#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)

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)

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)

#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)

#Trayvon Third NBC employee fired for doctoring 911 tapes

Via PJMedia’s “The Tatler” blog, yet more evidence of the corruption of the mainstream media:

TV Newser reports that a third NBC employee has been fired for dishonestly editing George Zimmerman’s 911 call. The fired employee’s name is Lilia Luciano. The edit that she created is, if anything, even more deceptive than the NBC edit that stirred racial angles in the story of Trayvon Martin’s fatal shooting, and which has resulted in the firing of two other NBC employees.

“In a story for the “Today” show on March 20, Luciano used part of the George Zimmerman 911 call in which an entire phrase (italicized below) was taken from a later part of the conversation:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good or on drugs or something. He’s got his hand in his waistband. And he’s a black male.
Dispatcher: Are you following him?
Zimmerman: Yeah.
Dispatcher: Okay, we don’t need you to do that.”

But here is how Zimmerman’s conversation with the 911 dispatcher actually went:

“Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he white, black, or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks black.”

Luciano’s firing makes three employees fired for dishonest edits in this story at NBC; Lilia Luciano, who joined NBC from Univision 18 months ago; Jeff Burnside, the reporter and environmental activist at NBC’s Miami owned-and-operated affiliate; and another producer at NBC whom the network has not named. Their edits consistently played up race as the driving motive in George Zimmerman’s actions.

This looks like what’s called “noble cause corruption.” Assuming these “journalists” weren’t just out to gin up the most shocking story they could to boost their network’s ratings and their own careers, then it’s reasonable to speculate that they committed these crimes against ethics and trashed their own integrity because they felt they were serving a higher purpose — perhaps “fighting racism” or “the Right-wing,” or pursuing some vague, ego-stroking sense of “justice.”

Whatever.

What these fools really accomplished, however, was to do harm on two levels: first, they further degraded the already terrible reputation of the major news networks — why should anyone have a shred of trust in NBC’s news offerings after this, if they still did?

Even more important, however, is the harm done to the judicial process by these agenda-journalists.  Both Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, victim and accused, deserve justice: a fair hearing, an impartial jury, and, if need be, punishment for one and justice for the other. But how is that supposed to happen when NBC and other MSM outlets spread fantasies that can only have the effect of winding up the mob?

I’m not a fan of Sean Hannity, but he was spot on in 2008 when he said that journalism was dead. And the exposure of Ms. Luciano’s misdeeds is yet another baring of its rotted face.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Palin. Breitbart. Nightstick. Boom.

Sarah Palin took to the electronic pages of Breitbart.com, both to pay tribute to the late Andrew Breitbart and to support Breitbart’s last mission: to “vet the Prez.” In it, she not only praises her friend, but also lambastes the corrupt media he so despised for doing anything but vetting Obama. It’s Palin at her best:

Barack Obama and I both served in political office in states with a serious corruption problem. Though there is a big difference between serving as the CEO of a city, then a state, and regulating domestic energy resources, and being a liberal Community Organizer, bear with me on the comparison. The difference between my record and Barack Obama’s is that I fought the corrupt political machine my entire career (and I have twenty years of scars to prove it) on the local, state, and national level. But Obama didn’t fight the corruption he encountered. He went along with it to advance his career. Graft, cronyism, and quid pro quo are the methods of the Chicago political machine from which he emerged.

You would think the media – those watchdogs of the public trust – would be interested in this. But they refused to vet Barack Obama. With tingles up their legs, they shielded him.

If the media had done their job of vetting him, we wouldn’t have been shocked that within days after Obama’s election, his close political associate Rod Blagojevich was caught trying to sell Obama’s vacant Senate seat.

If the media had done their job of vetting him, we wouldn’t be astonished to see all the billion dollar green energy kickbacks going to his campaign cronies as the nation heads towards bankruptcy.

If the media had done their job of vetting him, we wouldn’t be surprised that Obama brought these same Chicago “pay-to-play” practices to the White House.

