The online world was up in arms last week after Twitter announced they would be complying with local speech laws around the world. The service would be taking down tweets that the local government deemed illegal. Obviously the chorus of “Censorship!” was deafening. The short-form social media network has been ground-zero for a range of popular uprisings from Iran to the “Arab Spring,” used to organize protests and disseminate breaking news stopped by official censors.

So, it comes as no surprise that a wide range of players, especially in the countries most affected by draconian suppression of free speech, have been vocal about the announcement.

Twitter founder Biz Stone came out with a clarification this week, stating that the blog post was poorly worded and that the company is fully committed to free speech across the globe. To wit, they most likely have a legal obligation to comply with local laws in countries in which they operate . With that, they will only be removing “offending” tweets in that specific country using Geo-filtering.

For instance, it is illegal to post anything pro-Nazi in France. If French authorities see a tweet praising the Third Reich, they would request Twitter remove it. It will then be removed and be replaced with a Tweet mentioning the removal, but only in France. The original would still be visible around the world. This removal also would not take into account retweets, which would continue on their merry way.

While this may have some affect on the organizing of local protests, the main added value of Twitter, in this case, remains.

That brings us to exactly what it is that makes Twitter such a wonderful tool for the modern age. It is the ultimate disintermediation of information. Without the need for the traditional gatekeepers of news, it now can flow directly from observers on-site to all corners of the world.  With approximately 300 million subscriber accounts producing  over a billion tweets every four days, the amount of information flowing through the system is mind boggling. While much of it is banal at best, the unregulated nature of it is perfectly suited for the democratization of information.

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It’s becoming clearer and clearer that the Obama Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder is not just politicized and biased – it’s a hit squad for Obama’s enemies.

Remember when President Obama’s Department of Justice shut down investigation of the New Black Panther Party in the aftermath of their taped voter intimidation in 2008?  J. Christian Adams, author of the book Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department and former DOJ attorney, exposed the DOJ’s corruption in dropping the case altogether.  Or how about when the DOJ stonewalled investigations into Fast and Furious, the gunwalking operation that ended with weapons in the hands of the Mexican drug cartels – weapons used to kill American citizens?

Well, the DOJ is on the warpath again.  Not against the New Black Panthers or the Mexican drug cartels – against Rupert Murdoch.  According to Reuters, “U.S. authorities are stepping up investigations, including an FBI criminal inquiry, into possible violations by employees of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire of a U.S. law banning corrupt payments to foreign officials such as police, law enforcement and corporate sources said.”  What’s the evidence on which they’re basing the investigation?  Says Reuters, “U.S. investigators have found little to substantiate allegations of phone hacking inside the United States by Murdoch journalists, the sources added.”

So why, then, is the DOJ so intent on finding wrongdoing about Murdoch?  It couldn’t have something to do with Murdoch’s ownership of Fox News – the same network the Obama White House tried to exclude from inside administration interviews, according to papers uncovered by Judicial Watch – could it? (more…)

The media is calling the Barack Obama attack on the Catholic Church a “culture war.” Culture War. The words and graphics are everywhere. It was the ABC News headline one morning, “Candidate’s Culture War” is what the graphic said. As if this is some sort of battle between Obama and the Republican candidates. Yes, it is that, but it us much, much more.

This is also a fight much larger than “culture.” Culture is something that defines art and common belief. Culture is something that changes with the times and can actually be defined as you wish. Much of our culture today is not what it was 50, 100, or 200 years ago. What I think is culture, may not be what you think is culture. Yes, there is an “American culture, and I believe I know what it is, but I certainly don’t trust the media or this President (who would probably see me as a “bitter” American who “clings to guns and religion”) to tell me what it is.

The Constitution doesn’t work that way, certainly not the First Amendment which guarantees religious liberty and expression. I would like to think the Constitution would define our culture, but sadly that is not always the case. For the media to call this a “culture war” greatly diminishes its value, this is a battle over the First amendment of the US Constitution. Obama wants the Constitution circumvented to pander to his base, I would hope that most of us would be united with the Catholic Church in wanting it protected.

