Month: February 2014

AYFKM? Fox News Asks “Are We Playing A Role In Politics That Maybe We Should Not Be Playing?”

Posted by on February 7, 2014 at 1:26 pm. 7 Comments :

If there is one thing we can count on from Fox News, it is a steady supply of commentary that violates the standards of ethical journalism and provides a rich source of raw material for mockery and/or debunking. Whether it is Bill O’Reilly declaring that his own interview of President Obama will “go down in journalistic history,” or the Fox “Psycho” analyst, Keith Ablow, peering into the mind of the President (and everyone else), Fox keeps America’s media watchers and comedians busy. Today is no exception as we embark on a deconstruction of remarks made by Fox News anchor Jenna Lee.

Fox News

In a segment with Fox’s Media analyst, Howard Kurtz, the topic was whether the media is setting up the “inevitability” of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee for president in 2016, and even as the next president. Of course, Fox News itself has been amongst the most hyperactive media outlets obsessing over the, as yet non-existent, Clinton campaign. But the interesting part of the discussion came when Lee had a peculiar inquiry for Kurtz which she set up thusly:

“The purpose of the media in a democracy is freedom of the press. We want to make sure that voters are informed on issues so that they can actively participate in democracy. I believe that. In this way that we’re already looking ahead at the election, are we serving our purpose as journalists? Are we productive members of this freedom of the press and democracy? Or are we playing a role in politics that maybe we should not be playing?”

Let’s just skip over the contorted linguistic absurdity that freedom of the press is the purpose of the media, and go right to Lee’s insistence that she wants to “make sure that voters are informed.” To the contrary, everything that Fox has done for the past seventeen years has served to make sure that voters are stuffed to the brim with disinformation, right-wing propaganda, and lies. And if Fox is so concerned with people being able to “actively participate in democracy,” then why do they promote voter suppression policies so aggressively?

But the real stunner came when Lee asked if Fox is “playing a role in politics.” Are You Friggin’ Kidding Me? It’s impressive that a Fox News anchor can ask that question with a straight face. A network that was bankrolled by an international propagandist (Rupert Murdoch), built by a Republican media strategist (Roger Ailes), and staffed by partisans both behind and in front of the camera, is obviously playing a role in politics.

Fox News serves as Media Central for conservative pundits and politicians. They help them to shape their messages, to organize, to fundraise, and to gain invaluable exposure to the public. So yes, Jenna, you are playing a role in politics that maybe (definitely) you should not be playing. And you know it. And you are not going to change, because it is what you and your colleagues were hired to do. So stop asking such stupid questions.

Bill O’Reilly Says His Obama Interview “Is Going To Go Down In Journalistic History”

Posted by on February 6, 2014 at 1:36 pm. 5 Comments :

Bill O'Reilly

The Titanic ego that we all know as Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, has once again demonstrated the enormity of regard that he has for himself. In an appearance on fellow Foxie Geraldo Rivera’s radio show, O’Reilly critiqued his performance during the Superbowl interview of President Obama saying…

“I’m going to predict that the interview that I did is going to go down in journalistic history as what should be done. It takes a certain skill to pose questions in a factual way and be persistent without being disrespectful.”

I totally agree. It does take a certain skill, one that O’Reilly utterly lacks. However, there are many elements of the interview that merit historical remembrance. For instance, he likely broke his own record for flagrant rudeness by interrupting the President forty-two times. He also earned a place in history by raising only the topics that his bosses at Fox have certified as official scandal bait (the ObamaCare website, the IRS, and of course, Benghazi), or as Jon Stewart described it, O’Reilly was “dipping whole-scale into the full Fox scandal grab bag.” And History will surely note that some 40% of the interview consisted of O’Reilly talking, making him nearly as much the subject of the interview as the President.

After the interview, O’Reilly was taken to task by Dana Milbank of the Washington Post for many of the reasons enumerated above. This caused O’Reilly to bust a gasket, calling Milbank a weasel and a liar, although never once did he specify what Milbank said that was allegedly false. PolitiFact, however, assessed the dispute and gave Milbank a “Mostly True” rating.

