Huh? Whah?...Huh?

There's crazie and then there's World Net Daily Cuh-RAY-zee!

Check it out:

The Kansas Supreme Court has come up with a response for when its own justices are accused of being biased toward the abortion industry and against a former state attorney general who investigated alleged criminal activity there.

Stonewall.

That’s the result of a petition to the court that was filed on behalf of former Attorney General Phill Kline.

Kline probed alleged illegal activity by abortion provider Planned Parenthood and the late abortionist George Tiller, eventually filing charges against them after getting the counts approved by several trial judges in the state.

However, the pro-abortion political atmosphere in the state spelled defeat for Kline in the next election, and his foes launched criminal investigations into his probe of Planned Parenthood and Tiller. [emphasis added]

That's right.  You read that right.  Kansas where the:

• Governor
• Lieutenant Governor
• Secretary of State
• Attorney General
• Both US Senators
• All four members of the US House of Representatives
• 31 out of the 40 State Senators
• 92 out of the 125 State House members

are all Republicans. 

Kansas, where Mitt Romney won the state in the 2012 election by about 22% of the vote.

Kansas, where according to the Guttmacher Institute:

• A woman must receive state-directed counseling that includes information designed to discourage her from having an abortion and then wait 24 hours before the procedure is provided.
• A woman must undergo an ultrasound before obtaining an abortion; the provider must offer her the option to view the image.

Yea, that Kansas.  How crazie must Bob Uruh (and World Net Daily for publishing this) be to think that the political atmosphere in Kansas can, in any way, be "pro-abortion"??

Tracking Teh Crazie At WND

Teh Crazie's still at it.

Take a look at this opening paragraph from Bob Unruh over at World Net Daily:

Let’s see, under Barack Obama the IRS targeted conservatives and Christians with harassment, dozens of “czars” were appointed, Arizona was sued for trying to enforce federal immigration laws, the government refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act and the National Security Agency spied on Americans.

If ever you need to know what teh rightwing crazies are thinking, WND is the place to go to find out.  From his opening, Unruh goes on to more about the IRS "target[ing] conservatives" and the poll data showing growing support for impeachment because of it.

It's only when you take a look at the question asked in the poll do you see the fakery going on.  Here's the question:

Under President Obama, the Internal Revenue Service has targeted conservative nonprofit groups for special scrutiny, including audits, which hampered those groups from organizing to oppose him and other Democrats in the 2012 elections. Do you agree or disagree that President Obama should be impeached for his handling of this situation?

The only problem with this push poll question is its entire premise.

Take a look at this from Salon from August 20:

We already know that the IRS targeted progressive groups in addition to Tea Party ones, but new information released today adds further details, showing that the tax agency also targeted “ACORN successors” and left-leaning “Emerge” groups. Emerge Nevada, Emerge Maine and Emerge Massachusetts were the only groups to have their applications actually denied 501(c)4 tax-exempt status. Conservative groups had their applications delayed, in some cases for over a year, but not rejected outright.

Think of what that means for the poll question.  If the initial premise is incorrect (as it is here) then all of the data that follows is also incorrect.

And for this teh crazies want to impeach.

More On Representative Jeff Duncan

Remember this from yesterday?

The braintrust spread yet another wingnut conspiracy theory by way of Representative Jeff Duncan.

Well they should be more careful who they quote as it turns out that Duncan's a birther:

Another Republican is accusing President Obama of secretly being a Kenyan man who forged his birth certificate in order to get elected President of the United States. This time the theorist is Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC), chairman of the House Homeland Security Oversight Subcommittee.

Duncan appeared on the radio program TruNews with Rick Wiles on Friday where the host asked the South Carolina congressman whether the House would go after Obama’s “phony identification papers.” Duncan initially demurred, but then agreed with Wiles that Obama could be lying about his birth certificate, calling for Congress to “revisit” the issue of “the president’s validity."

While it's hardly surprising that Duncan (who's seen quickly shifting from the "guv'ment's buyin' up all the ammo!" story to the "guv'ment's arming the IRS with assault rifles!" story in yesterday's Trib) is fertile ground for any number of other crazie conspiracies, nothing invalidates credibility faster than being a birther. 

The Trib really needs to be more careful who they're quoting as they're dancing dangerously close to World Net Daily on this one.

Tracking Teh Crazie - Alan Keyes at World Net Daily

You want teh crazie?  I got teh crazie, my friends.

Crazie plus crazie wouldn't describe how crazie it is.  Nor would crazie times crazie.  No, we gotta go bigger still - a crazieplex, perhaps.

Let me back up a second to explain.  A "googol" is a very big number.  It's 10¹⁰⁰ or 10 multiplied by itself 100 times and thus a one followed by 100 zeroes. A "googolplex" is even bigger. It's 10^googol or ten multiplied by itself a googol number of times.  Don't even try to contemplate writing it out.  There isn't enough time or space in spacetime to do so.

So when I say that whenever Alan Keyes writes for World Net Daily, we got a crazieplex (teh crazie^{teh crazie}) you'll more or less know exactly what I mean.

Ambassador Keyes (did you know he was an Ambassador during the Reagan Administration?  You did? Well, then did you know he was the one who negotiated the anti-choice language of the Mexico City Policy into the final resolution at that conference?  You didn't?  Well, now you do.) is more than well known for his controversial positions on sex, gender and women's health.

Well, today I found this faith based bit of intolerance at birther central - aka World Net Daily.