The new part of the ObamaCare law (that nobody read before they voted on it) says that churches that provide health care and insurance, must also provide contraceptives. The Catholic Church opposes contraception.

“The White House insists this achieves a balanced approach that respects women’s health care and religious liberty, but that’s not how the Republican candidates see it,” said Jake Tapper of ABC this morning. Jake, this does nothing to protect religious liberty. It tries to destroy it.

Thankfully, the presidential hopefuls joined in the fight.

“We must have a president who is willing to protect America’s First right, a right to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience. This is a violation of conscience,” said Mitt Romney

Rick Santorum says Obama has been “hostile to people of faith particularly Christians and specifically Catholics.”

Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul have also been avid opponents to Dear Leaders actions on this. Not just because they want to be seen as opponents, they all believe what he is doing in inherently wrong.

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If you’re a Twitter user, you might start getting notifications just like this from Twitter in the very near future if you tweet something that some foreign governments don’t like.

On Thursday, the social media company announced on its blog that, effective immediately, it has implemented the ability to withhold specific content from certain geographical regions in order to respond to government censoring without affecting its entire base of users.

Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page, http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.

According to PC Magazine, Twitter will determine which content to withhold in much the same way it does DMCA notices, albeit proactively. (more…)

If you were mad about Obamacare, if you were made about the Patriot Act, the DHS watch lists, the administration’s reach into your diets, then you’re already concerned about SOPA.

SOPA = Stop Online Piracy Act sounds benign, as almost all legislation does. The names of most bills are completely antithetical to what the bill would actually do. SOPA is no exception. You read the name. “Piracy is bad,” you think. “Respect for intellectual property is good,” you think. Both of these things are correct. SOPA survives on the assumption that this is all the bill entails. Piracy is a major problem, but SOPA, and its Senate companion PIPA (Protect IP Act), are the worst ways to go about solving it.

What is SOPA?

The bill would authorize the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of infringing on copyrights, or of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement.^[4] After delivering a court order, the U.S. Attorney General could require US-directed Internet service providers, ad networks, and payment processors to suspend doing business with sites found to infringe on federal criminal intellectual property laws. The Attorney General could also bar search engines from displaying links to the sites.^[13]

If the Justice Department or a copyright holder believed a site was directing users to pirated content, they would go to court. Depending on who’s complaining, different remedies would come into play: In some instances a judge could order an Internet service provider like Verizon to cut off access to a site. In others, a search engine like Google could be directed to delete links to an infringing site. The idea is to starve the offending sites of the web traffic that keeps them in business.

Inconclusively, too.

Google and First Amendment scholars like Harvard’s Lawrence Tribe argue that SOPA would squelch free speech by giving private parties power to effectively cripple sites that allegedly — but not conclusively — steal copyrighted content. The simple filing of a complaint, they say, would exert huge pressure on the Internet ecosystem to blacklist an accused site. They also say it would give the feds dangerous new powers to go after sites for political reasons.

Gizmodo:

Perhaps the most galling thing about SOPA in its original construction is that it let IP owners take these actions without a single court appearance or judicial sign-off. All it required was a single letter claiming a “good faith belief” that the target site has infringed on its content. Once Google or PayPal or whoever received the quarantine notice, they would have five days to either abide or to challenge the claim in court. Rights holders still have the power to request that kind of blockade, but in the most recent version of the bill the five day window has softened, and companies now would need the court’s permission.

The language in SOPA implies that it’s aimed squarely at foreign offenders; that’s why it focuses on cutting off sources of funding and traffic (generally US-based) rather than directly attacking a targeted site (which is outside of US legal jurisdiction) directly. But that’s just part of it.

…to the point of potentially creating an “Internet Blacklist”…

Here’s the other thing: Payment processors or content providers like Visa or YouTube don’t even need a letter shut off a site’s resources. The bill’s “vigilante” provision gives broad immunity to any provider who proactively shutters sites it considers to be infringers. Which means the MPAA just needs to publicize one list of infringing sites to get those sites blacklisted from the internet.

