MRC Thinks 52% Supporting 'Gun Rights' Is 'Massive' Topic: Media Research Center
The headline on a Dec. 11 Media Research Center item by Scott Whitlock blared, "ABC, NBC Skip Poll Finding Massive Support for the Second Amendment." But the poll is dubious and didn't indicate "massive" support.
As Whitlock goes on to note, the Pew Research poll in question found that 52 percent of Americans support "gun rights," while 46 percent support "gun control." Two points over 50 percent is hardly an indicator of "massive" support.
Whitlock also fails to mention the issues with the poll itself, presumably because it fits the MRC's pro-gun narrative. As Media Matters pointed out, the poll's choice between "gun rights" and "gun control" ridiculously oversimplifies the national debate over guns, as if the two were mutually exclusive.
Whitlock also didn't mention that even the conservative Washington Times article about the poll upon which he based his item quotes "gun control supporters" pointing out that specific measures such as expansion of background checks have much wider public support than Pew's "gun rights" question -- around 90 percent. Wonder why he wouldn't report all the relevant facts?
The common thread behind the organized chaos unleashed on innocent people is the incitement by liberal black leaders.
Black-on-black crime is being perpetrated on the souls of black Americans, from the president on down. The crime is committed every time the black leadership deliberately stokes the anger of black people.
Anger consumes and kills the soul.
Black leaders say “black lives matter,” yet they’re teaching black youth to hate, showing that black lives don’t really matter. Misguided hate drives blacks to hurt and kill; and it destroys the hater, too.
When Barack Obama supports the lie that cops routinely mistreat “communities of color,” that encourages blacks to hate – thereby damaging their souls.
-- Jesse Lee Peterson, Dec. 7 WorldNetDaily column
America has made great strides in becoming a color-blind society. Let’s be clear: If it were not for white Americans, Mr. Obama would not be our president.
Even further strides toward the Promised Land could be made if the president would ban race hustler Al Sharpton from the White House. Sharpton’s past is an ugly one as it pertains to racial issues, and the president surely knows this.
There is no justification to give Sharpton any credibility unless Mr. Obama’s goal is to fracture race relations, which have taken a serious nosedive since he was elected.
If the facts were important to Obama and his gun-running attorney general, they would focus their efforts on reducing the violence that plagues our inner cities, which is overwhelmingly black-on-black crime. At just 13 percent of the population, blacks commit 50 percent of all murders.
Obama biographer David Mendell tells the reader that Obama “won” a full scholarship to Occidental, but as a bench-warming, B-minus student in his fancy Honolulu prep school Obama had to know what he had done to “win” it.
The bias continued in college. Biographer David Remnick tells us that Obama was an “unspectacular” student in his two years at Columbia and at every stop before that going back to grade school.
A Northwestern University prof who wrote a letter of reference for Obama reinforces the point, telling Remnick, “I don’t think [Obama] did too well in college.” As to Obama’s LSAT scores, Jimmy Hoffa’s body will be unearthed before those are.
[...]
Bottom line: Had Obama’s father come from Kentucky not Kenya and been named O’Hara not Obama, there would been no Harvard Law Review, no Harvard, no Columbia, no Occidental and, Lord knows, no presidency.
If one subscribes to Obama’s origins narrative (wherein he was sired by a Kenyan named Barack Obama), the president has no heritage linking him to black Americans, their history, or their struggles.
To my way of thinking, Barack Obama is the single biggest sinner in America. I don’t believe that anything he says or does is in the best interests of our nation. Instead, everything comes down to partisan politics with this schmuck, whether it’s attacking the police, refusing to green-light the Keystone pipeline or trashing the Constitution. On top of everything else, he sets a bad example for young people by being a hypocrite and a serial liar.
When George Bush doubled the national debt to roughly $10 trillion, Sen. Obama said it was unpatriotic, and, frankly, I agreed with him. However, over the past six years, Obama has encouraged it to soar an additional $8 trillion. On the traitor meter, that makes him a combination of Benedict Arnold, Tokyo Rose and Alger Hiss.
