MRC's Graham: Don't Talk About Non-Heterosexuals On Sunday
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Tim Graham has yet another transgender freakout in a Sept. 21 NewsBusters post:

The Washington Post has made it clear that Sunday is not the Lord’s Day. It’s the best day for LGBT preaching. In 2012, they splashed across the front page “TRANSGENDER AT FIVE.” In this Sunday edition, it’s an 18-year-old girl: “WHEN NO GENDER FITS.”

As usual, “the world” is having trouble sympathetically understanding girls who don’t want to be their “assigned” gender. Over a large color photograph of the girl in question tying her own necktie are the words “The world insists, in a host of way, that Kelsey Beckham choose: Male or female? But what feels most right to Kelsey is neither.”

The Post goes all out when it has lessons to teach: splashed across the front page, and then two whole pages inside, with eight color pictures taking up everything above the fold, with the words inside (in caps): “A QUEST TO BE JUST A PERSON.”

There is no space -- none -- for any dissent from the LGBT hard line.

First: We didn't realize it was forbidden to talk about things that didn't relate to heterosexuality on "the Lord's Day."

Second: there is no transgendering going on per se. It's about a biological teen girl who doesn't see herself as either gender. Sexuality is not even discussed in the Post article.

Thrid: It says something about Graham's hatred for non-heterosexuals that he sees someone who's on "a quest to be just a person" to be a "hard line" view. Apparently, he believes any article on a gay or transgender person should be "balanced" by someone like Scott Lively or the Westboro Baptist Church explaining how that person is a deviant and going to hell.

Again: We can't talk about non-heterosexuals on Sunday? Really, Tim?

CNS-Mark Levin Lack of Disclosure Watch
Topic: CNSNews.com

It appears that CNSNews.com remains incapable of being honest with its readers about its relationship with Mark Levin, despite presenting itself as a "news" operation that purports to abide by journalistic standards including disclosure of conflicts of interest.

A Sept. 17 CNS item by Michael Morris plays stenograher to Levin's pearls of wisdom yet again,  detailing how Levin "addressed Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Justice Thurgood Marshall, 'leftists, liberals, and statists' about the issue of race." The next day, a "news" article by Susan Jones transcribed how Levin declared that "We're surrounded by knuckleheads, and the problem is, they're supposed to be protecting the country."

Neither item mentioned the fact that CNS, through its parent the Media Research Center, is in a business arrangement with Levin in which Levin promotes the MRC on his radio show and the MRC touts Levin's endorsement.

On top of that, CNS reporter Penny Starr goes all fangirl on Twitter: "Outstanding routine from Levin tonight on big government! You are awesome!"

CNS should just officially give up the pretense to objectivity and declare that it will fluff conservatives and refuse to treat liberals fairly. That's what Starr, Jones and the rest of the CNS crew are already doing.

WND's Klayman: Nuke ISIS!
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Larry Klayman proves himself to be just as incompetent a military adviser as he is a lawyer with his advice on how to deal with ISIS in his Sept. 19 WorldNetDaily column. And because Klayman is a rabid Obama-hater, he includes his usual dose of Obama derangement:

Indeed, in taking on the Muslim caliphate, now being spearheaded by ISIS, we need to take a lesson from President Harry Truman in ending World War II. Showing real grit and leadership, Truman and his advisers correctly concluded that even if thousands of Japanese civilians had to be sacrificed in dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this seemingly unthinkable strategy would save countless lives in the end. And, not just the lives of U.S. servicemen who were then fighting in the Pacific theater, but by bringing the war to a close quickly also countless Japanese lives as well.

