Still misunderstanding 'birthers' ~ By Joseph Farah

Good journalists, with any seasoning at all, understand that politicians lie, deceive, obfuscate and conceal.

If you don't start with that supposition, you will be hoodwinked every time you cover a story. You might as well become a publicity hack for politicians if you take their word for anything – including where they were born and who their parents were.

The scandal of Obama's questionable constitutional eligibility is not just that our political system failed us in 2008. The scandal is compounded by how our "free press" continues to fail us through sophomoric misreporting and disinformation on the subject.

Joseph Farah isn't arguing about what Obama's birth certificate says (or doesn't say). He's not claiming that the President was born somewhere else besides Hawaii. What he IS asking is why the media refuses to question why Obama has kept his long-form birth certificate and other vital documents from public view. Doesn't that raise enough questions that a good journalist would want to look into? What I think really upsets Joseph is that the mainstream press is way too busy getting tingles running up their legs for Obama, and not being good journalists.

Still misunderstanding 'birthers'

JOSEPH FARAH

By Joseph Farah

February 19, 2011 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2011

The headline in the Capitol newspaper The Hill said: "Pawlenty dismisses 'birthers.'"

This I had to read. I even watched former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty deliver the speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, just to make sure I understood what this likely presidential candidate said about the issue of constitutional eligibility.

It turns out The Hill, like some other news organizations, completely misrepresented Pawlenty's carefully chosen words, with which I happen to agree 100 percent.

Watch the video for yourself.

(Please note: Unfortunately, the video and audio are not in sync.)

Video provided by GovernorTimPawlenty ~ February 11, 2011

Pawlenty said: "I'm not one who questions the existence of the president's birth certificate. But when you listen to his policies, don't you at least wonder what planet he's from? On what planet do they create jobs by taxing the daylight out of people trying to grow jobs? On what planet do they try to reduce the deficit by spending even more? On what planet do they make health care better by putting bureaucrats in charge?"

I've been called "the king of the 'birthers." How is it that I agree with Pawlenty?

I don't know any thinking, rational person who questions the existence of Obama's birth certificate. Of course he's got one. The question is not whether he has one. The question is what it says about where he was born and who his parents were. That question remains an open debate because the American people and all controlling legal authorities have been systematically denied a peek at any document that might offer an answer.

The Hill's lead for the story said: "Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) explicitly distanced himself from 'birthers' during a highly anticipated speech before conservatives on Friday."

Pawlenty did no such thing. He said nothing with which thoughtful "birthers" could disagree. He not only jokingly questioned Obama's American birthright, he questioned what planet he was from. This is explicitly distancing himself from "birthers"? Only to pseudo-journalists who report caricatures and stereotypes as facts. Only to the kind of pseudo-journalists who think reporting is regurgitating nonsense they've heard Keith Olbermann say.

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A greater tragedy than Tucson ~ By Robert Ringer

When it comes to guns, let's stop humoring those who want to fundamentally transform America into a nation of sheep whose main function would be to obediently serve their rulers. The fact is that the Second Amendment is not intended to protect the rights of hunters. It is to confirm the natural right of every citizen to protect himself from a tyrannical government. That is not vitriol. It's a Constitutional fact.

In this column, Robert Ringer brings up two points that to his knowledge, or mine, "no one has addressed." They are great points that surprisingly, I had not heard any of the pundits (dare) mention.

At the end of the column, Robert reminds us that while what occurred in Tucson was a terrible tragedy, "let us not confuse this tragedy with what needs to be done to rein in an oppressive government and thus prevent the far-greater tragedy of America being fundamentally transformed into an authoritarian police state."

A greater tragedy than Tucson

ROBERT RINGER

By Robert Ringer

January 21, 2011 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2011

I purposely delayed writing about the recent tragedy in Tucson, because I wanted to give myself time to get all the facts and observe the media reaction and political fallout.