Potential for abuse is rampant. As Public Knowledge points out, Google could easily take it upon itself to delist every viral video site on the internet with a “good faith belief” that they’re hosting copyrighted material. Leaving YouTube as the only major video portal. Comcast (an ISP) owns NBC (a content provider). Think they might have an interest in shuttering some rival domains? Under SOPA, they can do it without even asking for permission.

Who is behind it?

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From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

When Anita Dunn hasn’t been on CNN or MSNBC bashing the Republican presidential candidates and/or praising President Obama, she has been successfully lobbying for a Washington Post subsidiary by the name of Kaplan University.

You may remember Dunn as the Obama aide who once said communist mass murderer Mao and Mother Teresa were “two of my favorite political philosophers.” The Soros-funded Media Matters said she was taken out of context.

Dunn is now claiming that she is not a lobbyist, even though she works for a firm that does lobbying. Will the progressives defend this, too?

We have written in the past about Kaplan, which is the cash cow for the Post Company, whose newspaper has been losing money and readers. Steven Pearlstein of the Post wrote that Kaplan “has provided the handsome profits that have helped to cover this newspaper’s operating losses” and that “Although we in the Post newsroom have nothing to do with Kaplan, we’ve all benefited from its financial success.”

But that success came at the expense of students, including veterans, who got educated through Kaplan and found that some of their degrees were worthless.

After congressional investigations exposed abuses in the $30 billion for-profit education industry, Kaplan and other companies got very concerned that proposed regulations from the Obama Administration would potentially “cut off the huge flow of federal aid” to private sector colleges declared unfit to receive the money, The New York Times reported.

In the end, “after a ferocious response that administration officials called one of the most intense they had seen, the Education Department produced a much-weakened final plan that almost certainly will have far less impact as it goes into effect” this year.

Former Obama official Dunn played a key role in making sure the for-profit education companies will continue largely with business as usual.

Military columnist Tom Philpott, a former Coast Guardsman, has led the criticism of what he calls the “predatory for-profit schools” that “rob veterans of their Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits.” He quotes Theodore (Ted) L. Daywalt, chief executive officer and president of VetJobs, an online job search firm for military veterans, as saying that he learned about the problem through working with disappointed vets who thought they had used their GI Bill to earn credible degrees only to learn they were “worthless.”

“The eighth for-profit company among the top 10 institutions getting GI Bill payments is Kaplan, owned by The Washington Post. Its Post-9/11 GI Bill payments climbed in 12 months from $17 million to $44 million,” noted Philpott. These are the payments that help pay the salaries of the liberal editorial writers and columnists at the Post newspaper.

In a sign that some news competition is in play among the big papers and that some criticism of the Obama Administration is still permitted in print, the Times noted the key role played by Dunn, “a close friend of President Obama and his former White House communications director.” She had “worked with” Kaplan, the paper said. “And politically well-connected investors, including Donald E. Graham, chief executive of the Washington Post Company, which owns Kaplan, and John Sperling, founder of the University of Phoenix and a longtime friend of the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, made impassioned appeals,” the paper added.

Dunn had left the Obama Administration to make money at SKDKnickerbocker (SKDK), which describes itself as “a nationally recognized strategic communications consulting firm.” This is what lobbying is called these days. Dunn’s work in the media is highlighted in her bio, where she is described as “a frequent guest on cable and network television, including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 60 Minutes, Today, Meet the Press and many more.”

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From Accuracy in Media’s Logan Churchwell:

With the first legitimate event of the 2012 Republican presidential primary just days away in Iowa, the Associated Press today offered a clear example of hatchet jobs to come for the candidates. Mitt Romney was given an early example of what the AP means by “journalism with voice.”

I previously raised concerns over a leaked memo from AP Managing Editor Mike Oreskes two weeks ago. Charging all journalists to use the said “voice,” he did not offer any examples but, rather very contradictory directions (emphasis added):

“We’re going to be pushing hard on journalism with voice, with context, with more interpretation. This does not mean that we’re sacrificing any of our deep commitment to unbiased, fair journalism. It does not mean that we’re venturing into opinion, either. It does mean that we need to be looking for ways to be more distinctive and stand out in the field — something our customers need and want. The why and the how of the news are as crucial as the who, what, when and where.”

