneers at "Archie Comic’s recent money-making decision to portray it’s first 'gay kiss.'" God forbid anyone should do anything to make money.

Enk, after all, is keeping up the MRC's reputation for bashing all things gay, screeching offense at any positive portrayal of gays in the media.


Posted by Terry K. at 9:44 PM EDT
Retired General Demonstrates Lack Of Honor With Lies About Obama
Topic: WorldNetDaily

You'd think that a career military man who made it to the rank of general would have more honor than to lie in public. But apparently retired Maj. Gen. Patrick Brady has no honor.

Brady lied in a June 4 WorldNetDaily column: "In the midst of the massacre of our ambassador and three heroic Americans [in Behghazi], President Obama was nowhere to be found." In fact, congressional testimony repeatedly showed that Obama and the White House were fully engaged during the Benghazi attack.

Brady also dishonrably suggests Obama is to blame for "unprecedented rates of suicide and PTSD." Perhaps he doesn't realize that two wars were started on the watch of Obama's predecessor, a Republican, and that, not Obama, is perhaps the root of the military's PTSD and suicide epidemic.

Ultimately, Brady's column is just a petulant right-wing rant:

As incompetence, deception, duplicity and dishonesty become the hall marks of the Obama administration, it is important that we not lose sight of the greatest danger posed beyond these serial scandals: the feminization, emasculation and dismantling of our military. The two most important elements of national survival are the media and the military; one keeps us free and the other keeps us secure. We know the media are failing – God help us if the military does also. We may be able to fix the government in 2014. Fixing the military is more problematic.

[...]

e now have a quad-sexual military with all the health, readiness and moral issues that come with exalting sodomy. Sexual assault is at an all-time high. Women will be tasked to lead bayonet charges. As a result of the sex scandals, Congress is now looking to curtail the military’s ability to discipline, another tribute to the lack of leadership in the military and lack of military understanding in Congress.

[...]

Sadly the military is mirroring society – the goal of Mr. Obama and progressives – and will soon be impotent. Once the progressives have a helpless military they no longer need to explain why they didn’t go; they can say we are unable to go. Progress is not the path we are on; true progress is the path to our past. The other scandals may be more glamorous and outrageous (such as lying about Benghazi before the coffins of those massacred by terrorists, enemies’ lists and assaults on the First Amendment) but what Mr. Obama is doing to our military is more grave.

Brady may have been awarded a Medal of Honor, but his willingness to lie and mindlessly rant about his commander in chief more than demonstrates his true lack of honor.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:37 PM EDT
Saturday, June 8, 2013
CNS Is Still Hiding Good Unemployment News From Its Readers
Topic: CNSNews.com

The U.S. added 175,000 jobs in May, though the unemployment rate went up because of people re-entering the work force. That's good news, but you wouldn't have known that if you read CNSNews.com.

Instead, a June 7 CNS article by Elizabeth Harrington led with how "the total number of government workers in the United States increased by 92,000." Harrington failed to put that in context by mentioning the fact that public-sector employment had been on a steady decline since 2007.

Harrington downplayed the fact that more Americans entered the work force by repeating the utterly irrelevant statistic that "the 89,705,000 who were not in the labor force in May was still enough to fill every Major League Baseball stadium simultaneously, 69 times."

Harrington made no mention whatsoever of the 175,000 new private-secvtor jobs.

Harrington's biased reporting keep with CNS' agenda of downplaying any improvement in American employment under President Obama.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:13 PM EDT
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Supersize WorldNetDaily Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Will all the hydra-headed horrors whip-lashing the Obama White House spend themselves out splashing against a Democratic seawall in the Senate, and the media-corps awaken in the middle of the night and scream, “What am I doing? I repent!” and beg for return to their old bunk in Obama’s back pocket, thereby allowing Democratic gains in both houses of Congress next year and the already scripted nomination and coronation of Hillary Clinton in 2016?

Or will Barack and Michelle flee like the Batistas of pre-Castro Cuba after a big and normal-looking White House party and make it across the Mexican border with fake mustache, goatee and wig, leaving behind a statement that he could no longer waste his life-lifting energies on a population as fickle and ungrateful as we Americans?

