WND's Farah Still Clings To Clinton Conspiracy Theories Topic: WorldNetDaily
The Daily Beast talked to some of the most notorious Clinton-haters of the 1990s, and finds that many of them have kept their hatred stoked for lo these many years. At the top of that list, of course, is WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah, who still clings to many of the old Clinton conspiracies, like the death of Vince Voster:
“We were simply asking questions about the death of a high-ranking administration official in very peculiar circumstances, and we were just supposed to accept the conventional answers even though when you look at the forensic evidence there were a lot of questions,” said Joseph Farah, the editor of WND.com and the former head of the Western Journalism Center
In 1996, the Columbia Journalism Review described the WJC as dedicated to “trying to inject the dark view of Foster’s death into mainstream reporting and thinking. Last year, to this end, the Center bought full-page ads in several major newspapers, including The New York Times… to offer for sale special Vince Foster reports.”
That Foster was murdered, Farah says now, “is not something you will ever see me saying. I am a journalist. I don’t draw conclusions unless there is proper evidence for it. I don’t what happened but I don’t think he committed suicide in Fort Marcy Park.”
Of course, Farah is being utterly disingenuous. If you reject the idea that Foster committed suicide, the only other possible conclusion you can come to is that he was murdered.
But that's not the only thing Farah is willing to lie about. He even denies being a Clinton-hater, even though WND's early days were dripping with hatred for Clintbn:
“They called us Clinton-haters. I was never a hater,” Farah says. “But you could certainly say I was one of his enemies.”
And even with the remove of two decades, Farah stands by his reporting—although he acknowledges that not all of it was in the tradition of even-handed journalism.
“Accurate? Yes. Fairness is a nice thing that we try to do in journalism. We don’t want to smear people. We don’t want to be untruthful. But the most important thing is holding power accountable, and that is what we tried to do.”
As we have seen with WND's coverage of Obama, Farah has absolutely no problem smearing people and being untruthful.
By contrast, Newsmax's Christopher Ruddy has tried to distance himself from his Clinton-era excesses:
“At the time, I think I was just trying to do a good job as a journalist, but it was to just get caught up in this anti-Clinton movement and belief that he was a bad guy no matter what he did,” said Chris Ruddy, CEO of the conservative media company NewsMax, and close ally at the time of both Scaife and Farah.
[...]
“It becomes almost like trench warfare. You have a permanent stalemate and a permanent sense of war and anger and it keeps escalating and there is nobody to bring a truce,” Ruddy said.
He found his way out of the hysteria, he says, during the Bush years, a period which by comparison made Clinton look sober and judicious. At New York City Mayor Ed Koch’s urging, Ruddy and Scaife reached out to Clinton, and met with him for lunch at his Harlem office in 2007.
Now, he says, “I don’t feel like I did anything wrong. I think that at the time I was acting as the opposition press. Do I think it was over the top? Yes. This was 20 years ago. It was my first big adventure in journalism. I was caught up in the moment. You live and learn and you grow. Do I think it was a mistake to be attacking the president? Um… Yes, in the way I did, yes.”
Of course, true believer Farah was having none of that:
“Scaife and Ruddy have run from what they did,” said Farah. “Without any real explanation that makes any sense. You won’t see them talking about Vince Foster any more. They think Clinton has grown up since leaving the presidency, that he is somehow a changed man. Well, maybe they are the ones that changed.”
Farah has not changed -- he's as willing to spew hate and lies as ever.
Terry Jeffrey rants in a May 21 CNSNews.com column:
Two Senate committees held hearings this month on the nomination of Office of Management and Budget Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell to succeed Kathleen Sebelius as secretary of Health and Human Services, the federal agency most responsible for overseeing implementation of Obamacare.
In these two hearings, according to transcripts published by CQ Transcriptions, the senators and the nominee spoke approximately 49,000 words. Not one of these words directly addressed the contraception-sterilization-abortion-inducing drug regulation that Sebelius issued under Obamacare and that is now the target of more than 90 lawsuits.