Had “W” and Dick Cheney similarly authorized the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the Taliban in the days following Sept. 11, not only would Osama bin Laden had been killed many years earlier, but the United States could have wiped out this terrorist group completely and we would not be faced today with its resurgence. And, as importantly, we would have taught the Muslim enemy and our adversaries around the world – including but not limited to the Nazi-like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Islamic Iranian leaders – a strong lesson. Namely, attack the United States and its people, and we will wipe you out, period. Instead, Bush and Cheney decided to respond in kind, and we see the results today. Notwithstanding the Muslim president’s traitorous acts furthering the planned Islamic caliphate over the last six years, Bush and company sowed the seeds that Obama then exploited to further the insidious plans of his Middle Eastern Muslim brothers to again enslave Jews and now Christians to a world where Shariah law rules the school under the devilish hand of their god, Allah.

So the time has come to return to the strategy of President Truman and face reality. If we really want to destroy ISIS and set an example for other radical Muslims and the Putins of the world to fear us and leave us in peace, we must use the tools that can do this. Put simply, we should employ tactical nuclear weapons to wipe out the enemy. We cannot worry that Islamic civilians will be killed in the process. In the end this strategy, as was true of the Japanese in World War II, saves not just American but Muslim lives as well.

But of course, Hussein Obama will never authorize this strong action. In the last six years since he took over as our so-called commander in chief, he has ordered our brave servicemen not to fire on Muslims unless they were essentially fired upon first. The result: More men and women in our armed forces have died and been maimed, percentage wise, during the Afghanistan war than in all other American wars.

And, all of this points out that We the People not only have a Muslim enemy in the Middle East to defeat, but also a Muslim sympathizer in the White House that is bent on destroying our Judeo-Christian heritage and way of life.

MRC's Graham Misleads to Obscure Existence of Conservative Media Bias
Topic: Media Research Center

As we've previously detailed, the Media Research Center's Tim Graham likes to pretend that conservative media bias doesn't exist. He engages in another game of pretend in a Sept. 17 NewsBusters post.

Graham uses the post not to complain that the new owner of a Washington, D.C., TV station is pushing slanted news coverage but, rather, to complain that it was pointed out:

The Washington Post demonstrated a sudden interest in the political bias of local TV news on Wednesday. WJLA-TV, the ABC station in D.C., was purchased by Sinclair Broadcasting, which is now airing its conservative commentator Mark Hyman in Washington. They warned in a headline, "Under new owner, WJLA airs more conservative content."

Media reporter Paul Farhi  organized a parade of horrified liberals – except he didn’t identify any of them as liberals. In large type on the front page of the Style section was Charles Lewis of the leftist Center for Public Integrity: “They are stuck with an idiosyncratic owner with its own political views and agenda. It’s a nightmarish scenario for journalists.”

It’s “nightmarish” if you’re a dyed-in-the-wool liberal. But this critique is bizarre. The Center for Public Integrity has left-wing sugar daddies like George Soros and Pierre Omidyar with their own political agendas.

If the Center for Public Integrity is so "left-wing," how does Graham account for the fact that John Solomon served as its director between stints as editor of the right-wing Washington Times? Or that CPI originally funded reporting attacking Al Gore during the 2000 presidential election (for which the work's ultimate publisher, WorldNetDaily, had to apologize for the numerous false claims the work contained)?

Graham also complains:

Farhi’s assertion that WJLA has long been “nonpartisan” flies in the face of the 2010 firing of reporter Doug McKelway for “insubordination” after he reported on a Greenpeace protest calling the group “far left” and noting President Obama received a lot of Big Oil donations.

In fact, McKelway's reporting on Obama's purported "Big Oil donations" was false. As Media Matters noted, McKelway falsely claimed that Obama "accepted $77,051 in campaign contributions from BP" when, in fact, all but $1,000 of that money was from BP employees, not BP itself. And the report itself was not the "insubordination" for which McKelway was fired, as Graham claims; it was a "shouting match" with his boss over the factually flawed segment that prompted the firing.

And where is McKelway working now? Fox News, where he has racked up many more examples of his brand of biased news.

All of Graham's dishonest fulminations are designed to distract from the fact that he refuses to admit that conservative media bias exists.