The situation of the United States today reminds me of the period during the 9/11 terrorist attack, between the moment when each tower was struck and the moment of its breathtaking collapse (about 2 hours, as I recall).
Obama’s two terms are like those hours. This analogy suggests that sometime in the next two years we have reason to expect the breathtaking implosion of what’s left of the American way of life. The collapse has already begun.
NewsBusters' Pierre Laments That Catholic Abuse Victims Are Being Paid Topic: NewsBusters
NewsBusters' Dave Pierre is a big fan of the Catholic Church quietly paying clergy accused of sexual abuse to go away quietly as "fast and economical," never mind that such payments conveniently excluded any sort of accountability or justice.
Paying the victims who accused them, well, that's another story.
In a Nov. 27 NewsBusters post, Pierre proclaimed his distress at Boston Cardinal Seán O'Malley appearing on "60 Minutes" to talk about the church's sex abuse crisis:
While the media has showered O'Malley with praise for his management of sex abuse cases, we have actually been troubled with the way he has handled cases in Boston by paying sizable sums to settle questionable claims.
In the spring of 2012, O'Malley's archdiocese paid out large settlements related to accusations of abuse against two priests. However, as we carefully chronicled at the time, there is substantial reason to believe that the payments were not justified.
Both accused priests were long ago dead, neither man had even a hint of impropriety when they were alive, and these were the only claims ever made against them. The archdiocese's payoffs understandably infuriated the friends and families of both tarnished priests.
Pierre's "careful chronicling," it should be noted, lacks any evidence that the abuse didn't occur; he merely rants about "unproven allegations against previously unblemished priests who are now deceased and unable to defend themselves" and insists "our priests deserve much better than this" and wails about what "the families, friends, and colleagues of these accused men now must endure."
By contract, Pierre shows little concern for what the victim deserves and must endure. Instead, he baselessly besmirches them by baselessly suggesting they were only out to scam the church of money.
Pierre then moves on to attack Cardinal O'Malley for something completely unrelated, supposedly excessive "salaries for lay leadership in the Archdiocese of Boston." He concludes: "So the lesson here is that if a Church official is willing to criticize the Church over the topic of sex abuse, the media will fête him as a media darling no matter what he has actually done as a Church official."
The other lesson, it appears, is that Pierre will attack anyone who admits there has been a longstanding problem of abuse in the Catholic Church, and anyone who does so -- even victims -- must be thrown under the bus to save the church.
What is noteworthy about her article is not the presence of complete falsehoods (sadly, another common tactic among gay activists), such as the accusation that conservative Christians like Michelle Duggar and I “equate transgender identity with being a sexual predator” and that we suggest “that gay rights activists want immunity for people who do commit acts of sexual harassment” – to repeat, these are totally false allegations – but rather her defense of the indefensible.
In my article, I referenced “Colleen” Francis, a biological male who is now legally female and who surprised female high school students who went into a sauna at a jointly used college swimming pool, not expecting to see Francis sitting there naked with “her male genitalia” exposed.
In defense of Francis, who is attracted to women, not men, Beredjick argued that the case had been misreported, acknowledging that “the nugget of truth to the story: two teens did claim to see Colleen Francis nude while in the Evergreen College sauna.”
The problem, according to a report cited by Beredjick, is that the sauna was “generally off limits to swim team members,” so, according to Beredjick, this is really the fault of the girls.
Talk about defending the indefensible.
Actually, in his Nov. 26 WND column, Brown did, in fact, equate being transgender to be a sexual predator by stating that "male heterosexual predators could easily take advantage of this law. Why wouldn’t they?" He added:
If they know that the law allows for men who identify as transgender to use the ladies room, why wouldn’t they take advantage of it? Why wouldn’t they dress up as women to be around women and girls in this private setting?
Don’t sexual perverts do perverted things? Don’t sexual predators do whatever they can to prey on the innocent? And are the gay activists guaranteeing us that there are no men who now identify as transgender women who are sexual predators?