-- Barry Farber, May 21 WorldNetDaily column

Given this prevailing perverted worldview amongst Americans, it is no surprise that one Barack Hussein Obama (or whatever his name truly is), having attained the office of president of the United States of America, expected to enjoy more latitude than his predecessors with regard to his actions. This was intensified by the fact that as the first black president, he immediately became an historic figure. Add to that the cult of inordinate deference and adulation promoted by various forms of media, and we had an individual with whom practically no one actually wanted to find fault.

So, in pursuing his diabolical Marxist agenda, Obama knew that he would be able to gain far more ground than a white individual with the same plan. He may not have known precisely how dedicated and effective the press would be, or how long Americans would remain asleep, but he and his Cabinet had a pretty good idea of how far they could go.

-- Erik Rush, May 22 WND column

Why would Obama authorize a drone hit on Anwar al-Awlaki (who never killed anyone) but not give the victims of his Islamic preachings the same military designation?

What is his plan? It’s to partner with Muslim Brotherhood groups in America that work feverishly to “eliminate and destroy” America from within.

-- Pamela Geller, May 26 WND column

For a long time, as much as I wanted to see Obama gone, I opposed the notion of Congress attempting to impeach him. I figured that with the Senate in the hands of Harry Reid, nothing would come of it. What’s more, when it was attempted with Clinton, he came out at the other end more popular than ever, a martyr in the eyes of the left.

But I no longer care about the end result. I want Obama to go through the process because he has it coming. In totalitarian states, after all, the people have no other recourse except to take to the streets and spill blood. But we have available the process of impeachment, and Obama should be forced to defend his contemptible lies and actions.

If for no other reason than his unbearable arrogance, the schmuck should have to pay a penalty.

-- Burt Prelutsky, May 28 WND column

Regardless of political parties, though, where is there a Jefferson among us today? Someone who would demand an independent commission with due-process rights for the primary witness, President Obama, in a possible impeachment case against him? Mounting evidence, going back to the beginning of his first term, could be examined.

Should there be an actual fully televised impeachment procedure – which could happen if We the People demanded it – public school students watching might call for a return of civics classes to their schools, newly reminded that they are self-governing Americans.

Nat Hentoff,  May 28 WND column

It is madness to ignore the aggregate of evidence against Obama just because a lot of people want to believe that he’s a good guy. It is madness to ignore all of the evidence that shows us very clearly going down the road of every other civilized nation that has descended into tyranny. It is madness to ignore the evidence that speaks to Obama having deliberately and willfully sabotaged our economy, even as he continues to do so. It is madness to ignore his cozy and very open relationships with America’s sworn enemies. It is madness to ignore that we pretty much have the framework for an entire totalitarian state build right into Obamacare, the president’s crowning achievement.

And it’s madness to ignore that these things did not come about until one Barack Hussein Obama became president.

-- Erik Rush, May 29 WND column

Until the current administration came along, never in American history had so many people claimed to be taking responsibility without taking even the least little bit. Some leaders take pride in knowing how to delegate responsibility. Obama and his crew only know how to delegate blame.

-- Burt Prelutsky, June 4 WND column

Never mind that no one who voted for him knows who he is. Indonesian? Kenyan? Hawaiian? Who cares?! Presumably our dictators-in-waiting do. Obama’s three different Social Security numbers were “no problem” for the NSA’s vast army of high-tech voyeurs and their black budget. Created to spy on our enemies, these agencies and companies have now all put in their bid to rule over us.

-- Craige McMillan, June 7 WND column

Gov. Christie, you hug the president on camera at every opportunity, begging Obama like a shameless strumpet for federal dollars to fix New Jersey, which remains in disrepair, yet you don’t care about how you waste the taxpayer’s money? … Ewww!