Keyes begins:

“California would strip the tax-exempt status from youth organizations like the Boy Scouts if they have policies that bar gay people from participating under a bill introduced at the Capitol Tuesday.” So began the report at sfgate.com. With prominent elitist faction GOP leaders like Mitt Romney pressing the BSA to end its ban on homosexual activity, the campaign to enforce respect for so-called “homosexual rights” is quickly moving toward what I have for a long time warned would be its inevitable result. By allowing the language of fundamental right to be abused in a way that perverts its logic, we have set the stage for the systematic abuse of the coercive power of government in order to force people to abandon their conscientious disapproval of homosexual behavior. Ideas have consequences, especially bad ideas.

Some people try to maintain the position that government has no lawful authority to interfere with human freedom. But according to the premises of American self-government, their view is patently illogical. The American Declaration of Independence (part of the organic law of the United States) states that all just governments are instituted to secure unalienable rights. When wrongdoers ignore and violate those rights (by criminal acts like murder, theft, rape, etc.) government is obliged to curtail their freedom. This is why the criminal law exists.

However, any action provably consistent with God’s natural law (as it applies to human activities) is an exercise of right. That’s why otherwise innocent people who kill to defend their lives against unwarranted attack are not charged with murder (unlawful killing), since their actions accord with the first law of nature. In this respect a provable claim of unalienable right trumps any provisions of human law that contradict it. The obligation to respect God’s authority supersedes the obligation to obey human authority.

I think our good friend Justice Antonin Scalia (he of the United States Supreme Court, doncha know) would disagree with Keyes on that last sentence. We quoted Scalia back in March of 2012:

We have never held that an individual's religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate.

And:

Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself."

Subsequent decisions have consistently held that the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a "valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes)."

From this logic, let's just simply state that everything that follows from Keyes's assertion that the "obligation to respect God’s authority supersedes the obligation to obey human authority" is in direct opposition to the Constitution he claims to revere.

If you look closely, Keyes wants religious belief to be the law of the land - but only the right sorts of beliefs he already recognizes:

In what we call the Bill of Rights, preventing government coercion with respect to religion is the first order of business. This reflects the fact that the very idea of unalienable right depends on acknowledging that all human beings are obliged to respect “the laws of nature and of nature’s God”; that when they act accordingly they do what is right; and that they therefore have an unalienable right (i.e., a predisposition arising from the provision of God for their existence and well-being) to act as they do. As its origins may imply (from the Latin, religare, to bind fast) the word religion has to do with the views and practices connected with the natural sense that we are beholden to God for our existence, and bound to respect the provisions of God for our good.

Does this mean that every claim of right made in the name of religion authorizes people to break the law? Of course not; such claims must be examined in light of a reasonable appraisal of our knowledge of God’s law for our nature, as it applies to all human beings. Thus government may reasonably curtail the freedom of people who believe that their god requires them to murder innocent people (as was reportedly the case with the cult of devotees of the Hindu Goddess Kali, known as Thuggee; and as is true of some Islamic jihadists today.) In general a claim of religious belief, however sincerely asserted, does not supersede the obligation to respect the God-endowed natural rights of others. [Emphasis added.]

While he says that beliefs that lead to those "inalienable" rights are only those done in accordance with "the laws of nature and of Nature's God" and that only those actions, so defined, are the ones that are right, he then says that other, opposing beliefs, however sincerely held, don't have the same authority - and therefore actions taken in accordance with those religious beliefs can be curtailed.

So who decides which sincere beliefs are the right ones?  Who decides which ones are the foundations of the "inalienable rights" he's discussing?

That's right, Alan Keyes decides.  He decides what's right and wrong.  He decides (indeed, he's already decided) based only on his set of beliefs - a set of beliefs which he believes to coincide with God's.  Anyone else who has a different set of beliefs...well those beliefs, (again, however sincerely held) to the extent they disagree with what Keyes has already decided to be the "laws of nature and of Nature's God" can be ignored.

Alan Keyes must be a very important man - to Alan Keyes.

See? Crazieplex.

Tracking Teh Crazie - The "Unconstitutional" Minimum Wage

Every now and then it's good to take a peek at teh crazie - and we've done it more than a few times here at 2PJ.

Today, I'd like to look at this paragraph found at World Net Daily (actually it's from Mr Crazie himself, Joseph Farah):

My thought is that nobody in Washington – not Obama, not the Congress and not the Supreme Court – has any constitutional authority to insert itself between employers or potential employers and employees. If two consenting adults, as Obama believes, can do whatever they want to each other sexually, surely two consenting adults have the right to agree or not to agree to perform services for whatever wages they deem appropriate – without any interference from the federal government.

This is your more or less classic tenther argument about the minimum wage.  If it's not specifically spelled out on the Constitution, the Congress doesn't have the authority to implement it.

Too bad the Supreme Court already decided (in 1937!) that Congress does have the authority to set a minimum wage.  From West Coast Hotel v. Parrish:

In each case the violation alleged by those attacking minimum wage regulation for women is deprivation of freedom of contract. What is this freedom? The Constitution does not speak of freedom of contract. It speaks of liberty and prohibits the deprivation of liberty without due process of law. In prohibiting that deprivation, the Constitution does not recognize an absolute and uncontrollable liberty. Liberty in each of its phases has its history and connotation. But the liberty safeguarded is liberty in a social organization which requires the protection of law against the evils which menace the health, safety, morals, and welfare of the people. Liberty under the Constitution is thus necessarily subject to the restraints of due process, and regulation which is reasonable in relation to its subject and is adopted in the interests of the community is due process. This essential limitation of liberty in general governs freedom of contract in particular. More than twenty-five years ago we set forth the applicable principle in these words, after referring to the cases where the liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment had been broadly described.