Perhaps Brown might want to explain how discussing transgendered people in the same breath as sexual predators is not equating the two.
Beredjick's statement that Brown "suggests that gay rights activists want immunity for people who do commit acts of sexual harassment. that Brown's obsession with attacking anyone who defends transgenders by playing the sexual predator card. So, yeah, that appears to be true as well. Again, Brown might want to trying proving the falsehoods he alleges instead of merely insisting they are false.
Brown was also accurately accused to misrepresenting the Francis case. Here's what he wrote in his Nov. 26 column:
Third, there’s already a case in Olympia, Washington, where a man who is legally a woman but still has male genitalia shocked teenaged girls who found him sitting naked with his legs open in the girls sauna. (The police report stated that “she” was exposing “her male genitalia.”)
The girls, who are in high school, share a pool with a local college where the individual in question, whose name is now “Colleen” and who is about 45 years old, is taking classes. But since the school has a policy of no discrimination based on gender identity, there was absolutely nothing that could be done to stop “Colleen” from doing this again.
As Transadvocate pointed out, which Brown failed to note in his biased account of the case:
The sauna area was off limits to the two teens.
Unless one specifically tries to see inside the sauna, you can’t view the people inside the sauna.
Colleen Francis AND her cisgender female friend were using the sauna together. They were sitting there talking.
At no point did Francis act to expose herself to children
At no point was Francis walking around nude in the area where children were.
Brown doesn't contest Beredjick's charge that he misrepresented the Francis case -- perhaps because he knows she's right. But neither does he attempt to correct the record, which tells us that his misrepresentation was deliberate and designed to boost his anti-gay activism.
Brown's insistence of maliciously misrepresenting transgender issues for maximum outrage, while declaring that he's right simply because he says he is, shows that he doesn't care about the facts.
But given that his publisher, Joseph Farah, openly admits he publishes minsinformation at WND, Brown must certainly know he'll never be held accountable for his deceit (in this life, anyway).
MRC's Bozell & Graham Portray Broaddrick As A Credible Rape Accuser Topic: Media Research Center
In their newest column, Tim Graham and Brent Bozell lament that "the left" likes to believe that "the victim" in a rape accusation is the female accuser, going on to lament the treatment of their favorite alleged rape victim:
This is not the way these "watchdogs" handled Juanita Broaddrick's charge of rape against President Clinton in 1999. Even after NBC's Lisa Myers nailed down particulars establishing that Clinton and Broaddrick were in the same hotel on the same day in 1978, with witnesses who vouchsafed her tortured condition, the networks all but ignored the accuser and her story.
Bozell and Graham don't mention that there was a good reason for the media to discount Broaddrick's story: She changed it.
Prior to flipping in 1998, Broaddrick had repeatedly insisted that Clinton didn't rape her; she even said so under oath. It was not until she gave into the Clinton-haters -- and, more crucially, received a promise of immunity from independent counsel Kenneth Starr that she wouldn't be prosecuted for perjury -- that she changed her story.
Bozell and Graham don't mention that Broaddrick is a documented liar -- she either lied then or she's lying now.We don't recall the two ever telling that to their readers; indeed, a quick search of the MRC website mentions nothing about Broaddrick's contradictory claims or the immunity deal she received from Starr.
As we've also noted, there's enough evidence of the Broaddrick accusations being motivated by partisan politics and personal spite to cast further doubt on them. Indeed, according to Joe Conason's "The Hunting of the President," that's exactly what happened.
But Broaddrick made a sensational accusation against the hated Clinton, and that was good enough for the MRC.
Perhaps Bozell and Graham should have found a better example to use when it comes to the debating the veracity of rape allegations.
WND's Klein Can't Stop Pushing Zombie Lie About Saul Alinsky Topic: WorldNetDaily
Last year, we caught WorldNetDaily's Aaron Klein pushing the demonstrable lie that Saul Alinsky "dedicated" his book "Rules for Radicals" to Lucifer (in fact, the book is dedicated to "Irene," with an "over-the-shoulder acknowlegement" to Lucifer for being "the first rebel"), as well as baselessly speculating that Obama "channeled Saul Alinsky" by referring to "the world as it is" and "the world as it should be."