MRC Plucks Quotes From Roosevelt Documentary Out of Context
Topic: Media Research Center

A Sept. 20 NewsBusters post by Jeffrey Lord is devoted to whining that Rush Limbaugh was taken out of context when he lamented that guys can no longer wheedle sex with women by claiming "that 'no' means 'yes' if you know how to spot it." Lord asserts that "Rush has millions of listeners who, yes, actually listen to what he says, understood his context."

As usual at the Media Research Center, however, it's still perfectly fine to take non-conservatives out of context.

In a Sept. 16 MRC item, Kyle Drennen attacks the new PBS documentary on the Roosevelts:

During the first installment of PBS's The Roosevelts: An Intimate History on Sunday, historian Clay Jenkinson and former Newsweek editor turned historian Evan Thomas slammed Theodore Roosevelt as a bloodthirsty "imperialist" who promoted the "glorification of war" and built up a "cult" of personality. [Listen to the audio]

Speaking on Roosevelt's command of the Rough Riders during the Spanish-American War, Jenkinson proclaimed: "There's no question that Roosevelt is an imperialist. Apologists like to try to play this down. But the fact is he's probably the most significant imperialist in American history." Jenkinson seemed troubled by Roosevelt's call for the United States to "take our place in the world's arena."

Minutes later, Jenkinson launched a more pointed attack against the nation's 26th president: "This is really important. There is a blood lust in Theodore Roosevelt. He was a killer. You can't – you can't sanitize that."

Thomas added to denunciation, declaring: "Teddy Roosevelt, although he's a wonderful figure and a glamorous figure, is a dangerous figure in some ways. This glorification of war can't be a good thing in the long run....And it was an illusion that this country from time to time succumbs to."

[...]

The Ken Burns documentary even brought on conservative columnist George Will to scold Roosevelt's belligerency: "Theodore Roosevelt, we should say this bluntly, liked war....And it gave him an unpleasant dimension, which, after a century of war, which the 20th century became, should cause us to look back on Theodore Roosevelt with dry eyes."

But if you look at the transcript Drennen supplies and the accompanying text, it's obvious that Drennen has pulled all of these quotes out of context and fails to fully report what the documentary was saying.

As the full video of the Roosevelt documentary shows, the segment from which Drennen cherry-picks these statements is about Teddy Roosevelt's adventures in the Spanish-American War. The segment starts at 1:20:12; the Jenkinson clip is prefaced with a quote from Roosevelt about "the supreme triumph of war" trumps the triumph of peace and how "it is through strife, or the readiness for strife, that a nation must win greatness."

There's a 13-minute gap betwen the George Will quote and the second Jenkinson quote Drennen cites, during which it's recounted how Roosevelt was unusually eager to fight the Spanish in Cuba and how his reckless behavior  got many of his fellow Rough Riders wounded or killed.

Between the second Jenkinson quote and the first Evan Thomas quote is a short segment about how Roosevelt lobbied to receive a Medal of Honor for his work in Cuba although he was ineligible for one because he was a volunteer. Between the two Thomas quotes is a segment on how Roosevelt's later political career could be traced to his self-proclaimed heroism.

Curiously, for all of his plucking out of context, Drenne never contradicts anything in the documentary. Instead, he whines about Obama for some reason:

It should be noted that Theodore Roosevelt never brought the United States to a war as president and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Unlike Obama, Roosevelt actually earned his peace prize.  

Drennen doesn't mention the fact that the part of the seven-part documentary from which he cherry-picked covered Roosevelt's life before coming president. Part 2 of the documentary, which covers Roosevelt's presidency, does cover Roosevelt's Nobel Peace Prize.

MRC Hides Fox News' Biased Coverage of Benghazi Hearing
Topic: Media Research Center

Matthew Balan writes in a Sept. 17 Media Research Center item:

CNN and MSNBC viewers on Wednesday would have to switch channels if they wanted to watch the first hearing of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. CNN aired a 15-second news brief at the top of the 10 am Eastern hour, mere minutes before the nearly three-hour meeting began, but didn't cover the proceedings live. MSNBC set aside 12 minutes worth of segments to the event, and sometimes showed split-screen video, but didn't provide the audio.

