#WarOnJournalism: Who’s been snooping in Sharyl Attkisson’s computers?

Hmmm… Maybe FOX’s James Rosen and the AP aren’t the only targets of the White House’s ire? Here’s a radio interview CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson did with WPHT’s Chris Stigall in which she mentions unknown parties have accessed her home and work computers since February, 2011:

You’ll recall that both my blog-buddy ST and I have mentioned Attkisson several times on our blogs for being one of the few remaining MSM reporters actually willing to hold the administration to account for their actions, Fast & Furious and Benghazi being the most notable. She so got under their skin that, as Allahpundit reminds us, a DoJ official screamed and cursed at her over the phone. Attkisson herself has recently said that she has been shut out by her White House sources. There have been rumors (1) that David Rhodes, president of CBS News  and brother of Ben Rhodes, a would-be fiction writer and now an Obama national security deeply involved in Benghazi, might fire Attkisson for being too aggressive in her coverage of the White House… where his brother works.

Keep in mind that the DoJ got access to James Rosen’s GMail account by affirming to a judge that they believed he was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act, and then got a court order forbidding Google from telling Rosen of the access. And now we hear that somebody has been accessing Attkisson’s computers.

What was going on in February 2011? The Fast and Furious scandal, having been rumored for months, was finally breaking into the mainstream news, and Attkisson was filing stories that weren’t settling for administration spin.

And about that same time, she gets hacked.

What. A. Coincidence.

Footnote:
(1) Attkisson has said there has been no pressure from any CBS News executive regarding her Benghazi reporting.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Shocker: Lying weasel Jay Carney caught lying like a weasel about #Benghazi

US Consulate, Benghazi

And I think the shocking thing is that it’s the MSM exposing him (emphases added):

When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.

ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.

White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.

That would appear to directly contradict* what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.

“Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened,” Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012. “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

*(MSM-speak for “Jay Carney is a lying weasel.”)

We already know from The Weekly Standard that State and a failed fiction writer now working as an Obama national-security aide were heavily involved in “editing” the initial CIA talking points. This ABC report shows how many iterations they went through before the bowdlerized version was handed to Ambassador Rice for her role as designated mouthpiece the following Sunday. Then, when the talking points were shown to be a fiction, Carney went before the public to lie about their origins. The only question is was he knowingly lying, or was he played for a sap?

But, annoying as it is to have yet another example of the administration’s dishonesty over Benghazi (1) come out, the real story in my opinion here isn’t that a press secretary lied to cover his boss and his top aides. No, the real story here is that the MSM is finally getting interested in Benghazi, finally “uncovering” all these shocking revelations only after Obama has been safely reelected.

They’ve done their job, you see. They pushed Obama over the finish line twice, so now they can go back to pretending they’re objective journalists. There’s no need to “play Pravda” anymore, at least in this case. Now they can break news of things they could easily have discovered back in September, October, and November, except that it might have hurt Obama’s reelection chances.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad they’re finally doing their jobs. Benghazi is a huge scandal and the story has to be told. But don’t expect me to praise them for “holding the powerful accountable,” when their self-serving cynicism (2) is so dazzling.

RELATED: The Right Sphere reaches back in time to remind us that Carney’s boss was telling the same lies on a national stage just before the election.

Footnote:
(1) Remember, the administration knew what happened that night from their people on the ground. The jihadis themselves knew what happened; it was their operation. The only people being deceived here were us.
(2) There are a few exceptions, of course, but the corruption of the MSM as an institution is spread far and wide.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

You know the liberal media is desperate to support Obama when…

“Under state control”

They misquote their own stories to spread administration propaganda:

This morning on Politico’s Playbook, [Mike] Allen quoted a story from his own website:

“Monday, the bulk of the furlough notices will start going out. … [E]stimates include 12 furlough days at the Bureau of Prisons, 13 at the Environmental Protection Agency and 15 at the Agriculture Department. Forced days off will mean cuts in annual pay of about 10 percent. Uniformed military personnel as well as employees … ‘Everything hits the fan on April 1,’ said Scott Lilly, former Democratic staff director to the House Appropriations Committee.“

From reading that, you’d imagine that uniformed military and employees will be furloughed. There’s only one problem. The original article at Politico, by Darren Samuelsohn and Ginger Gibson, says precisely the opposite:

“Uniformed military personnel as well as employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the U.S. Postal Service are exempt from the furloughs.”

The bold portion had been replaced by an ellipsis, totally changing the meaning of the sentence. That’s not journalism, that’s a memo from the Ministry of Truth.

Is it any wonder that the public’s trust in the major media is tanking?

RELATED: Consider this another example of what ST noted yesterday about “media lapdogs.”