'But it was recognized in the cases cited, as in many others, that freedom of contract is a qualified, and not an absolute, right. There is no absolute freedom to do as one wills or to contract as one chooses. The guaranty of liberty does not withdraw from legislative supervision that wide department of activity which consists of the making of contracts, or deny to government the power to provide restrictive safeguards. Liberty implies the absence of arbitrary restraint, not immunity from reasonable regulations and prohibitions imposed in the interests of the community.

This power under the Constitution to restrict freedom of contract has had many illustrations.  That it may be exercised in the public interest with respect to contracts between employer and employee is undeniable. [Emphases added.]

The United States Supreme Court, 75 years or so ago.

When given the opportunity 4 years later, the US Supreme Court said in US v. Darby:

Since our decision in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, it is no longer open to question that the fixing of a minimum wage is within the legislative power and that the bare fact of its exercise is not a denial of due process under the Fifth more than under the Fourteenth Amendment.

And yet, Joseph Farah and his merry band of truth-telling tenthers missed this decades old decision.

Rick Santorum at Birther Central

Back in December, the OPJ posted the news that our favorite Man-on-Dog ponderer, Rick Santorum, takes up column space at World Net Daily - aka Birther Central.

If that in itself isn't enough evidence to show how meaningless his political career has become, his most recent column certainly is.

While complaining about President Obama's "constitutional violations" he simply shows his own ignorance of that document.  But first Rick's frame:

President Obama’s announcement last week on his plans to make sweeping changes to our nation’s gun laws by presidential executive order is yet another example of his continual disregard for the United States Constitution and the separation of powers it set forth to protect the American people from government by fiat.

Rick might want to check with the radical leftist who was George W Bush's last Attorney General on the constitutionality of the president's gun control program:

Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey appeared on the Fox News Channel’s “Hannity” Wednesday night with a message that left the host looking rather disappointed.

Rebutting the Republican talk show host, Mukasey said that President Barack Obama’s executive orders so far have been legal, as much as he finds them distasteful.

Uh-oh.  But let's take a look at some of the examples that Rick uses show Obama's "continual disregard" of the Constitution.  This is first on the list:

Two days after he took office, President Obama rescinded by executive order the “Mexico City policy,” which prevents foreign aid going to organizations that perform or promote abortions. No legislation passed, no debate, just an executive order.

Um, Rick?  Do you know why only an executive order was necessary for the rescindment of the "Mexico City Policy"?

Because the enactment of that policy was implemented by an executive order - namely George W Bush's:

The Mexico City Policy announced by President Reagan in 1984 required nongovernmental organizations to agree as a condition of their receipt of Federal funds that such organizations would neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations. This policy was in effect until it was rescinded on January 22, 1993.

It is my conviction that taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions or advocate or actively promote abortion, either here or abroad. It is therefore my belief that the Mexico City Policy should be restored. Accordingly, I hereby rescind the "Memorandum for the Acting Administrator of the Agency for International Development, Subject: AID Family Planning Grants/Mexico City Policy," dated January 22, 1993, and I direct the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development to reinstate in full all of the requirements of the Mexico City Policy in effect on January 19, 1993.

As you can plainly see, the history of the policy goes all the way back past Bill Clinton to Ronald Reagan. Each restoration/rescindment an executive branch decision, none requiring any sort of legislation.

It's simply embarrassing for a law school graduate to get this so amaurotically wrong.

Another thing Rick got wrong - his next example:

In early 2011, the Obama administration stop enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, a law duly passed by Congress and signed into law. Here President Obama has directed his Department of Justice to ignore the Constitution and separation of powers and not enforce a law.

For this, Politifact has done the research:

In February 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner saying that the Obama administration would no longer defend the law -- in court.

Holder argued that the law, as applied to same-sex couples legally married under state law, violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment. While the letter stated that the Obama administration would not defend the law in two cases, it also stated that it will continue to be "enforced" by the executive branch until Congress repeals it, or the courts definitively strike it down.

And so on.

How many more things does Rick need to get wrong at WND before he's laughed off the stage?

Tracking Teh Crazie - Jerome Corsi. Again.

The wingnut birther conspiracy continues.

From Jerome Corsi at WND (of course):

NEW YORK – John Brennan, the Obama counter-terrorism adviser nominated this week to head the CIA, played a controversial role in what many suspect was an effort to sanitize Obama’s passport records.

On March 21, 2008, amid Obama’s first presidential campaign, two unnamed contract employees for the State Department were fired and a third was disciplined for breaching the passport file of Democratic presidential candidate and then-Sen. Barack Obama.

Breaking the story, the Washington Times on March 20, 2008, noted that all three had used their authorized computer network access to look up and read Obama’s records within the State Department consular affairs section that “possesses and stores passport information.”

And the connection to Brennan?  Take a look:

The New York Times noted the two offending State Department contract employees who were fired had worked for Stanley Inc., a company based in Arlington, Va., while the reprimanded worker continued to be employed by the Analysis Corporation of McLean, Va.

The newspaper gave no background on either corporation, other than to note that Stanley Inc. did “computer work for the government.”

At that time, Stanley Inc. was a 3,500-person technology firm that had just won a $570-million contract to provide computer-related passport services to the State Department.