The AP offered a very clear example this morning for how these directions will be executed.

The title, “Romney tries to come across as man of the people” was bad enough and it only got worse from there. The AP revealed its playbook as to how they will frame the Romney campaign in 2012.

Step 1: Paint Romney as filthy rich; like his daddy before him. What better way to fan the flames of class warfare than to paint the Republican frontrunner as the quintessential political aristocrat of one-percenter roots? The AP led with (emphasis added):

“Mitt Romney reminisced before a noontime crowd about the long car trips his family took when he was a boy. ‘My dad made Ramblers, so we had one,’ the Republican presidential hopeful said…In fact, Romney’s father didn’t just make cars. He was chairman and president of American Motors, the company that made Ramblers, and a highly successful businessman before he entered politics. It’s a detail the son omitted as he sought to establish a bond with Iowans he hopes will support him in next week’s presidential caucuses.”

Toward the end of the piece, another wealth jab that now opens the Romney wardrobe and Christmas list to criticism:

“As he stood at the cash register at a Concord, N.H., toy store, picking up a few gifts for charity, a patron asked him what he gave his family for Christmas. Earlier in the day, he had bought his wife a $285 North Face jacket as a gift, he said…For his sons? ‘We sent them checks,’ said Romney, a multimillionaire. ‘Cash is always good’.”

Some may remember just how effective the smears were against the Palin family wardrobe in 2008; a standard not held to Michelle Obama.

Step 2: Suggest to readers that either Romney is too smart, or Republicans are too dumb to understand him. Not only is Romney rich and therefore uncaring, but he cannot speak the language and empathize with the common man. The AP cited Romney’s comments regarding company relocation affecting employee commutes:

“Sometimes it’s counter-intuitive,’ replied Romney, a former businessman, explaining that businesses often invent new, more efficient ways to compete…The term is called productivity. Output per person,’ he said. ‘Our productivity equals our income’.”

Anyone with a Business 101 course under their belt or basic sense gained from commercial employment can understand what that statement means, and therefore why the question was properly answered. To argue otherwise is an insult to the general intelligence of the electorate. But the AP does not stop there, suggesting that he can also be too smart and systematically-minded to be “sympathetic.”

“When one retired firefighter in New Hampshire said he was drawing a reduced Social Security check because he also had a state pension, the former Massachusetts governor was less than sympathetic. ‘If there’s a competition for who will give you the most free stuff, go vote for that guy.’ When the man said he wasn’t asking for any handouts, Romney said, ‘You knew what you were getting into. … I wish you well, but I’m not going to promise you more bucks’.”

Regardless of the approach, Romney will be made to look unfit to chat up a voter on Main Street. It also would be helpful to know the context of that exchange and the tone of the question.

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From Accuracy in Media’s Benjamin Johnson:

While America heads home for the holidays, many will see the TIME Magazine cover displaying “The Protester” as Person of the Year in over-priced airport news stands for the first time.

http://youtu.be/nm9rf2UzCZ4

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From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

Glenn Beck suggests that Newt Gingrich is so “progressive” that only racism could explain why the tea party would support him over President Obama. He is alluding to Gingrich’s praise of Theodore Roosevelt. But the “progressive” outlook of Republican Theodore Roosevelt (TR) was much different than the Progressive Party of Henry Wallace, who served as Democrat Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president. TR opposed socialism and communism.

During an appearance on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Fox Business Channel program, Beck said about Gingrich:

“This man is a progressive. He knows he’s a progressive. He doesn’t have a problem with being a progressive. So if you’ve got a big government progressive [in Gingrich] or a big government progressive in Obama, one in Newt Gingrich, one in Obama, ask yourself this tea party. Is it about Obama’s race? Because that’s what it appears to be to me. If you’re against him but you’re for this guy, it must be about race.”

With this comment, Beck is claiming that the policies of Gingrich and Obama are the same or at least very similar. However, in his interview with Beck, Gingrich made the point that he believes government has a role in maintaining some “minimum regulatory standards of public health and safety.” He also said government programs have to be reformed to maximize individual choice and that some federal subsidies, such as those which bolster a domestic oil and gas industry, are defensible. None of this qualifies as Obama-style socialism.