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

The progressive war on the middle class: Kansas vs. California

A few days ago, reactionary liberal E.J. Dionne wrote a piece in The Washington Post, part of which he devoted to bashing states that implement conservative fiscal and governance policies. And he singled out Kansas, the state with perhaps the most “Tea Party” government, for a ritual “two minutes hate:”

In some states where Republicans control all the levers of power, they are rushing ahead with astonishingly right-wing programs to eviscerate government while shifting the tax burden toward the middle class and the poor and away from the wealthy. In trying to build the Koch brothers’ dystopias, they are turning states in laboratories of reaction.

As Neil King Jr. and Mark Peters reported in a Wall Street Journal article on the “Red State model,” Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback has slashed both income taxes and spending. This drew fire from moderate and moderately conservative Republican legislators, whom he then helped purge in primaries.

Note the requisite invocation of the demon Koch brothers, lest any of the progressive faithful miss the clue that these conservative reforms are EVIL!!!

Anyway, Washington Examiner columnist Conn Carroll read Dionne’s screed and did something increasingly unusual for journalists these days: he looked for facts before turning on his word-processing program. Imagine that.

So, first looked at how things are going in Mordor Kansas:

If Dionne were to bother to visit Kansas, he would find a state with an unemployment rate of 5.4 percent, a full 2.5 points below the nation’s 7.9 percent average. Despite “eviscerated” state government spending, Kansas’ fourth- and eighth-graders beat the national average in both math and reading scores. The state’s 11.2 percent poverty rate is also well below the national 15.8 percent national average. And despite all those evil tax cuts for the rich, the gap between Kansas’ wealthiest and poorest citizens is also much smaller than the national average.

The most recent Jayhawk Poll showed Brownback enjoying a 55 percent to 37 percent approval rating. But I’m sure the backlash Dionne predicted is just around the corner.

Then he compared it to the progressive Paradise, my beloved California, where Democrats control the governor’s office and have super-majorities in the legislature:

At 9.8 percent, unemployment is a bit higher in the Golden State then in Kansas — or the rest of the country, for that matter. Despite California spending far more per student than most states, its fourth- and eighth-graders perform far worse on reading and math proficiency scores than the average American students. A third of all the welfare recipients in the United States live in California, and the Census Bureau reports that the state also has the nation’s highest poverty rate. Almost one-quarter (23.5 percent) of Californians live below the poverty line.

And there is plenty of wealth to go around in California, but it also has one of the nation’s highest levels of income inequality. According to the Census Bureau, it is getting more and not less unequal.

Oh, and Governor Brown’s claims that our budget is at last balanced turned out to be a total lie, too. No word about Kansas’ budget, but I’m willing to bet they’re in better far fiscal shape than we are. Even Albania is.

Anyway, based on just this brief comparison of two states that most embody, respectively, what Walter Mead has called the Red and Blue models of government, if anyone is waging a war on the middle class, it’s the liberal/progressive/statist Democrats. Instead of looking at conservative states and shrieking “My God, what are you people doing,” Dionne should look to places where “his way” rules and ask “My God, what have we done?”

PS: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. That California isn’t yet in flaming ruins after decades of progressive misrule is evidence of just how powerful this state’s natural economy was and could be, again, if only the oligarchs in Sacramento would pull their heads out of their collective backsides — and their hands out of our wallets.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Media scrubs left-wing manifesto of fugitive cop-killer — Updated

You may have heard there’s a manhunt underway in California and Nevada for Christopher Dorner, a former LAPD officer who’s gone on a rampage that’s left at least three dead:

As authorities scoured Southern California for an ex-Los Angeles police officer suspected of shooting three officers, killing one, officials broadened the alert to include the entire state Thursday morning, and authorities in Nevada were warned.

The California Highway Patrol originally issued a “blue alert” for nine Southern California counties, warning that suspect Christoper Jordan Dorner, 33, was considered “armed and extremely dangerous,” early Thursday. Shortly after 9 a.m. that alert was broadened to the include the entire state.

A statewide “high alert” was sent out about 8:30 a.m. across Nevada for Dorner, authorities with the Nevada Highway Patrol said.

Arizona authorities were aware of the situation but had not issued any formal alerts, said Officer Carrick Cook with the state’s Department of Public Safety.

Local, state and federal authorities are involved in the search for Dorner, who threatened “unconventional and asymmetrical warfare” against police in an online manifesto. Dorner is also wanted in connection with a double homicide Sunday in Irvine, where the daughter of a retired LAPD captain and her fiance were killed.

The search intensified early Thursday after three police officers were shot in Riverside County and Dorner was identified as a possible suspect.