By contrast, Fox News Channel provided nearly 41 minutes (40 minutes, 51 seconds) of live coverage of the congressional committee's hearing during the 10 am and 11 am Eastern hours.

What Balan did report: Fox's coverage of the hearing was probably biased.

Media Matters monitored Fox's hearing coverage the previous day and found that the channel emphasized the question from Republican members of Congress while cutting away from questions by Democratic members. In all, Fox devoted twice as much time to Republican questions than to Democratic questions. This is something Fox frequently does, but Balan won't tell you that either.

Balan also won't mention Fox's freakish obsession with Benghazi -- nearly 1,100 segments on it since the incidence occurred in September 2012.

Why? Because Fox's agenda is the MRC's agenda. If Fox is obsessed with Benghazi, Balan must be as well.

WND Writer: Adrian Peterson's Punishment Of Son Not A Bad Idea, Just 'Poorly Executed'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Reb Bradley is the author of the WorldNetDaily-published book "Child Training Tips." As we've previously noted, Bradley is an enthusiastic advocate of corporal punishment of children (and even babies), stating that the "objective" of punishing children is "subjection of their will" and that parents must "teach your children to obey without being told 'why.'"

All of which makes Bradley the obvious WND choice to talk about the Adrian Peterson child abuse case, which he did in a Sept. 17 column. Bradley laments the decline of spanking:

People, civilized and uncivilized, have used spanking to teach their children self-control for thousands of years. In most cultures it has been used to help children learn to say NO to themselves and YES to what is right. It wasn’t until 50 years ago that parenting books began to discourage spanking. Instead of reinforcing the absolute importance of raising children of good character through balancing love and discipline, the new “experts” emphasized raising children who were independent, expressive and “self-actualized.” Since the ’60s the change in emphasis saw a dramatic increase in narcissism and hedonism in our culture.

Bradley ultimately defends Peterson's intent if not his methods, claiming the severe beating Peterson delivered to his 4-year-old son was merely "poorly executed":

Someone like Adrian Peterson is trying to employ the approach to parenting that was used successfully for centuries and worked well on him. He wants his son to grow up with self-control and responsibility. Unfortunately, Peterson, like all of us, is flawed and therefore makes mistakes in his judgments and acts of discipline.

When I heard that Peterson had whipped his son 14 times with a switch and left abrasions and bruises I was sickened. Just the thought of injuring a child that way angers me. I am a proponent of spanking, but not of overdoing it. Spanking must not be done in anger, not on the legs, not on the head, not with an implement that damages the skin, and certainly not with 14 strokes. If, as his son claimed, his dad spanked him in anger, then he accidentally taught his son that it is OK to take out aggression on smaller, more helpless people.

Spanking is not an act in which a parent wails on his kid and yells, “I’ll teach you to do that to me.” Parents – spanking is not about YOU. Such an approach can actually foster violence in children. Proper spanking simply offers some negative reinforcement for young children when they demonstrate defiance or rebellion and NOT when they make childish mistakes. The unpleasant consequence for misbehavior motivates better behavior. It helps children in the first five years of life develop self-control, the key trait of maturity. Without self-control they will grow up, but they will never mature. Our nation is now morally out-of-control because it is populated by individuals who lack self-control, most likely because they were catered to and not spanked for defiance when they were young.

So – did Peterson permanently warp his son by spanking him? I doubt it – at least not by the spanking, as poorly executed as it was. A calmly delivered spanking on the bottom would have served his purpose better. Adrian Peterson loves his son and wants to raise him properly, but quite honestly, I would encourage him to concentrate on cultivating a strong relationship of love. By the time his son is a teenager, love will motivate him far more than fear.

Bradley's calling for love to motivate more than fear seems to run counter to his advice to subjugate the will of children and instill blind obedience into them.