It’s endlessly entertaining to watch O’Reilly exalt himself as the journalistic eminence that he clearly believes himself to be. It’s like watching a child brag about his sports ability and then taking his ball and going home after he embarrasses himself. The difference is that O’Reilly is so egotistical that he is impervious to shame. So thanks, bill, for showing us all how it should be done – by negative example.

Tea Party Values: Obama Should Be Executed As An Enemy Combatant

Posted by on February 6, 2014 at 10:37 am. 28 Comments :

The right-wing outrage machine is a sensitive instrument that requires little more than a sideways glance to set off a fierce rumbling. For instance, a tweet that noted that conservatives would hate a Cheerios commercial with a biracial family, that they already said they hated, produced a fury of immense proportions. But where is their outrage when this happens:


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In a town hall meeting in the district of Rep. Jim Bridenstine (OK-Tea Party), one of his God fearing, traditional values loving constituents rose to express her patriotic desire to send President Obama to the morgue:

Crazy Lady: “Obama, he’s not president, as far as I’m concerned, he should be executed as an enemy combatant. […and congress is…] doing nothing and that legally allows this moron to make decisions. He has no authority. None!”

Obviously this woman has an inability to grasp the concept of democracy. But far more disturbing is the response of her neighbors (who laughed) and Rep. Bridenstine. Rather than admonish her for advocating birtherism and treasonous violence, Bridenstine validated her comments with examples of why he agreed with her:

Bridenstine: “Everybody knows the lawlessness of this president. He picks and chooses which laws he’s going to enforce or not enforce. He does it by decree. When he can’t create a law, or when he can’t create a law through Congress, then he uses the bureaucracies of the executive branch to create rules and regulations through executive order. And, ultimately, when he can’t even get that done, then he uses foreign bodies. He uses the United Nations to try to change the laws in the United States.”

Nothing in his response repudiated the woman’s presidential death wish. To the contrary, Bridenstine elaborated on it with charges that are the substance of the most inane conspiracy theories that swirl through Fringelandia. The right is fond of castigating this president for the use of executive orders, even though he has used them less often than any president in over a hundred years. Just today, over at Fox News, their Fox Nation website featured an article about Obama’s “Executive Order Tyranny.” [Read Fox Nation vs. Reality for more than 50 examples of documented dishonesty]

But Bridenstine can’t let facts get in the way his Tea Party agenda. At least not while he is still standing in front of his wild-eyed constituents. After the meeting, and presumably some criticism, Bridenstine released this statement on his web page:

“A public figure cannot control what people say in open meetings. I obviously did not condone and I do not approve of grossly inappropriate language. It is outrageous that irresponsible parties would attribute another person’s reckless remarks to me.”

It’s true that a public figure cannot control what people say in open meetings. But he can respond in a manner that indicates his approval or disapproval. Bridenstine, contrary to his assertion that he did not condone the “grossly inappropriate language” (that he doesn’t specify), actually did condone it by not repudiating it, and worse, by embellishing it with his own pseudo-facts.

This sort of thing is commonplace among Tea Party politicians and pundits. They demonize the President, and all Americans who hold progressive views, as traitors and commies and villains who salivate at the thought of destroying America. Then they turn around and complain if a liberal correctly points out bad behavior by a Tea Party disciple. But they cannot escape their repugnant views when they are captured on video expressing them. And sadly, this is just one more example of their vulgar hostility and seething hatred.

Koch Brothers Take Their Campaign To Kill Net Neutrality To Fox News

Posted by on February 5, 2014 at 8:27 pm. 2 Comments :

Last month the corporate-friendly majority on the Supreme Court struck down FCC rules that required Internet service providers (ISP) to treat all content equally. Known as “Network Neutrality,” these rules prevent companies like AT&T from providing fast service for Internet sites it favors, while impeding content from those it does not. Without Net Neutrality, you might try to access Dominoes Pizza, but your ISP could refuse that request and direct you to Papa John’s, who paid them to do so. Or they could simply slow down the connection to Dominoes so that you would give up and try some other pizzeria.