This is terrible news, and I hope they catch this mad dog before he kills anyone else. If he should be killed in the process, I’ll not mourn.

What’s scandalous, though, is the media’ scrubbing of a killer’s online “manifesto” leaving out significant portions that announce a left wing, pro-Obama, pro-gun control belief system. Multiple TV, radio, and newpaper outlets have suppressed this information. Ostensibly, it’s to protect other potential targets named in the manifesto, but the information about his agenda could be given out without releasing the names. But that wouldn’t serve The Narrative.

Read Sooper Mexican‘s post for the full story, but here’s an example:

Pro Gun Control:

Who in there right mind needs a [...] silencer!!! who needs a freaking SBR AR15? No one. No more Virginia Tech, Columbine HS, Wisconsin temple, Aurora theatre, Portland malls, Tucson rally, Newtown Sandy Hook. Whether by executive order or thru a bi-partisan congress an assault weapons ban needs to be re-instituted. Period!!!

Mia Farrow said it best. “Gun control is no longer debatable, it’s not a conversation, its a moral mandate.”

Sen. Feinstein, you are doing the right thing in leading the re-institution of a national AWB. Never again should any public official state that their prayers and thoughts are with the family.

Loves Obama:

You disrespect the office of the POTUS/Presidency and Commander in Chief. You call him Kenyan, mongroid, halfrican, muslim, and FBHO when in essence you are to address him as simply, President. The same as you did to President George W. Bush and all those in the highest ranking position of our land before him. Just as I always have. You question his birth certificate, his educational and professional accomplishments, and his judeo-christian beliefs. You make disparaging remarks about his dead parents. You never questioned the fact that his former opponent, the honorable Senator John McCain, was not born in the CONUS or that Bush had a C average in his undergrad. Electoral Candidates children (Romney) state they want to punch the president in the face during debates with no formal repercussions. No one even questioned the fact that the son just made a criminal threat toward the President. You call his wife a Wookie. Off the record, I love your new bangs, Mrs. Obama.

The guy is obviously a lunatic, just as was Jared Loughner, the man who shot Congresswoman Giffords. If we apply the same standards in Dorner’s case that the Left applied to Loughner’s, then it would make as much sense to say all the people he praises are as to blame for Dorner’s rampage as Sarah Palin was for the shooting of Giffords.

Which, of course, would be nuts to do, something we leave to progressives.

But, again, the real scandal here is the MSM’s apparent suppression of genuine news in what can only be described as agenda journalism: in this case, hiding anything that might harm or confuse the effort to a) press for needless new restrictions on the right to bear arms, and b) the narrative about dangerous right-wing extremists.

Thought experiment: If Dorner had been a populist conservative, a second amendment supporter, or an Obama-hater, would any of those ten pages cut from his manifesto been left out, other than the names of his targets?

No, I don’t think so, either.

Good work by Sooper Mexican for bringing this to public attention!

UPDATE: The LA Times is now hosting 18 pages of the 21 page document, including much of the ranting that had earlier been excised.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

MSM bias against the 2nd amendment quantified

There’s an interesting item at PJ Media reporting on a Media Research Center study about MSM hysteria over the “gun violence” crisis (1). MRC took a look at the broadcast networks’ news coverage after the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre, and what they found is intriguing:

MRC analysts reviewed all 216 gun policy stories on the Big Three networks’ evening (ABC’s World News, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News) and morning show programs (ABC’s Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, NBC’s Today), beginning with the evening of the shooting through January 17, the morning after Obama made his speech surrounded by children who had sent him letters pushing for more gun control.

The results show staggering imbalance:

    ■ Stories advocating more gun control outnumbered stories opposing gun control by 99 to 12, or a ratio of 8 to 1.
    
    ■ Anti-gun soundbites were aired almost twice as frequently than pro-gun ones (228 to 134).
    
    ■ Gun control advocates appeared as guests on 26 occasions, compared to 7 times for gun rights advocates.

CBS was the most stridently anti-gun rights network. By a whopping 22 to 1 ratio, CBS aired more stories that favored gun control (44) to those that supported gun rights (2), with 37 neutral pieces. ABC aired almost six times as many stories that favored gun control (29) to those that favored gun rights, with 25 neutral stories. NBC pushed for more gun control in 26 of their stories to just 5 that tilted in favor of gun rights for a 5 to 1 ratio, with 43 neutral segments.

That’s not news reporting, that’s agenda journalism at its worst. And I’m willing to bet many at the “alphabet networks” don’t even realize they’re doing this and would be appalled to be faced with the reality. They live and work in left-liberal echo chambers while thinking of themselves as guardians of the truth.  (2)

Of course, on the other hand, I’m sure we can all point to reporters who see agenda journalism as the whole point — it’s a crusade, not a straight reporting of facts. Bernard Goldberg (formerly of CBS) has written a  great book on this.

