Why Does the Media Pay Attention to Lying Scum Bags Like Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe

Why Does the Media Pay Attention to Lying Scum Bags Like Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe

Andrew Breitbart and convicted criminal James O'Keefe are promising to unveil another video. In assessing Breitbart and O'Keefe's claims, media should keep in mind their record of dishonest and illegal practices and their failed attempt to show that ACORN was engaging in criminal behavior.

Specifically:

Breitbart's "strategy": Withhold evidence and "deprive" people of "information"

O'Keefe is an admitted criminal

Breitbart and O'Keefe's ACORN scam exposed no criminality

Breitbart and O'Keefe criticized for selective editing and manipulating video

O'Keefe's video methods slammed by former employer

Breitbart and O'Keefe repeatedly misrepresented ACORN tapes

Breitbart threatened to release more tapes during election unless DOJ investigates ACORN

O'Keefe has received significant backing from right-wing funders

Since when did it become good journalistic ethics to act as a megaphone for wacko serial lying political hacks. When did the media stop acting as fact checkers on the loons.

Jon Stewart Debunks Glenn Beck's Claim That He Alone Showed Israeli Flotilla Raid Footage (VIDEO)

Republicans Nearly Kill Civil Rights Enforcement. Obama Revives it

Obama Resurrects DOJ's Civil Rights Division

As the Washington Post detailed Friday, the devastation of the Civil Right Division in George W. Bush's wake was staggering:

Nearly 70 percent of the lawyers had left between 2003 and 2007, a mass exodus that came during allegations the Bush administration was politicizing hiring. Internal watchdogs concluded that the division's former head had refused to hire lawyers he labeled "commies" and had transferred one for allegedly writing in "ebonics," allegations the official denied. Civil rights groups said the unit had lost its traditional civil rights focus.

But now, the Obama administration is resurrecting the agency created in 1957 to protect the Freedom Riders and students trying to integrate public schools. The division has a renewed new focus on the enforcement of employment, disability rights and other anti-discrimination laws, and the resources to go along with it:

Hate crimes and police misconduct are a renewed focus, and several section chiefs from the George W. Bush era have left. More than 30 people have been or are about to be hired as part of an 18 percent budget increase this year, the largest in the division's history. It will bring in 102 new people.

And in recent weeks, the division has taken a leading role in preparing for a possible Obama administration lawsuit against Arizona over the state's new immigration law.

As division chief Thomas E. Perez put it, "We had some healing to do." Perez added:

"We had to restore the partnership between the career staff and the political leadership. And frankly, certain civil rights laws were not being enforced."

Among those laws was something called the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Under President Bush, the Justice Department became an essential tool in the Republican strategy to suppress minority (read "Democratic") voter turnout through unprecedented redistricting, onerous registration hurdles, hyper-partisan prosecutors, polling place chicanery and draconian voter identification laws.


More details at the link. Conservatives only like freedom when it's their narrowly defined brand and even than freedom is only for the chosen few.

Helen Thomas Has Apologized; When Will Huckabee?

Hearst reporter Helen Thomas has rightly received criticism for her offensive comment that Israelis should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home [to] Poland and Germany and America.” Though Thomas quickly apologized, issuing a written statement that said “I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians,” some conservatives are still calling for her to be fired.

Sam Stein reports that one of those critics is former Bush Press Secretary Ari Fleischer, who said in an email that Thomas “should lose her job over this“:

“As someone who is Jewish, and as someone who worked with her and used to like her, I find this appalling,” [Fleischer said.]

“She is advocating religious cleansing. How can Hearst stand by her? If a journalist, or a columnist, said the same thing about blacks or Hispanics, they would already have lost their jobs.”

But are conservatives applying the religious cleansing standard equally? Consider Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has on numerous occasions voiced his opposition to a Palestinian state in Palestine, saying that “the Palestinians can create their homeland in many other places in the Middle East, outside Israel.” Like the most radical right-wing elements in Israel, Huckabee’s conception of Israel includes Palestinian lands occupied by Israeli forces in 1967.

Huckabee has never apologized for any of this, for the simple reason that this is what he really thinks: The Palestinians should be transferred out of Palestine. As far as I know, no conservatives have ever criticized Huckabee for these comments, let alone called on Fox News to fire him. I look forward to Ari Fleischer doing that very soon.