Net Neutrality insures that you are able to access any site on the Internet that you want without interference from your provider. Unfortunately, the big ISPs (i.e. AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, etc.) oppose that freedom. They want to control your access and make either you, or the destination sites, pay them to open the highway to free-flowing traffic. Theoretically, they could just as easily obstruct your access to content they find objectionable politically, morally, or economically (i.e. their competitors).

Fox Nation

Read the acclaimed ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality for more brazen Fox lies.

In response to the Supreme Court ruling, Democrats in Congress drafted the “Open Internet Preservation Act of 2014,” with the stated goal of…

“…restor[ing]the Open Internet Rules struck down by the D.C. Circuit in January 2014 prohibiting broadband Internet service providers from engaging in discriminatory behavior or blocking content altogether.”

Within hours the conservative opposition to the bill cranked up on behalf of the corporations that bankroll them. Prominent among them was the Koch brothers who have long been aggressive opponents of an open Internet. Their fake news wire service, Watchdog.org, quickly published an article that thoroughly mischaracterized the facts and featured a deceitful headline saying “Democratic federal lawmakers really want the FCC to regulate Internet.”

By casting this as an issue of regulation, the Koch brothers seek to marshal support for their anti-Internet agenda. To the extent that this bill can be portrayed as regulation, it is a regulation that guarantees more freedom for all users of the Internet. Granted, there is somewhat less freedom for ISPs to gouge consumers and inhibit free speech. Despite the fact that the legislation was drafted by Democrats, the only member of Congress that the article quoted was arch-rightist Marsha Blackburn who said…

“It’s more than ironic that the same Administration that can’t figure out how to make Healthcare.Gov work now thinks that regulating the Internet like China and Russia will make things better for American consumers.”

Clearly Blackburn doesn’t understand either Net Neutrality or the nature of Russian and Chinese censorship. It is Net Neutrality that actually makes the Internet more open, and the lack of it that permits government and corporate interference. But she is just another Republican who is doing the bidding of her well-heeled corporate donors.

koch-news
True to form, Fox News picked up the story from Watchdog and ran it on their lie-riddled, community website Fox Nation with the headline “Dems Pushing FCC To Regulate Internet.” Fox News regularly publishes articles from the fake Koch brothers wire service that always seem to advance the interests of wealthy industrialists like the Kochs. It’s one of the perks of being rich enough to create your own “news” distribution outlet that can feed propaganda to friendly publishers like Fox.

In this case, Fox News is doing a disservice to their audience by failing to disclose the partisan interests of their source. But more seriously, they are feeding them disinformation about net neutrality that could result in a severe reduction in the freedom that has always been a part of the open Internet if Fox and the Kochs are successful.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Giving Workers More Freedom Is ‘Devastating’ To Fox News

Posted by on February 4, 2014 at 10:00 pm. 3 Comments :

The Congressional Budget Office just released their latest set of economic projections for the next decade and the data provides some good news for America’s workers. But never let it be said that Fox News would receive such information and honestly present it to their woefully deceived audience. The headline at the top of the Fox Nation website trumpeted that the CBO’s report was “Devastating News for ObamaCare: Over 2 Million Workers Will Lose Jobs.”

Fox Nation

For more brutal deconstructions of Fox lies, read Fox Nation vs. Reality.

Oh my. That would be devastating – If it were true. However, the CBO report never said any such thing. The truth is that ObamaCare will provide workers with more freedom of choice due to the fact that they will no longer be shackled to jobs they don’t want or need simply because they can’t afford to lose their medical benefits. What ObamaCare does is to make health care affordable so that people can decide whether to continue their employment based on factors other than their health plan. Here is how the CBO phrased it:

“The estimated reduction stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses’ demand for labor, so it will appear almost entirely as a reduction in labor force participation and in hours worked relative to what would have occurred otherwise rather than as an increase in unemployment (that is, more workers seeking but not finding jobs) or underemployment (such as part-time workers who would prefer to work more hours per week).”

What this means is that workers may voluntarily choose to leave their jobs or work fewer hours. It does not mean that employers will fire anyone or cut staffing. And when a worker freely decides to resign, it is ridiculous to say that they “lost” their job. They didn’t lose it. They know where it is still. It’s just that they have chosen not to go there anymore (h/t Bobcat Goldthwait). That’s called freedom of choice.