Apparently facts don't matter to Klein, because he does the exact same thing again in a Dec. 9 WND article:
Michelle Obama went on to quote her husband’s speech to the “community meeting” in which Barack Obama paraphrased Alinsky.
She said: “As he talked to the residents in that community center, he talked about two concepts. He talked about ‘the world as it is’ and ‘the world as it should be.’ And I talked about this throughout the entire campaign. What he said, that all too often, is that we accept the distance between those two ideas.”
In his defining work, “Rules for Radicals,” which he dedicated to “the first rebel,” Lucifer, Alinsky used those words to lay out his main agenda. He asserted radical change must be brought about by working within a system instead of attacking it from the outside.
“It is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be. That means working in the system,” wrote Alinsky.
Klein's reporting of demonstrable falsehoods and his portrayal of speculation as fact is just another reason why nobody believes WND.
CNS Gives Scandal-Tarred Rabbi A Platform Topic: CNSNews.com
Michael Chapman fawningly writes in a Dec. 8 CNSNews.com article:
Scholar, best selling author, and talk radio host Rabbi Daniel Lapin said the rioting and looting in Ferguson, Mo., over the non-indictment of the police officer who shot Michael Brown were the result of the “dark pathology of liberalism” and, in its “delight in destruction,” echoed the “Kristallnacht in Germany.”
"When the liberal project, when the dark pathology of liberalism -- not so much a doctrine as a sick and twisted pathology -- manages to strip Judeo-Christian belief out of American society, congratulations guys, welcome to Ferguson, you succeeded,” said Rabbi Lapin on the Dec. 3 Glenn Beck Program.
[...]
Daniel Lapin is an Orthodox Jewish rabbi who emigrated to the United States and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1973. He hosts the Rabbi Daniel Lapin Show on San Francisco’s KSFO radio station, and is the author numerous books, including America’s Real War, Buried Treasure: Hidden Wisdom from the Hebrew Language, and Business Secrets From the Bible.
Missing from Chapman's overlong recitation of Lapin's CV: figure in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.
Convicted felon Abramoff has reportedly credited Lapin with introducing him to then-House Republican leader Tom DeLay. Abramoff also made use of Lapin's organization, Toward Tradition (on whose board Abramoff also sat), in moving money around to further his lobbying efforts. Toward Tradition also hired the wife of a DeLay aide who later pleaded guilty to conspiring to corrupt public officials; the aide said that his wife was paid in exchange for his official actions.
Lapin and Abramoff also reportedly discussed creating an award at Toward Tradition that Abramoff could claim he received (Lapin later insisted his end of the discussion was tongue-in-cheek).
Since Chapman doesn't mention Lapin's scandal-tarred record, we also aren't treated to an explanation of why such a man has the moral authority to lecture others.
NEW ARTICLE: Marisa Martin's Art Attack Topic: WorldNetDaily
The pseudonymous WorldNetDaily art columnist gets in her seemingly mandated requirement of Obama derangement, but also makes sure to take time to freak out about how undignified it is for a cartoon character to die protecting a gay man. Read more >>
Newsmax Promotes Ben Carson's Propaganda Topic: Newsmax
Jim Meyers serves up quite the cheerleading tone in a Dec. 8 Newsmax article:
A just-released documentary about the best-selling author and rising GOP star Ben Carson is getting rave reviews from conservative activists — a strong sign that the renowned neurosurgeon is seriously looking at running for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016.
The hour-long film "A Breath of Fresh Air: A New Prescription for America," airs every night this week on Newsmax TV at 9 p.m. and midnight Eastern Time, Monday through Friday.
You can tune into Newsmax TV on DIRECTV 349 and DISH Ch. 223, on NewsmaxTV.com, or via the free Newsmax app on any smartphone.
One thing Meyers doesn't mention: Newsmax is apparently being paid to air the Carson propaganda documentary.
