MRC Forgets It Bashed Burger Chain's Racy Ads Before Its CEO Became Right-Wing Darling (And Trump Nominee)
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Scott Whitlock whined in a Dec. 9 post that coverage on NBC's "Today" about Hardee's and Carl's Jr. executive Andy Puzder, donald Trump's nominee for labor secretary, "chided the Carl’s Jr. CEO for his company’s racy ads." Whitlock huffed that "Today" reporter Peter Alexander "played a clip of a Carl’s Jr. fast-food ad featuring scantily clad women and chided, 'While Puzder approves of these racy ads, he opposes broader overtime pay and minimum wage increases.' What does one have to do with the other? Alexander didn’t say."

Whitlock further huffed that "Additionally, it seems odd for NBC to suddenly turn prudish after promoting Fifty Shades of Grey for a full week, repeatedly playing clips and trailers from the bondage film." Actually, according to the link Whitlock supplied, it wasn't the entire network doing this, just "Today."

But Whitlock's complaint rings hollow for another reason. You know who else used to complain about the "racy ads" put out by Puzder's company? The MRC.

Lauren Thompson complained in a February 2012 MRC post:

Most families would agree that eating a hamburger is a normal and appropriate thing to do at dinner, but Carl’s Jr. has turned an American past-time into sexual foreplay with its string of salacious advertisements.

The burger chain used to be known as a family franchise, but recently began targeting, teenage males with lust-filled commercials, and in the past they have showcased both Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian in overtly raunchy roles in order to garner attention for their product.

The new advertisement for their Southwest Patty Melt features 19-year-old model Kate Upton sweating and stripping off her clothes while suggestively consuming a burger. The ad far from family friendly, especially when the young starlet straddles the burger bag and places her hand between her legs, all while nearly exposing her breasts.

Andy Pudzer [sic], who is the CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent to Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s told USA Today that, “The first thing you have to do is get people to watch your ads. I guarantee you there will be a very small number of young guys fast-forwarding through this ad."

A longer, racier version will be featured on their website further adding to today’s culture meltdown.

But as the MRC has demonstrated with its flip-flop on Donald Trump, it will look the other way on morality issues -- typically the bread and butter of a conservative organization -- as long as sufficient lip service is given to toeing right-wing orthodoxy. In May 2015, it touted Puzder's defense of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and on job growth in the state; and in March, Tom Blumer cheered how Puzder was moving his company from California to Tennessee to avoid California's "intolerable" (in Blumer's words) labor laws.

Obama Derangement Syndrome Watch, Joseph Farah Edition
Topic: WorldNetDaily

I am so glad we’re only 40 days away from saying a permanent good riddance to Barack Obama as impostor president.

And, please, this is not racism speaking.

I’m sickened at what comes out of the man’s mouth. I couldn’t care less about the color of his skin.

What is it this time?

OK, I’m going to try to keep my cool here, but I am livid about the way this spoiled man-child punk is still mau-mauing about racism as the front door of the White House is about to hit him in the behind after eight years. That’s how long we’ve had to endure his shameless exploitation of racism in America while he has done just about everything imaginable in his power to stoke and rekindle its dying embers.

[...]

This guy is a one-trick pony.

He got elected president without any accomplishments to speak of in 2008 running as a black man.

He got re-elected president in 2012 even after proving himself incompetent to serve.

In other words, race was his political franchise.

Is there someone in America who doesn’t get this yet?

Why did Hillary Clinton lose, while Obama won twice?

Obama got more support from both whites and blacks than she did.

Had Obama not been black, he could never have won the presidency even once with his radical platform and his mysterious past.

[...]

Get over it, Obama.

Enough is enough.

People don’t dislike you because of race.

They dislike you because you exploit race to demean your critics and the nation that elected you to its highest office.

I can’t wait for Jan. 20.

-- Joseph Farah, Dec. 9 WorldNetDailiy column

MRC Still Denying That Anti-Planned Parenthood Was Deceptively Edited
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Curtis Houck uses a Dec. 7 post to smear Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak as a "pro-abortion lefty" spewing "insanity." Why? Because she spoke the inconvenient truth that the Center for Medical Progress' videos attacking Planned Parenthood were deceptively edited. Houck complained:

Dvorak chose not to look at her own employer or major TV outlets but instead attacked the pro-life group Center for Medical Progress and their undercover Planned Parenthood baby parts videos as being the lynchpin for a Colorado man to shoot up a local Planned Parenthood.