Unfortunately, mass slayings are not a new phenomenon to the U.S. Two previous massacres that immediately come to mind are Charles Whitman's killing of 16 people at the University of Texas in 1966 and Seung-Hui Cho's murdering of 32 students and faculty members at Virginia Tech in 2007. In both cases, the perpetrator suffered from severe mental illness, as is almost certainly true of Jared Loughner, the Tucson killer.

Unfortunately, as was expected, within hours after the Tucson tragedy, those on the left started revving up their hate rhetoric. They quickly zeroed in on the "vitriol" of conservative talk radio, Fox News, Sarah Palin and the tea-party movement. As polls show, however, most people realize that these claims are bogus, since all evidence indicates that Loughner had no political connections of any kind. End of discussion.

However, I'd like to make a couple of points that, to the best of my knowledge, no one has addressed.

The first is that even if the killer had been a tea-party person or a member of a right-wing paramilitary outfit … or had openly stated that he was a rabid Rush Limbaugh fan … or, yes, even if he had claimed that Sarah Palin's target map inspired him to commit murder, it would have been irrelevant.

The fact is that Loughner is a mentally ill person, and just about anything can set off someone who has severe mental problems. Take, for example, the Hollywood film about the assassination of George W. Bush! Or movies that glorify the most gruesome violence imaginable. I would guess that such films have pushed far more lunatics over the edge than the most vile political rhetoric.

So, when conservatives argue that the murderer had no connection to conservative politics, they are allowing themselves to once again be sucked into the liberals' false-premise trap. It's the wrong argument. Both liberals and conservatives have a right to say whatever they please, because it's (supposed to be) a free country.

If an insane person killed someone and told the police he was motivated by the political rhetoric of Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, or Joe Klein, none of these hateful individuals would be at fault. They have a perfect right to be hateful so long as it's OK with their employers.

Sane people cannot be muzzled in an effort to keep their words from affecting the mentally ill, so it isn't necessary to argue that it was not conservative talk radio, Sarah Palin, Fox News, et al. that motivated Jared Loughner.

Again, whatever the motivation, it would be irrelevant. The fact is that whether on the right or the left, it's absurd to believe that people should base their words and actions on how they might affect a mentally unstable person whom they have never even met.

The second point I'd like to address is a bit ancillary, but important. It's the accusation that Sharron Angle's remark about the possibility that citizens may have to consider their Second Amendment right to bear arms as a defense against an oppressive government also qualifies as dangerous rhetoric. I disagree. The natural right of an individual to bear arms was considered so important to the Founding Fathers that they took the trouble to amend the Constitution to underscore it.

The truth is that few people want to face up to the reality that the way things are going in this country, it may someday get down to a choice between servitude and taking up arms. I hope it never comes to that, but it's something every rational, liberty-loving individual needs to think about – before it happens.

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Guns save lives ~ By John Stossel

John Stossel used to go along with his mainstream media colleagues, he now admits, that guns were evil. But that has changed. (He didn't happen to say when his opinion changed, though. Was it before or after he left ABC to go work for Fox Business News?) He now believes that guns reduce crime because criminals do not know when their victim may be packing heat. And of course, we realize, he now has it right. Keep in mind that many of the mass shootings, like at Virginia Tech, are in gun-free zones. That should tell the anti-gun people something, wouldn't you think? Just sayin'...

Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in the Heller case that Washington, D.C.'s ban on handgun ownership was unconstitutional. District politicians then loosened the law but still have so many restrictions that there are no gun shops in the city and just 800 people have received permits. Nevertheless, contrary to the mayor's prediction, robbery and other violent crime are down.

Because Heller applied only to Washington, that case was not the big one. McDonald v. Chicago is the big one, and the Supreme Court is expected to rule on that next week. Otis McDonald is a 76-year-old man who lives in a dangerous neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. He wants to buy a handgun, but Chicago forbids it.

If the Supremes say McDonald has that right, then restrictive gun laws will fall throughout America.

By John Stossel

Posted: June 23, 2010 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

You know what the mainstream media think about guns and our freedom to carry them.