A National Journal article that Meyers cites for its praise of Carson as a potential presidential candidate also notes that the documentary's producer, Armstrong Williams, insists that the documentary will never be placed online because that "would violate his paid-programming contract with the networks that aired it." That, preumably, includes Newsmax TV, which means that Newsmax is promoting something it's being paid to air.
National Journal also notes the propagandistic nature of the documentary:
In tone, A Breath of Fresh Air lies somewhere between a Church of Scientology recruitment video and a cash-for-gold infomercial. In the documentary, you'll learn about the dangers of political correctness and the "liberal orthodoxy," along with the triumphs of Ronald Reagan and Galileo. You'll also hear an almost inscrutable metaphor about American greatness and oxygen masks.
Meyers just wants you to watch Newsmax TV. He doesn't care about the quality or objectivity of its programming.
UPDATE: A Newsmax spokesperson tells ConWebWatch: "Newsmax was not paid to air the film, nor did we pay Dr. Carson anything."
A Dec. 7 WorldNetDaily article by Leo Hohmann takes WND's usual one-side-only approach, quoting only opponents of a United Nations small arms treaty. In this case, Hohmann is serving as a form for the rantings of Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation:
The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty requires nations to keep records tracking every transaction involving firearms.
“The only way to do that is to set up a national database, and that is what the U.N. wants every country to set up and maintain. We know that’s been one of the objectives of this administration from Day 1 anyway, so under the color of the U.N., that’s what they’re going to try to do,” Gottlieb said.
Gottlieb is distorting the treaty. As PolitiFact details, the treaty impacts only arms trade between countries, not within them, stating that the claim made by Gottlieb and accepted by Hohmann as fact "takes a treaty intended to curtail illicit weapons trade between countries and describes it as a step toward confiscating gun owners’ property":
The treaty emphasizes that the U.N. is leaving regulation of the arms trade within a country entirely up to that country. The preamble says the parties to the treaty reaffirm "the sovereign right of any state" to regulate arms in its own territory "pursuant to its own legal or constitutional system." It also says the parties are "mindful of legitimate trade and lawful ownership."
But because Hohmann is simply serving as Gottlieb's stenographer instead of an actual reporter, he lets Gottlieb's false claims stand and makes no effort to fact-check them.
Terry Jeffrey's Unprofessional, Uninformed Editorializing Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey has always been much more about advancing his right-wing agenda than practicing fair and ethical journalism. He is continuing to obliterate the line between journalism and opinion at CNS.
Jeffrey writes in a Dec. 3 CNS article that conservatives oppose a proposed National Women's History Museum because they "believe it will be tilted toward a feminist, pro-abortion vision of American women--and that it will promote such figures as eugenicist Margaret Sanger and cost-free-contraception health-insurance entitlement advocate Sandra Fluke."
Quite a mouthful there. How long did Jeffrey rearrange the words until he came up with formulation "cost-free-contraception health-insurance entitlement advocate" to dismiss Fluke? Do you get the feeling that Jeffrey was restraining himself from following in Rush Limbaugh's footsteps and calling Fluke a slut and a prostitute?
That's rank editorializing, and it doesn't belong in a "news" article.
Given CNS' longtimecensorship of Limbaugh's denigration of Fluke, one may surmise that Jeffrey approves of Limbaugh's words.
Jeffrey goes into full unethical mode in a Dec. 6 article noting President Obama's words about Jesus and the holiday season:
Barack Obama is one of the greatest champions of the legalized killing of unborn babies in the history of the United States. In the Illinois state senate, he went so far as to repeatedly oppose a bill that simply would have defined a newborn child as a “person,” “human being,” “child” and “individual.”
That law would have prevented live-birth abortions--a procedure in which a mother in late term is induced to deliver her child so the child can be left alone, without care, to die.
Even if that were true, Jeffrey's screed has no business being in a "news" article. But Jeffrey's portrayal of Obama's stance on the Illinois bill is disingenuous and misleading.