George W. Bush Confesses to War Crimes

Bush's Glib Waterboarding Admission Sparks Outrage

George W. Bush's casual acknowledgment Wednesday that he had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed waterboarded -- and would do it again -- has horrified some former military and intelligence officials who argue that the former president doesn't seem to understand the gravity of what he is admitting.

Waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, is "unequivocably torture", said retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years.

"As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War," Irvine said. "Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life."

Irvine told the Huffington Post that Bush doesn't appreciate how much harm his countenancing of torture has done to his country.

"Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," Bush told a Grand Rapids audience Wednesday, of the self-professed 9/11 mastermind. "I'd do it again to save lives."

But, Irvine said: "When he decided to do it the first time, he launched the nation down a disastrous road, and we will continue to pay dearly for the damage his decision has caused.

"We are seen by the rest of the world as having abandoned our commitment to international law. We have forfeited enormous amounts of moral leadership as the world's sole remaining superpower. And it puts American troops in greater danger -- and unnecessary danger."

Bush thus committed war crimes. Also strange that Bush thinks that torture saved lives. There has never been any documentation what so ever torturing any prisoner at GITMO or in Afghanistan saved lives. KLM made lots of confessions, as tortured people usually do. He made most of the stuff up and the little bit of good information he did provide was given before the torture started.

GLENN BECK, SINCERE HUCKSTER-LUNATIC

But I don't think Beck's self-image as a businessman is at odds with his beliefs about religion and politics. He doesn't know enough about the world to understand why his grand-unified theory of a 100-year progressive plot is a laughingstock outside of his own TV and radio studios. I think he actually believes God wants him to make all this money and fight dirty for right wing causes. Does he really believe God is speaking to and through him? I don't know. But in one of his books, he describes Heaven as a place where everybody "can make as much money as they want," and he does believe that God basically wrote the Constitution in 1787.

The mistake Beck's critics often make is to say, "Okay, so if his main self-identity is as a media and entertainment mogul, then everything else is just an act." There's no need to choose just one door. On his worldview's own terms, there's no contradiction between his enormous success, his entertainment toolbox, and his bat-in-the-bell tower politics. What's shocking to me is how completely his fans swallow the "selfless patriot" act.

Super Smart Conservatives Have Found Another Watergate

Republicans have fantasized about a Democratic "Watergate" for decades. Can they still remember the real thing?

The quest for a Democratic Watergate that has preoccupied Republicans for more than three decades may never achieve fulfillment but surely will never end. Impeaching Bill Clinton promised satisfaction only to bring deeper frustration -- which must be one of the many reasons that we now hear politicians and pundits announcing the arrival of " Obama's Watergate" (and also why they never say " Obama's Whitewater" ).

So far, the alleged scandal that supposedly threatens the Obama presidency doesn't amount to much: a verbal mention of a nonpaying advisory post to Rep. Joe Sestak in a conversation with Clinton, and an e-mail mentioning three administration jobs to Andrew Romanoff, the Democratic speaker of the Colorado state assembly, dangled in order to dissuade them from entering primaries against incumbents favored by the president.

If clumsiness were an indictable offense, then the White House officials responsible for those overtures might well be in trouble. But when people compare such ham-handed deal-making with the crimes of Watergate, it can only mean that they don't remember what the country and the Constitution endured under Nixon -- or that they cynically assume nobody else does.

Some of us do, however. And for those who don't, or who never learned the true history of the Nixon era in high school or college, there are several gripping books, including "The Wars of Watergate" by Stanley Kutler, "Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years" by the late Tony Lukas, and of course Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's classic "All the President's Men." (The latter is also the title of a wonderful movie that outlines the conspiracy but necessarily omits most of the grim details.)

" Watergate" was the place where the president's henchmen staged a "third-rate burglary" of the Democratic National Committee headquarters on a June night in 1972, but its historical definition is the vast gangsterism of the Nixon regime. Watergate involved no political job offers, but a series of burglaries, warrantless domestic wiretaps, illegal spying, campaign dirty tricks, and assorted acts of thuggery by a group of goons whose leaders included G. Gordon Liddy and the late E. Howard Hunt. Watergate meant a coverup of those felonies with more felonies, set up by lawyers and bureaucrats who collected cash payoffs from major corporations and then handed out hush money and secret campaign slush funds. Watergate implicated dozens of perps, from Hunt and Liddy all the way up to the president, his palace guard, and his crooked minions at the highest levels of the Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA.