Newsmax's Malzberg Joins MRC In Protecting Sharyl Attkisson's Dubious Reporting
Topic: Newsmax

It's not just the Media Research Center that's uncritically buying into Sharyl Attkisson's questionable reporting on Benghazi. Newsmax has joined the lack of skepticism.

A Sept. 17 Newsmax article by Bill Hoffmann summarizes an appearance by Attkisson on Steve Malzberg's Newsmax TV show. Malzberg lets Attkisson get away with pretending her main source on her latest Benghazi scoop, Raymond Maxwell, is being unfairly dismissed as less than credible:

The media is out to discredit a former State Department diplomat who turned Benghazi whistleblower, says Emmy-winning journalist and former CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson.

What is the dirt that reporters have on former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell? He's written poetry, she says.

"One person tweeted out that she heard someone else or was told by someone else in the media that [Maxwell] had no credibility because of his poetry," Attkisson said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.

"He's a poet and he published, when he was on administrative leave, some very insightful allegories."

The full segment shows that Malzberg did not push back on Attkisson's ridiculous defense.

In fact, Maxwell has been credibly accused of much more than writing poetry. Media Matters summarizes:

Maxwell himself is a dubious source. He was placed on administrative leave after the Accountability Review Board's investigation found a "lack of proactive leadership" and pointed specifically to Maxwell's department, saying some officials in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs "showed a lack of ownership of Benghazi's security issues." A House Oversight Committee report released findings from the classified version of the ARB report, which revealed that the ARB's board members "were troubled by the NEA DAS for Maghreb Affairs' lack of leadership and engagement on staffing and security issues in Benghazi."

Disgruntled over being "the only official in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), which had responsibility for Libya, to lose his job," Maxwell spoke to The Daily Beast in May 2013 in an attempt to "restore" his "honor." Maxwell, who had filed official grievances regarding his treatment, expressed anger that Mills -- the same staff member Maxwell speculated was involved in hiding potentially damaging documents -- "reneged" on a deal to eventually bring Maxwell back to the NEA after his leave.

While Maxwell has previously been interviewed by the ARB, the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the House Oversight Committee, the Daily Beast, and Examiner.com, this is curiously the first time this allegation has been made public.

Maxwell also has no evidence to prove his allegation that Benghazi documents were "scrubbed" to protect then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, nor did he ever witness such behavior taking place.

The fact that Attkisson is resporting to such a transparently diversionary defense of her source suggests that she knows his testimony can't stand up to genuine scrutiny. No wonder she's relying on the likes of the MRC and Newsmax to protect her.

WND's Massie Invokes His Black Conservative Privilege Again
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Mychal Massie uses his Sept. 15 WorldNetDaily column to engage in one of the oldest tricks in the demogogue's book: pretending that his most extreme critics are representative of all his critics.

In the column, he dismisses his critics as "white bigots" and claims that according to them, "God frowns on those who refuse to be victims and don’t espouse antipathy based on skin color. The fact that my race is the human race and not some melanin-coded subsection of same is anathema to her."

That's laughable, because Massie very much exploits his race to espouse his antipathy. As we've documented, the anti-Obama and anti-black venom that spews from Massie's mouth would be automatically dismissed as racist were he not himself black. He is effectively invoking his black conservative privilege to get away with saying such things.

Massie also declares that, according to his critics, "speaking the truth is inconsistent with being a person of color." This from a man who lies with impunity in his WND columns. Indeed, he peddles more lies in his column:

Should I ignore the fact that Obama sent six special ops members to their deaths to rescue a Muslim terrorist sympathizer and military deserter, Bo Bergdahl, in exchange for five of the most high-value enemy detainees being held? Would they have me ignore the fact that Obama has done not one thing to free Marine Corps Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi from the Mexican prison he is being held in?

