Barbara Hollingsworth kicks off her Dec. 3 CNSNews.com article by stating:

A number of prominent lay Catholics are taking issue with New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s statement on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that were it not for the Obamacare's treatment of abortion, undocumented immigrants and provisions that require they violate the "dictates of our conscience," Catholics would be among the loudest “cheerleaders” for Obamacare.

But Hollingsworth quotes only right-wing catholic who criticize Dolan, one of whom is her boss, Brent Bozell.

Hollingsworth might want to check CNS' mission statement, which calls for her to "fairly present all legitimate sides of a story." Or did Hollingsworth decide that  any support for Obamacare is somehow illegitimate?

Posted by Terry K. at 9:38 PM EST

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The teaser headline on WorldNetDaily's front page today reads, "Does Obama Want You Infected With This?"

The article itself, by Chelsea Schilling, is about discussion of ending the ban on gay males donating blood. She apparently talked to only person for the article, who opposes lifting the ban. The article is heavily biased toward opposing lifting the ban, raising the specter of the blood supply becoming contaminated with HIV. As Media Matters notes, Schilling fails to mention that the American Medical Association favors lifting the ban.

The funny thing about the article? Obama is not mentioned anywhere in it. Nowhere.

In other words, WND is not just engaging in homophobic scaremongering, it's lying. Again.

No wonder nobody belives WND.

Posted by Terry K. at 4:01 PM EST

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The Media Research Center just can't get away from its own hypocrisy. Geoffrey Dickens writes in a Dec. 3 MRC "Media Reality Check":

When Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a “slut” the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks went ballistic, making the conservative talk show host a centerpiece in their campaign to tarnish Mitt Romney and the GOP as engaging in a “war on women.” However when MSNBC’s Martin Bashir launched his own war on women against Sarah Palin, not a single anchor or reporter from the Big Three said a word about his vile attack.

In the two weeks (February 29, 2012 - March 14, 2012) after Limbaugh made his crude Fluke joke, that he apologized for, the Big Three networks aired a total of 32 stories or interview segments that were full of calls for Limbaugh to apologize to the liberal activist Fluke, to get advertisers to abandon the show and demand that Republicans condemn the talk show host. 

How like the MRC to think that denigrating a woman is a joke -- which runs completely counter to its attempted narrative of bashing Bashir.

If you'll recall, MRC employees defended Limbaugh's misogyny as humor, and they approved of it so much that some of them, like Matt Philbin, added their own Fluke attacks.

Dickens calling Limbaugh's remark "crude" is now officially the strongest thing any MRC employee has said about it. MRC had Brent Bozell couldn't muster anything stronger than "let's all agree Limbaugh crossed a line," then created an "I Stand With Rush" website. Then again, the MRC gave Limbaugh its very first "William F. Buckley, Jr. Award for Media Excellence" in 2007.

In focusing only on that one remark, however, Dickens pushes down the memory hold the fact that  Limbaugh launched dozens of personal attacks on Fluke but apologized for only two of them. Bashir's statement on Palin, meanwhile, was a single instance and he apologized much more profusely and sincerely than Limbaugh did.

Dickens huffs: "The questions have to be asked: Why no mandatory time-off for Bashir and why no outrage from the Big Three networks?" Dickens might want to try asking his boss Bozell why he expressed no outrage about Limbaugh and refused to demand Limbaugh take mandatory time off.

And while he's at it, Dickens might want to ask  Bozell whether he thinks his comment that President Obama looks like a "skinny ghetto crackhead" should have kept him at least temporarily from his weekly guest gig on Sean Hannity's Fox News show.

Posted by Terry K. at 1:25 PM EST

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Les Kinsolving has always been a raging homophobe. So much so, in fact, that his Dec. 1 WorldNetDaily column really does argue that if a homosexual is not "mute," he or she is "militant," even if it's Dick Cheney's daughter:

There was once a day in this nation when lesbians and others with alternate sexual orientations were comparatively mute.

There has developed a militancy that may well know no bounds, and that has torn apart the family of the former vice president of the United States.

Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, is running for U.S. senator from Wyoming.

Liz has stated publicly that she does not believe in same-sex marriage.

For that, she has been publicly denounced by her militant lesbian sister, Mary Cheney, and Mary’s similarly militant lesbian mate, Heather Poe.

[...]

The Cheney sisters, reported the Times, have not spoken (to each other) since the summer, and Mary declared she would not reconcile with Liz unless she changed her position on marriage.