Christopher Ruddy of Newsmax noted in his article, “Glenn Beck Should Revere Theodore Roosevelt,” that “The policies advocated by TR were not those of some social engineer who wanted to remake the United States based on a Saul Alinsky radical model.”

Beck notes that Theodore Roosevelt started the Progressive Party, but this is not the same Progressive Party, dominated by the Communists, that nominated Henry Wallace for president in 1948 and which continues to influence the Democratic Party today. (more…)

On November 30, CNN’s T. J. Holmes gave us a great example of how the Old Media is soft peddling the law-breaking going on at the Occupy events in order to make these events seem far less dangerous and illicit than they are. Like many in the Old Media, Holmes seems desperate to give lawbreaking Occupiers as much cover as possible — a benefit they never offered the tea partiers.

In an interview with an L.A. city police commander about the clearing of Occupy Los Angeles, Holmes did his best to minimize the number of arrests of members of the Occupy protest. The actual number of arrests was 200, but Holmes repeatedly characterized that numbers as “dozens.”

Now, I don’t know about you but when I hear “dozens” I think of the number twenty-four. Being generous I might even say three dozen (a healthy 36) could be thought of as “dozens.” On the other hand, when someone tells me “200″ the word “dozens” doesn’t at all come to mind. I just don’t think of 18 dozen as “dozens.” I think of them as hundreds!

Of course, Holmes was desperate to make hundreds seem less imposing. So, to him, two hundred arrests became minimized to “dozens.”

It must be pointed out here that even after two years of tea party protests featuring millions of Americans and often seeing many thousands appearing at any given event never saw 200 arrests during the whole time! In fact, there weren’t even 100 arrests in two years with millions of protesters. Not even 50 or 25 arrests, for that matter.

This soft peddling of the Occupy-Whatevers, though, is of a piece with the penchant of the entire Old Media to ignore the lawbreaking going on at the Occupy events. The truth is simply being ignored by the media. A recent tally by John Nolte shows 364 serious incidents to date of criminal actions — one short of one for every day of the year — at the various Occupy events across the country. And this list doesn’t count the many thousands of local laws, ordinances, and permitting rules that have been flouted by these Occupy protests.

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From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News attacked the police at UC Davis during a recent broadcast. He said the demonstrators were just “sitting on a sidewalk peacefully protesting” when they were pepper-sprayed. Inviting members of his viewing audience to take the side of the protesters, he said, “Imagine those are your kids sitting on the sidewalk.” In fact, some of those “kids” were non-student agitators. They were locked arm-in-arm and had refused reasonable and repeated requests to move. They were threatening the educational atmosphere on campus by erecting a tent city that was luring increasing numbers of criminal outsiders. They wanted a confrontation and got it. What’s more, they got it on film, making sure they could portray the police in the worst possible light, without context or background to the confrontation that should have been avoided.

Doesn’t Brian Williams have the ability to get facts on the ground before going public with sensational and wild allegations against the police?

Sitting in the comfort of his New York studio, Williams ignored the statement issued by Linda P.B. Katehi, the Chancellor of UC Davis, when she noted that “…on Thursday a group of protesters including UC Davis students and other non-UC Davis affiliated individuals established an encampment of about 25 tents on the Quad.” Notice the reference to “non-UC Davis affiliated individuals,” including outside agitators.

Katehi said, “The group was reminded that while the university provides an environment for students to participate in rallies and express their concerns and frustrations through different forums, university policy does not allow such encampments on university grounds.”

So the radicals were there in violation of university policy, interfering with the rights of others. The head of a college or university clearly had a responsibility to act under those circumstances.

The chancellor went on:

“On Thursday, the group stayed overnight despite repeated reminders by university staff that their encampment violated university policies and they were requested to disperse. On Friday morning, the protestors were provided with a letter explaining university policies and reminding them of the opportunities the university provides for expression. Driven by our concern for the safety and health of the students involved in the protest, as well as other students on our campus, I made the decision not to allow encampments on the Quad during the weekend, when the general campus facilities are locked and the university staff is not widely available to provide support.”