“What happened at Comet Ping Pong isn’t the first time we’ve seen real consequences of the doctored-news phenomenon. A year ago, a “gotcha” video — created by folks who lied, schemed and plotted to get a doctor to talk about the graphic details of her work while secretly being recorded — was pinging in the head of Robert Lewis Dear Jr. when he stormed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado,” Dvorak complained.

Dvorak continued with spin that somehow these videos weren’t true that couldn’t have been done any better than if Planned Parenthood wrote it themselves:

Grandstanding congressmen fed him the “baby parts” line after they watched that heavily edited video of a Planned Parenthood executive talking about the donation of tissue from aborted fetuses. (They must’ve forgotten that fetal tissue has been used in important medical research since the 1930s and helped produce vaccines for polio, measles and mumps.)

The video was created under false pretenses and never would have met the standards of a legitimate news organization.

That faux investigation ended in hours of congressional hearings, a budget crisis for Planned Parenthood in many states and the deaths of those three people in Colorado.

Needless to say, Houck won't admit that Dvorak is correct -- the edited versions of the CMP videos make claims the full videos don't support, and numerous state investigations of Planned Parenthood spurred by the CMP videos have found no wrongdoing regarding the issue of fetal tissue. The MRC's seemingly official policy is to deny any deception on the CMP's part.

Interestingly, though, Houck also declines to deny that Dear's shooting spree was inspired by the CMP videos. Maybe he was too busy trying to deny that the videos were edited that he forgot to do that. The MRC has previously insisted Dear is "mentally unstable" to distance him from the CMP.

Houck concludes by complaining that "the left has once again shown that any worthwhile push to halt the spread of legitimately fake news can easily be stymied and backfire in an instant whenever liberals seize on the situation to promote it’s own self-serving agenda to attacking conservatives and right-leaning news sites (like this one) that truly do care about accuracy and take our jobs seriously to not spread falsehoods."

This from a guy who won't acknowledge the indisputable fact the CMP videos were misleadingly edited -- and who is an employee of an organization that promoted a fake story from Fox News that Hillary Clinton's indictment was imminent but never issued a full correction and retraction of it.

No, Curtis, you do not take your job seriously enough if you have no problem with perpetuating falsehoods that benefit right-wing arguments.

NEW ARTICLE -- Out There, Exhibit 65: WND's Politician-Nazi Double Standard
Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily spent years likening President Obama to various Nazis, yet it's now somehow appalled that some would make the same comparison with Donald Trump. Read more >>

CNS Promotes Right-Wing Lies About U.N. Pact
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com's Melanie Hunter certainly put out a clickbait-y headline for her Dec. 8 article: "UN Rejects Sex Education Program That Called for Teaching 4-Year-Olds to Masturbate." She writes:

The United Nations last week rejected a controversial sex education program by Europeans and the World Health Organization (WHO) in its draft resolution for the General Assembly’s “Rights of the Child” resolution, the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM) reported on Dec. 1.

The programming, which “first found its way into a UN resolution in 2012 within the Economic and Social Council,” called for teaching children under age four about “early childhood masturbation” and promoting “acceptance of homosexuality and transgenderism throughout primary school.”

Hunter's proof for this clickbait-y claim claim is a C-FAM article that she has essentially rewrote, which asserts that "European and World Health Organization standards for comprehensive sexuality education prescribe teaching children under 4 years old about 'early childhood masturbation."

If Hunter had bothered to fact-check C-FAM's claims -- she quotes only C-FAM in her article, meaning that once again she's serving as a stenographer instead of a reporter, and she doesn't disclose that it's a far-right group that best known for being vehemently anti-gay -- she would know that it's lying about the clickbait-y thing.