First, no "special ops members" died in the exchange of Bergdahl for the "enemy detainees," and the claim that six soldiers died in Afghanistan searching for Bergdahl years before has not been substantiated. Second, even Tahmooressi's lawyer believes that diplomacy will have no effect on his case:

Defense attorney Fernando Benitez, who will represent the Afghan war veteran in a Tijuana court for the first time on July 9, said demands, threats and diplomacy from American politicians will have no effect on Tahmooressi's release.

"This is a federal court and as in any democratic nation you will not find an executive calling up a judge and ordering the release of a suspect," Benitez said. "It makes no difference if it is a mayor, governor, or the president, there's not a phone call in the world that will change this."

Massie continues to be a  dishonest, hateful man who believes he can hide behind black conservative privilege to spew his hate. So what else is new?

MRC Covers For Sharyl Attkisson's Shoddy Reporting
Topic: Media Research Center

Now that Sharyl Attkisson has revealed herself to be an anti-Obama conservative-leaning reporter, the Media Research Center has her back, defending her by ignoring the shoddy nature of her reporting.

In a Sept. 15 NewsBusters post, Curtis Houck complained that the networks are providing "zero coverage of news from investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson that aides to Clinton when she was Secretary of State engaged in a weekend meeting that included the removal of documents related to the Benghazi attacks that portrayed her in a negative light." Houck touted how "Attickson [sic] interviewed former Deputy Assistant Secretary Raymond Maxwell, who stated that the weekend meeting took place in the basement of a room at the State Department and included going through 'boxes and stacks of documents” relating to the attack that left four Americans dead" that pruportedly involved "pull[ing] out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light.”

P.J. Gladnick followed up with a Sept. 16 post that "Politico reporting on groups of Hillary Clinton supporters who will be defending her during the Congressional Benghazi hearings which makes absolutely no mention of the Sharyl Attkisson's report about how Hillary's aides at the State Department scrubbed the Benghazi documents of possibly incriminating information." Gladnick insists that Attkisson is making "pretty damning allegations" in her "bombshell" story.

What Houck and Gladnick won't tell their readers: Attkisson's source is highly questionable at best. As Media Matters notes, even some reporters at MRC fave Fox News doubt Attkisson's report; Bill O'Reilly, for instance, called Maxwell "a disgruntled former State Department official" who, Attkisson confirmed, didn't actually witness any of the actions he claimed happened.F ox correspondent James Rosen reported that Attkisson's source had previously failed to disclose this accusation of a cover-up and that his account "bears a lot of further investigation before it can be deemed credible."

But these MRC writers somehow trust Attkisson implicitly, even though the MRC has criticized her reporting in the past for promoting conspiracy theories about vaccines. The MRC's cognitive dissonance on Attkisson continues.

WND's Monckton: Ban The Quran!
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Craven public authorities have failed to act against the circulation of the Quran in its present form because they fear a violent backlash.

How, then, is this manifestly illegal text to be dealt with? It is not our custom to ban books, for freedom of speech is guaranteed by the Constitution.

However, it is our custom to prosecute for incitement to murder. And the fact that incitement is on every page of what is said to be a holy book does not diminish, still less extinguish, the offense.

A bill should be brought before Congress identifying all passages in the Quran which, whether in isolation or taken together, constitute incitement to murder.

The bill should specify that anyone who reads any of these passages out loud is to be charged with that crime and, if convicted, subjected to the usual penalty for it – a long prison term.

The bill should state that, after a grace period of a year, every copy of the Quran must clearly identify by emboldened and different-colored text the passages that constitute criminal incitement to murder, together with a clearly printed warning on the first page that reading any of these passages out loud anywhere within the jurisdiction of the United States may result in prosecution.

The prominent part played by the Quran in the radicalization of young Muslims so that they become willing to murder their own fellow-citizens demands that we act at once, before its dangerous influence incites the loss of any more innocent lives. The Quran as it now stands is illegal.