Joe has it about 99% right. The fact is that Andrew Romanoff inquired about a job with the administration.

New York Times Flubs Coverage of Dartmouth Health Care Costs Story

Glenn Beck pins blame for 9/11 attacks on Saudi Prince, major News Corp. stakeholder

Rupert Murdoch may be getting an unpleasant phone call soon, if it hasn't come already.

That's because Glenn Beck, the Fox News network's popular opinion host, just blamed the world's 19th richest man -- Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud -- for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

As it happens, the Prince is a major investor in News Corporation; at seven percent of the company's shares, he's second only to Rupert Murdoch himself. Fox News is just one piece of the massive corporation. Murdoch, likewise, owns nine percent of the Prince's Arab media empire Rotana.

Most people would call the situation awkward, to say the least.

Oil and Conservatives Do Mix - BP hires Cheney spokeswoman to lead PR effort

BP hires Cheney spokeswoman to lead PR effort

As if the water wasn't deep -- or oily -- enough around British Petroleum's public relations, the company has hired a former spokeswoman for Vice President Dick Cheney to be its public face for the disaster.

Anne Womack Kolton, former head of public affairs at the Department of Energy and Cheney's onetime campaign press secretary, will take the baton from BP this week.

While at Cheney's side, Kolton defended the secrecy of the Vice President's Energy task force, a group which held secretive meetings with energy company executives. When the General Accounting Office -- the research arm of Congress -- sued the Administraton for records relating to Cheney's meetings, Kolton (then Womack) was at his side.

"We are ready to defend our principles in court," she said. "This goes to the heart of the presidency and to the ability of the president and vice president to receive candid, discreet advice."

A blogger at the liberal web site Daily Kos notes that BP was reportedly among one of the companies that Cheney met with.

The BP Horizon well in the Gulf was made during the Bush administration. They never expressed any concerns about requiring a back up shut off valve.

Conservatives Doing Their Best for Arizona

Arizona ‘BUYcott’ organizer: ‘ID-ing everybody’ will make the ‘illegal criminals disappear like cockroaches.’

Today, the Arizona Republic reported that “the exodus of illegal and legal immigrants predicted by some as a result of Arizona’s tough new immigration law is expected to hurt a variety of businesses that directly and indirectly cater to immigrant populations.” If all of Arizona’s undocumented immigrants “disappeared,” the state could lose $26.4 billion in economic activity, $11.7 billion in gross state product, and approximately 140,324 jobs. Rather than worrying about the economic effects of the law itself, Tea Party Nation launched the separate “National Arizona BUYcott” campaign last month at the Winning Back America Conference, which was headlined by Liz Cheney, Fred Thompson, and Sarah Palin. Gina Loudon, the St. Louis tea party supporter who credits herself with coming up the buycott idea, has said “the goal is to render boycotts ineffective.” The personal financing website, mint.com, has estimated that Arizona’s fragile tourism industry has already lost $6-10 million in cancellations since the bill was signed into law.

The rule of law is certainly important - once in a while when it is convenient wedge conservatives find a law of two they like. In this case - during the slow recovery of a bad recession, caused primarily by Republican economic policies that shipped jobs to China and ran up the largest debt in the nation's history - they hand off a bonus prize to Arizona - the loss of almost $12 billion dollars. Yep, these conservatives are patriots all right, we just need to find out what country they are patriots of.

O'Keefe and Breitbart Confess to Crime. ABC News Helps Them Lie

O'Keefe and Breitbart launch Great American Rehab Tour on GMA

In fact, NewsCorpse compares O'Keefe's latest report to reality. As usual, there are pesky little details that expose his bias and tendency to lie yet again, and expose O'Keefe to the possibility of additional criminal charges.

So what we have here is O’Keefe confessing again to a crime. He knowingly signed the time sheet despite his having lied on it about the hours he worked. He knew that it was unlawful to do so, yet he did it anyway. This couldn’t be a more clear cut case. What’s more, there are laws against interfering with the conduct of the census. Since O’Keefe never intended to provide the services to which he agreed upon on employment, he could be liable for additional charges in that regard. And that’s not all. The Washington Post reports that O’Keefe may also have broken laws relating to surreptitiously recording Commerce Department conversations.

Update: Media Matters has an excellent summary, too.

This is the conservative media at work with the help of the so-called liberal media. ABC recites discredited report about ACORN and doesn't question the veracity of a couple of known liars, one of whom is a convicted felon.