Analysis Corporation was headed by Brennan, a former CIA agent who was then serving as an adviser on intelligence and foreign policy to Sen. Obama’s presidential campaign.

And since Brennan's "connected" to the intrusion it didn't take much for Corsi to paste in a conspiracy:

Investigative reporter Kenneth Timmerman said a well-placed but unnamed source told him that the real point of the passport breach incidents was to cauterize the Obama file, removing from it any information that could prove damaging to his eligibility to be president.

Information like Obama's birthplace, of course.  Two things you should know about the source of Corsi's scoop above - it's Newsmax and it's from January of 2009 about events that took place almost a year earlier.  Was there any sort of investigation in to this?  Is any of it even possible?  Corsi, gives us a clue:

In July 2008, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General issued a 104-page investigative report on the passport breach incidents, stamped “Sensitive But Unclassified.” The report was so heavily redacted, it was virtually useless to the public. Scores of passages were blacked out entirely, including one sequence of 29 consecutive pages that were each obliterated by a solid black box that made it impossible even to determine paragraph structures.

You can read the "virtually useless" report here. From the Executive Summary we learn:

In March 2008, media reports surfaced that the passport files maintained by the Department of State (Department) of three U.S. Senators, who were also presidential candidates, had been improperly accessed by Department employees and contract staff. On March 21, 2008, following the first reported breach and at the direction of the Acting Inspector General, the Office of Inspector General (OIG), Office of Audits, initiated this limited review of Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA) controls over access to passport records in the Department’s Passport Information Electronic Records System (PIERS). Specifically, this review focused on determining whether the Department (1) adequately protects passport records and data contained in PIERS from unauthorized access and (2) responds effectively when incidents of unauthorized access occur.

So the unauthorized access was through the PIERS system. Now we're getting somewhere.  But can anyone actually do what Corsi says these low level data entry employees did?

Not really.  From page ten of the OIG report:

According to CA [Consular Affairs] officials, almost all PIERS users have “read only” access.

There's a foot note to that sentence which reads:

A small number of CA Directorate Staff can edit PIERS records as required by their positions.

So as it's only those State Department employees on the "CA Directorate Staff" who can edit (which, presumably would include "sanitize" or "cauterize") passport records and as the "connection" between Brennan and the snooping wasn't a State Department employee, Jerome Corsi's thesis (that Brennan "sanitized" Obama's passport records to cover up the "fact" that he was born in Kenya) is virtually useless.

But let's assume it's true.  It would be illegal, right?  But if that's the case then why would this happen?

Still, the New York Times report indicated then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had spent Friday morning calling all three presidential candidates and that she had told Obama that she was sorry for the violation.

“I told him that I myself would be very disturbed if I learned that somebody had looked into my passport file,” Rice said.

If Corsi is right, then Rice must've been in on it - if only to cover it up. Jerome Corsi - he's got teh crazie.

Tracking Teh Crazie - 22nd Amendment

I've seen this pop up in a few places and so I am assuming you have, too.

Here's teh crazie from la maison de crazie, WND:

Before President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to his third and fourth terms in office, U.S. presidents had honored the limit established by George Washington that a president should serve no more than two.

And after, the 22nd Amendment formally restricted service in the Oval Office to two terms.

But now, U.S. Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., and a supporter of President Obama, has introduced House Joint Resolution 15 to repeal the 22nd Amendment and thus abolish presidential term limits.

The title of the piece, incidentally, is:

Democrat plan lets Obama run for 3rd term

So we all know it's a "Democrat" plot to "let" Obama rule for another 4 years - can't trust them lib'ruls, can you?  Can't trust 'em not to change the Constitution to suit their radical socialist agenda, can you?

Except this is not the first time Serrano has introduced this.  Nor is he the only one.  Indeed, there's a whole mess of details that WND left out.  Let's start with their very next paragraph:

Serrano has attempted this before, in 2003, 2009 and 2011 with little luck. H.J.R. 15 would require a two-thirds majority vote in favor in both the House and Senate and a majority of support from state legislatures.

Actually, according to snopes.com:

Rep. Serrano has introduced the very same proposal to Congress every two years since 1997 (a total of nine times), regardless of which party was currently occupying the White House...[Emphasis added.]

That's two resolutions for Clinton the philanderer, four for Bush the torturer, and now three for Obama, the guy who's letting Bush get away with the torture.

But I digress.

Here's the text of Serrano's resolution:

JOINT RESOLUTION
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment, thereby removing the limitation on the number of terms an individual may serve as President.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission for ratification:

‘Article--
   ‘The twenty-second article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.’. [Italics and Bolding in original.]

Did you know the current leaders in the Senate (McConnell and Reid) co-sponsored a very similar bill in 1995?  Word for word similar.

Did you know who said this?

...in thinking about it more and more, I have come to the conclusion that the 22nd Amendment was a mistake.

This person was also quoted as wondering whether the 22nd Amendment interferes with "the democratic rights of the people" Adding:

They can elect a Senator for 40 years or a Congressman—something of this kind—for as long as they want to. Why don't they have the right to vote for whoever they want to vote for?

Do you know who said that? That would be the 40th President of these United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan. And do you know when he said that?  You'd think, considering the frame teh crazie wants you to use, that it was when the Gipper was a Democrat.

You could think that, but you'd be wrong.

He said both those things in 1986 - during his second administration.  The first in an interview with Barbara Walters and the second during an interview with the Washington Post.

So yea, Serrano's resolution is a Democrat Plan to let Obama rule some more.