-- Christopher Monckton, Sept. 14 WorldNetDaily column

NewsBusters Misinformation Watch
Topic: NewsBusters

In the midst of a freakout over Salon suggesting that George Wallace was a Republican, P.J. Gladnick goes on a misinformation spree in a Sept. 12 NewsBusters post. In whining that a Salon article on Republican voter suppression "is chock full of blatant attempts to rewrite history," Gladnick engages in his own revisionism.

Gladnick complains that Salon references "the myth of the 'stolen' Florida 2000 election , citing a CNN report that "Bush's margin would have tripled if the 'undercounted' ballots had been checked as Gore wanted." In fact, a news consortium that reviewed all presidential ballots in the 2000 election in Florida found that "Gore might have eked out a victory if he had pursued in court a course like the one he publicly advocated when he called on the state to 'count all the votes.'"

Gladnick then has a fit over Salon's claimthat "the parties switched places over civil rights," citing a random guy at an obscure history bulletin board to claim that "With only one exception [Strom Thurmond], all of the Democrat segregationists remained Democrats when that [civil rights] era ended."

But that's miseading -- because the Southern shift from Democrat to Republican didn't happen immediately doesn't mean that there was never a shift. Jody Seaborn points out: 

The party shift was underway. It was multilayered and would take decades to complete, but Johnson was right. The South was a conservative stronghold in 1964. It remains so. What has changed over the past 50 years is the region that was once solidly Democratic, with only a handful of Republican representatives and senators scattered here and there, is now solidly Republican. And the passage of the Civil Rights Act is a big reason why.

Jamelle Bouie wrote at the American Prospect:

White Southerners jumped ship from Democratic presidential candidates in the 1960s, and this was followed by a similar shift on the congressional level, and eventually, the state legislative level. That the former two took time doesn’t discount the first.

Gladnick also complained that Salon cited an alleged voter fraud complaint in Georgia but "very conveniently did not mention that Kemp's investigation was initiated by complaints at the local county level by election officials of registration irregularities." But Gladnick conveniently didn't mention that the group conducting the voter registration drive at the heart of the complaint, by state law, must turn in all voter registration forms even if they are incomplete. The Washington Post also reported that the group "reached out to the secretary of state’s office proactively in June to ensure they complied with state law."

If Gladnick couldn't manufacture the kind of outrage he cobbled together for his post, would he still be a NewsBusters blogger?

Bob Unruh One-Sided Reporting Watch
Topic: WorldNetDaily

We already know that WorldNetDaily "reporter" Bob Unruh can't be bothered to report any side of an argument that diverges from his employer's (and, presumably, his own) right-wing agenda. And he just can't seem to stop repeatedly proving it.

Unruh does it again in a Sept. 13 WND article in which he promotes only the view of anti-gay therapists, even quoting  from a dissent in a judicial decision upholding a state ban on anti-gay "repatative" therapy without quoting from the majority decision. Unruh goes on to baselessly assert that lawmakers in states that have banned anti-gay therapy are "pro-homosexual lawmakers" and that the anti-gay groups who favor such therapy are "licensed mental health professionals."

Such is the state of WND and Unruh's reporting. No wonder nobody believes WND.

MRC's Graham, Sharyl Attkisson Pretend We Don't Know Where Obama Was During Benghazi
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Tim Graham devotes a Sept. 12 NewsBusters post to highlighting tweets by Sharyl Attkisson -- the former CBS correspondent turned conservative darling and right-wing website employee -- claiming that "we still have no idea what commander in chief did Sept. 11, 2012" during the attack on diplomatic facilities in Benghazi" and asserting that "the White House photos taken that night" have been "withheld" from the public. Graham followed up Attkisson's huffing by adding, "How can our "government watchdog" media not secure answers to the most basic questions about the government response to this attack on our consulate?"

Except, of course, those answers have been supplied. Even Fox News acknowledges that Obama was in the White House during the attack, and the White House Flickr account has a photo of Obama meeting with then-deputy national security Adviser Denis McDonough, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, and then-chief of staff Jack Lew the night of Sept. 11, 2012.

