Buzzfeed Scoops Breitbart: The Obama Harvard Video

At last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, Andrew Breitbart said that he had videos of President Obama in his college days at Harvard. The implication was that the content of the videos was so scandalous that it would have an impact on Obama’s reelection. Breitbart gleefully announced that…

“I have videos. This election we’re going to vet him from his college days to show you why racial division and class warfare are central to what hope and change was sold in 2008. The videos are going to come out, the narrative is going to come out.”

Well, they came out today. But Breitbart’s survivors at BigGovernment.com had nothing to do with it. The “vetting” was done by Andrew Kaczynski at Buzzfeed. Kaczynski acquired video from WGBH TV in Boston of the future president speaking at a rally for more diversity in the Harvard faculty.

The Breitbart crew immediately blasted Buzzfeed for releasing what they said was a “selectively edited” copy of the video.

“[T]he video has been selectively edited–either by the Boston television station or by Buzzfeed itself. Over the course of the day, Breitbart.com will be releasing additional footage that has been hidden by Obama’s allies in the mainstream media and academia.”

Gee, I can hardly wait. This should be endlessly informative since the Breitbart clan is intimately familiar with the practice of selectively editing videos. BigGovernment’s Joel Pollak says that the unveiling of the uncut video will take place tonight on Sean Hannity’s program on Fox News. There’s another sign of how much credibility any of this will have. Hannity is famous for airing videos of sparsely attended Tea Party rallies that turned out to be from completely different, and crowded, events.


The most remarkable thing about this video is how little Obama has changed. He had the same oratorical style and poise then as now. At the time Obama was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was speaking on behalf of Prof. Derrick Bell, the first tenured African-American professor in Harvard’s law school. The occasion was a rally in support of greater diversity in general, and specifically the hiring of an African-American woman in the law school.

Pollak further promised to expose Bell as a “radical academic tied to Jeremiah Wright.” I’m surprised that he isn’t also tying him to George Soros, Van Jones, Saul Alinsky, and Che Guevara. However, Bell was a respected legal scholar and author who served in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, at the NAACP as an associate counsel, as the dean of the University of Oregon School of Law and, in addition to Harvard, also taught at USC, Stanford, and NYU. Clearly a dangerous anti-American. But Breitbart’s ghost is already setting in motion the smear campaign.

Perhaps Pollak has portions of the video where Obama advocates the violent overthrow of the government by black nationalists or discloses his Kenyan birthplace, but somehow I doubt it. It appears that the Breitbart folks are just upset that their phony plot to trickle out snippets of an entirely harmless video in order to create a fake controversy has been foiled by the lamestream media (if Buzzfeed qualifies as that). Now they will have to resort to smearing the name of a deceased law professor and pretending that there is something wrong with Obama supporting a more diversified Harvard faculty. Fox Nation has already jumped in with an item about this story headlined: Obama Harvard Video: Rally for Race-Based Hiring. So there’s your talking point, righties. Go at it.

Late Breaking: Breitbart’s site released the “uncut” video and the only additional footage on it is of Obama embracing the professor he had just introduced. It was not exactly a secret that Obama admired his Harvard law professor. But the real problem for the Breitbart clan is that they have been bashing Buzzfeed all day long about having “selectively edited” the video, but now they have been shown to be lying.

PBS/WGBH posted the REAL uncut video here.

Hannity and Co. spent over 20 minutes discussing this embarrassing flop of a scandal, even though the exclusive broadcast of the uncut video offered nothing new. The pair from Breitbart.com (Ben Shapiro and Joel Pollak) fidgeted nervously as they desperately tried to set some sort of fire under this non-event, but they utterly failed to come up with anything other than a bumper sticker criticism of Bell which they repeated incessantly to make sure the brainwashing stuck: Derrick Bell is the Jeremiah Wright of academia.

Just as I suspected, that’s the talking point they are running with. It’s so pathetic that I actually feel a little sorry for them. Their leader passed away last week and now they are floundering like lost orphans. What a sad spectacle.

Andrew Breitbart’s Imaginary Republican Primary

Last week Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment published an unintentionally hilarious column that sought to offer Democratic alternatives to President Obama. The choices included non-Democrats like Fox News anchor Chris Wallace and Independent senator Joe Lieberman.