[...]
The central question in the lawsuits filed against Sebelius is whether the federal government can force Americans into complicity with the taking of innocent human life by compelling them to buy or provide health insurance that covers abortion-inducing drugs.
[...]
As the enforcer, Burwell will effectively tell Americans: Under Obamacare's individual mandate, you must buy health insurance, and under our regulation, that insurance must cover abortion-inducing drugs.
As we've repeatedlydocumented, no drugs that fit the medical definition of "abortion-inducing drugs" are covered by Obamacare.
Why must Jeffrey and CNS continue to lie about this provision?
WND Thinks People Getting Robbed Is 'Delicious' Topic: WorldNetDaily
A May 21 WorldNetDaily article by Jay Baggett carries the headline "Delicious irony at 'no guns allowed' restaurants." What was that "delicious irony"? A robbery:
The armed robber who shot and robbed a 20-year-old man outside this Houston Jack in the Box Sunday probably didn’t know the fast-food chain had only nine days earlier banned guns at their restaurants.
Or maybe he didn’t care.
Or maybe he realized his chances of encountering meaningful resistance were slim.
The shooting came on the heels of the chain capitulating to demands by the anti-gun activist group Mothers Demand Action that law-abiding gunowners be banned from bringing their weapons into the restaurants.
“Creating a warm and inviting environment for all of our guests and employees is a top priority for Jack in the Box,” read the corporation’s news release. “The presence of guns inside a restaurant could create an uncomfortable situation for our guests and employees and lead to unintended consequences. While we respect the rights of all our guests, we would prefer that guests not bring their guns inside our restaurants.”
Unfortunately, defenseless customers create a “warm and inviting environment” for the wrong people.
How callous and amoral is WND that it finds schadenfreude in someone being the victim of a crime?
AIM's Kincaid Is Still Promoting Falsehood-Prone Joel Gilbert Topic: Accuracy in Media
WorldNetDaily's Jerome Corsi is not the only right-winger who's sticking with Joel Gilbert.
Accuracy in Media's Cliff Kincaid follows in Corsi's footsteps by devoting a May 20 column to Gilbert's latest Obama-bashing film. Kincaid lionizes Gilbert as "the filmmaker who exposed Barack Obama’s Marxist background, and debt to a pro-Soviet Communist Party operative," and proclaims that Gilbert's previous film, "Dreams From My Real Father," "examined the hidden history of America’s first black president in a serious and matter-of-fact manner."
Kincaid, of course, refuses to acknowledge that "Dreams From My Real Father" has been utterly discredited and Gilbert himself exposed as a charlatan unconcerned with facts or reality. But Kincaid has alwaysignored that particular truth.
Kincaid works for an outfit called Accuracy in Media, yet he champions a filmmaker notorious for his inaccuracy. Funny, that.
The Perfect WND Storm: Corsi Quotes A Birther to Defend Criminal D'Souza Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jerome Corsi inadvertently reveals the ulterior motive for sticking up for admitted criminal Dinesh D'Souza and perpetuating the notion of an Obama conspiracy against him: He wants to help D'Souza cash in on his next movie.
Getting prosecuted by the Obama Justice Department is likely to increase the box office for Dinesh D’Souza’s new documentary, “America,” scheduled to open in theaters July 4, according to some Hollywood observers.
If the Obama administration had calculated that a criminal prosecution would silence him, as some critics charge, D’Souza appears to have turned the tables. The early consensus is that D’Souza has affirmed the Hollywood truism about publicity.
Moreover, even if D’Souza is sentenced to prison, he remains out on bail until the fall, free to promote his upcoming documentary without restrictions.
Even better from a marketing point of view, D’Souza, by advancing the theme of “selective prosecution,” has succeeded in positioning himself as yet another member of an Obama “enemies list” that extends far beyond the tea party.