Tracking Teh Crazie.

Tracking Teh Crazie

I took a look at crazie central this morning to see if there's any reaction to the Sandy Hook shooting.

And guess what?  Teh crazies are crazie.

The article itself isn't too too weird - teh crazie's in the comments.

First there's the by now expected Gun Owners of America response:

I only wish a few of the teachers had a few .40 caliber Berettas and knew how to use them...they could have saved the lives of 20 babies and six adults in that school today.

But it doesn't take long for it to go complete batshit:

Barrack won the election - Fast and Furious blew up in his face ! This stinks of a White House - Valerie Jarret planned gun control operation !

And then the proper source of the blame is identified:

You, have to ask yourself since he was elected, why so many gun crimes. Are people hopeless...or has this country under libs melted down to no morale base.

And of course:

What is the penalty for abandoning God..a debased immoral, and violent society. We have systematically removed God from our culture. ~Psalm 9:17 The wicked shall be turned into hell, and the nations that forgot God."~

Yea, that's it.  That's what caused the deaths of all those elementary school kids.

Peeking in on Teh Crazie.

Lil Ricky finds a new home!

Via Think Progress:

Rick Santorum has joined WorldNetDaily, a conspiracy theory blog best known for its indefatigable work advancing the birther movement, as an exclusive columnist.

Here's a sample of headlines from WorldNetDaily taken off the intertoobs:

 

 

 

 

 

Their Latest Excuse

Teh Crazies have another excuse:

It's not fair!  A thirty-year old consent decree is keeping them from fighting VOTER FRAUD.

This is what's coming out of crazie central: World Net Daily:

...a race-based consent decree negotiated by Democrats against the Republican National Committee a generation ago still has tied the RNC’s hands, and GOP officials could be cited for contempt – or worse – if they try to make sure American elections are clean.

Impossible?

No. Fact.

The case is the Democratic National Committee vs. the Republican National Committee, originally from 1982.

Democrats alleged Republicans were trying intimidate minority voters in New Jersey and brought the legal action. The RNC, inexplicably, decided to agree to a consent decree before a Democrat-appointed judge rather than fight the claims.

And they ("inexplicably") agreed to it, of course, because Reagan trounced Carter only two years before.  So of course they were politically powerless.  Of course.

When we look at a recent challenge to this consent decree, we find that in 1987 (still during the Reagan years) that the decree was modified. It pointed out some really dirty tricks from the RNC (Note: this is still two years BEFORE Lee Atwater took over):

In Louisiana during the 1986 Congressional elections, the RNC allegedly created a voter challenge list by mailing letters to African-American voters and, then, including individuals whose letters were returned as undeliverable on a list of voters to challenge. A number of voters on the challenge list brought a suit against the RNC in Louisiana state court. In response to a discovery request made in that suit, the RNC produced a memorandum in which its Midwest Political Director stated to its Southern Political Director that “this program will eliminate at least 60,000–80,000 folks from the rolls . . . If it’s a close race . . . which I’m assuming it is, this could keep the black vote down considerably.”

There was a lawsuit and then:

The RNC and the DNC settled the lawsuit, this time by modifying the Consent Decree, which remained “in full force and effect.” (App. at 404.) In the 1982 Decree, the RNC had agreed to specific restrictions regarding its ability to engage in “ballot security activities,” but that Decree did not define the term “ballot security activities.” (App. at 401.) As modified in 1987, the Decree defined “ballot security activities” to mean “ballot integrity, ballot security or other efforts to prevent or remedy vote fraud.” The modifications clarified that the RNC “may deploy persons on election day to perform normal poll watch[ing] functions so long as such persons do not use or implement the results of any other ballot security effort, unless the other ballot security effort complies with the provisions of the Consent Order and applicable law and has been so determined by this Court.” (App. at 405.) The modifications also added a preclearance provision that prohibits the RNC from assisting or engaging in ballot security activities unless the RNC submits the program to the Court and to the DNC with 20 days’ notice and the Court determines that the program complies with the Consent Decree and applicable law. [Emphasis added.]

Wait, wait. So the Republicans CAN do normal poll watching??  Since 1987?

But I thought that the WND said they were barred from trying to make sure the elections are clean?

Someone's bullshitting you, my friends.  How much you wanna bet it's the World Net Daily?

The GOP Debacle 2012 - Two Views

We all know how the election ended. President Obama was reelected with 332 Electoral and 62,085,892 Popular votes (51%), beating Challenger Mitt Romney who won 206 Electoral and 58,777,012 Popular votes (48%).

The big story, as told by CBS, is how the Romney Campaign got it so wrong.  They really did think they were going to win:

Romney and his campaign had gone into the evening confident they had a good path to victory, for emotional and intellectual reasons. The huge and enthusiastic crowds in swing state after swing state in recent weeks - not only for Romney but also for Paul Ryan - bolstered what they believed intellectually: that Obama would not get the kind of turnout he had in 2008.

They thought intensity and enthusiasm were on their side this time - poll after poll showed Republicans were more motivated to vote than Democrats - and that would translate into votes for Romney.

Didn't happen, of course. But why not?

Politico has some answers:

Across the [GOP]’s campaigns, committees and super PACs, internal polling gave an overly optimistic read on the electorate. The Romney campaign entered the last week of the election convinced that Colorado, Florida and Virginia were all but won, that the race in Ohio was neck and neck and that the Republican nominee had a legitimate shot in Pennsylvania.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee consistently had a more upbeat assessment of races in North Dakota and Montana, among others, than their Democratic counterparts. One GOP poll even showed Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock holding even with his opponent, even as public polls showed the embattled Republican hemorrhaging support. A Republican poll taken by Susquehanna Polling and Research showed Pennsylvania Senate candidate Tom Smith leading Democratic Sen. Bob Casey by 2 points a few weeks before the election; Casey won by 9 points.