C-FAM is apparently referring to a report by WHO and the Federal Centre for Health Education in Germany noting that "early childhood masturbation" is a behavior young children engage in and that "extensive observational research" shows this is among the behaviors that is "regarded as normal." A "matrix" chart later in the document lists it as something educators can "give information about," defined as "facts from the field of sexuality education in a balanced, comprehensive, age-appropriate way." At no point does it state that 4-year-olds should be taught masturbation.

WHO further issued a Q-and-A clarifying the issue:

This information is addressed to professionals (e.g. teachers, including kindergarten teachers), who need to be informed about the variety of normal phenomena in the psychosexual development of children including, in fact, early childhood masturbation and “doctor” games. Without such knowledge, there is a risk that professionals will react in inappropriate ways, possibly harming the child and/or hindering his/her future healthy development. The Standards therefore inform professionals about how to deal with these phenomena in a high-quality sexuality education programme in a developmentally appropriate way.

C-FAM is a highly biased organization, and Hunter and CNS should not be uncritically reporting its claims as undisputed truth -- especially when a little basic fact-checking proves the group wrong. But then, CNS is not paying Hunter to fact-check the claims of right-wing groups.

MRC's Bozell Still Trying to Deflect Fake-News Controversy
Topic: Media Research Center

You'd think an organization that purports to care about issues in the media would want to have a substantive debate about fake news. But as the Media Research Center continues to prove, it doesn't.

As before, Brent Bozell and Tim Graham's Dec. 7 column on the subject is all about trying to change the subject. They began by declaring: "Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg is under enormous pressure from the left to crack down on the "fake news" circulating on the social-media giant. He is well-advised to run as far as he can from the News Police."

They don't mention that Bozell himself was part of the right-wing News Police that victimized Zuckerberg and Facebook earlier in the year  over alleged bias in Facebook's trending-news feed. So cowed was Facebook by this that it allegedly did nothing to stop the torrent of pro-Trump, anti-Hillary fake news that swamped the website lest it run afoul of Bozell's News Police again.

Bozell and Graham then proclaimed that the problem of fake news is 1) no big deal and 2) a creation of the left:

Make no mistake about it: Fake news does exist. Everyone is used to false click-bait, like the recent "Megyn Kelly leaving Fox?" story floating around the internet, which claims she's leaving to promote some blah-blah-blah skin care product. Then there are the offshore fake news factories churning out "shocking" reports about Pope Francis backing Donald Trump.

Are these annoyances? Yes. Are they threats to Western civilization? Hardly.

The left saw an opening with talk of fake news and pounced.

[...]

Are the red flags for fake news only going to target stories that upset liberals? The leftist group Media Matters for America is claiming it will de-emphasize its Fox News obsession to focus instead on websites like Breitbart and the "alt-right" platforms in an effort to be that "trusted third party" to help run Facebook's algorithms.

Do you think they would ever call out leftist fake news outlets like, oh, themselves?

Bozell and Graham provide no evidence that any Media Matters ever produced is "fake news." (Disclosure: We used to work there.) But the MRC has participated in a few fake-news stories: its promotion of the fake Fox News story just before the election that Hillary Clinton's indictment was imminent, its dishonest misquoting from a book by former New York Times editor Howell Raines that stood uncorrected for nine years, and the deliberate misquoting of Democratic strategist Paul Begala at the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com.

Yet somehow it's the fault of "the left" that the MRC perpetuated fake news.

Bozell and Graham also assert: "The networks have labored mightily to avoid videotapes demonstrating Planned Parenthood allegedly sold dead baby parts to fetal-tissue researchers. The left said those taped admissions are somehow faked, even after all the footage, which shows no such thing, was made available." In fact, it's been repeatedly proven that the edited versions of the video make claims the full videos (which were always released after the edited versions) don't support. Even David Daleiden, who produced the videos, admitted to deceptive edits.

What does it say that "the networks" downplayed deceptively edited videos while the MRC treats them as indisputable gospel? That the MRC will embrace fake news that furthers its right-wing agenda.

But that truth is a little too real for Bozell and Graham to admit to its readers.

Fake News: WND Walks Back Claim of 'Migrant' Attack
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily has been trying to change the subject whenever it gets associated with spreading "fake news" (even though it indisputably has).

But WND has been caught spreading fake news again.