“In Hollywood, any publicity, good or bad, is better than no publicity at all,” said Bettina Viviano, a successful Hollywood producer who includes among her credits having worked as vice president of production for Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment.
She told WND that with “the IRS scandal targeting tea-party conservatives, a lot of people are on to the theme that the Obama administration targets its enemies.”
“People are smart enough to know that Dinesh D’Souza was targeted by the Obama administration,” she said.
Corsi doesn't mention that Viviano is a birther who got some right-wing ink claiming without evidence that Bill Clinton once claimed that Obama wasn't eligible to be president.
To sum up: Birther and Obama-hater Corsi quotes a fellow birther to defend an admitted criminal (and, yes, an Obama-hater). It's the quintessential WND article.
The Very Uncivil Brent Bozell Lectures On Civility Topic: Media Research Center
Brent Bozell and Tim Graham write in a May 21 column:
Just before the 2010 midterms, Comedy Central star Jon Stewart drew a large crowd to Washington to celebrate a "Rally for Sanity." He gave a closing speech, intended to be inspirational and not comical, on how "we can have animus and not be enemies."
The same man who succeeded in convincing CNN to cancel "Crossfire" in 2004 because its squabbles were "hurting the country" felt the need to sermonize about overdoing caricatures of our political opponents on television. This raises the question: Does this man watch his own show?
"The country's 24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator did not cause our problems but its existence makes solving them that much harder," Stewart proclaimed in his address. "The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing."
Simply put, Stewart is lecturing the media not to behave like ... Stewart.
That's right. The man who likened President Obama to a "skinny ghetto crackhead," verbally abuses his fellow TV panelists, and hires misogynists as employees -- among numerous other examples of incivility -- is lecturing Jon Stewart about civility.
Mychal Massie's Favorite Racist, Donald Sterling Topic: WorldNetDaily
Mychal Massie asserts how down he is with Donald Sterling's racist sentiments in his May 19 WorldNetDaily column:
Donald Sterling has been treated unjustly; I’ve said it before, and I remain recalcitrant pursuant to that opinion. Mr. Sterling is being used by race-mongers and melanin pimps as validation of institutional racism – which loosely translated means the modern-day equivalents of Joseph Goebbels are using Mr. Sterling’s private conversation as proof that in America, rich white men are impeding progress for blacks.
For those who remember the riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles following the acquittal of the police officers charged with beating Rodney King, America was told that the malevolent voices, those such as Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, et al., represented blacks nationwide. The only problem is, that wasn’t remotely the case. In fact it can be validly argued that it was precisely because of the malicious heterodoxy and vitriol of those who supposedly spoke for all blacks that black conservatives organized and made their presence known.
We are witnessing another such seminal moment with respect to Mr. Sterling. Persons of color who understand and believe in the Constitution support his right to the free expression of his personal opinions.
[...]
I do not condemn the words of a person such as Mr. Sterling because in America we are privileged to have the right to express our opinions, especially when it comes to the practices of someone we are involved with. I do not view the words of Mr. Sterling as harmful to me as an American of color or to anyone else.
Massie is particularly down with Sterling's opinions about Magic Johnson:
As a father, I have referenced Magic Johnson as a successful businessman, but he is not the person I would hold up as a model for my son. Johnson, by his own admission, lived a debauched lifestyle. He not only endangered himself with his selfish pursuit of sexual gratification, but he also endangered his family and those he was sexually active with. He is not to be championed as a safe-sex advocate, i.e., just wear a condom; he is to be used as an example of why we should teach abstinence and restraint to our children.
But those who espouse commonality for blacks are loath to admit that. They want blacks to be governed by anger and resentment that’s used to tether them to a past when blacks suffered indignities, and to use anecdotal evidences of same as proving the perceived pandemic of institutional racism argued to exist today.