The problem is that so many people still get the majority of their information from the broadcast networks, the range of opinion on which is so slanted, that they themselves are trapped in that same echo chamber — a captive audience. It’s small wonder that so many people think more gun control is the answer, when they rarely get to hear intelligent advocates for the pro-2nd amendment argument, instead being shown kooks like Alex Jones. (3)

It’s a tremendous hill to climb to try to overcome this cacophony of media-generated hysteria, where facts are less-valued than feeling, but we have to try nonetheless.

Footnotes:
(1) As in that progressive favorite, “never let a crisis go to waste.” Even if you have to make one up.
(2) And there are some who really do play it straight, but far too few, sadly.
(3) Dear CS monitor: Alex Jones is not “ultra-conservative.” He’s a conspiracy-theory loon, and that’s it.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Journalistic integrity at CBS? Not when it comes to competitors…

Or their innovative technology:

Recently, I found myself thrust in the middle of a kerfuffle when CBS ordered its subsidiary CNET to remove a product from consideration for a “Best of CES” award at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show. I can never recall any major media company, much less a top-tier First Amendment protector like CBS, publicly mandating an editorial decision based on business interests. The bizarre aggressiveness of CBS executives against the Hopper Sling disturbed me as it not only tainted the CES awards, but it hurt one of the world’s classiest media companies.

The controversy started when Dish introduced the Hopper, a product that allows Dish subscribers to skip through TV commercials under certain conditions. CBS and other networks sued Dish to stop the sale of the Hopper, despite a landmark 1984 Supreme Court decision that innovative products like the Hopper cannot be blocked by copyright owners if the product has many uses. Broadcasters never even challenged the legality of the TiVo personal video recorder back in 1999, which allows easy commercial fast-forwarding.

While the CBS legal challenge to the Hopper case chugs along, Dish used the 2013 International CES, to introduce the Hopper Sling, which allows Dish subscribers to stream one channel over the Internet while another is playing on the home TV. As owners of CES, we had an agreement with CNET to cover the show and recognize the best products. The CNET editorial team identified the Hopper Sling as one of the most innovative products of the show, but CBS brass ordered the CNET editors to remove it from CNET’s website.

For a top media company to impose editorial control so publicly for business reasons created a firestorm, resulting in stories in USA TODAY, Wall Street Journal and several tech blogs. CBS’ actions are puzzling, and troubling, on many levels.

One CNET reporter has already resigned over this, and there may be more on the way. While this is business and not politics, it should serve as a reminder to us all that the MSM is willing to bend or even alter the news to meet its goals. CBS’ “classy reputation” was already tarnished by Rathergate, and NBC News’ president has resigned “under controversy.” (1) And the major media reporting on so-called man-made climate change has been nothing short of disgraceful, agenda journalism at its worst.

Thanks to the space the Internet provides alternative voices, the “gatekeeper of what’s news” function of the MSM is dying, though they still need to be watched like a hawk. As Democratic pollster Pat Caddell recently said, the media has become an “enemy of democracy.” (2)

via Instapundit

Footnote:
(1) For a devastating and nauseating example of NBC’s (and other MSM) dishonesty, have a look through my blog-buddy’s Sister Toldjah’s Trayvon Martin archive, about the persecution of George Zimmerman. She moved mountains exposing their perfidy.
(2) With exceptions for certain individual reporters. But the overall MSM “culture” stinks with corruption.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

European Union or EUSSR? Brussels demands power to regulate press, fire journalists

“Enemy of the State”

If anyone had any notion that the European Union was anything but a bureaucratic dictatorship, this should open their eyes:

A European Union report has urged tight press regulation and demanded that Brussels officials are given control of national media supervisors with new powers to enforce fines or the sacking of journalists.

The “high level” recommendations that will be used to draft future EU legislation also attack David Cameron for failing to automatically implement proposals by the Lord Justice Leveson inquiry for a state regulation of British press.

A “high level” EU panel, that includes Latvia’s former president and a former German justice minister, was ordered by Neelie Kroes, European Commission vice-president, last year to report on “media freedom and pluralism”. It has concluded that it is time to introduce new rules to rein in the press.

“All EU countries should have independent media councils,” the report concluded.

“Media councils should have real enforcement powers, such as the imposition of fines, orders for printed or broadcast apologies, or removal of journalistic status.”

As well as setting up state regulators with draconian powers, the panel also recommended that the European Commission be placed in overall control in order to ensure that the new watchdogs do not breach EU laws.