“Liz’s position is to treat my family as second-class citizens. That’s not a position I can be ‘lovingly tolerant’ toward.”

This really begs a question: How would lesbian Mary expect her sister to regard her orientation if she were polyandrous (female polygamy), a pedophile, incestuous or necrophiliac?

Yes, Kinsolving is once again falsely equating homosexuality, pedophilia and necrophilia. That's how homophobic Kinsolving is.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:35 AM EST

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What do these CNSNews.com blog posts over the past couple of weeks -- most by James Beattie -- have in common?

Mark Levin: My Family Discussed Obamacare on Thanksgiving...

Levin: Obamacare Is Vessel Through Which the Left Has Conducted a Coup in This Country

Levin: No Mission Left in Afghanistan

Levin Thanks Harry Reid for Helping to Kill Obamacare

Levin: Paul Ryan's Remarks Prove 'These Guys are Going to Buckle;' Obama and Reid are 'Thrilled'

Levin: 'You Can't Get Along with Harry Reid and Barack Obama - They're Insane'

As with CNS' previous Levin stenography, none of them disclose that CNS' parent, the Media Research Center, has a business relationship with Levin that includes Levin promoting the MRC on his radio show and CNS promoting Levin's logrolling blurb.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:33 PM EST

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Joseph Farah makes two major errors in his Dec. 1 WorldNetDaily column.

First, he portrays Colin Flaherty as a "journalist":

Journalist Colin Flaherty recognized the trend long before anyone else in America – before the corporate media, before me, before Matt Drudge.

He began tracking a noticeable and undeniable upswing in black-on-non-black racist violence – either in mob form or via what has become known as “the knockout game,” in which perpetrators took at least one unprovoked punch at an unsuspecting and innocent victim.

Two years ago, Flaherty’s work got my attention. He had self-published a remarkable book called “White Girl Bleed A Lot” about this phenomenon. WND enlisted Flaherty to chronicle these attacks for publication and made arrangements to re-publish a vastly updated, bestselling edition of the book – one that would allow readers to see, with their own eyes, hundreds of attacks actually caught on video by perpetrators or bystanders.

Flaherty is not a journalist -- he's a race-baiting radio host.

Second, Farah assumes that every instance of black-on-white violence Flaherty has documented is driven by racism:

Despite the recognition of the story by many other media outlets, precious few have credited either Flaherty or WND for the relentless, heavily criticized reporting that broke through the long news blackout that allowed this unprovoked racial violence to go virtually unnoticed for two years.

[...]

We also need victims to tell their stories. If you have been victimized by racial mob violence or the so-called “knock-out game,” you have an eager and willing advocate here at WND. Let us know the details of what you have experienced so we can continue to raise awareness of the way racist violence is rearing its ugly head in America, again.

What’s the danger of not pursuing this epidemic of social pathology?

The danger is obvious and even more frightening – the provocation of something resembling a race war.

Again, Flaherty's work does nothing other than demonstrate his race-baiting. Why else would he put non-blacks (and non-humans) in his "black mobs?

Because Flaherty has never bothered to prove that an inordinate amount of the "black mob violence" he obsessively documents is "racist," he has no basis to claim there's a trend here -- and Farah has no basis to claim there is "something resembling a race war" happening here.

emember, for WND it's all about perception, not reality -- as we've noted, Flaherty and WND don't claim to be documenting an actual epidemic of "black mob violence" -- only what what appears to be an epidemic.

The fact that Farah is begging readers to tell their "racist violence" stories to WND is all the evidence you need that he's trying to create something that doesn't exist. He has a book to sell, after all.

And the fact that Farah apparently can't tell the difference between a journalist and a race-baiter is yet another clue as to why nobody believes WND.

Posted by Terry K. at 8:34 PM EST

Updated: Tuesday, December 3, 2013 8:36 PM EST

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It's been a few days since the Media Research Center last had an anti-gay freakout, so we were due for one. Cue Tim Graham complaining about Broadway musical performers taking part in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade:

The Huffington Post liked how “right-wingers across America” disapproved of NBC putting part of the Broadway show “Kinky Boots” in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Matt Lauer described it as a “fun show that tells the story of a struggling shoe factory owner who pairs up with an outrageous cabaret performer and together, not only do they save the business, but they learn to celebrate the differences in each other.”