NEW ARTICLE: The MRC's Watch-Chihuahua Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center launches MRC Latino, despite the fact that it has not been historically friendly toward Hispanics or their issues. Read more >>
WND's Jack Wheeler Is On An Obama Derangement Roll Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jack Wheeler resurfaced at WorldNetDaily a couple weeks back to peddle his brand of Obama derangement. He's apparently on a derangement roll because he has more deep thoughts to share with the world.
in his May 19 column, Wheeler laments that impeachment is too cumbersome and that "there is a much faster and easier way to eject Obama from office. It is the law that can put him in jail." Wheeler unearths the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits the government from authorizing an expenditure exceeding the amount appropriated for it.
What does that have to do with Obama? Wheeler sorta explains:
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, has provided 76 examples of Obama’s lawlessness. In each instance, it cost federal government money to implement them. Were any of these implementations authorized by a congressional appropriation? For every one that wasn’t, that’s one count of violating the Antideficiency Act. Every count of which the defendant is found guilty can mean two years in jail.
Mr. Obama needs to be prosecuted in violation of the Antideficiency Act. He can be criminally prosecuted, per §1350, for knowingly and willfully violating it.
Note, however, that §1349 only requires violation of the act (without the knowing/willful qualifier) for the perpetrator to be suspended and removed from office.
First, as we've previously noted, a significant number of Cruz's "76 examples of Obama’s lawlessness" aren't even true. Second, if Wikipedia is to be believed, nobody has ever been prosecuted, let alone indicted, for violating this law.
But Wheeler isn't about to let reality get in his way:
We have the Constitution and the specific federal law to put an end to the tyranny. It’s time to go on offense. All patriots now have the opportunity to actively encourage Republican governors to have their state prosecute the president and to help conservative law firms build their case.
The Antideficiency Act is the means by which Mr. Obama can be thrown out of office and go to jail. Let’s use it.
If Wheeler has not met Larry Klayman, a similarly reality-challenged Obama-hater, WND should really introduce those two.
Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Accuracy in Media Edition Topic: Accuracy in Media
The resignation of Barack Obama would be a victory for the American people, create an opportunity for the restoration of the Constitution and the rule of law and allow citizens to regain control of the government. At the same time, the departure of Obama will elicit a torrent of revelations that will likely taint the highest officials in government, the leadership of both political parties and the upper echelons of the media.
Like Obama, the establishment considers itself too big to fail, but no government can survive if the interests of its officials conflict with those of the people.
It is time for Obama to resign and let a hopelessly corrupt government fail.
-- Lawrence Sellin, May 20 Accuracy in Media column
Dinesh D'Souza May Be Guilty, But The Obama Conspiracy To Get Him Lives At WND Topic: WorldNetDaily
Jerome Corsi has never been one to let the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy, and he certainly isn't about to when it comes to President Obama's purported war against Dinesh D'Souza.
Back in January, Corsi trotted out the producer of D'Souza's films, Gerald Molen, to claim that D'Souza's arrest on charges of making illegal campaign contributions is "political prosecution" comparable to the tactics used on the communist former Soviet Union to quell dissent. Now that D'Souza has not only pleaded guilty to making the illegal campaign donations but admitted he knew that what he was doing was illegal, Corsi and Molen won't let the conspiracy die a natural death, as Corsi wrote in a May 20 WND article:
Molen issued a statement after D’Souza’s court hearing Tuesday.
“This administration doesn’t see its opponents as dissenters but as enemies, and if they can’t refute you, they try to lock you up,” he said.
“Normally these types of offenses are resolved with fines or community service. I and the American people will be watching closely to make sure that justice is done in the sentencing portion.”
In January, Molen’s response to D’Souza’s indictment also was blunt.
“When Dinesh D’Souza can be prosecuted for making a movie, every American should ask themselves one question: ‘What will I do to preserve the First Amendment?’” Molen, the producer of “2016: Obama’s America,” told WND at the time.