Back to CBS. The piece lists the miscalculations the GOP made regarding their poll data:

1. They misread turnout. They expected it to be between 2004 and 2008 levels, with a plus-2 or plus-3 Democratic electorate, instead of plus-7 as it was in 2008. Their assumptions were wrong on both sides: The president's base turned out and Romney's did not. More African-Americans voted in Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina and Florida than in 2008. And fewer Republicans did: Romney got just over 2 million fewer votes than John McCain.

2. Independents. State polls showed Romney winning big among independents. Historically, any candidate polling that well among independents wins. But as it turned out, many of those independents were former Republicans who now self-identify as independents. The state polls weren't oversampling Democrats and undersampling Republicans - there just weren't as many Republicans this time because they were calling themselves independents.

3. Undecided voters. The perception is they always break for the challenger, since people know the incumbent and would have decided already if they were backing him. Romney was counting on that trend to continue. Instead, exit polls show Mr. Obama won among people who made up their minds on Election Day and in the few days before the election. So maybe Romney, after running for six years, was in the same position as the incumbent.

That's one view - reasonable, logical and supported by, you know evidence.

But never mind all that, Joseph Farah over at World Net Daily has the real reason why Romney ended up 116 Electoral and 3,309,000 Actual votes down.  It was VOTER FRAUD:

I also know that the reigning ethos of this movement represented so ably today by Obama is this: “By any means necessary …” It was first articulated by Jean Paul Sartre in his play, “Dirty Hands.” But it became popularized as a slogan of the revolutionary left by Malcolm X.

What it means, in short, is that the ends justify the means. It means violence is fine in achieving a worthwhile objective. It means lying, stealing, cheating and all those other bourgeoisie “sins” are appropriate means of furthering the cause.

Is there any doubt in your mind today that this is now the reigning ethos of the Democratic Party and its various tentacles and allies?

There is no doubt in my mind.

And that’s why stealing the vote is not only an acceptable practice by these people, it is a moral imperative in their twisted worldview.

Am I suggesting that the recent presidential election was stolen through voter fraud and manipulation?

Without a doubt.

While he writes that he has "plenty of anecdotal evidence" to support his view that 5% of the Democrat's support is attributed to fraud, he only offers us 4 examples.

None of which actually make much sense as evidence.  Let's take them one by one:

1) In Ohio, the voter rolls are "bloated" meaning that in some counties there are more people registered to vote than there are actual voters.  This, to Farah, is evidence of voter fraud.  What he leaves out of his quotation from his source material is these paragraphs:

The research found: more than 1.8 million dead people listed as voters; about 2.75 million with voter registrations in more than one state; and about 12 million voter records with incorrect addresses, meaning either the voters moved or errors in the information make it unlikely any mailings can reach them.

The latter category is where you’ll find most of Ohio’s 1.6 million inactive voters.

“For the most part, these are individuals who have already had mail returned to the board of elections or have filed a change of address with the U.S. post office,” said Husted spokeswoman Maggie Ostrowski.

Yet they are still officially registered to vote in Ohio and can cast a ballot if they provide a valid form of identification and their signature matches the one on file.

Bloated voter rolls in Ohio? Doesn't matter.

2) Michigan.  Farah wonders who Obama won so handily when the polls showed the two candidates in a virtual tie." Because they didn't. Take a look at Nate Silver's listing of the Michigan Poll data. Or Real Clear Politics. Nowhere in there is there any indication of a "virtual tie."

3) James O'Keefe and Project Veritas.  This doesn't even require a response.

4) WND's investigation that "demonstrated conclusively" that the Obama Campaign was taking illegal contributions via its website.  While I have no idea how this proves Voter Fraud, it did show that WND itself committed fraud by donating to a political campaign in someone else's name.

No limit of teh crazie over at World Net Daily.

They Did It Again!

In trying to find campaign fraud, THEY COMMIT CAMPAIGN FRAUD.

This time it's the nutballs at WND.

In an attempt to show how easy it is for a foreign national to donate money to the Obama Campaign, this is what the geniuses at WND did:

One $15 donation was made at BarackObama.com using a confirmed Pakistani IP address and proxy server. In other words, as far as the campaign website was concerned, the donation was openly identified electronically as coming from Pakistan.

Upon clicking the “donate” button, WND staff selected the $15 amount and were taken to a page on the campaign website asking for a first and last name, city, state, zip code, email address and phone number.

The information submitted was: “Osama bin Laden, 911 Jihad Way, Abbottabad, CA 91101.”

So they donated some cash in the name of Osama bin Laden - a foreign national. A dead foreign national at that!

Too bad it looks like that's illegal:

§ 110.4Contributions in the name of another; cash contributions (2 U.S.C. 441f, 441g, 432(c)(2)).
(a) [Reserved]
(b) Contributions in the name of another.
(1) No person shall—
(i) Make a contribution in the name of another;

Do these guys have ANY brains at all?

A Birther Update

Me, on April 26:

Here's the latest from Jerome Corsi, chief birther at Birther Central (aka World Net Daily): Barack Obama Sr was NOT Barack Obama Jr.'s real father.

Frank Marshall Davis was.