Pierre Thomas of ABC: "When someone gets angry or when they snap, they are going to be able to have access to weapons."

Chris Matthews of MSNBC: "I wonder if in a free society violence is always going to be a part of it if guns are available."

Keith Olbermann, who usually can't be topped for absurdity: "Organizations like the NRA ... are trying to increase deaths by gun in this country."

"Trying to?" Well, I admit that I bought that nonsense for years. Living in Manhattan, working at ABC, everyone agreed that guns are evil. And that the NRA is evil. (Now that the NRA has agreed to a sleazy deal with congressional Democrats on political speech censorship, maybe some of its leaders are evil, but that's for another column.)

Now I know that I was totally wrong about guns. Now I know that more guns means – hold onto your seat – less crime.

How can that be, when guns kill almost 30,000 Americans a year? Because while we hear about the murders and accidents, we don't often hear about the crimes stopped because would-be victims showed a gun and scared criminals away. Those thwarted crimes and lives saved usually aren't reported to police (sometimes for fear the gun will be confiscated), and when they are reported, the media tend to ignore them. No bang, no news.

This state of affairs produces a distorted public impression of guns. If you only hear about the crimes and accidents, and never about lives saved, you might think gun ownership is folly.

But, hey, if guns save lives, it logically follows that gun laws cost lives.

Suzanna Hupp and her parents were having lunch at Luby's cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, when a man began shooting diners with his handgun, even stopping to reload. Suzanna's parents were two of the 23 people killed. (Twenty more were wounded.)

Suzanna owned a handgun, but because Texas law at the time did not permit her to carry it with her, she left it in her car. She's confident that she could have stopped the shooting spree if she had her gun. (Texas has since changed its law.)

READ FULL STORY at WorldNetDaily.com

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Ahmadinejad: 'Yep, I'm nuclear!' ~ By Ann Coulter

Commentary from WorldNetDaily

Even if you weren't aware that the U.S. has the worst intelligence in the world, and even if you didn't notice that the leak was timed perfectly to embarrass Bush, wouldn't any normal person be suspicious of a report concluding Ahmadinejad was behaving like a prince?


Not liberals. Our intelligence agencies concluded Iran had suspended its nuclear program in 2003, so Bush owed Ahmadinejad an apology.


Feb. 11, 2010: Ahmadinejad announces that Iran is now a nuclear power.

By Ann Coulter

Posted: February 17, 2010 ~ 6:02 pm Eastern

© 2010

The only man causing President Obama more headaches than Joe Biden these days is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who, coincidentally, was right after Biden on Obama's short-list for VP).

Despite Obama's personal magnetism, the Iranian president persists in moving like gangbusters to build nuclear weapons, leading to Ahmadinejad's announcement last week that Iran is now a "nuclear state."

Gee, that's weird – because I remember being told in December 2007 that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded that Iran had ceased nuclear-weapons development as of 2003.

At the time of that leak, many of us recalled that the U.S. has the worst intelligence-gathering operations in the world. The Czechs, the French, the Italians – even the Iraqis (who were trained by the Soviets) – all have better intelligence.

Burkina Faso has better intelligence – and their director of intelligence is a witch doctor. The marketing division of Wal-Mart has more reliable intel than the U.S. government does.

After Watergate, the off-the-charts left-wing Congress gleefully set about dismantling this nation's intelligence operations on the theory that Watergate never would have happened if only there had been no CIA.

Ron Dellums, a typical Democrat of the time, who – amazingly – was a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, famously declared in 1975: "We should totally dismantle every intelligence agency in this country piece by piece, brick by brick, nail by nail."

And so they did.

So now, our "spies" are prohibited from spying. The only job of a CIA officer these days is to read foreign newspapers and leak classified information to the New York Times. It's like a secret society of newspaper readers. The reason no one at the CIA saw 9/11 coming was that there wasn't anything about it in the Islamabad Post.