A Dec. 7 WND article by Joe Kovacs carried the headline "Video: ‘Migrant’ kicks young woman down flight of stairs." It began: "Video emerged Wednesday of a young woman in a German subway station being kicked down a flight of stairs, in what some are calling an unprovoked attack by a 'migrant gang.'"

But sometime after its posting and Dec. 10, Moore's article got scrubbed, to the point that Kovacs' byline was removed from it. The headline was changed to "Video: Man kicks young woman down flight of stairs" -- with "man" replacing "migrant" -- and the lead paragraph adds that the alleged perpetrator is "unidentified."

A later paragraph originally stated that "It has not been reported if police have any suspects," but that also was rewritten to add that "it cannot be confirmed at this point if the perpetrator is actually a migrant." The original is below, followed by the updated version:

Curiously, though WND has the capability of noting updates in its articles (in red type after the posting date), at no point does this acknowledge this article has been updated to remove what WND decided after the fact was false, fake information -- let alone explain to readers why.

This isn't the first time Kovacs has gotten things wrong. In 2011, for instance, he wrote that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan's name came up "at least nine times on [Supreme Court] dockets involving Obama eligibility issues" stemming from her connection as Obama's former solicitor general; in fact, none of those docket items has anything to do with "eligibility issues." That article required some heavy scrubbing as well.

WND recently claimed to be "the real mainstream when it comes to where Americans go to get the real news." (Funny, reporting "the real news" is also what Kovacs said he joined WND to do.) If WND has to heavily correct a story days after the fact, then hide from its readers the fact that those corrections were made -- and if Kovacs has continued employment at WND despite a history of serious, embarrassing errors -- it's not really real, is it?

(h/t Richard Bartholomew)

MRC Plays the Deceptive-Editing Game
Topic: Media Research Center

The Media Research Center's Brad Wilmouth complains in a Dec. 1 post that "CNN's Alisyn Camerota brought up a clip of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn discussing radical Islam in which it appeared that he was claiming Islam in general is a 'cancer.'"

In fact, Camerota is portraying the clip accurately. In a larger clip of the statement in question, Flynn doesn't apply the narrower "radical Islam" Wilmouth is suggesting, Flynn is clearly stating that "Islam is a political ideology" and goes on to liken Islam -- not "radical Islam" -- to cancer.

Looking at a even larger part of the Flynn speech from which that statement was taken, he does not appear to differentiate between "radical Islam" and Islam as a whole -- he even suggests that Muslims getting involved in local government in the U.S. is a directive from Muslim extremists.

Flynn also falsely claimed in his speech that Democrats in Florida "voted yes to allow Sharia law to be used in the state of Florida judicial system," adding, "Do these people not understand what Sharia law is, what it does to these beautiful women? ... You're a piece of property." In fact, the Florida law simply codified existing policy in allowing foreign law to govern certain family cases only if it does not contradict U.S. law, and it does not specifically mention Sharia law at all.

Does that sound like someone who makes a meaningful difference between "radical Islam" and Islam as a whole? Wilmouth seems to think differently.

Then, Wilmouth flip-flops by defending taking President' Obama's words out of context:

Ironically, moments after using an edited clip of Flynn, the CNN host was seen reading and appearing to agree with complaints -- which seem to have come from an article at Mediaite -- that Fox Business Network edited some of President Barack Obama's words from an interview in which the President -- even with the words in place -- left an impression with many that he was encouraging illegal immigrants to vote, in spite of it being illegal for non-citizens to do so.

Why is it OK to misrepresent Obama's words, according to Wilmouth? Because Obama didn't make his words clear enough for Wilmouth not to exploit the ambiguity, apparently:

The Mediaite article Camerota was reading from argued that it was obvious that Obama was not encouraging illegals to vote because of the part of his answer when he stated that "when you vote, you are a citizen yourself." But this statement is not the same as stating that if one is a non-citizen, it is illegal to vote, since, if someone were unfamiliar with American law, they could misunderstand and believe voting can be a way of becoming a citizen.

His response could certainly have been misinterpreted as meaning that non-citizens like "Dreamers" and the "undocumented" could vote because they were a major part of the question asked, which should have elicited an upfront reaction in the negative that those groups should not be voting.