That absurdity aside, think of what that means for the whole birther industry when you realize that Frank Marshall Davis was born in Kansas.

Talking Points Memo, today:

“Birthers” are flipping their tinfoil hats over a new film that claims President Barack Obama’s father was not a Kenyan goat herder but rather a communist journalist nearly four decades older than his mother. The problem? It undermines a bedrock of birther lore: that the president is ineligible to be commander-in-chief.

“Dreams From My Real Father,” a 97-minute film narrated by an Obama impersonator, weaves the narrative that Obama’s grandfather wasn’t a furniture salesman but an undercover CIA agent who convinced Barack Obama Sr. to marry his teenage daughter to hide the fact that she was impregnated by a 55-year-old communist named Frank Marshall Davis.

There's a disclaimer on the film, by the way.  TPM writes that it includes:

...re-creations of probable events, using reasoned logic, speculation, and approximated conversations in an attempt to provide a cohesive understanding of Obama’s history.

So you know the research is rock solid.  Just rock solid.

Tracking Teh Crazie at World Net Daily

It's always a good idea to keep track of what teh right wing crazies are thinking.

This time, our good friends at birther central are doing their darnedest to connect, yet again, President Obama to Bill Ayers.

They fail, of course, but in doing so it's a good lesson in what counts as dot-connecting for teh crazies over at WND.

Let's begin. This morning I saw this headline at WND:

It leads to this story - it's a retread, I guess, of some of the "research" they did in 2009.  The Obama/Ayers dots are "connected" in the first two paragraphs:

Although the Washington Post this past week featured an extensive profile of Mitt Romney’s high school days, which alleged the presidential hopeful engaged in bullying, the news media has yet to probe important aspects of Obama’s early education that may evidence later radical ties.

In 2009, WND exposed Obama’s attendance in a church Sunday school that espouses far-left politics and served as a sanctuary for draft dodgers from the Students for a Democratic Society during the time Bill Ayers was a leader in that organization.

And number of paragraphs down the piece we read:

After living from age 7 with his mother and step-father in Indonesia, where he was enrolled as a Muslim under the name “Barry Soetoro” in public schools, Obama was sent back to Hawaii at age 11 in 1971 to reside with his grandmother. His mother moved back to Hawaii in 1972 and stayed there until 1977, when she relocated again to Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation.

In his autobiography, “Dreams from My Father,” Obama recounts on page 17 moving to Hawaii and being enrolled in the Unitarian church.

Note the Muslim connection in a story about Obama's Unitarianism - how do they do that with a straight face?

But back to Ayers - they've established that Obama was in Hawaii from 1971 on.  And that he went to Sunday school at a Unitarian Church.  And that that Unitarian Church "espouses far-left politics" and attended sunday school at a church connected to the SDS when Ayers was a leader there.

Ah...that's where things break down.  We've all known Ayers to be a leader of the Weather Underground - but what's the connection to the SDS?  From a PBS documentary:

The Weather Underground emerged when [Bernadine] Dohrn and a group of fellow University of Chicago students split with the campus-run Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS, because they disagreed with the SDS’s peaceful protest tactics against the Vietnam War. Dubbing itself the Weathermen, this new organization took its name from a line in Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”—“you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows”—and within months had set off bombs at the National Guard headquarters and set in motion plans to bomb targets across the country that it considered emblematic of the worldwide violence sanctioned by the U.S. government.

And when did this break occur?  When did Ayers and Dohrn et al leave split with the SDS?

Um, a couple of years before Obama set foot in that Sunday school:

By 1969 the organization had split into several factions, the most notorious of which was the “Weathermen,” or “Weather Underground,” which employed terrorist tactics in its activities.

This is what passes for dot-connecting among teh crazies on the right.

Get used to it - we got 6 months until the election.

Tracking Teh Crazie

In the past couple of days, these things have happened in this order:

• President Obama signed an executive order on Friday
• Some of the wingnuts went crazy because of it on Saturday
• Some other wingnuts said, "Eh...not so much." on Sunday

First here's the Executive Order.  Then teh crazie.

Tracking Teh Crazie - WND On That Breitbart-Obama Video

Read teh crazie here:

Video footage of President Obama during his college years at Harvard University was intentionally suppressed by news media and academia during the 2008 presidential campaign in order to hide Obama’s connections with radical leftists, according to the editors of Breitbart.com, the website of late conservative activist Andrew Breitbart.

Tapes of Obama at Harvard in 1991 have now been posted online and aired on the Fox News Channel, and they show then–student Obama speaking warmly on behalf of a leftist professor, Derrick Bell.

“Open up your hearts and your minds to the words of Professor Derrick Bell,” Obama says during his speech before hugging him.

The embrace between the pair had been edited out of a video that was released earlier in the day by Buzzfeed. (Video of the embrace can be seen here.)

“This is just the beginning. And this video is a smoking gun showing that Barack Obama not only associated with radicals, he was their advocate,” said Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro.

Referring to Professor Bell, Shapiro explained, “This is a close associate of [controversial Obama Rev.] Jeremiah Wright, a man who was quoted by Jeremiah Wright regularly. This is a man who posited that the civil rights movement was too moderate because it accepted the status quo, and believed that the entire legal and constitutional system had to be transformed in radical fashion. This is a man so extreme that, as we’ve reported, he wrote a story in 1993 in which he posited that white Americans would sell black Americans into slavery to aliens to relieve the national debt, and that Jews would go along with it.”