(Emphases added)

I’m sure these new powers, if granted, will be used only for the common good, to ensure fair, sensitive journalism — as determined by a bunch of Eurocrats.

The danger of this is obvious: the power to fine or fire is the power to dictate, and the only reporters to retain their jobs will be those who say things pleasing to the mandarins in Brussels. It would be the death knell of free speech in Europe, for free speech is meaningless if it doesn’t include the right to say things that make the powerful uncomfortable, or even simply to offend. A free, unfettered press is essential to a democratic society, and if the press is fettered, so is the citizen, who becomes a subject. The society is no longer free.

The article points out that these proposed regulations are aimed largely at the British press, which has a large Euro-skeptic element and regularly ticks off the European Union elite.  Quite unsurprisingly, then, the Brussels initiative has set up howls of outrage in Britain, from whom we inherited our traditions of free speech and press freedom. With Prime Minister Cameron promising a referendum on a new arrangement, one can only hope the majority of Britons will see the danger of staying a part of this “brave new Euro-world” and vote to get the hell out.

Indeed, they may already ready be headed for the door.

PS: This article reminds me yet again how rare, fragile, and precious our traditions of free speech –the ability to speak one’s mind to the powerful without fear of reprisal– really are. In Europe, where on the Continent the governing tradition is top-down, the natural reaction of the government is to suppress annoying speech. (And in America, we see twitches of that from the Left.) Even in Australia, the people of which are our close political cousins, there is no recognized natural right of free speech. It is a right that we must not only assert and defend, but actively exercise, especially when it itself is under threat.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

#Benghazi — There are still a few genuine reporters left

The dead would like answers, too.

Some of you may recall that I’ve in the past praised Sharyl Attkisson of CBS for her work on the Fast and Furious scandal. For a long time, she was almost the only MSM reporter asking serious questions about what happened in that “felony stupid” fiasco

Sharyl’s also been digging into the massacre at our consulate in Benghazi last September 11th, in which our ambassador and three other Americans died at the hands of Al Qaeda-aligned terrorists. While she’s had plenty of questions for the White House, the most transparent administration ever has given no answers. Frustrated with the stonewalling, Attkisson yesterday took to Twitter to ask her questions before the public. Here are is a series of particular interest to me:

A Benghazi victim’s family member stated that Mrs. Clinton told him she would find and arrest whoever made the anti-Islam video. ..

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) January 22, 2013

Remember that guy who was rousted out of his home by the LA Sheriffs in the dark of the night because he had the temerity to exercise his right to free speech? (Please, the parole violation was just a fig leaf of an excuse, if that.) That’s who Attkisson is talking about.

To continue:

. Is this accurate? If so, what was Mrs. Clinton’s understanding at the time of what would be the grounds for arrest?..

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) January 22, 2013

…and…

The Administration is reported to have asked that the anti-Islamist YouTube video initially blamed in Benghazi be removed from YouTube…

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) January 22, 2013

Love this next one:

.. If true, what is the Administration’s view regarding other videos or future material that it may wish were not published, but are legal?

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) January 22, 2013

And finally…

What is the Administration’s criteria in general for requesting removal of a YouTube or other Internet video?

— Sharyl Attkisson (@SharylAttkisson) January 22, 2013

Naturally, the mooks of Chicago-on-the-Potomac have refused to answer any of these or Attkisson’s other questions.

Secretary Clinton is scheduled to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee today on the Benghazi massacre… assuming she doesn’t have another concussion. I would right a fat check to any congressman on the committee who asked Clinton these questions, refused to let her dodge answering, and demanded to know how, in her opinion, the video maker’s arrest and imprisonment comports with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and his natural right of free speech. (1)

Meanwhile, I’ll continue hoping for more real reporters like Sharyl Attkisson, instead of the progressive cheering section that comprises most of the MSM. (Not that I’ll hold my breath; none of these questions are difficult to think of. The media’s shame is that there are so few willing to ask them.)

via Ace, who has a great post on “old school journalism.”

Footnote:
(1) Again, don’t try to tell me this was all over a parole violation. If you believe that, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you.

UPDATE: Clinton has begun her opening statement — no mention of the video maker’s arrest.  As Bryan Preston concludes, it’s either “stunningly incomplete, if not blatantly dishonest.“

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

High-ranking CBS staffer calls for destruction of Republican party

Well, at least he’s being honest about his biases:

The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat.

(…)

Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize. Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents. Through a series of clarifying fights over controversial issues, he can force Republicans to either side with their coalition’s most extreme elements or cause a rift in the party that will leave it, at least temporarily, in disarray.

New tone?