So the chancellor wanted to keep the campus safe on the weekend, for the benefit of the real students who were there. Was she expected to let more and more outsiders assemble on campus, to the detriment of the students paying to get an education?

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From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

Rather than being victims of police brutality, a new video shows that Occupiers at UC Davis knew they were going to be pepper sprayed and didn’t mind it. Indeed, the new video evidence indicates that the entire confrontation with the police was staged for the benefit of the media, which took the bait and ran with it, making police out to be cruel and heartless villains. The new video evidence demonstrates that the police had not only warned the protesters in advance about what was going to happen but one demonstrator says to the police, “You’re shooting us?” and, after getting an affirmative answer, replies, “That’s fine.” Another tells her comrades, “Keep your eyes closed.” Several are seen covering their faces.

Despite misleading stories about the “peaceful protest” at UC Davis, the campus police had been ordered by Chancellor Linda Katehi to remove the protesters using pepper spray, determined to be the best way to do so without causing long-lasting physical injuries, because they had erected an illegal tent city on campus and were blocking a sidewalk. The police could have used batons, like they did during an earlier confrontation at UC Berkeley, but that was ruled out by the UC Davis campus police chief. The video shows the police holding and shaking the pepper spray canisters during a time period of several minutes. They gave the protesters more than enough time to disperse.

On his NBC Nightly News broadcast, NBC’s Brian Williams had called the lawbreakers “kids” and implied that parents should be outraged over their treatment. There is no evidence, however, that these “kids” being sprayed on the sidewalk were all students. Chancellor Katehi said in a statement that non-students had been active on campus and part of the protests. Indeed, these non-students were undoubtedly the organizers of the affair.

As Brian Williams should know, since he claims to be so concerned about parents and their “kids” on campus, safety is a top priority because of the ability of outsiders to enter the grounds and threaten or assault students.  Crime on campus is a major issue for parents and young people looking for a safe educational environment. Under these circumstances, it would have been utter dereliction of duty for any college or university president to condone what the Occupiers were doing at UC Davis. That is why Katehi ordered the tent city dismantled and the protesters evicted.

Despite the numerous stories about alleged police brutality, which have led to putting the campus police chief and two officers on leave, there is no evidence the police did anything wrong. The operations plan used by UC Davis included the use of pepper spray. The police followed acceptable procedures.

The public should be quickly educated by the media about what is really going on here. The so-called Occupy movement, underway for several months now, is based on seizing public and private property. Since the public has demanded that the protesters be evicted from these spaces, and many mayors are ordering the police to do so, the leaders have decided to move on to college campuses. UC Berkeley and UC Davis were some of the first targets.

The effort to discredit the police is an old Marxist tactic, designed to lay the groundwork for larger mob actions. Congressional investigations were held in the 1960s into how communists foment riots and disturbances. The aim is to demonize and then paralyze the police. Since members of the Democratic Socialists of America have discussed plans to take over city halls and state capitals in the next several months, we can see that the stakes are rising as the Occupy movement gets more violent and confrontational over time. This is the time to support the police, not undermine their ability to preserve law and order.

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From Accuracy in Media’s Benjamin Johnson:

Is there a better way to bring in the weekend than by chatting with top newsmakers over drinks? Sure, the bar talk and news commentary device has been used before, but that was just a sound stage. Today Accuracy in Media introduces our new video series, Bar Stool Confessions, which offers a closer look at those who break and shape the news.

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A known liberal activist that has for months been stalking several Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin, verbally abusing them, has finally crossed the line into a physical attack. So … where is the Old Media to chronicle this assault? Sadly, no where to be seen.

On Sept. 14 left-wing activist Miles Kirstan entered The Inn at 22 S. Carroll Street in Madison, Wisconsin, began to harass some GOP lawmakers patronizing the establishment, and ultimately attacked them, throwing a mug of beer on them.