Corsi didn't point out that D'Souza's guilty plea makes his earlier statement a fraud. He wasn't prosecuted for "making a movie," he was prosecuted for breaking the law.
Corsi and Molen do not explain why they believe Obama-haters should not be held responsible for their crimes.
MRC's Graham Doesn't Want The Ugly Truth Reported About A Republican Topic: NewsBusters
As we've amplydocumented, the Media Research Center's ongoing "Tell the Truth!" campaign doesn't apply to unflattering news about its favored conservatives.
Tim Graham demonstrates this hypocrisy yet again in a May 17 NewsBusters post in which he complains that Politico is reporting the facts about conservative Oregon Senate candidate Monica Wehby:
Politico’s helping the Democrats wage war on women candidates right before the U.S. Senate primary in Oregon. First, John Bresnahan reported “GOP Senate candidate Monica Wehby was accused by her ex-boyfriend last year of ‘stalking’ him, entering his home without his permission and ‘harassing’ his employees, according to a Portland, Oregon police report.”
Wehby (pronounced "Webby") led incumbent Sen. Jeff Merkley (D) in one poll, so perhaps the liberals want to defeat her in the primary. Then Politico obtained a 911 call from Miller so they could call it the "Wehby saga," in which he said he was going to get a restraining order:
[...]
Liberal media types love to pound tables and complain about how the Supreme Court has allowed wealthy donors to make politics more brutal with negative ads. But what does Politico say when it's the wealthy media outlet sliming a candidate and their personal life?
At no point does Graham counter any of Politico's reporting -- he's merely complaining that facts are being reported.All Graham can do is complain that Politico's "running around and obtaining police reports and 911 calls looks a little like the way the Chicago Tribune cleared the path for Barack Obama to get elected to the Senate in 2004." Graham noted nothing inaccurate in that reporting either.
Further, this seems to be a pattern with Wehby -- she has also been accused of harrassing her ex-husband as they were divorcing.
Perhaps Graham should be grateful that the truth is coming out now instead of closer to a general election.
WND's Klein Slides Down the Radio Dial, Gives Larry Klayman A Forum Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein has moved his New York Sunday radio show from longtime powerhouse WABC to a station that doesn't even register in the ratings for New York radio and has to cut its brodcasting power by 90 percent at night. One reason for Klein's slide down the dial may be guests like Larry Klayman.
A May 18 WND article describes the latest nonsense Klayman peddled on Klein's show:
U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts may have been blackmailed to approve Obamacare after being spied on by the NSA and CIA, says Larry Klayman, the attorney who has come to be known as “the NSA slayer” for his successful legal battles against the National Security Agency.
During an appearance Sunday night on Aaron Klein’s New York City radio show on 970 The Answer, Klayman suggested the blackmail possibility when asked by a caller if the Supreme Court could be sued for its approval of the Affordable Care Act.
“Unfortunately, there’s no way to sue the Supreme Court for decisions that it makes. There should be, and there should be a way to remove these justices for making decisions like that,” explained Klayman, the founder of Judicial Watch who now heads Freedom Watch.
“But let’s take this possibility: Why did Chief Justice Roberts at the eleventh hour change his decision? He was going to side with the other justices and find that Obamacare was unconstitutional. Is it something that was dug up on him by the NSA or the CIA? Was that used against him to blackmail him?
“These are the kinds of things [the government is doing], and that’s why it’s so scary what’s going on with the NSA and the CIA. It can happen in a democracy. So that may help explain it, and perhaps we can reach these issues through the NSA cases that we brought, the NSA/CIA cases. I intend to get the truth on this.”
MRC Censors Facts About IRS Documents Topic: Media Research Center
Geoffrey Dickens breathlessly writes in a May 15 Media Research Center item:
On Wednesday Judicial Watch released a new batch of IRS documents that showed “extensive pressure on the IRS by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) to shut down conservative leaning organizations.” The documents also revealed the IRS’s handling of the Tea Party applications was directed out of the agency’s DC headquarters, contrary to initial claims that blamed low-level officials in Cincinnati.