Selling black Americans to aliens to relieve the national debt?? What the heck is that all about?  Once you see the details and how WND/Breitbart is manipulating them, you'll see how empty this story is.

More On Rick Santorum's Birther Flirtations

In case you missed it, here's Lil Ricky at a recent event in Florida:



The woman's voice in the clip says a number of things, among them:

I never refer to Obama as President Obama, because, legally, he is not.

And:

And my question is: why isn’t something being done to get him out of our government? He has no legal right to be calling himself President.

Two obvious birther references.  Neither of which Rick refutes.

WND and Teh Gay, Today.

Something must be in the water today at Crazie Central otherwise known as World Net Daily.

I mean look what counts as breaking news over there!

The story on "The Pink Swastika" ("Everything you think you know about Nazis and homosexuals is wrong") is quite entertaining in a morbid, dumbfounding, anti-historical way. Its opening:

It's one of the most controversial books of our time. It has been shunned by libraries. It has been vilified by America's "gay" activist establishment. And no wonder: It makes a disturbing, compelling and persuasive case that homosexuals dominated the German Nazi Party from its birth through its catastrophic demise.

Really? I guess they missed these guys:

See those triangles on their uniforms? Those pink triangles tagged them as gay. Homosexuality was banned and thousands died in the camps for being gay.

And yet, according to WND, they "dominated" the Nazi party from beginning to end.

Almost makes WND's lead story seem less crazie.

Judicial Watch is suing Rachel Maddow:

A lawsuit seeking in excess of $50 million has been prepared against MSNBC and its talk-show entertainer Rachel Maddow over statements she made about a Minnesota-based ministry.

The issue according to WND:

He once made a statement on the radio criticizing his fellow Christians for not taking a stronger stand about the "gay" rights lobby promoting homosexuality in the schools. According to the ministry announcement, he made a strong reference to Muslims taking the issue more seriously in the context of Shariah law, but did not condone their practices. It was Bradlee's intent to focus attention on the issue, not to advocate harm to anyone.

Despite the very clear disclaimer by Dean on his ministries website and elsewhere regarding the false accusation that he was calling for the execution of homosexuals, according to the announcement, "MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and others seized on and accused Dean on her show of supporting the killing of homosexuals, as is the practice in some radical Islamic countries. This seriously has harmed Dean and the ministry, who pride themselves on respect and love for all people."

However, she actually pointed out Dean's own correction:

On her show, Maddow played a clip of Dean saying Muslim nations that execute gays are more moral than American Christians.

"Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America," he said on AM 1280 the Patriot. "This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination."

Dean says that Maddow ignored a "very clear disclaimer" on his ministry's site that he does not support killing homosexuals.

But after playing the clip Maddow noted that Dean "later clarified that he didn't really mean to sanction murder of gay people, he said, quote, 'We have never and will never call for the execution of homosexuals."

And so she's being sued for...what again?

More world class journalism from World Net Daily!

Teh Crazie...WND...Can't Comprehend.

World Net Daily, aka Crazie Central, is, like other right wing media outlets, trying to spin Anders Behring Breivik into something that isn't "right wing extremist." Today they're going with "Breivik = Darwinian" to explain his particular brand of Noridic crazie.

In the process they trip over their own illogic.

Here's the headline of the piece:

Terrorist proclaimed himself 'Darwinian,' not 'Christian'

And the first two paragraphs:

A review of Anders Behring Breivik's 1,500-page manifesto shows the media's quick characterization of the Norwegian terrorist as a "Christian" may be as incorrect as it was to call Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh one.

Breivik was arrested over the weekend, charged with a pair of brutal attacks in and near Oslo, Norway, including a bombing in the capital city that killed 7 and a shooting spree at a youth political retreat on the island of Utoya that killed more than 80 victims.

But then:

Yet, while McVeigh rejected God altogether, Breivik writes in his manifesto that he is not religious, has doubts about God's existence, does not pray, but does assert the primacy of Europe's "Christian culture" as well as his own pagan Nordic culture.

But then:

While Breivik says he considers himself "100-percent Christian," he also expresses pride in his genealogical roots.

Didn't the headline say he'd proclaimed himself not 'Christian'? In trying to spin this as something other than a right wing nut, crazie central goes with this quote extended quote from Breivik:

As this is a cultural war, our definition of being a Christian does not necessarily constitute that you are required to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus

And:

Being a Christian can mean many things; That you believe in and want to protect Europe's Christian cultural heritage. The European cultural heritage, our norms (moral codes and social structures included), our traditions and our modern political systems are based on Christianity – Protestantism, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity and the legacy of the European enlightenment (reason is the primary source and legitimacy for authority). It is not required that you have a personal relationship with God or Jesus in order to fight for our Christian cultural heritage and the European way. In many ways, our modern societies and European secularism is a result of European Christendom and the enlightenment. It is therefore essential to understand the difference between a 'Christian fundamentalist theocracy' (everything we do not want) and a secular European society based on our Christian cultural heritage (what we do want). So no, you don't need to have a personal relationship with God or Jesus to fight for our Christian cultural heritage. It is enough that you are a Christian-agnostic or a Christian atheist (an atheist who wants to preserve at least the basics of the European Christian cultural legacy (Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter)). The PCCTS, Knights Templar is therefore not a religious organisation [sic] but rather a Christian 'culturalist' military order.

So he says this is a culture war to protect "our Christian cultural heritage."

Yea, that's soooo not crazie, Christian or right wing.

UPDATE: Clarified WND's quoting of Breivik.