The bill Jeffrey is referring to is better known as a "born alive infant" law that would have entitled a fetus who survived an abortion to legal protection, even if doctors believe it could not survive. As FactCheck.org notes, Illinois law already provided such protection to infants with a "reasonable likelihood" of likelihood of surviving outside the womb.
Obama has long stated that he opposed the law because versions of it did not include a protective clause stating that it did not affect existing laws on abortion, according to FactCheck.
In other words, the law was designed as a wedge issue by anti-abortion activists. And Jeffrey's citing of it as a way to disingenuously smear Obama proves that intent.
WND vs. WND On China's Economy: Corsi Smacks Down Farah! Topic: WorldNetDaily
Joseph Farah was in a very pouty mood in his Dec. 4 WorldNetDaily column, lamenting that China's economy was on pace to surpass that of the United States:
At first glance, the news that China’s economy has surpassed that of the U.S. will probably result in yawns from the average guy on the street.
What difference does it make?
China’s population is a lot bigger than America’s. Big deal!
How does it affect my life?
But it is precisely at seminal moments like this, when another country’s economy is bigger than the economy of the United States of America for the first time since Ulysses S. Grant was president, that we should take a collective look at reality to figure out why.
Why is China producing $17.6 trillion in goods and services this year while the U.S. is producing $17.4 trillion?
Why does China now account for 16.5 percent of the global economy while the U.S. represents 16.3?
Only 14 years ago, the U.S. produced three times as much as China, so how did this change occur so rapidly?
Is it really important, significant, meaningful?
It is important, significant and meaningful.
Economic power translates directly to political and military power.
Needless to say, Farah was quick to lay blame for this. First up was abortion, because the children who were aborted in the early years after the Roe v. Wade decision would themselves be having children by now. Farah also blamed more usual suspects: the welfare state, big government, the alleged loss of the American work ethic.
But Farah's histrionics were overblown, as they usually are. And pointing that out is none other than his own employee, Jerome Corsi.
Corsi's Dec. 5 WND article doesn't explicitly state that he's correcting his boss, but he puts China's economy in perspective:
Has the Chinese economy really overtaken the U.S. economy as the world’s biggest?
Economists say it all depends on the metric used to measure the two economies.
[...]
The basic problem is that comparing the economies of China and the U.S. is truly like comparing apples and oranges.
China’s growth in recent years has been extraordinary, with the International Monetary Fund projecting a rate of 7.5 percent in 2014, nearly triple the 2.8 percent outlook for the United States.
But China, with a population of 1.3 billion people, more than four times the population of the United States, barely ranks in the top 100 nations for income per person. Chinese consumers are estimated to have only about one-tenth as much money to spend as Americans, on a par with the Philippines, Bolivia and Iraq, according to economist Brian Jackson of IHS Global Insight.
[...]
As of November, China, the leading foreign holder of U.S. debt, held an all-time record of $1.317 trillion of U.S. Treasuries, exceeding China’s previous high of $1.315 trillion in July 2011. Meanwhile, China’s holdings of foreign-exchange reserves surged to a record $3.82 trillion at the end of 2013, as noted by Fox Business.
The U.S. Treasury decision in November to issue more than $1 trillion in new debt to pay off old debt by retiring Treasury securities that were maturing and to fund new deficit spending by the Obama administration has been characterized as a “Ponzi scheme” by knowledgeable economic observers.
This debt analysis would indicate that the U.S. economy remains the largest in market value in part because of China’s willingness to subsidize U.S. growth by funding a large and increasing amount of debt.
Rarely does Farah get a public smackdown from one of his own employees, but that's exactly what's happening here.
Unfortunately, Corsi's bout of lucidity and common sense was brief; later in his article, he approvingly repeats CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey's uninformed claim that refinancing federal debt is akin to a Ponzi scheme, asserting without proof that Jeffrey is a "knowledgeable economic observer."