The stars addressed a song to “Ladies, gentlemen, and those yet to make up their minds.” They sang let “pride be your guide” and “you change the world when you change your mind.”

Parents had to suddenly explain what a “drag queen” was and why there was a man standing in red thigh-high boots, boxer shorts and the top of a business suit. The show was created by gay playwright Harvey Fierstein and “rock icon” Cindy [sic] Lauper (to use Lauer’s term). The production won six Tony awards.

Every once-traditional family television show is getting transformed into another opportunity for gay-pride evangelism, especially if it’s run out of Manhattan by NBC Universal.

We weren't aware that the parade was limited only to heterosexuals. Graham should let us know these things.

(Photo via Vanity Fair)

Posted by Terry K. at 11:51 AM EST

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A Dec. 2 WorldNetDaily article steals and rewrites a New York Post article about a New York rabbi who teaches karate:

There’s a solution to the problem of New York Jews being singled out by “Knockout Game” attackers, says a New York rabbi turned Karate sensei.

Teach them martial arts.

When Rabbi Gary Moskowitz, now 56, was growing up in the Soundview section of the Bronx, he got beaten up a lot, he recalls. So he took up karate.

At age 14, he went to a Jewish Defense League summer camp.

“I came back, and I was able to do 400 pushups,” he told the New York Post.

If the Jewish Defense League sounds familiar, it should: As we detailed when then-NewsBusters bloger Cinnamon Stillwell defended JDL-linked bomber Earl Krugel, the JDL has been associated with numerous acts of violence since its founding by far-right activist Meir Kahane. The most notorious of those is Baruch Goldstein's massacre of 30 Arabs at Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs.

Moskowitz told the New York Times in 2010 that he had been attracted to Kahane as a “dumb kid” and later turned against him. But a flyer promoting a series of films about Moskowitz describes one film as lionizing his JDL experience:

This story is about the renowned Jewish Defense League (JDL) through the eyes of a young high school yeshiva and later public school student. Moskowitz, as a young high school student learned to fight back against the tyranny of the streets and the apathy in the community by joining the new Jewish Defense League. Moskowitz became a born again Jew after enlisting in the JDL training camp. The camp consisted of several hours of daily karate training, a couple of hours of weapons (arms) training, intensive Jewish education in Jewish history, law, Zionism, philosophy and the holocaust and military instruction and drilling.

Following the training camp the JDL story is told through Moskowitz’ participation in the many demonstrations against the Russian mission, the rally against the Klan in Heights town NJ, protecting Jewish teachers and Jewish people on school boards who were being threatened by gangs for voting in the West Bronx, and many other actins [sic] JDL became known for. Later the story focuses of the conflict Moskowitz had with Rabbi Kahane founder and head of the JDL.

While Moskowitz appears to be doing good things these days, the JDL connection is troubling. As recently as 2001, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the FBI considered the JDL a terrorist organization.

Of course, given that WND writer Aaron Klein has his own Kahanist sympathies, it's not really much of a surprise that WND would promote Moskowitz.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:31 AM EST

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Hate-tweeter and Media Research Institute Culture & Media Institute managing editor Matt Philbin is at it again. This time, he has decided that a #WHyouth hashtag really says #HitlerYouth, and feels the need to go all Godwin on the president, tweeting and retweeting Obama-Nazi smears:

This sort of sleazy name-calling doesn't exactly help the MRC's demand that MSNBC punish Martin Bashir for saying offensive things about Sarah Palin. Does Philbin even realize that?

UPDATE: Philbin took exception to us highlighting his Godwinism, and he expressed his displeasure by calling us a "faggot" and telling us to "fuck off," and then blocking us from his Twitter account. Here's the exchange:

The insults and the childish blocking indicates some maturity issues on Philbin's part. That's not a surprise, of course.

Posted by Terry K. at 9:12 PM EST

Updated: Monday, December 2, 2013 10:10 PM EST

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WorldNetDaily may have spent the past year downplaying its years of birtherism -- presumably in an effort to slow down the decline of its credibility -- but that doesn't mean that WND employees have stopped believing it.

WND editor Joseph Farah makes his birther leanings quite clear in his Nov. 29 WND column:

I know Obama will continue to outrage me and millions of other Americans. That won’t stop. But he will never be quite the same after being taken down several notches. He will be desperate. He will push harder than ever to accomplish his evil objectives as his time runs out. But that’s as it should be for a falling political star whose legacy has already been written.