So Wilmouth and his fellow conservatives seem to feel free to misrepresent Obama's words because he didn't give an answer worded in exactly the way they wanted him to -- ignoring the full answer from Obama, in which he also  said that "what is important for Latino citizens is to make your voice heard" and that those citizens voting helps speak for those "who can't legally vote."

The MRC has always felt justified in taking Obama's words out of context if doing so fits its political agenda.

WND Keeps Up the Imeachment Hypocrisy
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Joe Kovacs writes in a Nov. 28 WorldNetDaily article:

Donald Trump has not even been inaugurated into office yet, but radio host Rush Limbaugh is predicting a concerted effort by Democrats to impeach him from the presidency.

“I don’t have any doubt that there’s going to be a Democrat effort to impeach Trump,” Limbaugh said on his national broadcast Monday.

And even without any high crimes or misdemeanors committed by the president-elect, Limbaugh said opponents of the Republican will choose another route to push for his ouster.

“I think at the very least, the Democrats are gonna put voter fraud on their list of particulars for impeaching Trump,” he explained.

“They’re already beginning now to establish the evidentiary chain, and one of the elements of this is going to be that he’s illegitimate, that he really didn’t win.”

Oh, the hypocrisy. First, as we've noted, Hillary Clinton wasn't even running for president when WND started agitating for her impeachment. On top of that, WND's Jerome Corsi was touting just a couple days before the November election how "If Hillary Clinton wins the election Tuesday, a prominent Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee says there will be an immediate move to impeach her before she can even be sworn into office Jan. 20."

Second, among the many accusations WND forwarded in his laughable, falsehood-ridden "Case for Impeachment" of Obama was his purported illegitimacy, insisting that "Obama has yet to show anyone a legal, long-form birth certificate demonstrating he was born in the United States" and had only shown "a semi-legal document called a 'Certification of Live Birth' that is not accepted by most courts as legal" (false: it is an acceptable legal document) and that "Obama's legal team has spent close to $2 million fighting numerous eligibility lawsuits rather than simply producing the legal long-form birth certificate and ending the controversy" (false: even WND has never proven that all of the money, paid to a law firm representing Obama's campaign, went toward "eligibility" issues).

If WND didn't have double standards, it wouldn't have any standards at all.

CNS' Starr Misdirects on Pipeline Controversy
Topic: CNSNews.com

CNSNews.com reporter Penny Starr has been a reliable shill for the oil industry for years, so it's not a surprise what side she's taking on the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline.

In September, for example, Starr gave a platform to the business lobby -- specifically, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Midwest Alliance for Infrastructure Now --  criticizing President Obama's decision to halt the building of the pipeline. Much of her article was devoted to critics of the decision, while just a single paragraph was given to quoting from a statement from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, which is central to the controversy.

In a Dec. 5 article, though, Starr went on an odd tangent of misdirection:

Native Americans and other activists vow to continue their protest over the final stretch of the Dakota Access pipeline under the Lake Oahe near Standing Rock, N.D., but at another reservation in the state, Native Americans are happy about the prosperity that pipelines have brought to their community.

“One hundred fifty miles up the Missouri River from Standing Rock, pipelines and pumpjacks are plenty on the Fort Berthold reservation,” an article posted on the Inside Energy website on Nov. 23 said.

“More than 4,000 miles of pipe carrying oil, natural gas and wastewater criss-cross the reservation in the heart of the Bakken oil patch,” the article said, noting that Fort Berthold is home to the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes — known as MHA Nation.

But Starr omits the fact that the situation with the Dakota Access pipeline and the Standing Rock reservation is completely different from that of the Fort Berthold reservation. The pipeline as proposed does not cross the Standing Rock reservation as currently constituted; it does, however, cross tribal land the Standing Rock Sioux claim was promised to them in an 1851 treaty but instead provided to white settlers, land the tribe claims contains ancient burial mounds and other historial artifacts. The tribe also asserts that federal officials made little effort to consult the tribe about the pipeline's route.