Graham tries to fudge things by claiming that Attkisson was talking about what "Obama was doing in real time" that night, but she does not make that distinction in the tweets Graham reprints.

We know Graham has an interest in playing dumb about Benghazi because of his anti-Obama agenda, but what's Attkisson's excuse? Maybe she's just a bad reporter -- which the Media Research Center, where Graham serves as director of media analysis, used to believe she was until she made her own anti-Obama leanings clear.

WND's Zahn Really, Really Wants You To See 'The Identical'
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily's resident movie guy, Drew Zahn -- best known for panning films that fail to comport with his right-wing Christian worldview -- has found a film that aligns with his worldview, and he's berating his fellow Christians for not seeing.

In a Sept. 1 article, Zahn touts an "exclusive preview" of the film "The Identical," declaring that "In 1967, Israel was miraculously saved from warring Arab nations on all sides, and this weekend in Hollywood’s only widely released debut movie, well-known actor Ray Liotta will proclaim that Israel’s fate has 'everything' to do with Christians in America." Which is an odd thing to focus on given that the actual film's plot has to do with twins separated at birth, one of whom becomes a rock star and the other is a preacher's son who is also lured by rock n' roll.

But when the film tanked at the box office on its opening weekend -- it came in 12th in revenue despite being the widest-opening new film that weekend -- Zahn used his Sept. 7 review of the flim  to berate his fellow right-wing Christians for not going to see it:

The moviemakers spent tens of millions marketing this film – a budget most Christian movies could only dream about – through churches, Christian radio and other key outlets. The movie stars big Hollywood names like Ashley Judd, Seth Green and Ray Liotta. It features a stunning soundtrack put together by Motown legends. It also delivers a profoundly Christian message in the context of a story that you don’t have to be a pew-sitter to love.

In other words, it’s just the kind of film that could take Christ outside the church walls. All it needs to succeed and to see more films like it made, to see the candle become a blaze in our culture, is for Christians to go see it. That’s it.

And yet, theater receipts now reveal, “The Identical” has become one of the biggest box office busts of 2014. Despite being the only widely released new film of the week, despite showing in nearly 2,000 theaters (or roughly 10 times the number of locations of a typical, independent Christian film), “The Identical” couldn’t even crack the Top 10 movies of the week.

The church simply stayed home and left its brothers and sisters in the arts out to dry … again.

[...]

Audiences of all faiths could enjoy “The Identical,” learn from it and have the opportunity to see how Christ, specifically, brings strength and purpose to life.

They could, anyway, if only someone would go and actually see it. And more such opportunities could also be made, more candles shining in the darkness, if only the bushel-dwellers would take seriously their opportunity to make a real impact on the culture around them.

Hollywood, right now, is practically handing the megaphone over to the church, but the church must come out of its doors and take the opportunity. There are filmmakers who are stepping up the challenge; but in order to make this work, the ticket buyers need to step up, too.

Zahn went to bat again for "The Identical" in a Sept. 12 article by touting the filmmakers' last desperate gambit to promote the film: streaming the first 15 minutes of the film online. Zahn groused:

Many Christian ticket buyers, it seems, mistakenly concluded “The Identical” – which stars big Hollywood names like Ashley Judd and Ray Liotta and includes 23 original songs created by Motown music legends – was “just an Elvis movie” and didn’t give the production the same boost at the box office they gave other faith films like “Son of God” and “God’s Not Dead.”

Without support from Christian moviegoers and saddled with negative reviews from secular critics, “The Identical” – despite appearing in nearly 2,000 theaters nationwide – flopped at the box office.

Zahn also complained that "while popular movie-critic sites like RottenTomatoes.com panned 'The Identical,' many Christian reviewers found reasons to praise it."

Zahn's willingness to be an unpaid (as far as we know) hype man for "The Identical" didn't help: The film took in a mere $390,000 over the weekend, a plunge of 75 percent from its opening weekend.