This corruption was entirely predictable. But the mainstream media, who work under our Constitutional right of freedom of the press which our sons and daughters fight in war zones today to protect, dropped the ball and failed America by refusing to vet their chosen candidate.

So, as Breitbart declared in his last CPAC speech, we – the everyday patriotic citizens of the United States – will do the vetting the media refused to do.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Saturday Links Fiesta

Time to clear out some backlogged links; I think you’ll find something worth reading under each category:

MEDIA:

If you’ve ever doubted that the MSM is full of hypocritical cowards, this should clear things right up: BBC Chief admits Christianity treated worse than other religions. And by “other religions,” I don’t think they mean Judaism… (via Howie)

ECONOMY:

I’ve said before that the Democrats’ policies (“Quantitative easing,” aka “printing money;” a devotion to radical environmental agendas) will cause inflation, for example in the cost of gasoline. But the Consumer Price Index (CPI) pegs inflation at a modest 3.1%. So, was I wrong? No, I wasn’t. Real inflation for the things you buy everyday is at more than 8% for the previous year. And it will get worse. (via Fausta)

Meanwhile, James Pethokoukis rips into Treasury Secretary Geithner’s arrogance and financial ignorance. I’m so glad Turbo-Tax Timmy is watching our money. Aren’t you?

PRESIDENT OBAMA:

The One has warned Iran not to call his bluff over his opposition to their development of nuclear weapons. Ed Lasky asks “Why shouldn’t they?” Hey, it’s worked so well in the past!

In light of the coming election, George Will has argued that Republicans should concentrate on capturing Congress, making Obama a relative lame-duck with a limited opportunity to do harm for the next four years. While I agree we need to take Congress to implement much-needed reforms, I strongly disagree that Obama would be a gelded president. So does Bryan Preston, in a must-read article. Three words: Supreme Court appointments.

As part of his class-warfare campaign to get reelected, Obama likes to excoriate oil companies for the supposedly obscene profits they rake in. And gullible people lap it up. At Power Line, John Hinderaker shows how much ExxonMobil puts back in to the American economy, making them a good corporate citizen, not evil.

OPERATION FAST & FURIOUS:

Here’s an excellent summary of what we know about “Gunwalker’ and the scandalous behavior of the administration, so far. Long, but very worthwhile. (via Moe Lane)

In what is one of the better examples of chutzpah I’ve seen in a while, Attorney General Eric Holder wants credit for stopping Fast and Furious. Really, this guy knows no shame.

CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson, one of the few MSM reporters giving Gunwalker serious coverage, reports that the gun used to kill ICE Agent Jaime Zapata in Mexico in 2010 also came from an ATF undercover operation. That is, it was ultimately supplied by our Department of Justice. That makes two US federal agents and over 300 Mexicans killed by “walked” guns.

I wonder if Eric Holder wants credit for that, too?

Oh, and as Mary Chastain points out, the gun that killed Mr. Zapata came from a second Gunwalker-style operation. Just how many of these fiascoes lie waiting to be discovered? Well…

MEXICO:

A potentially larger problem than Operation Fast and Furious is the danger of our southern neighbor becoming a failed state, or, at the least, the Mexican government losing control of large swathes of its territory on our mutual border. Some say that’s overstating the problem. But, what if the warning is coming from the governor legislators of a Mexican state bordering Texas? “Nuevo Leon on the verge of collapse.”

But, that’s okay. Obama and Napolitano say the border is more secure than ever.

I feel reassured, don’t you?

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Global warming headline of the year

And it’s only February:

Yes, so powerful is the effect of a trace gas that serves mainly as plant food, that it can make the world cooler while simultaneously causing dangerous warming. Call it a one-stop shop for natural disasters, all of which can be reliably blamed on Mankind, and the only solution to which is greater governmental control (1) over our economies and daily lives.

Next up: man-caused climate change causes sun to rise in West and Barack Obama to become a fan of the free market.

Global warming — is there nothing it can’t do?

And is there any way the climate alarmists could make themselves look more fatuous and desperate? Why, yes, there is.