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Purveyors of hate ~ By Henry Lamb

Commentary from WorldNetDaily

These ordinary people are organizing from the precinct level to counties, to states and into national groups. They fully intend to reject the Washington majority's plan to empower government far beyond its constitutional limits in order to nationalize the economy and enslave individuals.


People who insist on calling these American patriots "teabaggers" are, indeed, purveyors of hate.

By Henry Lamb

Posted: February 13, 2010 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

What is the correct word to describe people who deliberately, publicly and repeatedly use the "N" word when they refer to black people? There are such people. Are they sick? Are they mean? Are they stupid? Are they just full of hate?

How do you describe people who deliberately, publicly and repeatedly call gay people "queers"? There are such people. Are they sick? Are they mean? Are they stupid? Are they just full of hate – or are they all of the above.

Obviously, people who insist on doing these things have no compassion or appreciation for people who are different from themselves. They have no tolerance. Most people condemn this behavior and find it appalling.

What is the correct word to describe people who deliberately, publicly and repeatedly call the people who attend tea parties – "teabaggers"?

These people are called: Anderson Cooper (CNN); Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Dylan Ratigan, Rachel Maddow, Anna Marie Cox, Janeane Garofalo (MSNBC); Bill Maher (HBO); ABC News; CBS News: Daily Kos; Huffington Post; and a host of other bloggers and TV personalities.

The people who deliberately, publicly and repeatedly refer to tea-party participants as "teabaggers" suffer from the same character flaw that makes people use the "N" word and call gay people "queers." The character flaw that would allow someone to tie a hangman's noose on a tree in front of a black man's house or burn a cross on his front lawn is precisely the same flaw that allows a person to deliberately, publicly and repeatedly call someone a "teabagger" when they know it to be untrue.

These are the same people who preach tolerance – but practice hate.

These are the same people who never missed an opportunity to denigrate and demean President Bush, but rush to label Obama protesters as hate-mongering redneck "teabaggers."

By their deliberate, public repetition of the term "teabaggers" in reference to the participants of tea-party events, these people and institutions are condoning and perpetuating hate for those who hold a different political view. Moreover, their actions tell those who are influenced by them that it is normal and right to belittle and demean the people who are not "politically correct" as defined by the "in" crowd.

It is sad to realize that this attitude is learned in school, particularly in many colleges and universities. David Horowitz was shouted down at Emory University by students who suffer this same character flaw. Rep. Tom Tancredo met the same fate at the University of North Carolina. College kids have learned that it is perfectly normal and right to shout down or deny the First Amendment to anyone who holds a political view different from their own.

Is it any wonder that when this crowd gets to Congress they think it is perfectly normal and right to shut out opposing views? Democrats routinely reject amendments offered by Republicans, often with no discussion or debate. On President Obama's health-care bill, Democrats refused to even let Republicans into the room when key portions of the bill were being negotiated. Then they have the audacity to call Republicans the party of "No."

This is the kind of disingenuous political representation that makes ordinary people rise up.

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MSNBC Exclusive: Fort Hood never happened! ~ By Ann Coulter

Commentary from WorldNetDaily

By Ann Coulter Posted: November 25, 2009 ~ 5:43 pm Eastern © 2009 It's been weeks since eyewitnesses reported that Maj. Nidal Hasan shouted "Allahu akbar" before spraying Fort Hood with gunfire, killing 13 people. Since then we also learned that Hasan gave a medical lecture on beheading infidels and pouring burning oil down their throats (unfortunately not covered under the Senate health-care bill). Some wondered if perhaps a pattern was beginning to emerge but were promptly dismissed as racist cranks. We also found out Hasan had business cards printed up with the jihadist abbreviation "SoA" for "Soldier of Allah." Was that enough to conclude that the shooting was an act of terrorism – or does somebody around here need to take another cultural sensitivity class? And we know that Hasan had contacted several jihadist websites and that he had been exchanging e-mails with a radical Islamic cleric in Yemen. The FBI learned that last December, but the rest of us only found out about it a week ago. Is it still too soon to come to the conclusion that the Fort Hood shooting was an act of terrorism? Alas, it is still too early to tell at MSNBC. For Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews – at least two of whom would be severely punished under Shariah law – the shooting of George Tiller was an act of terrorism, no question. The death of a census taker in Kentucky was also an act of terrorism. (We learned this week that it was a suicide/insurance scam.) But as to Maj. Hasan, the jury is still out – and will be out for many, many years. Actually, according to Keith, the Fort Hood massacre may not have happened at all. He has argued persuasively, on several occasions, that it is impossible, literally impossible, to commit mass murder at a military base. [CLICK HERE TO READ MORE]