When Starr did bother to devote significant space to the tribe's side of the pipeline controversy, it was in order to paint it as extremist. A Nov. 23 article cited "a director at a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C." who claimed that "white privilege and white supremacy" led to the creation of the pipeline "and compared it to building a pipeline under Arlington Cemetery and across the Potomac River."

So, yeah, more biased reporting from Starr designed to present only one side -- the side she's getting paid to report favorably about -- as reasonable.

(Photo via EcoWatch)

Desperate Self-Promotion at WND
Topic: WorldNetDaily

WorldNetDaily has been spending the year begging for money to stay afloat while also exaggerating its traffic counts to create the illusion of a fully functioning business. It does more of the latter in a Nov. 27 article:

The establishment media are lashing out in the aftermath of the stunning 2016 presidential-election result, which it almost unanimously had discounted as impossible, demanding sanctions against so-called “fake news” websites.

But the hysteria may have more to do with fear of competition than with the pursuit of truth, as independent news organizations such as WND are soaring in both traffic and reader engagement. And the growth of WND is continuing even after the election.

According to Alexa, WND is now the 187th most popular site of all websites in the United States and in the top 1,500 group of all websites globally.

Actually, WND hasn't been maintaining its election-driven traffic boost. While it may have been ranked No. 187 at the time of the article, it's currently ranked No. 259 and falling.

WND immediately uses that ranking to play the victim:

Despite, or perhaps because of, this growth, WND, along with sites such as Breitbart, Red State and the Daily Wire have been smeared as “fake news” sites since the election, even though the definition seems to have more to do with ideology than accuracy.

Google and Facebook have also said they will be targeting revenue sources for so-called “fake news” sites.

The brief moment of self-criticism the establishment media engaged in after the election has ended, as outlets such as the Times now demand Facebook and other social networking titans essentially shut down competitors.

The move is coupled with a campaign to label independent journalism as “hate speech,” an accusation leveled at Breitbart and also WND.

Well, not so much: WND's history of publishing fake news -- its anti-Obama birther crusade is just one example -- is unambiguous.

And it wouldn't be WND if there wasn't a massive dose of self-aggrandizement to go along with this desperate self-promotion:

“WND has always – for 20 years – risen to the top of the charts for political coverage during presidential election years,” said Joseph Farah, founder, editor and chief executive officer of the pioneering alternative news site. “But this year the growth trend continues after the election. This is something we’ve never seen before. Perhaps Americans are finally getting the message: What we euphemistically call the ‘mainstream media’ is the real purveyor of ‘fake news.’ If you want to the truth, the real story, you’ve got to look for alternative sources of news. And WND, from the beginning, has been the place of refuge for real journalists with experience and values and professional standards.”

This time, it really is different. Almost 70 percent of voters believe the news media is not “honest and truthful” and almost 80 percent say it is “biased.”

With the establishment media’s credibility destroyed, Americans are turning to WND, a trusted source that has been around almost since the beginning of the Internet. Now, the facts show WND is the real mainstream when it comes to where Americans go to get the real news.

The real fake news, maybe...

CNS Laughably Portrays Obama As 'Dictatorial Tyrant'
Topic: CNSNews.com

It's pure opinion -- and a ridiculous, unsupported one at that -- but CNSNews.com portrayed it as news. Penny Starr wrote in a Dec. 2 CNS "news" article:

Conservative attorney Cleta Mitchell said on Friday that Barack Obama has acted more like a dictator than a president, and that President-elect Donald Trump should make it a priority to “restore the rule of law.”

“We have been living under a dictatorial tyrant for the last eight years,” Mitchell said at the Conservative Women’s Network event, co-hosted by the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute and the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C.

“And one of the most important things that Donald Trump can do as president is to restore the rule of law,” Mitchell said.

[...]

“As an attorney I’m going to tell you that the most important thing that Donald Trump can do … and that is to restore the rule of law in America,” said Mitchell, who has represented the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, the National Rifle Association and many Republican members of the U.S. Congress.

“America is a nation of laws, not of men,” Mitchell said. “But what we’ve seen in the last eight years is a president with a cell phone and a pen who has made law as though he were an emperor and a complicit liberal media that has found that completely acceptable.”