That’s John Dickerson writing at Slate.  But he’s not just a frothing, nigh-ecstatic fan of Obama writing for a lefty web-zine.  As John Nolte points out at Breitbart, he’s also CBS’ political director:

Dickerson is merely being Dickerson, and  there’s no doubt he speaks for legions upon legions of those in the media today.

What is worthy of note, though, is that a CBS News’ political director is now comfortable openly calling for the destruction of the Republican Party. He obviously fears no admonitions from his colleagues or his employer. And why should he? Earlier this week, Bob Schieffer, a CBS News “living legend,” was perfectly comfortable publicly comparing the NRA to Nazis.

Ladies and gentlemen, your neutral, thoughtful Fourth Estate.

“Media bias?” What’s that?

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Gun owner outed by Journal News burglarized by thieves looking to steal his gun? NY State Senator demands action

Reblogged from Twitchy:

https://twitter.com/PetuniaTwo/status/290815648030928896

And so it begins. The Journal News shamefully published the personal information of gun permit holders in two New York counties. While such information is available via public records, this was widely believed to be a gift to criminals. And, now? One of the outed gun owners has been burglarized. And, gee, guess what may have been targeted?

Read more… 1,358 more words

Gosh, who could have foreseen this happening? Anyone with a lick of sense, that's who. This paper should be held liable in civil court for endangering people exposed by their idiotic map.

#GunControl Has LAPD produced fake “rocket launchers” before?

Following up on this story. It seems the press conference at which LAPD Chief Charlie Beck produced supposed rocket launchers as evidence of the need for stricter firearms regulations wasn’t the first time. They may even have been the same pieces:

But upon looking into this story further, it appears that Chief Beck has played this game at least once before and with what may have been the exact same device.

Back in May, Beck again paraded before the media with a “rocket launcher” he claimed his department had received during a gun buyback program. That piece, too, was clearly marked “trainer” and was incapable of ever firing any rockets.

All this raises many questions. Did the police really ever receive any such devices in its gun buyback programs? Is this just a repeat tactic that Chief Beck is using to scare the public and make it seem as if his program is working? Do the Chief and his department understand at all the the devices he keeps claiming are “rocket launchers” are really nothing but harmless plastic tubes? Why do these “rocket launchers” keep showing up in L.A. buyback programs but not anywhere else in the country? Finally, why hasn’t the media questioned Chief Beck about his repeated rocket launcher claim?

That last question is easy to answer: the LA Times, which should be the lead source for investigative journalism in the City of the Angels, is a liberal paper heavily invested in, among other leftish dogma, the necessity and wisdom of gun control. It would never occur to them (nor to our pathetic local news stations) to even slightly question Beck’s claims, because it fits their preferred narrative.

As to Huston’s other questions, I’d love to see the answers, but I’m not holding my breath.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

LAPD caught engaging in gun-control propaganda

Remember when Los Angeles’ latest gun buyback program made headlines last month because a couple of “rocket launchers” were turned in? Pretty scary right? A dramatic, powerful argument for more “smart” gun regulations, no? A perfect illustration of Senator Feinstein’s attempt to ban weapons with a “military characteristic,” don’t you think?

Only problem is, they weren’t real:

It turns out both were one-use, AT-4 grenade launchers used by the U.S. Army in anti-tank operations. Yes they are grenade launchers (not really “rocket” launchers proper) but these tubes are pre-packaged weapons that can be fired only one time and cannot be reloaded. They are one-shot only weapons. So, yes, that means the tubes the police had were completely and permanently harmless.

But even more absurdly, at least one of the tubes was a training piece and never fired a grenade and never could have. It was a device used only for showing young soldiers what such a weapon looks like. It is a hands-on training tool that is 100% inert, un-fireable, safe as a plastic kid’s toy gun.

As Paul Szoldra explains, “It is, quite literally, a long, green fiberglass tube that does nothing.”

Further, these hunks of plastic can be bought at many military surplus stores and have even turned up on on eBay in the past.

What we really have here is the LAPD making a big story out of nothing and a gaggle of Old Media lapdogs lapping up the fake story because they haven’t a clue about the topic.

And don’t tell me that no one in LAPD, not even its notoriously pro-gun control (1) Chief, Charlie Beck, knew the difference. They just thought the public would be as gullible as a MSM reporter.

Sorry, Charlie.

Footnote:
(1) Check out this CBS article for a good example of Chief Beck mouthing the party line in the face of strong evidence of a correlation between rising gun sales and a decline in gun-related injuries and deaths. And, contra the Chief, gun buybacks don’t work (PDF).