There are many reasons why someone might leave a job under these circumstances. They may be seniors who wish to retire. They may be young mothers who want to be at home with their children. They may want to seek opportunities at other companies. They may be entrepreneurs who require more time to start a new business. Before ObamaCare these choices may not have been available because people were locked into their employer-provided health plan at a job that was not otherwise helping them achieve their personal goals. Now they will have more freedom to structure their lives in a manner that is more satisfying or appropriate to their circumstances.

Nevertheless, the Fox Nationalists falsely portrayed this exercise of free choice by workers as “lost jobs.” Then they judged this phony loss a devastating blow to ObamaCare. Their source for this blatantly misleading analysis is the “Moonie” Washington Times, a disreputable newspaper with an ultra-conservative bias. But it doesn’t stop there. The same fraudulent reading of the CBO study was aired on the Fox News Channel where they recruited criminal/congressman Darrell Issa to lambaste the “bombshell” report.

It’s no wonder that so many studies have proven that Fox News viewers are more ill-informed than viewers of other news outlets – and even those who view no news at all. The problem with the Fox News audience has never been that they lack information. The problem is that the information they have is more than likely untrue. We’ve been warned about this in the past by some notable thinkers:

“Beware of false knowledge. It is more dangerous than ignorance.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” ~ Mark Twain

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wise people so full of doubts.” ~ Bertrand Russell

Fox Nation
[Update] As Fox Nation escalates their mischaracterization of the CBO report with a feature story asserting a “Death Blow,” PolitiFact has analyzed the spin and the conservative claim that jobs will be lost due to ObamaCare. They found specific allegations, as articulated by House Speaker John Boehner and Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, to be “Mostly False.”

PolitiFact: “They made it sound as if jobs are going away because businesses don’t create them or because they eliminated existing jobs. The CBO report, though, was referring to workers who decide on their own to leave the workforce, because they don’t have to keep working a job just to keep their health benefits.”

The Tea Party’s Dream Candidate Files For Tennessee Election

Posted by on February 4, 2014 at 12:52 pm. 8 Comments :

There is joy in Teaville today as perhaps the most admired figure in the ultra-rightist wing of the GOP has answered their hopes and taken concrete steps to embark on a political career.

Victoria Jackson

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That’s right, former Saturday Night Live ukelele strummer, Victoria Jackson, has declared her candidacy for a seat as a county commissioner in Williamson County, Tennessee. As a commissioner Jackson can be expected to bring her unique “knowledge” of economics, urban planning, law enforcement, business development, and government administration to Williamson’s county hall. Plus, she can recite poetry while standing on her head.

Jackson is revered for her policy positions that include support for a White History Month and opposition to gay marriage. She is a staunch opponent of Islam which she characterized in song as being pro-beheading and pedophilia. She promises that her campaign will focus on issues important to Williamson County’s citizens, like resisting the Muslim Brotherhood, battling the U.N.’s Agenda 21 conspiracy, and obstructing Common Core standards for education.

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Check it out at Amazon today.

Once in office Jackson can be expected to be a small government, fiscally conservative advocate for the Constitution and the Christian values that she would unconstitutionally impose on her neighbors. And when the county meetings got to be a little dull, she could whip out her uke and do a chorus of “There’s A Communist Living in the White House!”

If you live in Williamson County, be sure to give Victoria your support and your vote. She told local reporters that she is running a campaign that will rely on word of mouth rather than conventional fundraising, so it may be difficult to donate. But we at News Corpse are wishing her the best and hope that she prevails. Good luck Victoria.

MSNBC: Fire Phil Griffin And Rehire The Cheerios Tweeter

Posted by on February 3, 2014 at 5:46 pm. 10 Comments :

Remember way back about four days ago when Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, wet his britches over a tweet by someone at MSNBC that said that right-wingers would hate a new Cheerios ad that featured a biracial family?