Mitchell said if Trump were to govern with a cell phone and a pen his critics would accuse him of acting as a dictator. But it is Obama, Mitchell said, who has conducted the office of the presidency in that manner.

“We have been living under a dictatorial tyrant for the last eight years,” Mitchell said. “And one of the most important things that Donald Trump can do as president is to restore the rule of law.”

Starr cites -- and Mitchell apparently didn't provide -- any example of Obama governing like a "dictatorial tyrant." The "cell phone and a pen" is a reference to Obama's decision to use executive orders and work with outside groups in the face of the Republican Congress' unwillingness to work with him on legislation. Both actions are legal and constitutional -- in other words, the complete opposite of a "dictatorial tyrant."

But Starr was once again in stenography mode, and she treated Mitchell's words as undisputed and unimpeachable. If Starr were a real reporter, she  would have interviewed others at the conservative event she attended to gauge reaction to Mitchell's ludicrous statement -- but she couldn't be bothered.

But then, stenography to attack Democrats and in the service of Republicans is how CNS rolls these days.

WND's Farah Can't Prove Illegal Votes for Hillary Either
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Last week, we caught WorldNetDaily trying to fearmonger about the specter of illegal voting in the presidential election -- but couldn't come up with any evidence to back it up, only a lot of speculation by right-wingers.

Now, WND editor Joseph Farah takes a whack at it in his Dec. 5 column:

Donald Trump tweeted a week ago that he won the popular vote on Election Day “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

Of course, the media went ballistic over this comment.

Even the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, in reporting his comment in a news story had this to say: “There has been no evidence of the widespread voter fraud that would have had to taken place to give Clinton millions of illegitimate votes.”

But is Trump’s statement likely true?

We may never know, but I suspect he’s right.

[...]

Personally, I would be shocked to learn that there weren’t at least 2 million votes cast for Hillary Clinton that were invalid.

In other words, he can't prove anything either.

Farah goes on to do a lot of ranting about the need for voter ID laws, asserting that "If we’re ever going to have a free and fair election again in this country, we need all states requiring proper ID." In fact, the kind of in-person voter fraud voter ID laws would ostensibly prevent is incredibly rare.

Finally, Farah declares that his utter lack of evidence is irrelevant, but the perception of illegal voting (never mind that it's a false one) does: "Even if there is any doubt about the extent of such illegal voting, it must be stopped cold to preserve constitutional integrity."

Fake news, anyone?

MRC Complains Media Is Accurately Reporting About Ben Carson
Topic: Media Research Center

The headline of Media Reserarch Center writer Sam Dorman's Dec. 5 post reads, "Media Predictably Mock Trump’s HUD Secretary Pick Ben Carson." He goes on to huff: "After Donald Trump chose former presidential candidate Ben Carson to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), journalists ridiculed the choice, mocked Carson’s beliefs and labeled him a 'scammer.'"

But Dorman's doing a lot of dishonest things here. First, he's conflating opinion writers with "journalists" -- most of the people he cites are opinion writers, not reporters.The closest he gets is Michael Powell of the New York Times, but he's a sports columnist, which means he's still allowed to voice an opinion.

Second, he actually lumps together "media figures from lefty Think Progress, Huffington Post, NBC News and others" as if they were interchangeable. And, again, all of them are opinion writers or commentators who get paid to offer an opinion.

Third, much of the criticism Dorman cites is fact-based. Does Dorman really think it's "liberal bias" to point out that Carson has no professional experience in housing or urban development.

Dorman also complained that New York magazine's Jonathan Chait called Carson a "world-class scammer," but didn't mention that Chait offered proof of that in the article to which he links in the Twitter post Dorman cites. That would be an article in The Atlantic noting how Carson's presidential campaign spent massive amounts of money paying marketing firms to raise money, suggesting that Carson was more interested in building a personal brand and a donor base than actually running for president.

Finally, Dorman doesn't actually dispute any of this -- he's only complaining that it's being talked about. Apparently Dorman has absorbed the part of MRC researcher school that teaches anything that appears in the media you don't like -- even if it's true or said by someone paid to offer opinions -- is "liberal bias."