Election '09: Change I can believe in! ~ By Ann Coulter

From WorldNetDaily

By Ann Coulter Posted: November 04, 2009 ~ 6:12 pm Eastern © 2009

MSNBC, Aug. 31, 2009, Keith Olbermann on Robert F. McDonnell, Republican candidate for governor of Virginia: "In (McDonnell's master's thesis), he described women having jobs as detrimental to the family, called legalized use of contraception illogical, pushed to make divorce more difficult and insisted government should favor married couples over, quote, 'cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.' Wow. When did he write this? 1875? No, 1989. Wow, 1989. "Goodbye, Mr. McDonnell." MSNBC, Sept. 22, 2009, Rachel Maddow also on McDonnell: "And here's where the conservative movement and the Republican establishment smash into each other like bumper cars without bumpers. Here's where Republican electoral chances stop being separate from the wild-eyed excesses of the conservative movement. "Part of watching Republicans try to return to power is watching ... the conservative movement eat the Republican Party, eat their electoral chances over and over and over again."

On election night, conservatives-eating-Republicans resulted in an 18-point landslide for McDonnell, who beat his Democratic opponent 59 percent to 41 percent – winning two-thirds of all independent voters and ending the Democrats' eight-year reign in the Virginia governor's office. Republicans swept all statewide offices for the first time in 12 years, winning the races for lieutenant governor and attorney general, as well as assembly seats, garbage inspector, dog catcher and anything else Virginians could vote for. To paraphrase a pompous blowhard: Goodbye, Mr. Democrat. And that's not the most exciting news from election night! Astoundingly, Jon Corzine, the incumbent governor of heavily Democratic New Jersey – a state that Barack Obama won by 16 points just a year ago – lost by 5 points. [CLICK HERE TO READ MORE]

The Grating Communicator ~ By Ann Coulter

From WorldNetDaily

By Ann Coulter Posted: October 21, 2009 ~ 6:11 pm Eastern © 2009 The Obama administration has attacked Fox News in order to prevent government corruption stories broken on Fox from bleeding into the other media, which are all-consumed with daily updates on Levi Johnston's Playgirl spread and Carrie Prejean's breast implants. That's understandable. But I think the administration should have picked someone other than David Axelrod to deliver the claim that Fox News is "not really news," inasmuch as Axelrod was behind the leak of scurrilous allegations in Jack Ryan's sealed divorce papers when he was running for a Senate seat against Obama. Talk about vicious personal gossip. Now that Fox has been branded an untouchable, the teacher's-pet media are jubilant. In Newsweek, Jacob Weisberg wrote a column saying liberals should refuse to appear on Fox News, pointedly concluding, "And no, I don't want to come on 'The O'Reilly Factor' to discuss it." Considering that Weisberg is a 107-pound weasel with a speech impediment, this is on the order of Weisberg's announcing that he's not interested in appearing in the next "Ocean's Eleven" movie with George Clooney. The strangest thing about all the invective against Fox is that it is happening in a world that contains MSNBC. At least Fox News prime-time hosts, and many of their guests, know something about politics. MSNBC's prime-time lineup presents an array of people who sound like earnest college kids who just walked up to a Common Cause table, and the sum-total of what they know about politics is what they read in the brochures. In the past week, both Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann have rolled out the Willie Horton ad, claiming that it marked the beginning of vicious personal attacks in politics, as opposed to what it was: The most devastatingly relevant campaign commercial in all of American history. [CLICK HERE TO READ MORE]