Hat-tip to  WUWT, which notes the headline has since changed, probably out of embarrassment. And here’s a link to the original Georgia Tech press release, which climate-hysteric “journalists” predictably screwed up.

Footnote:
(1) Especially by transnational bureaucracies answerable to no one and supported by global taxes. Winning!

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Shocker: MSM fakes information in “mutant shark” story to promote climate-alarmist agenda

I knew it! I just had a feeling there was something funny going on here!

Remember the story about hybrid sharks I posted about the other day? I mocked it for it’s use of weasel words to scare the reader and push a climate-alarmist, pro-AGW agenda. The story was cited by several news outlets under different bylines (I quoted the original AFP report by writer Amy Coopes), but a Business Insider story by Dina Spector carried (for a while) an even more lurid headline:

“The World’s First Hybrid Shark Is Another Scary Sign That Global Warming Is Real”

At Watt’s Up With That, a commenter wrote directly the researcher cited in the articles, Jess Morgan, to ask her if she really said anything about shark hybridization being possibly related to global warming/climate change. Here’s her answer:

Quote not correct – I have now stated numerous times that it is extremely unlikely that climate change caused the hybridization event – however, the hybrid-Australian blacktips are now being seen further south of their known range (Australain blacktips have a tropical distribution) in cooler waters suggesting that the hybrids may have a wider temperature tolerance than their parents (ie the hybrids may be better adapted to handle changing water temperatures). That long statement is being condensed and printed as your quote below.

(Emphasis in the WUWT post)

Well, well, well. As Arte Johnson might have said, “verrry interesting… but shtinky!” Whether Spector or Coopes or someone else was the original source, and whether the misrepresentation of Morgan’s words was deliberate or unintentionally born of a do-gooder’s enthusiasm, what might have been an interesting bit of scientific reportage was transformed into street-corner preaching for the Cult of Anthropogenic Global Warming, agenda journalism of the worst sort.

It’s a prima-facie example of what Professor Bob Carter has called “noble cause corruption,” the perversion of of scientific (and other) ethics in the service of some cause or vested interest, rather than empirical truth:

Such corruption arises from the belief of a vested interest, or powerful person or group, in the moral righteousness of their cause. For example, a police officer may apprehend a person committing a crime and, stuck with a lack of incriminating evidence, proceed to manufacture it. For many social mores, of which “stopping global warming” and “saving the Great Barrier Reef” are two iconic Australian examples, it has become a common practice for evidence to be manipulated in dishonest ways, under the justification of helping to achieve a worthy end. After all, who wouldn’t want to help to “save the Great Barrier Reef”?

And this is yet another example that journalists are no more immune than cops or scientists — or anyone. It also serves as a healthy reminder to us all to read critically and, when possible, do like the commenter at WUWT and go straight to the source when something catches our eye, rather than relying on authority.

Be sure to read the whole post at WUWT. At the end, you’ll see Business Insider was forced by all the embarrassing questions to change both its headline and article text.

PS: As of this writing, AFP/Yahoo has not corrected the text of the article I originally quoted. Also, be sure to check out Bob Carter’s excellent critique of the “science” behind the theory of dangerous man-caused climate change, “Climate: The Counter-Consensus.”

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Eric Holder cracking under pressure?

The Daily Caller has been carrying lots of articles about the growing calls for Attorney General Holder’s resignation over the Fast and Furious gun-trafficking scandal. And apparently it’s getting to him: when a TDC reporter tried to ask him a question about the growing clamor, Holder snapped:

Embattled Attorney General Eric Holder today demanded The Daily Caller stop publishing articles about the growing calls in Congress for his resignation because of the failed Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking program.

As Holder’s aide was escorting the attorney general offstage following his remarks Tuesday afternoon at the White House, a Daily Caller reporter introduced himself and shook Holder’s hand. The reporter asked him for a response to the growing chorus of federal legislators demanding his resignation.

Holder stepped towards the exit, then turned around, stepped back toward the reporter, and sternly said, “You guys need to — you need to stop this. It’s not an organic thing that’s just happening. You guys are behind it.”