WND: Only Christians Should Benefit From Religious-Discrimination Laws
Topic: WorldNetDaily

Bob Unruh tells the sob story in a Nov. 24 WorldNetDaily article:

The situation didn’t seem that alarming. A Christian school needed to move to more economic, and yet bigger, facilities.

As such schools usually are, the Livingston Christian School in Genoa Township, Michigan, was on a tight budget, but it located a facility available at the nearby Brighton Church of the Nazarene, and made plans for the move.

The local planning commission approved the plan, the community supported it, and even experts summoned by the township endorsed the strategy.

Then the town council rejected the application, a decision that prompted a court case that now is pending before the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The brief there, submitted by First Liberty, warns that the rejection is a violation of federal law because it threatens the very existence of the religious outreach.

This being a Bob Unruh article, it goes without saying he's not telling the full story. Indeed, as real news outlets have reported, the town's rejection of the special use permit has been upheld in lower courts because, despite its current claims, the school had an option to use another location and has acted upon it.

But Unruh also plays up how the religious school's attorneys, First Liberty, are suing the township under a federal law:

“The government is refusing to allow a Christian school to move into a building on church property or, for that matter, anywhere else in town,” Hiram Sasser, deputy chief counsel for First Liberty Institute, said. “That’s wrong. Federal law expressly prohibits the government using zoning laws to keep religious institutions out of their town.”

[...]

At the initial court hearing stage, a judge said the school’s religious liberty had not been “substantially burdened” by the town’s decision, so First Liberty advanced the fight to the appellate level, arguing that under the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, the township was essentially terminating the school’s ability to operate as a religious ministry.

The U.S. Department of Justice says that law is to “protect individuals, houses of worship, and other religious institutions from discrimination in zoning and landmarking laws.”

“First Liberty has won multiple cases using RLUIPA,” said Sasser. “We know this law well. In fact, we won a landmark case, Opulent Life Church v. Holly Springs, in the 5th Federal Circuit Court when a town used zoning regulations against a religious institution. We lost at the district court, but won at the federal appeals court. We hope for the same outcome in this important case.”

Just a month earlier, however, WND was denouncing the RLUIPA. Why? It was being invoked for the benefit of non-Christians.

In an Oct. 2 article, WND Muslim-basher Leo Hohmann complained that a different township in Michigan agreed to pay $1.7 million to a Muslim group after blocking its planned construction of a school. Hohmann is much more negative about use of RLUIPA than Unruh is:

The tentative settlement agreed to by Pittsfield Township would be one of the largest cash payouts ever by a U.S. municipality to a mosque. The deal could send shock waves throughout the nation among communities fighting to keep large mosques and madrasas out of residential areas.

[...]

The Pittsfield case, by the sheer amount of the payout, could have a chilling effect on any city or town considering a mosque location or expansion, say legal experts. Many such legal battles are in process, including a major one in nearby Sterling Heights, Michigan, reported recently by WND.

“It’s not surprising,” said Karen Lugo, a constitutional law attorney with expertise in the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal statute under which the Michigan Muslims claimed discrimination.

[...]

Pittsfield Township, a community just outside of Ann Arbor, denied the construction permit saying the project would be incompatible with the surrounding residential zoning and would cause undue traffic and congestion.

But the owner of the property, a Shariah-compliant Ann Arbor mosque backed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR, filed suit against Pittsfield Township in 2012.

The U.S. Justice Department joined the case last year on the side of the mosque, claiming Pittsfield was violating RLUIPA, a law passed by Congress in 2000 that prohibits local governments from imposing zoning regulations that “substantially burden” religious rights “unless there is a compelling government interest.”

[...]

The percentage of federal RLUIPA investigations involving mosques or Islamic schools has risen from 15 percent in the 2000 to August 2010 period to 38 percent during the September 2010 to present period, according to a DOJ report posted on July 27.

The Pittsfield Township settlement, while one of the largest ever won by a mosque against a municipality in America, is not the only large settlement in recent years. Some have included not only cash but free land, Lugo said.

It's the very same law. While WND trashes it when being used on behalf of Muslims, it cheerleads the law's use on behalf of Christians. Muslims' religious rights should always be burdened, in WND's view, while those of Christians should never be.

There's no other difference.