The reaction from Priebus and the rest of the conservative throngs was to lash out at MSNBC and demand satisfaction for what they regarded as an insulting insinuation that there were racists in the ranks of the right. Priebus even threatened to boycott the cable network. Never mind that the tweet was thoroughly justified by the fact that right-wing racists actually did hate the very same biracial family when they appeared in a previous version of the ad. In fact, YouTube had to close off the comments on the video due to the volume of vulgar responses. That didn’t stop Priebus from throwing a tantrum and insisting on an apology.

In a classic demonstration of just how pusillanimous a corporate media weasel can be, the president of MSNBC, Phil Griffin, disgorged a sniveling apology and announced that the person responsible for the tweet had been terminated. It was an embarrassing supplication to conservative bullies whose outrage was transparently fake.

Coke - America

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Today we have additional evidence that Griffin’s knee-bending was uncalled-for. An ad for Coca-Cola aired yesterday during the Superbowl (video below) that featured Americans of various nationalities, races, religions, and cultures, all singing “America the Beautiful” in a rich tapestry of the languages that represent our country’s diversity. The response from conservatives to this heartwarming advertisement was predictably hostile. They lit up Twitter and Facebook with hateful messages vilifying Coke, as well as all Americans who do not fit the European, Caucasian mold favored by these bigots. Some of the more prominent feces-flingers were:

  • Todd Starnes of Fox News, who tweeted “Coca Cola is the official soft drink of illegals crossing the border.”
  • Tea Party ex-congressman Allen West, called the ad “a truly disturbing commercial,” because “the words went from English to languages I didn’t recognize.”
  • Michael Patrick Leahy of Breitbart News, who lamented that the “ad also prominently features a gay couple.” and somehow found a message in it that the U.S. “is no longer a nation ruled by the Constitution.”
  • Eric Bolling of Fox News, who objected to this use of a patriotic song saying “Don’t put it to ‘America the Beautiful.’ You used the wrong song.”
  • Armageddonist Glenn Beck, who inexplicably derived division from this ode to unity, saying “That’s all this is – to divide people.”

If anything exonerates the unjustly fired MSNBC tweeter, it is this parade of conservative xenophobes who validate the original message about right-wingers hating an ad that honors what really makes America beautiful: as the song says, brotherhood. And if anyone should be fired by MSNBC it’s Phil Griffin, the executive who didn’t have the balls to stand up for what’s right.

The O’Reilly Rehash: President Obama’s Superbowl Interview

Posted by on February 2, 2014 at 9:04 pm. 12 Comments :

Today the highly [er, make that barely] anticipated Superbowl interview of President Obama by Bill O’Reilly of Fox News (video below) went off pretty much how you might expect. Hoping to cover matters of importance to the special broadcast’s audience, the irascible O’Reilly jumped right into the discussion with an issue that has been dormant for weeks and went from there to some of the most overwrought pseudo-scandals that Fox has failed miserably to ignite, despite countless hours of effort.

Bill O'Reilly

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O’Reilly led off by asking the President about the website glitches that plagued the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare ) when it launched four months ago. He inquired why Obama hasn’t fired his Secretary of Health and Human Services, as if she had personally written the faulty code. And he asked about Obama’s prior statement that “if you like your plan you can keep it.” Of course, Obama has answered all of these questions numerous times, so O’Reilly’s dredging them up could not possibly have produced any new information.

The next subject was Fox News’ favorite mantra: BENGHAZI! This issue is even older than the website failure. The unique angle O’Reilly sought to mine involved the claims of “some people” who O’Reilly said believe that the White House refused to describe the attack as terrorism in order to help his reelection campaign. There’s just two small problems with that: 1) O’Reilly doesn’t explain how that would help the reelection effort. and 2) The President did describe the attack as terrorism the day after it occurred. Nevertheless, O’Reilly insisted that Obama explain why there are people who believe the false premise. Obama had an excellent explanation saying that “They believe it because folks like you are telling them that.”

Next up for O’Reilly’s inquisition was the infamous allegations that the IRS had targeted Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations who applied for non-profit status. Obama pointed out that, despite extensive hearings in Congress, no evidence has been produced to support the charges. In fact, the evidence increasingly reveals that both liberals and conservatives were given scrutiny by the IRS, as they should be. Obama further noted that, just as with Benghazi, “These kinds of things keep on surfacing in part because you and your TV station will promote them.”