While the news led Wednesday's Special Report with Bret Baier on FNC, coverage by the Big Three (ABC, NBC, CBS) networks on their Wednesday evening and Thursday morning shows? 0 seconds.
But Dickens isn't telling the full truth about the IRS documents, choosing only to parrot what the right-wing Judicial Watch said about them.
As Media Matters points out, Levin did not tell the IRS to "shut down conservative leaning organizations"; rather, he urged the IRS to "remind all 501(c)(4) organizations about their obligation to observe that restriction on their activities if they want to retain their tax exempt status." Another Levin email on the subject added, "This is not a partisan issue."
Despite the lack of factual basis, MRC chief Brent Bozell regurgitated it in a Fox News appearance.
If all Dickens and Bozell can do is repeat right-wing talking points instead of actual facts, they're not very good media watchdogs, are they?
WND's Fletcher Thinks Walid Shoebat Is A Bible Scholar Topic: WorldNetDaily
Walid Shoebat is an utterlydiscredited far-right ideologue with a shady past he may be fibbing about. So why does WorldNetDaily keep treating him as credible?
Jim Fletcher treats Shoebat as a Bible scholar worth listening to in a May 18 WND article:
A prominent Bible-prophecy teacher claims the true site of the biblical Tower of Babel is in Saudi Arabia and the concept of “Mystery Babylon” actually refers to Mecca, not the Vatican, as some researchers of Scripture claim.
Walid Shoebat, a former PLO operative, tells fellow Christians they’re looking in the wrong place when trying to understand the identity of the people who make up the worldview outlined in Revelation 17:1-5.
[...]
Shoebat contends the Bible’s references to cities point to Arabia.
“When it comes to the destruction of end-days Babylon, Scripture makes no mention of any of the ancient Babylonian cities: Nineveh, Ur, Babel, Erech, Accad, Sumer, Assur, Calneh, Mari, Karana, Ellpi, Eridu, Kish, or Tikrit. All of the literal references in Scripture are in Arabia.”
Fletcher does include a comment from a "veteran prophecy teacher" who states that "There is no such thing as ‘Mystery Babylon,’ according to the grammar of the Greek text." But Fletcher still devotes most of his article to Shoebat, despite never bothering to outline what Shoebat's qualifications are to make pronouncements about Biblical prophecy.
Indeed, someone with Shoebat's dubious background probably shouldn't be trusted at all. But Fletcher won't tell us that.
The Daily Beast talked to some of the most notorious Clinton-haters of the 1990s, and finds that many of them have kept their hatred stoked for lo these many years. At the top of that list, of course, is WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah, who still clings to many of the old Clinton conspiracies, like the death of Vince Voster:
Terry Jeffrey rants in a May 21 CNSNews.com 
WorldNetDaily's 
Jerome Corsi inadvertently reveals the ulterior motive for sticking up for admitted criminal Dinesh D'Souza and 
Brent Bozell and Tim Graham write in a May 21 
Mychal Massie asserts how down he is with Donald Sterling's racist sentiments in his May 19 WorldNetDaily 
Jack Wheeler 
The resignation of Barack Obama would be a victory for the American people, create an opportunity for the restoration of the Constitution and the rule of law and allow citizens to regain control of the government. At the same time, the departure of Obama will elicit a torrent of revelations that will likely taint the highest officials in government, the leadership of both political parties and the upper echelons of the media.
Jerome Corsi has never been one to let the facts get in the way of a good conspiracy, and he certainly isn't about to when it comes to President Obama's purported war against Dinesh D'Souza.
As we've 
WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein has moved his New York Sunday radio show from longtime powerhouse WABC to a 
Geoffrey Dickens breathlessly writes in a May 15 Media Research Center 
Walid Shoebat is an 