Obamas' Happy Relationship Nauseates MRC Writer Topic: Media Research Center
Katie Yoder makes her opinion clear with the headline of her Dec. 5 Media Research Center item: "Nausea Alert: Barack and Michelle Obama's Love Story Coming to Theaters." She writes:
It’s all about true love – not only for the Obamas, but also for the media.
“The White House legend that is Barack and Michelle Obama’s romance is heading to the screen,” reported Deadline’s Jen Yamato on Dec. 5. The drama, “Southside With You,” will detail the Obama couple’s “epic first date” the summer of 1989 – consisting of the Art Institute, a long walk, and Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing.”
In July 2015, the filming will begin where their romance blossomed: Chicago. “Get On Up” actress Tika Sumpter will star as Michelle Obama – but the real question is, as Yamato asked, “who will play young Barack?”
Allain’s Homegrown Pictures producer Tracey Bing gushed with excitement for the “smart and timeless film” on “one of the great love stories of our time.” She hyped how screenplay writer Richard Tanne “captures the essence of that romantic connection between Barack and Michelle that is so evident in the way that they look at each other.” Yuck.
Funny, we thought that the MRC approved of happy, stable, child-producing marriages. Apparently that's not the case when the couple in question isn't conservative.
Only someone so filled with petty hatred as Yoder can turn someone's happy marriage into a sick political attack -- to the point where she's apparently phsyically repulsed by the idea that her political enemies are happily married.
WND Perpetuates Ex-Chaplin's Lie, Obsesses Over Judge's Sexual Orientation Topic: WorldNetDaily
In a Dec. 2 WorldNetDaily article, Bob Unruh is unusually eager to let us know that the judge who ruled against right-wing activist Gordon Klingenschmitt is "openly lesbian," even though he offers no evidence that the judge's sexual orientation played any role whatsoever in the ruling.
As is usual for Unruh's shoddy journalism, he doesn't quote from, or link to, the judge's decision, for which he also refused to provide a link -- usually a sign he's trying to hide something. Rather, he quotes Klingenschmitt purporting to paraphrase the judge:
“Although Judge Elaine Kaplan ruled against me, at least she affirmed how I was vindicated by the U.S. Congress, who rescinded [military regulation] 1730.7C after it was enforced against me in the Navy court,” he continued.
“She also admitted in her ruling that the government really did punish me, a Navy chaplain, for quoting the Bible in chapel, which would be protected by the First Amendment, but this judge refused to correct the Navy’s obvious abuse of power.
“She also acknowledged that I had written permission to wear my uniform during ‘public worship’ but that my prayers offered in Jesus’ name at a press conference did not qualify as ‘public worship,’” he said.
“Finally, she acknowledged I was punished for writing to my congressman and the president, but again claimed she didn’t have jurisdiction to enforce whistleblower laws. My lawyer and I plan to immediately appeal this bad ruling, and again later if necessary all the way to the Supreme Court,” Klingenschmitt told WND.
Given that Klingenschmitt is rather invested in the case, he's hardly an objective source. In fact, Unruh is working with Klingenschmitt to perpetuate a lie, that he was removed as a Navy chaplain for praying in Jesus' name.
As Kaplan's ruling notes, Klingenschmitt was removed as a Navy chaplain because he prayed at a political event while in uniform, and he was warned beforehand by his superiors that not to participate in the event while in uniform.
This is the event that Unruh let Klingenschmnitt describe as a "press conference" and Unruh described as a "public worship event." Kaplan noted that Klingenschmitt said that "given the event was being organized by a clergy lobbyist group, I have strong reservations about whether this event will, indeed, be a bona fide religious service or observance, rather than a demonstration or assembly to promote personal or partisan views on political, social, or religious issues."
Kaplan pointed out that “The Order did not limit Dr. Klingenschmitt’s right to engage in any religious practices (including presenting an opening prayer at the event or invoking the name of Jesus in his prayer). It simply prohibited Dr. Klingenschmitt from engaging in this activity while wearing his uniform at what was clearly a political event and not, as Dr. Klingenschmitt seems to suggest, a bona fide religious service.”