-- Ellis Washington, June 7 WND column


Posted by Terry K. at 1:28 AM EDT
Friday, June 7, 2013
At NewsBusters, The Truth Is A 'Gratuitous Smear'
Topic: NewsBusters

Jack Coleman complains in a June 6 NewsBusters post that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in a radio interview, "gratuitously smeared Liddy as 'an admirer of Adolf Hitler.'"

Of course, it's not a smear if it's true, and indeed, Liddy was very much an admirer of Hitler, as documented by the British paper The Independent in 2004:

The Fuhrer was G Gordon Liddy's first political hero. Liddy was a sickly, asthmatic child when he grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey, in the 1930s. The town was full of ethnic Germans who idolized Hitler. Liddy was made to salute the Stars and Stripes Nazi-style by the nuns at his school; even now, he admits, "at assemblies where the national anthem is played, I must suppress the urge to snap out my right arm." His beloved German nanny taught him that Hitler had -- through sheer will-power -- "dragged Germany from weakness to strength."

This gave Liddy hope "for the first time in my life" that he too could overcome weakness. When he listened to Hitler on the radio, it "made me feel a strength inside I had never known before," he explains. "Hitler's sheer animal confidence and power of will [entranced me]. He sent an electric current through my body." He describes seeing the Nazis' doomed technological marvel the Hindenberg flying over New Jersey as an almost religious experience. "Ecstatic, I drank in its colossal power and felt myself grow. Fear evaporated and in its place came a sense of personal might and power."

While Coleman doesn't acknowledge this undisputed fact about Liddy -- remember, to him it's nothing but a gratuitous smear --  he does make sure you know that Kennedy's uncle, John F. Kennedy, was a "Nazi sympathizer." Well, no -- JFK wrote some contemporaneous praise of Germany after a 1937 visit and wrote in 1945 that Hitler was "the stuff of legends" (arguably true since he is the benchmark for genocide, warmongering and overall human depravity).

Coleman provides no evidence that JFK offered any such praise after 1937, a time when Nazi Germany still had a significant number of supporters in the U.S., and he certainly offers no evidence that JFK issued such gushing praise of Hitler on the level of Liddy's. 

Coleman then gets really pissy after RFK Jr. reminded people of why Liddy is a convicted felon, wuch as "an alleged plot involving G. Gordon Liddy to kill columnist and longtime Nixon nemesis Jack Anderson." Coleman then sneers, "And just out of curiosity, did that conspiracy against Anderson involve drowning him in a car?"

Well, no. Liddy was looking to do it the old-fashioned way -- poison:

The Nixon operative knew exactly who to contact to get the job done. He began with his sidekick G. Gordon Liddy, who had just been transferred to the Nixon campaign's intelligence operation and was “forever volunteering to rub people out,” as Hunt put it. Liddy wasted little time before expounding on the obvious solution to his latest White House assignment: “They charged us with the task: ‘Come up with ways of stopping Anderson.' We examined all of the alternatives and very quickly came to the conclusion [that] the only way you're going to be able to stop him is to kill him.”

To lay the groundwork, Hunt and Liddy conducted physical surveillance of Anderson, tailing the columnist in Liddy's green Jeep as Anderson drove from a parking garage in downtown Washington to his residence in the Maryland suburbs. “The purpose was to locate Anderson’s home and examine it from the outside for vulnerabilities,” Hunt recalled. It turned out to be “just an ordinary house” with “no pits around it,” so “if housebreakers wanted to get in they would have very little difficulty.” Hunt concluded that he and Liddy could easily sneak into Anderson's home and “get rid of the pesky journalist” by putting “a drug- laden pill” in whatever medicine bottles Anderson used.

But what kind of poison should be slipped to the muckraker? This was a question beyond the expertise of the White House operatives. After all, while Hunt had plotted at the CIA to overthrow leftist leaders in Central America, he had no personal hands- on experience in murder; and while Liddy boasted that he “could kill a man with a pencil in a matter of seconds” by jamming it into a victim's neck, he was not an expert in the toxicology of poisons. So Hunt reached out to a former intelligence colleague who had been part of a CIA team that tried to poison Fidel Castro a decade earlier with botulism toxin—a plot, ironically, that had recently been exposed by Jack Anderson.