Holder then walked offstage without answering TheDC’s request for comment about calls for his resignation.

Visit TDC for the video.

I honestly feel sorry for our Attorney General; after all, it’s not easy being an admitted incompetent who doesn’t read memos on major DoJ operations and who thinks voting rights laws protect only some Americans, based on their skin color. For the worst AG since Wilson’s A. Mitchell Palmer, these have got to be tough, stressful times.

Which is why I think the poor dear should do the right thing and resign to “spend more time with his family.”

Before he does any more damage.

PS: Bravo, TDC!

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Gunwalker: “Does no one care about the dead Mexicans?”

Subbing for Hugh Hewitt on the radio last week, the great Mark Steyn asked a darned good question that touched on hypocritical liberal bigotry:

“Now real Mexicans are dead,” he continued. “Does the president of the United States, does his attorney general, does CNN, does The New York Times, does NPR — do they not care about dead Mexicans?

“I mean, forget the United States Border Patrol guys that were killed about these ‘Fast & Furious’ guns. Real-live, or previously live, citizens of third world countries — the kind of people that NPR, The New York Times claim to love — are dead because of this.”

“Why isn’t that a national scandal?” he pleaded. “This is absolutely a — Iran-Contra didn’t rack of that kind of body count. Watergate didn’t rack up that kind of body count. Sarah Palin’s daughter’s boyfriend’s mother, or whatever stupid story they were chasing around Wasilla for months, that didn’t rack up a body count. There were hundreds of dead Mexicans from a gun running program run by the United States.”

The answer, of course, is that they only care about the dead Mexicans when they’re useful for attacking a Republican administration

Click through for a recording of the segment.

RELATED: At Fausta’s blog, read all about how Sinaloa’s top assassin was hoarding weapons obtained via Operation Fast and Furious. Earlier Gunwalker posts.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Gunwalker: mean reporter makes poor little White House cry

Well, boo-hoo. It seems CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson, who’s one of the few MSM reporters paying close attention to Operation Fast and Furious, has been getting yelled at by White House and Department of Justice aides over her coverage of the scandal. As she told radio host Laura Ingraham:

6:05 – Laura: So they were literally screaming at you?
Attkisson: Yes. Well the DOJ woman was just yelling at me. The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me. [Laura: Who was the person? Who was the person at Justice screaming?] Eric Schultz. Oh, the person screaming was [DOJ spokeswoman] Tracy Schmaler, she was yelling not screaming. And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House.”

(…)

8:28 – …Is it sort of a drip, drip. And I’m certainly not the one to make the case for DOJ and White House about what I’m doing wrong. They will tell you that I’m the only reporter–as they told me–that is not reasonable. They say the Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, the New York Times is reasonable, I’m the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I’m unfair and biased by pursuing it.

Visit Jammie Wearing Fool for the rest.

Meanwhile, the Obama White House and the Holder DoJ can cry me a freaking river.

via Snowflakes in Hell.

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Palin, Pappas, and different accounts — an update

This is a follow-on to this morning’s post about a misleading headline and Governor Palin’s phone call to a reporter in the mistaken belief that he was responsible. While really an addendum to that post, the passage of time and the number of posts since then make me think this should be its own entry.

Anyway, reporter Robert Stacy McCain (aka, “The Other McCain”) did some digging during the day and turned up some information contrary to the original report. Here are the key points:

• Governor Palin did not personally dial up Pappas’s number. She asked around among her aides if anyone knew how to get in touch with Pappas. One member of her advance team, Jason Recher, had Pappas’s number, called him and then handed the phone to the governor.
• Governor Palin did not summon a Politico reporter to listen in on the call. Palin was in the middle of a gigantic crowd of people at the Iowa State Fair, and her half of the conversation may have been overheard by others. There was no way, amid the press of the throng, that anyone outside that swarm could have been summoned at all, and the idea that Palin would be doing favors for a Politico reporter is ridiculous.
• Governor Palin wasn’t screaming angrily at Pappas. Again, Palin was in the middle of a crowd, which was quite noisy, and if her voice was loud, it was because she was trying to make herself heard amid the hubub.