The Madison Police Department confirmed to the MacIver Institute that the incident occurred and the group found that Republican State Rep. Robin Voss (Burlington) was the main target. Reps. John Nygren (Marinette) and Scott Suder (Abbotsford) were also a victim of the attack.

Kirstan is a well-known face among the extremists that have been railing against the Walker administration over the budget cuts and other legislative efforts.

He’s well enough known that some halfwitted groupies have excitedly delivered their hosannas to him online.

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USA Today published a story recently by Bob Smietana of the Nashville newspaper The Tennessean attacking the integrity and work of well-known Christian First Amendment defense attorney Jay Sekulow – that is shocking for what is left out.

Sekulow is the head man of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a Washington D.C.-based organization that takes on attackers of Christian’s First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion, a tempting target in some corners of America’s political establishment.

In fact, writer Smietana didn’t just write one piece attacking Sekulow and the ACLJ but in the space of only a few days wrote two. In one piece Smietana accuses Sekulow and his family of making too much money from the charities they represent and in the second he claims that the ACLJ might be improperly pursuing cases not in its tax exempt charter.

In both cases Smietana employs the “some say” style of indictment by writing innuendoes backed up by little actual evidence, but the piece in USA Today is by far the worst example of the tactic. (more…)

The Hill has an interesting, if not a bit slanted, report about the faux grassroots efforts of unions and left-wing advocates to pretend they are somehow just like the tea party by attacking the town hall meetings of various GOP congressman across the country this Summer.

The Hill dutifully reports without complaint the union’s claims that they are organizing just like the tea partiers and forcing GOP congressmen to face “angry protests at home” this month in a “replication” of the tea party backlash that “bit” Democrats in 2009.

“Liberal groups have been planning these protests for months,” trumpets The Hill, “One organizer told The Hill in February that the campaign would ‘build to a crescendo’ in August.”

These protests have been organized by Obama’s supporters in government unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO as well as far left NGOs such as MoveOn.org, Campaign for America’s Future and others.

The report goes on to note that several congressmen have faced unruly audiences this August.

At least ten other House Republicans have been the targets of protests or angry questions at public events in the last two weeks. Many of the protests are the outcome of a months-long effort by labor unions and liberal advocacy groups to turn up public pressure on GOP lawmakers.

These groups have taken a page from the Tea-Party playbook and are trying to replicate the August of outrage that nearly sunk President Obama’s healthcare reform initiative in 2009.

“This is very similar to what the Tea Party did,” said Roger Hickey, co-director of Campaign for America’s Future, which has worked with labor unions and liberal groups to help organize a public backlash to the House GOP agenda.

Only these orchestrated attacks are nothing like what happened in 2009 as the tea party movement first started gaining steam.

The tea party events were not organized by unions, they did not have millions of dollars behind them, they had no national organizations, no formal groups to which to belong or by which to organize. The protests that Democrats faced in 2009 were real citizens gathering on their own hook not organized from the top like these faux protests are being raised today.

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Fresh from the Accuracy in Media A/V Room:

Accuracy in Media had the opportunity to sit down with Big Journalism’s fearless Editor, Dana Loesch, to discuss precisely how Conservatism is the new punk rock. Rather than simply complaining that the media is biased, she explains that a conservative’s do-it-yourself attitude can be put to good use when building our new media.

In part two, Dana and Accuracy in Media shoot holes in the tea-errorist meme passed down from the White House.

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On MSNBC, John Kerry told us that Tea Party ideas are not “real” ideas, not “factual,” and thinks that the media should stop reporting on anything that smacks of ideas or news coming from Tea Partiers. If this isn’t proof of how Democrats and leftists would use the power of government to quash free political speech, what is?

Not long ago, several Democrats tried to once again raise the ugly head of the defunct Fairness Doctrine that was killed during the Reagan administration in order to limit the free political speech of conservatives. In those dark days when Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House of Representatives, several Republicans talked about forever outlawing the anti-free speech rule. Democrats at the time spoke up in favor of the Fairness Doctrine and countered that they wanted to bring it back.