This is Coleman's hero, the one who "gratuitously smeared" about his love for Hitler.


Posted by Terry K. at 5:43 PM EDT
Updated: Wednesday, June 26, 2013 4:00 PM EDT
WND Channels The Dumbest Man on the Internet
Topic: WorldNetDaily

A June 4 WorldNetDaily article carries the headline "It begins: Major demand to impeach Obama."

First, the WND petition calling for Obama's impeachment that the article promotes is not a "major demand" -- it's a desperate bid for relevance on the part of an Obama-hating website whose four-year jihad to personally destroy the president by raising discredited claims about his "eligibility" utterly failed to the point that nobody believes anything WND says.

Second, there's nothing new about this -- WND launched the petition in February and has been promoting calls for impeachment since 2009.

Third, the "It Begins" construct is most notoriously associated with Gateway Pundit blogger Jim Hoft, who is best known as the Dumbest Man on the Internet for a plethora of legitimate reasons.

So far, WND's bid to appear credible remains firmly in the "failure" column.


Posted by Terry K. at 2:05 PM EDT
NewsBusters' Double Standard on Demanding That People Be Fired
Topic: NewsBusters

In a June 4 NewsBusters post, Nathan Roush is appalled that a feminist group would call for the firing of a few male Fox News personalities for making retrograde comments about single mothers:

The Constitution of our country protects the freedom of expression of ideas and opinions, and these men were simply expressing their opinions on a historically contested issue. It is actually expected that some people would be in opposition to the statements that were made; however, to claim that someone should be terminated from their employment for merely expressing their opinions is detestable.

Roush is just an intern at the Media Research Center so he may not know this, but the MRC calls for people to be fired all the time. For instance, last year MRC chief Brent Bozell demanded that MSNBC fire Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton for doing what Roush was defending: expressing opinions. Bozell also demanded that MSNBC president Phil Griffin fire himself for hiring them.

We suspect Roush won't be calling out Bozell for doing the same thing he has criticized others for doing.


Posted by Terry K. at 12:09 PM EDT
Erik Rush Is Just Asking
Topic: WorldNetDaily

It has already been established that there are jihadi training camps within our borders and that the Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were members of a radical mosque in Boston. Yet not only does this administration fail to put an end to such things, it empowers them through their insinuation into government and with deferential policies.

Are Muslims intended to be Obama’s cutthroat foot soldiers, those who will be mobilized to rise up, paralyze America with widespread terror attacks, and incite the chaos that will necessitate martial law and an end to our free society?

-- Erik Rush, June 5 WorldNetDaily column


Posted by Terry K. at 2:32 AM EDT
Updated: Friday, June 7, 2013 2:33 AM EDT
Thursday, June 6, 2013
NEW ARTICLE: The Sheffield Shuffle
Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters creator Matthew Sheffield gets a few things right about new media, but it's overshadowed by his retrograde, knee-jerk bashing of the old, "liberal" media. Read more >>

Posted by Terry K. at 4:32 PM EDT
WND Columnist Cites Scientology Front Group To Attack DSM
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Dear Gina Loudon:

Your June 4 WorldNeDaily column fretting that the new American Psychiatric Association’s new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual fretting that its new definitions mental disorders "ould be insidiously used by government to label certain Americans with mental disorders as a pretext for curbing rights of all kinds" might have a little more credibility if it didn't appear at a website that sells a book proclaiming all liberals to be mentally ill merely for holding liberal views.

And if, the same day your column appeared, WND hadn't also run a column by Walter Williams with the headline "Insane liberals in their own words."

And if hadn't prominently cited the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International -- a Scientology front group that has long bashed psychatry -- to back up your claims.

Sincerely,
ConWebWatch


Posted by Terry K. at 1:17 PM EDT
CNS Can't Stop Portraying Money Spent on LGBT Issues as Wasteful
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com's obsession with portraying federal money spent on LGBT issues as wasteful continues in in a June 5 article by Elizabeth Harrington:

President Barack Obama's 2009 economic stimulus law financed a $431,363 grant in Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco-based congressional district to study the “psychological distress” of homosexual fathers. The study took three years to publish its results and created no jobs. 