Uhm, uhm, uhm, Barack Hussein Obama ... ~ By Craig R. Smith

From WorldNetDaily

By Craig R. Smith Posted: September 28, 2009 ~ 1:00 am Eastern © 2009 Last week the dedicated men and women of the FBI and local law enforcement displayed extraordinary skill and professionalism in thwarting several plots hatched right here in America by terrorists determined to destroy us. We all owe a tremendous amount of gratitude for the ongoing daily efforts to protect us from the ever-present threat of radical Islamists. Wiretaps of overseas communications and constant surveillance of suspected bad guys are providing safety I believe many in America take for granted. But I have a message for the yet-to-be-caught terrorists still in America: If you really want to hurt our nation, drop your plans of any future attacks. The party of big government led by Mr. Obama is doing a fine job of destroying our country as we know it. He and his party have us more torn apart than ever before. Another attack would only bring us together – just as it did on Sept. 12, 2001. We would stand shoulder-to-shoulder in solidarity against you, so you would be fools to attack us again. The Left is doing the work for you. With legislation ranging from expensive cap and trade based on flimsy science to the government takeover of health care , Americans are now viewing their government as a true threat to our personal liberty and freedom, both of which are the very foundation of America's greatness. I can't imagine going to jail for not having health insurance , but the Democratic Party sure can. I can't imagine paying more for energy just because Al Gore and his pals want to make billions on naiveté. George Soros and Keith Olbermann sure can. [CLICK HERE TO READ MORE]

Character assassin Olbermann ~ By Joseph Farah

By Joseph Farah © 2009 Frankly, I can't believe this guy is still on the air. Keith Olbermann, that is. But then again, is he really? If you host a nightly program built around character assassination, partisan smears, predictable ideological tripe, party-line goose-stepping and self-important, self-righteous political correctness and nobody but the gang at Daily Kos and the Huffington Post watches, are you really on the air? I don't like to spend too much time discussing the outrages of Keith Olbermann. For the most part, he's pretty irrelevant – toiling away at a cable network that continues to lose viewership even from its hard-core base of those suffering from what V.I. Lenin characterized as "infantile left-wing disorder." Nevertheless, for the great masses who don't watch MSNBC, I think it's important you know what Olbermann did last week: He blamed the Fox News Channel for the murder of late-term abortionist George Tiller. [Continue reading]

Related story: The lying non-entity ~ By Joseph Farah Digg story

The lying non-entity ~ By Joseph Farah

By Joseph Farah © 2009 I admit it. Two columns in a row about a lying non-entity is a bit much. But sometimes it's necessary to get down in the gutter with the likes of Keith Olbermann to set the record straight. After all, there are at least a dozen or so people who watch this cretin and believe what he says. I predict, with some assurance, more people will watch him below than on his MSNBC show. But at least here, he will be shown for the deceiver he truly is.

Notice the offense for which WND columnist Jill Stanek is honored with the "Worst Person in the World" award. It is for publishing the names and addresses of the two surviving late-term abortionists in America following George Tiller's murder. Having previously indicted the Fox News Channel for complicity in Tiller's murder, Olbermann attempts to persuade his viewers to believe WND and Stanek are enticing other assassins to some kind of late-term abortionist final solution. There's just one problem with Olbermann's thesis. Neither WND nor Stanek has ever published the addresses of these scalpel-wielding fiends who publish their own addresses in advertisements for their bloody services all over the World Wide Web. [Continue reading]

Related story: Character assassin Olbermann Digg story

Olbermann's plastic ivy - By Ann Coulter

Keith Olbermann just had to point out that Rush Limbaugh made an error in his CPAC speech. There is utterly no purpose to these lame "gotchas," except that Olbermann is so insecure and wants people to know how scary-smart he is. That's why Keith is always talking about his "Ivy-league" education at a school that isn't: The Cornell ag school. read more | digg story