I’ve never acknowledged him as president.

To me he has always been – and will always be – the illegal, illegitimate occupant of the White House. He’s little more than a bad, deadbeat tenant, exercising his squatter rights.

Does this sound like a guy who doesn't regret spending years peddling discredited claims about Obama's birth certificate? Didn't think so.

Posted by Terry K. at 5:24 PM EST

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Noel Sheppard devotes a Nov. 26 NewsBusters post to touting a demand by the Catholic League's Bill Donohue that HBO host Bill Maher be fired for saying making what Sheppard called "truly disgusting attacks on the Pope, priests, and the Catholic Church." Sheppard also linked to a Catholic League "list of the 54 vile anti-Catholic attacks Maher has made since 1998."

Sheppard doesn't mention that his boss, Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell, is a member of the Catholic League's board of advisers.

It's a matter of disclosure of a conflict of interest -- something that the MRC regularly criticizes media outlets for when they fail to do so. Is it too much to ask the MRC to do what it demands of others?

Posted by Terry K. at 11:41 AM EST

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On Jan. 21, at a so-called Presidential Inaugural Prayer Breakfast -- to which WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah was invited, disinvited, re-invited, then ultimately didn't bother to attend -- Farah buddy Jonathan Cahn gave a pretty standard right-wing, evangelical Christian, Obama-bashing speech, tying in his book "The Harbinger," which claims that the 9/11 attacks were a judgement from God. Weirdly, it took two weeks for WND to write up an article summarizing the speech.

Now, WND is trying to promote Cahn's months-old speech by creating a mystique about it. From a Nov. 30 article:

Given the moral and spiritual state of the nation, some have called it “the most important speech given in modern American history.”

It was delivered by Jonathan Cahn, author of the best-selling book “The Harbinger,” Jan. 21, 2013, the morning of Barack Obama’s second presidential inauguration, at the Presidential Inaugural Prayer Breakfast. The unofficial gathering, which included members of Congress, government leaders and Christian ministers, took place just one hour before Obama took the oath of the presidency.

“[The address] was a prophetic exposé of America’s fall from God, a revealing of the biblical signs of judgment manifesting in America, and a call to return,” said Joseph Farah, producer of “The Isaiah 9:10 Judgment,” the No. 1 faith movie of 2012 and 2013 based on Cahn’s teachings.

The speech became pointed when Cahn addressed his words to Obama: “Can you lay your left hand upon His Word and then with your right hand enact laws against it? Can you invoke the name of God to assume the presidency and then use the presidency in any way to endorse that which clearly wars against the ways of the God you invoke? … Can you utter the words ‘so help me God’ if you should in any way take part in helping to lead a nation away from the God whose help you invoke?”

Those who were present described Cahn’s address as electrifying, a prophetic clarion call and nothing short of a historic moment. At the speech’s end, the gathering erupted into what one observer described as “a near riot.”

Soon after the speech, a recording of it began spreading across the Internet like wildfire. At the same time, viewers began noticing that as quickly as it was being posted, it was being taken down.

Thousands of viewers began noticing that as they tried to repost it and send it to others, the links to the speech were going dead. Confusion and speculation spread through social media.

WND even received threats for trying to air it.

Note that not a thing WND alleges happened has any documented evidence to back it up:

• Who called the speech "the most important speech given in modern American history"?
• Who described Cahn's speech as "electrifying, a prophetic clarion call and nothing short of a historic moment"? (We know Farah didn't, because he couldn't be bothered to attend.)
• Who was the "observer" that called the after speech scene a "near riot"? What were they "near rioting" against? The audience was cheering Cahn's words at the end of the speech, which is not the definition of "near riot."
• Who was taking down copies of the speech from the Internet?
• Who threatened WND for "trying to air" the speech? What did those threats say?

WND provides no answers for these questions, which raises the question of whether any of it happened at all and WND is just trying to create a controversy in order to generate clicks.

The dishonesty extends to the headline. It reads, "the speech you were never supposed to see" in quote marks, but nobody is quoted in the article as saying that.

If this was such a big, important speech, why did WND fail to write about it until two weeks later? And why did WND fail to post a video of it until now, months after the fact?

We don't care whether or not WND posts a video of Cahn's speech. We do care, however, that WND appears to falsely trying to inflate its importance by creating a myth around it by making claims WND won't document.