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Okay, I’m impressed. This is how you demolish the Democrats’ fiscal cliff narrative

I mean, it’s an all too rare occurrence when a news anchor actually challenges the Democrat script, but when it’s done before a cheering audience, that makes it extra special:

“That’s all you want to do. That’s it. It’s your way or the highway. Raise the rates on the rich. No other way. Your way or the highway. That’s it. That’s where we are. Thank you, Senator.”

That’s how CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo finished her interview with Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD) last week as the two went back and forth over the fiscal cliff negotiations in Washington DC. It was the first time a Democrat has really been challenged over their lack of leadership in the negotiations.

Conventional wisdom (and therefore the dominant narrative in the media) focuses on Speaker John Boehner and House Republicans being intransigent and not meeting President Obama and the Democrats for a “balanced approach.” Bartiromo exploded that narrative by challenging Cardin on ANY alternative type of revenue stream that doesn’t include raising tax rates. Cardin would not agree to any of them, thus destroying the idea that Democrats are embracing the “balanced approach.”

“So how come you’re not moving forward? What’s the problem? Because the American people are so tired of this, and they are really tired of the lawmakers thinking that the American people are stupid. You can’t keep coming on the show every week saying the same thing: ‘It’s not a balanced approach.’”

“You’re talking about $1.2 trillion in revenue, but you’re not prepared to put anything on the table. People are not stupid!”

You can read the rest and watch the video at Breitbart. In the background you’ll see floor traders cheering Bartiromo on as she dismantles Cardin. Too bad the rest of the MSM won’t take her lead when confronting Reid, Durbin, Schumer, and the rest of that rapacious crew.

By the way, can someone explain to me how this time-serving tool, Cardin, beat Dan Bongino last month?

via RBPundit

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

The Implicit Racism of Ezra Klein

Reblogged from Innocent Bystanders:

• 
• 

Ezra Klein leaps proudly into the gun control controversy, claiming that he's just presenting a list of 12 "facts" to help inform the debate. There are many things wrong with his list, but in this post I want to focus on just two:

5. America is an unusually violent country. But we’re not as violent as we used to be.

Read more… 398 more words

This is an excellent take-down of the shoddy use of statistics by the anti-2nd amendment crowd. That it also shoves a grapefruit in the face of The Washington Post's Ezra Klein is an added bonus. (via Baseball Crank)

Rule 5 Friday: south of the border edition

Sometimes it’s nice to end the work week by contemplating and appreciating beauty. Especially when we’ve already considered the tragedy of Pearl Harbor, the crushing of a small business by Leviathan, and how we’re all better off on welfare.

So, without further ado and to end the day on a happy note, Public Secrets is happy to  present the most famous weather presenter in all Mexico, Mayte Carranco:

You know, if they want to get me watching local news again…

Hmm… I may have to start a feature on Mexican weather girls.

Related: Rule 5 explained.

#FastAndFurious: The Legacy Media can take lessons from Spanish-language Univision

Fast and Furious got results, all right.

With notable exceptions, such as CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson, the mainstream media has done a horrid job covering the deadly scandal of Operation Fast and Furious, the “gunwalking” operation in which the US Government allowed thousands of weapons to fall into the hands of vicious Mexican drug cartels. These weapons killed not only two US federal agents and but –as far as we know and with more sure to come–  hundreds of Mexican citizens. It’s a scandal of epic proportions, but not all that well known to many Americans because of the media’s desperate attempts to convince us that what is really important are Mitt Romney’s tax returns.

Enter Univision, which had already raised impressed eyebrows with its hard questions to Obama over immigration. On its Aqui y Ahora show last night, Univision aired a one-hour investigative documentary on Fast and Furious, “Rapido y Furioso,” that blew the lid off this fiasco and showed clearly its human cost:

On January 30, 2010, a commando of at least 20 hit men parked themselves outside a birthday party of high school and college students in Villas de Salvarcar, Ciudad Juarez. Near midnight, the assassins, later identified as hired guns for the Mexican cartel La Linea, broke into a one-story house and opened fire on a gathering of nearly 60 teenagers. Outside, lookouts gunned down a screaming neighbor and several students who had managed to escape. Fourteen young men and women were killed, and 12 more were wounded before the hit men finally fled.

Indirectly, the United States government played a role in the massacre by supplying some of the firearms used by the cartel murderers. Three of the high caliber weapons fired that night in Villas de Salvarcar were linked to a gun tracing operation run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), according to a Mexican army document obtained exclusively by Univision News.

Univision News identified a total of 57 more previously unreported firearms that were bought by straw purchasers monitored by ATF during Operation Fast and Furious, and then recovered in Mexico in sites related to murders, kidnappings, and at least one other massacre.