Fortunately, the Fairness Doctrine has not come back. But this un-American policy idea has been talked about by leftists every few years since it was torpedoed by Reagan in 1987. They would love to bring it back. And despite what they claim, the left would use a new Fairness Doctrine to squelch the free political speech of those on the right.

Want proof? Then let’s look at what Democrat Senator John Kerry said on MSNBC this week.

SEN. JOHN KERRY: And I have to tell you, I say this to you politely. The media in America has a bigger responsibility than it’s exercising today. The media has got to begin to not give equal time or equal balance to an absolutely absurd notion just because somebody asserts it or simply because somebody says something which everybody knows is not factual.

It doesn’t deserve the same credit as a legitimate idea about what you do. And the problem is everything is put into this tit-for-tat equal battle and America is losing any sense of what’s real, of who’s accountable, of who is not accountable, of who’s real, who isn’t, who’s serious, who isn’t?

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ABC’s Brian Ross claimed that Michele Bachmann’s staff pushed him around on July 19 at a campaign appearance. I know, I know, you are waiting for the pity party to start.

REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque

In a fit of wild hyperbole, Ross called his treatment by Bachmann similar to the treatment he’s received “mostly by Mafia people.” The left-o-sphere has taken up Ross’ banner, of course, but one can only laugh at Ross considering the ho hum treatment that the media gave back in January of 2010 when a Democrat accosted a different reporter.

In truth, what happened to Ross is fairly mild and all his fault. Bachmann’s staff told the press that she was moving on and would take no further questions but Ross, being the uncouth sort of fella he is, broke away from the other reporters and ran pellmell at the candidate screaming questions anyway. He tried to follow Bachmann into the parking area and at that point her aides stepped in and blocked him even pushing him away a few times.

ABC claims it has video of this altercation, but has yet to post it.

If you listen to the silly hyperbole from the far left blogrags, the media is being treated like the Egyptian protesters in Tahrir Square by Bachmann’s campaign staff. Another lefty site says that Bachmann is indulging in “open conflict” with the press. Neither characterization is even close to the truth.

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Larry Flynt recently wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post lambasting Rupert Murdoch. In this piece, Flynt paints a stark contrast between his publishing practices and Murdoch’s regarding privacy: Murdoch “did not just cross the line – he erased it,”  whereas Flynt has never “created sensationalism at the expense of people living private lives.” Sensationalism is a wholly separate problem, Mr. Flynt, whether you’ve technically respected privacy or not.

Flynt lives proudly on the outer fringe of free speech. The idea that the most offensive speech/expression is the most in need of protection is a philosophically sound idea whether you like pornography and Flynt’s brand of vulgar political commentary or not. It’s a similar idea regarding the right to bear arms: take assault rifles away and our spectrum of rights get smaller. It’s this defense of free speech that Flynt has been driving home for decades and one that many First Amendment theorists agree with.

Flynt’s assertion that Murdoch has “placed all of us who enjoy freedom of the press at grave risk” is a platitude made in a theoretical vacuum. Flynt’s claim that information procured illegally erodes the public’s trust in print media is pure self-interest on the one hand and a nostalgic yearning for an outdated archetype of a respected media and a virtuous public on the other. The media died, and the public significantly lost its virtue a long time ago, largely due to the fast-moving moral anarchy created by the “anything goes!” philosophy prevalent in publications like Hustler.

I’d argue that as much as anyone, Flynt is the perfect avatar for the trend in America that “the truth is whatever you believe it to be.” When your mission in life is to break down all barriers and taboos, you run the risk of chaos, both culturally and morally. It’s odd hearing Flynt claim the following:

The government needs to get back to its roots: protecting the privacy of its citizens while encouraging the individual freedoms on which this country was founded.

In my estimation, the people responsible for establishing the roots of our freedoms would not have supported Larry Flynt. They would have believed that mass distributed photographs that allow us to take a look inside a woman’s reproductive cavity, whether she was a willing participant or not, to be both morally vile and perhaps the ultimate invasion of privacy, albeit in a different way than Flynt sees it. Flynt would have been seen as a dangerous nihilist whose only goal was to destroy the moral edifice of society upon which our freedoms are based.

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