The study concluded that homosexual men likely reduce their chances of contracting HIV after becoming fathers because they have less time for sex.

Harrington doesn't explain whether job creation was promised from this grant; if not, the fact that it "created no jobs" is irrelevant.

By our count, this is the seventh CNS article published since March portraying federal money spent on LGBT issues as wasteful.


Posted by Terry K. at 10:38 AM EDT
WND's Farah Slouches Toward Mendacity (Again)
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Joseph Farah is a documented liar, so nothing he says can be trusted since it's usually so easily debunked. Farah's June 3 WorldNetDaily column provides yet another example. 

Farah spends most of the column freaking out over a Department of Defense instruction establishing policies and procedures for how the DoD can support local and state law enforcement agencies. It's a 42-page document, but Farah cherry-picks a tiny section to declare that the Pentagon "altered U.S. law to allow the U.S. military to quell domestic 'civil disturbances' without so much as presidential authorization."

It's telling that Farah did not provide a link to the full instruction -- which, again, is 42 pages long --  because that would have negated his full frothing mode. The document explains how such military actions are regulated by the Posse Comitatus Act, and nowhere does Farah explain how this new instruction goes any farther than any previous DoD orders, or even if there is a rollback.

Indeed, Kevin Govern of the Ave Maria School of Law (not exactly a liberal institution) explains that DoD Instruction 3025.21 replaces several older directives on military assistance to civilian law enforcement and civil disturbances and permits nothing that wasn't already permitted before:

These policy changes must be read in light of an evolution, rather than revolution, involving over a century of federal troop deployments and 200-plus years of legal precedent. The Insurrection Act of 1807 [PDF] was one of the first and most important US laws on this subject, and was followed some 71 years later by the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which further limited executive authority to conduct military law enforcement on US soil. Each of those laws has evolved over time — consistent with the times and the popular will expressed through Congress.

But Farah's frothing must not be interrupted by facts:

Did Americans notice what happened in the wake of the marathon bombings? Did they see how a city was shut down by a military-style occupation? Did they care how difficult it was to distinguish between U.S. soldiers and civilian police forces? Was there any difference?

And before that came Barack Obama’s campaign pledge to create a “civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the U.S. military.

Apparently no one else in the national press found that promise newsworthy, because I was the first to call it to the attention of the public days later. Interestingly, the pledge had been stricken from transcripts of the speech handed out to media.

What ever happened to the “civilian national security force” initiative? No one in the press has dared to ask that question.

As we've repeatedly documented, Obama's reference to a "civilian national security force" refers to an expansion of the foreign service, which Obama himself explained in 2008.

The fact that Farah has chosen to perpetuate his lies about the "civilian national security force" demonstrates his capacity for soulless mendacity.

Farah's column is headlined "Slouching toward a military junta," but Farah slouched his way to the Land of Mendacity a long time ago.


Posted by Terry K. at 1:03 AM EDT
Updated: Thursday, June 6, 2013 1:11 AM EDT
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Alan Caruba Lies About U.N. Gun Treaty
Topic: Accuracy in Media

Alan Caruba writes in his June 4 Accuracy in Media column:

It’s what you do not know about what the government is up to that can get a lot of people killed. For example, on June 3rd, President Obama will sign off on a UN treaty which, if ratified by the Senate, would override the Second Amendment and deprive Americans of the right to own guns.

In fact, the  proposed United Nations Arms Trade Treaty does not override the Second Amendment; it specifically states that it "reaffirm[s] the sovereign right of any State to regulate and control conventional arms exclusively within its territory, pursuant to its own legal or constitutional systems." Further, the American Bar Association investigated the treaty and found that "the proposed [treaty] is consistent with the Second Amendment."

Apparently, that whole "accuracy in media" thing doesn't apply if you write for Accuracy in Media.


Posted by Terry K. at 6:36 PM EDT

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