Read it all, there’s oh so much more. The ABC link also has a video excerpt with subtitles, the documentary’s first ten minutes.

At PJ Media, Bob Owens notes that the documentary shows that DoJ officials knew the weapons would only be recovered at crime scenes –after people had been killed– and just brushed it off as having to “break a few eggs.”

I wonder how the families of the victims feel about that?

Owens also highlights the information Aqui y Ahora presented on other possible gunwalking operations:

Operation Castaway, run with the same bloody-minded approach as Operation Fast and Furious, provided more than 1,000 guns to cartels via the Tampa ATF. Those guns leaked out across Honduras, Colombia, and Venezuela, according to the U.S. veteran who smuggled some of the weapons, Hugh Crumpler ^[6]:

“When the ATF stopped me, they told me the guns were going to cartels,” Hugh Crumpler, a Vietnam veteran turned arms trafficker, told Univision News. “The ATF knew before I knew and had been following me for a considerable length of time. They could not have followed me for two months like they said they did, and not know the guns were going somewhere, and not want for that to be happening.”

Univision also uncovered evidence of weapons being smuggled from Texas: two gun-smuggling programs similar to Fast and Furious are rumored to have put thousands of additional weapons in the cartels’ hands in operations larger than Fast and Furious. U.S. Senator John Cornyn has repeatedly pressed the Obama administration for information about the documented trail of weapons coming from two Texas ATF areas of operations. The Department of Justice has denied the existence of such programs, despite the physical evidence of guns recovered suggesting otherwise. While the Univision report focused on guns the DOJ ran to Mexican cartels, there is enough evidence to suggest other Obama administration-sanctioned gun-walking plots arming domestic criminal gangs, such as the so-called Gangwalker plot ^[7] in Indiana, which supplied Chicago street gangs, and similar rumored operations in California, North Carolina, northern Florida, and elsewhere, which provided weapons to gangs in U.S. cities. Nor has the Univision report focused on weapons that have found their way to cartels via the State Department ^[8] or the Department of Defense.

Echoing the thoughts of an Arizona sheriff, we have to ask, how does this not make complicit officials from the president down to the field agents “accessories before the fact?” In fact, let’s be blunt: supplying these weapons to armed gangs attempting to take over territory from the Mexican federal and state governments could easily be called an act of war. We already have hundreds of casualties!

Operation Fast and Furious is an absolutely monstrous scandal, the kind we’d dismiss as bad television, if we didn’t know it was real. People need to go to jail over this, and if the Mexicans care to file for extradition, I’d be happy to oblige.

Meanwhile, Univision and its reporters are once again to be congratulated and commended for refusing to be fawning sycophants and for committing real journalism.

RELATED: Earlier posts on Operation Fast and Furious.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Pat Caddell: the MSM has become an “enemy of democracy.”

Harsh words from the former Democratic pollster and analyst in the wake of the massacre in Benghazi:

…but I fear he’s much more right than wrong.

via Legal Insurrection

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Tweet of the Day: “You wrote that with a straight with a straight face?” edition

From left-wing “pundit” Oliver Willis, a “senior fellow” at that notably unbiased paragon of journalistic integrity, Media Matters for America:

conservative media is largely about punditizing, limbaugh style, while liberal media leans much more towards actual reporting.

— Oliver Willis (@owillis) September 21, 2012

Tell me another funny one, Ollie.

Look, I don’t mind journalists advocating a point or expressing an opinion, but don’t insult my intelligence by pretending a) that you aren’t when you are and b) that the MSM isn’t heavily biased toward the progressive-statist (PDF) end of the spectrum, the political and cultural Left.

via RBPundit on Twitter

PS: Hi, Oliver. I guess blocking me wasn’t all that effective. Darn.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

The MSM has its own open-mic moment

Shades of Journolist. MSM reporters are caught on tape coordinating their questions for Mitt Romney at today’s press availability on the North African crisis:

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: …pointing out that the Republicans… *unintelligible* …Obama….

CBS REPORTER: That’s the question.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: *unintelligible*

CBS REPORTER: Yeah that’s the question. I would just say do you regret your question.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Your question? Your statement?

CBS REPORTER: I mean your statement. Not even the tone, because then he can go off on…

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And then if he does, if we can just follow up and say ‘but this morning your answer is continuing to sound…’ – *becomes unintelligble*

CBS REPORTER: You can’t say that..

**Later**

CBS REPORTER: I’m just trying to make sure that we’re just talking about, no matter who he calls on we’re covered on the one question.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Do you stand by your statement or regret your statement?

Odd. Secretary Clinton and President Obama weren’t forced to answer questions, coordinated or not, at their press “conference.”

Must be an oversight.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)