Finally, O’Reilly read a question that had been sent to him by a viewer. The viewer wanted to know “Why do you feel it’s necessary to fundamentally transform the nation that has afforded you such opportunity and success.” Seriously? This idiotic bit of tripe has been swirling around the conspiracy theorist community since the first Obama inauguration when it was posited by Glenn Beck. These brain-damaged twerps can’t seem to grasp that a turn of phrase during an election campaign is not a coded reference to some nefarious plot to unravel the American Dream. The only meaning was that then-candidate Obama intended to repair the damage that the previous eight years of President Bush had caused.

So this was the entirety of O’Reilly’s interview. It was a rehashing of tired rumors and slander. Given this platform to reach an unusually large audience, O’Reilly wasted it with bitterly partisan nonsense. He could have addressed some of the issues that are currently on the minds of the American people, like the economy and jobs, immigration reform, the Keystone XL Pipeline, or the situations in Syria and Iran. He could have dug deeper into the President’s recent State of the Union speech and sought to get him to elaborate on income equality. He might even approached the tribulations of New Jersey governor Chris Christie, or legalizing marijuana.

But no. O’Reilly stuck with the Fox News manufactured scandal mongering related to ObamaCare, the IRS, and as always, Benghazi. As a result, the interview was a pitiful waste of time and more proof that Fox News doesn’t have the first clue about what constitutes journalism. But rest assured they will find some sentence fragment in the segment that they will inflate into humungous proportions that will produce buckets of raw outrage by Monday morning.

Fox News May Be Anti Voting Rights, But At Least They’re Pro Election Fraud

Posted by on February 2, 2014 at 9:57 am. 1 Comments :

The Republican Party has been engaged in a prolonged and determined campaign to suppress the votes of citizens whom they believe are inclined to vote for Democrats. Their disingenuous claims to be battling voter fraud are exposed as lies by the fact that they cannot certify any significant incidence of unlawful voting, and the solutions they propose to the non-problem all seem to serve as impediments to voting by youth, minorities, seniors, and the poor. These are all commonly regarded as Democratic constituents, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

Conservative media, and especially Fox News, has been a full partner in this voter suppression effort. They have openly taken positions in support of the GOP’s discriminatory initiatives and given a platform to right-wing partisans who advocate for purging the electorate of Democratic voters. The issue has become a near obsession for the rightist media machine as it seeks support for restrictions that require photo IDs, reduce polling places and hours of operation, and limit the ability of independent organizations to register voters.

All of this is done in the name of cracking down on illegal election activities. Which makes it all the more ironic that Fox News is now defending someone who has been indicted for actual election fraud, Dinesh D’Souza. As a veteran of right-wing punditry, D’Souza is a frequent guest on Fox News and is the writer and producer of the anti-Obama crocumentary, “2016: Obama’s America,” based on his own widely debunked book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage.”

D’Souza was recently indicted for felony violations of election finance laws. He is alleged to have solicited people to make donations to a candidate for the senate and then reimbursing the donors as a scheme to exceed contribution limits. The response to this by D’Souza’s pals at Fox News was to assert that the prosecution is all a part of a plot by President Obama to silence his critics. It’s an absurd and unsupported claim that doesn’t explain why Obama would go after a minor figure like D’Souza, whom few Americans have heard of, while allowing more prominent critics like Rush Limbaugh to remain free. Nor does it account for the fact that the same Justice Department that indicted D’Souza also convicted a Democrat for the same crime.

Fox News - D'Souza

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The attempt to whitewash D’Souza’s criminal activity included a guest spot on Sean Hannity’s program. Hannity called D’Souza “the latest victim to be targeted by the Obama White House,” without any evidence of White House involvement. Then Hannity gave D’Souza an opportunity to rebut the charges made against him. D’Souza said…

“Well, as you can imagine, it’s been quite a week. I can’t really talk about the case but I will say that I’m determined to continue my work. I’m making a big film called “America,” which is about the greatness of America that’s gonna come out for July 4th this year. So I just want to say that I’m undeterred and I’m marching full speed ahead.”