Posted by Terry K. at 12:58 AM EST

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In 2012, when Rush Limbaugh repeatedly denigrated Sandra Fluke, Brent Bozell was a profile in cowardice, unable to work up any harsher criticism than "let’s all agree Limbaugh crossed a line" and even starting a short-lived "I Stand With Rush" website.

Which makes Bozell's whining about Martin Bashir's comments about Sarah Palin while invoking others' criticism of Limbaugh -- criticism he couldn't be bothered to make himself -- utterly hypocritical:

While the liberal networks all blew gaskets over Limbaugh calling Sandra Fluke a "slut," not one of them has covered Bashir's remarks. How's that for hypocrisy? Associated Press media reporter David Bauder filed at least three stories, but there was mostly silence outside of Fox News. The Washington Post and USA Today published nothing, and it only came up in The New York Times as a clause of a TV listing about the subjects of "Fox News Sunday." There was nothing on ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR or PBS. CNN only touched on it once during its "New Day" morning show and once on its "Reliable Sources" journalism program.

One obvious answer for this blackout is that Limbaugh is far more popular in America than Bashir, who few watch. But another obvious answer is media liberals despise Limbaugh and Palin, and sympathize with Bashir and the audience that loves this kind of hate speech toward conservatives.

Not only is Bozell sympathetic to Limbaugh's views, his Media Research Center gave Limbaugh its very first "William F. Buckley, Jr. Award for Media Excellence" in 2007. He can't even claim to apply the same standard to all MSNBC hosts who said ugly things; when then-MSNBC host Don Imus insulted the Rutgers women's basketball team with a racial slur, Bozell said only that the remark was "stupid" then tried to change the subject.

He couldn't possibly diss Limbaugh by doing something so gauche as criticizing something that manifestly deserved criticism -- as we've seen, ideological loyalty is much more important to him than logical consistency.

Bozell concludes his column by sneering, "There's a concept with which the folks at MSNBC are manifestly unfamiliar. Honor." Speak for yourself, Brent.

Posted by Terry K. at 5:30 PM EST

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Joseph Farah just can't stop lying about President Obama.

In his Nov. 28 WorldNetDaily column, Farah pretends he's not denigrating Obama's faith -- "I’m not saying he is not a believer. I’m not saying he is a Muslim masquerading as a Christian" -- then goes on to do exactly that through falsehoods and distortions.

Farah writes: "Obama released a reading of the Gettysburg Address he did at the request of filmmaker Ken Burns. What were the only words missing from the actual Gettysburg Address as delivered by Abraham Lincoln? 'Under God.'" Farah didn't mention that was because the draft of the address Burns had Obama read did not have "under God" in it.

Farah also wrote: "In 2009, Obama announced in Turkey, of all places, that America was no longer a Christian nation. 'We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values,' he said." Notice how Farah twists Obama's words. Obama never said America was no longer a Christian nation, as Farah claims -- he said that America is defined by a set of priniciples that transcends religion.

Farah writes: "Also in 2008, Obama called the recitation of the Shahada, the Muslim confession of faith, 'one of the prettiest sounds on Earth.' In an interview with Nicholas Kristof, published in the New York Times, Obama recited the Muslim call to prayer, the Adhan, 'with a first-class [Arabic] accent.' The opening lines of the Adhan (Azaan) is the Shahada: “Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme! Allah is Supreme! I witness that there is no god but Allah I witness that there is no god but Allah I witness that Muhammad is his prophet … ' According to Islamic scholars, reciting the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith, makes one a Muslim. This simple yet profound statement expresses a Muslim’s complete acceptance of, and total commitment to, the message of Islam." Farah doesn't seem to understand that one can appreciate the faith of others, or even how a prayer sounds, while not following it themselves.

Finally, Farah lapses into the Obama derangement his website is famous for:

Let’s just face facts.

Obama is hostile to Christianity in any orthodox form. He’s hostile to Catholicism. He’s hostile to evangelicalism. And he seems to be hostile to the faith that formed the root of all Christianity – the faith of Hebrew patriarchs.

Should we stop being surprised, then, when Obama censors words like “God” from important American historical documents?

I think not.

He is simply shaking off the vestiges of hypocrisy he clung to publicly to win the presidency. Today, Obama’s antipathy to the God of Israel is right out there in the open.

Who appointed Farah to be the arbiter of proper Christianity? Nobody that we can recall.

Posted by Terry K. at 2:26 PM EST

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