Stacey’s a good journalist, and I recommend reading the whole post and following his site. One interesting observation he makes, a bit of “political news” that he’s amazed no one else has picked up on, is the inference to be drawn from Palin herself making the call: that if she felt that strongly about the need to deny any hint that she was endorsing Mitt Romney, it’s a strong indication she really is planning to run.

As they say, “intriguing.”

(My guess is still that she’ll announce at Waukee on September 3rd.)

Finally, on a more personal note, I took a fair amount of heat in the comments (at ST’s blog and mine) and on Twitter for that post. Fair enough; if you’re willing to say what you think in public, you have to expect some folks won’t be happy. But I don’t believe I was out of line, hasty, unfair, or injudicious, having qualified it with enough cautions to choke a horse. Believe it or not, I am glad later information is coming out that apparently clears things up.

UPDATE: My blog-buddy chimes in with a comment. (Scroll down to the bottom of the original post.)

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

#Gunwalker becomes a real threat to the Obama administration

When even a Democratic Party house-organ such as the Los Angeles Times begins to take notice, you know the wall of obstruction and denial is crumbling fast.

via Melissa Clouthier and others

RELATED: Earlier posts on Gunwalker.

 

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Klavan on the Culture: Michele Bachmann makes a gaffe!!!

Andrew Klavan has decided it’s too much fun not to participate in the mainstream media’s latest game: waiting for Representative Michele Bachmann to get something wrong so they can make fun of her.

Pay no attention to that chap in the background:

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)

Predictable, really

The marketing divisions of the Democratic Party, aka The New York Times and The Washington Post, have launched a vigorous defense of the Obama administration in the wake of scandalous revelations about Operation Fast and Furious (“Gunwalker”) by launching a smear campaign against Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), chairman of the committee investigating this fiasco. Patrick Richardson at PJM’s Tatler blog has the story:

Issa of course has been holding hearings on the fiasco that was Operation Fast and Furious, where the ATF allowed thousands of guns across the border into the hands of the drug cartels, weapons which then began showing up at crime scenes, including the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

The NYT is continuing to tell the lie that most of the weapons which end up in Mexico came from the U.S. They also show their complete ignorance when they say the weapons sold were military rifles. They were not. Whatever the semiautomatic rifles sold may look like, they are not true assault rifles. They do not have a selective fire capability, meaning they cannot fire full auto, as military rifles will. The NYT is merely using these hearings in order to push for the re-enactment of the so-called assault weapons ban while doing the administration’s dirty work.

The WaPo is perhaps more thoughtful in their attack, attempting to look like real reporting. Using anonymous sources to take potshots at Issa, claiming he was briefed in on the operation last year.

Let’s keep in mind that not only have two US federal agents been killed by guns that were allowed to “walk” over the border with the full knowledge of the ATF, but at least 150 Mexican soldiers, federal agents, and civilians. And Mexico is an ally.

If they were real newspapers truly concerned with the pursuit of the truth, the Times and the Post would be demanding to who knew what when and who gave the okays. They’d be digging into the serious foreign policy implications for the United States (1), and they’d be giving wall-to-wall coverage of the grotesque human tragedy caused by gunwalker — on American orders — something Representative Issa has described as “felony stupid;” an understatement if there ever was one.

But that would only happen if there were an (R) after the president’s name.

Real newspapers are mostly gone, at least at the national level. (2) Now, instead, we have PR flacks disguised as newspapers trying desperately to distract us from a trail that seems to lead directly to the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, if not to the Oval Office itself.

Heckuva job, guys!

Footnotes:

(1) Supplying weapons to groups that threaten to destabilize a foreign state. Y’know, those little things we used to call “acts of war.”

(2) One exception is the Washington Examiner, which has a great lineup of journalists and analysts. Among the legacy media, CBS deserves real credit for following “Operation Fast and Furious” almost since the story first broke.

RELATED: Background and links

(Crossposted at Sister Toldjah)