Unruh tried to downplay the significance of Kaplan's ruling: "Technically, the judge granted the government’s motion for a judgment on the case’s administrative record and her determination her court lacked jurisdiction over some issues." In fact, Kaplan pretty much demplished Klingenschmitt's claims:
Dr. Klingenschmitt has failed to establish that there was any violation of law, rule, or regulation in connection with the separation process itself. Thus, the Court can find no basis for Dr. Klingenschmitt’s contention that neither the CARE board nor the Assistant Secretary had before them an adequate record on which to judge Klingenschmitt’s suitability to be recertified and retained.
Indeed, at the oral argument in this matter, counsel for Dr. Klingenschmitt abandoned his argument that the administrative record before the Court was incomplete, and acknowledged that he had no basis for challenging the government’s representation that it included at AR 1977-2127 the entire record considered by both the CARE board and the Assistant Secretary.
[...]
Finally, Dr. Klingenschmitt’s claim that the decision not to recertify him constituted reprisal for constitutionally protected activity is not supported by the administrative record before the Court. As the court of appeals for the D.C. Circuit observed, “[b]ecause mandatory, the Secretary’s initiation of separation proceedings could not have been motivated by retaliatory animus.” Klingenschmitt v. Winter, 275 F. App’x. at 13. Moreover, the administrative record reveals that the ultimate decision not to recertify Dr. Klingenschmitt was based on performance deficiencies and misconduct that were, as described above, unrelated to the content of his sermons or any other even arguably protected activity.
In that regard, the Court finds unpersuasive Dr. Klingenschmitt’s argument that his First Amendment right to practice his religious beliefs was infringed by Captain Pyle’s Order that he not wear his uniform to the media event held in Lafayette Park in March 2006. Captain Pyle’s Order was based on Navy regulations that prohibit the wearing of a uniform in connection with political activities. ... The Order did not limit Dr. Klingenschmitt’s right to engage in any religious practices (including presenting an opening prayer at the event or invoking the name of Jesus in his prayer). It simply prohibited Dr. Klingenschmitt from engaging in this activity while wearing his uniform at what was clearly a political event and not, as Dr. Klingenschmitt seems to suggest, a bona fide religious service. Therefore, taking this infraction into consideration in deciding whether to recertify Dr. Klingenschmitt as a chaplain did not violate either his First Amendment rights or RFRA.
In short, the record fails to support a showing of any causal connection between any protected activity and Dr. Klingenschmitt’s separation. For that reason, and because his other challenges to the lawfulness of the recertification process are without merit, the Court concludes that the Navy’s decision not to recertify Dr. Klingenschmitt, which resulted in his administrative separation from the Navy, was neither arbitrary, capricious, nor contrary to law.
In other words, as Right Wing Watch points out, Klingenschmitt's entire career as a WND-promoted right-wing activist facing religious persecution is based on a myth. But because Unruh has no interest whatsoever in reporting facts and only cares about promoyting false propaganda, WND readers will learn none of this.
The headline on a Dec. 11 Media Research Center item by Scott Whitlock blared, "ABC, NBC Skip Poll Finding Massive Support for the Second Amendment." But the poll is dubious and didn't indicate "massive" support.
The common thread behind the organized chaos unleashed on innocent people is the incitement by liberal black leaders.
NewsBusters' Dave Pierre 
Michael Brown writes in a Dec. 10 WorldNetDaily 
In their newest 
Last year, we 
Michael Chapman fawningly writes in a Dec. 8 CNSNews.com 
Jim Meyers serves up quite the cheerleading tone in a Dec. 8 Newsmax 
A Dec. 7 WorldNetDaily 
CNSNews.com editor in chief Terry Jeffrey has always been much more about advancing his right-wing agenda than practicing fair and ethical journalism. He is continuing to obliterate the line between journalism and opinion at CNS.
Joseph Farah was in a very pouty mood in his Dec. 4 WorldNetDaily 
Katie Yoder makes her opinion clear with the headline of her Dec. 5 Media Research Center 
In a Dec. 2 WorldNetDaily 
In November, 