The notable thing about that response, other than its shameless self-promotion of a future project, is that D’Souza never once denied the charges against him. While he may not be able to discuss the details of the case, there is no prohibition on proclaiming his innocence. It is curious, to say the least, that when given the opportunity to do so in a friendly environment, he would so conspicuously refuse. Then when Hannity inquired whether D’Souza considered the indictment to be political retribution, D’Souza said…

“Well, I will say that “2016” was a film that does seem to have gotten under President Obama’s skin. And the reason for this is that it wasn’t just a critique of ObamaCare or his policies, but I, in a sense, went into Obama’s world and also into Obama’s mind. There I was at the Obama family homestead in Kenya. I interviewed his brother. And, of course, we advanced the thesis that here is a traumatized, and somewhat of a messed up guy who is, in a way, haunted by the dreams of his father, the topic of his own biography. There was a rant against the film on Obama’s own website, that is BarackObama.com, so we know the film rattled him. We know that it upset him. And whether this is some kind of payback remains to be seen.”

Once again, there is no denial guilt. But there is speculation about payback that is not backed up by any facts. There are also some rather ego-drenched assertions that his cinematic screed had a prodigious impact on the President’s state of mind, when in all likelihood Obama never saw it or cared about it. He’s a little too busy being the leader of the free world to be concerned about an amateurish hit piece by a disreputable hack.

Over at Fox’s community website, Fox Nation [see the ebook Fox Nation vs. Reality for documentation of their brazen dishonesty], they posted a link to an article by Charles Hurt on Breitbart News that went even further in defense of the criminal activities alleged against D’Souza. Hurt even conceded the question of D’Souza’s guilt and still excused him saying that he “very well may be guilty of a few winks and nods that wound up violating limits on campaign contributions’ The “few winks and nods” added up to more than $20,000 dollars in fraudulent donations. But the central theme of Hurt’s article is that the prosecutor, Preet Bharara, is some sort of White House enforcer assigned to rubbing out the President’s enemies. The article’s title calls Bharara a “hatchet man,” and Hurt’s first paragraph ominously intones that…

“Mr. Bharara is the snapping jaws of Attorney General Eric H. Holder’s junkyard attack dog and the velvet fixer of President Obama’s thorniest political problems.”

Bharara is the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and supervises over 200 lawyers who handle hundreds of cases. He has presided over the recovery of a half-billion dollars in civil fraud cases. He has locked up numerous terrorists, narcotics traffickers, and violent gang members. Yet Hurt’s article cites only a couple of cases that he deems relevant to his theory that Bharara is Obama’s hit man. Neither of these cases were political in nature, nor did they involve any personal interest of the President. One case involved an Indian diplomat who allegedly lied about her employment and payment of a nanny. The other was a case where forty-nine Russians were charged with defrauding Medicare. In both cases Hurt seemed to imply that all of these lawbreakers should have been set free despite their crimes. And having made no logical connection to Obama, Hurt just seems to be praying that his readers are dumb enough not to notice what a laughably insipid argument he is struggling to construct. Since his readers are on Breitbart News, he doesn’t have to pray very hard. Hurt concluded by saying that…

“Certainly, Mr. D’Souza very well may be guilty. Same with the Russian diplomats – and perhaps the Indian attache really needed to be strip-searched. However, a filmmaker skirting campaign donation limits does not tear at the fabric of this nation of laws. Russians cheating our welfare system is not a constitutional crisis. A constitutional crisis that tears the fabric of this nation of laws is a federal prosecutor who uses his office to advance political vendettas.”

Hurt’s argument seems to be that any crime that he doesn’t regard as upending the Constitution should be dismissed. Therefore we should let all the murderers and drug dealers and embezzlers off the hook. Just think how much money we would save by shutting down the federal courts and virtually emptying the nation’s prisons.

Conservatives often portray themselves as being the party of law and order. However, the truth is that they only embrace the law when it serves their purposes, and they abhor it when it gets in their way. That’s why they advocate more laws that would deny a ninety year old citizen the right to vote if she doesn’t have a driver’s license. But they forgive, and even praise, a political crony who breaks the law in order to funnel money to right-wing candidates. It’s a perverse concept of justice that favors elitists and the corporations that they believe are people.