Not content to embarrass himself with his incoherent analysis of Democratic politics, the author and editor of Breitbart.com, Joel Pollak, followed up the story this week with even less plausible suggestions for his own Republican Party. Pollak advocates for a brokered convention that would nominate a candidate not currently in the field. He runs down the GOP wish list of familiar names like Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie, and threw in some of the most unpopular characters the Republicans have ever hatched like Eric Cantor, Jim DeMint, and Paul Ryan. These folks might get the Tea Party extremists sweaty, but they would alienate the general public to an unprecedented degree. However, Pollak saved his top recommendations for last, and they are doozies.

Pollak’s number two choice for president is one of the nation’s most ridiculed and disrespected politicians, Sarah Palin. Despite starring in a documentary bomb, ironically titled “The Undefeated,” Palin has a resume chock full of defeat. She bailed out of her governorship half way through her first term. She lost the 2008 vice-presidential campaign and is credited with having been responsible for the fall of the ticket. Her book sales have been declining with each new release. Her canceled Alaska tourism program on TLC lost viewers almost every week it aired. She is currently trying to pitch a new TV show featuring her husband’s snowmobile exploits, but no one is biting. When Republicans are polled as to whether they want her to run for president, majorities say unequivocally NO! So of course, she’s the perfect candidate.

Well, almost perfect. Palin was, after all, Pollak’s second choice. So who could Pollak come up with that would surpass Palin’s extraordinary credentials? He would have to dig deep to uncover someone even more ludicrous than Palin. And Pollak does not disappoint when he reveals his first choice, the governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker.

There may be no politician in America who is more reviled by average citizens and working families. Scott Walker is renowned for his arrogant attempts to roll back collective bargaining rights that were in effect for decades. He managed to anger nurses and firefighters, and even his own police departments, as he battled for lower wages, pensions, and budgets that would mandate extensive and dangerous layoffs. His state has lost jobs for five consecutive months as job creation grew nationally. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics place Wisconsin last in the nation.

But the biggest obstacle to Walker being drafted for a presidential run is that he is about to be recalled. The organizers of the campaign to recall Walker have already announced that in less than half the allotted time they have over 500,000 of the 540,000 signatures required for a recall election. Walker’s popularity in the state is abysmal and his prospects for fending off the recall are, let’s say challenging. Earlier this year Democrats successfully recalled two of Walker’s Republican legislative allies.

The notion of a brokered GOP convention is music to the ears of Democrats. It’s an admission that the candidates put forth so far are inadequate to the job. Should one of them prevail in such an environment they would emerge greatly weakened. Should a new name emerge, it would be someone that did not endure the primary process of vetting that is so critical to assessing the viability of a candidate. Imagine if any of the previous Republican frontrunners (Bachmann, Cain, Perry, Trump) had been selected by acclamation in a brokered convention. They would have been quickly dispensed with in the general election because their obvious flaws would not have been revealed until it was too late. That will surely be the fate of any of the candidates that Pollak is setting up now.

So I wish him well. I completely agree with his choices. It would bring me great pleasure if Walker or Palin or Christie or DeMint were thrust to the head of the line and were chosen to face Obama in the general election. Obama has some very real hurdles to overcome in his quest for another term. The economy has to continue to show signs of improvement. Unemployment has to keep going down. And any number of international hotspots need to be carefully managed in order to avoid tragic flareups. But the most consistently positive advantage that Barack Obama has over his prospective opponents is that he is running against the sort of contemporary Republicans that have lost all semblance of sanity. How lucky can a guy get?

Andrew Breitbart’s Imaginary Democratic Primary

The chronically choleric Andrew Breitbart has published an amusing speculation as to who the Democratic Party could field for president instead of Obama. This is really just an attempt by BigGovernment to sow new discord among the unusually united Democrats.

The article was written by Joel Pollak, the editor-in-chief of Breitbart.com, and features a roster of barely Democratic names who are arguably more conservative than many Republicans (i.e. Harold Ford and Joe Manchin). It also includes a couple of Democrats that would be bitterly opposed by the BigGovernment crowd if there were any real chance of them running (i.e. Hillary Clinton and Andrew Cuomo). However, two names stand out for their surreal presence on any list of of reputed Democrats.

First is the anchor of Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace. Pollak’s basis for including Wallace on a list of Democrats is a five year old article in the Washington Post that reported that Wallace was a registered Democrat. Unfortunately, Pollak didn’t read the whole article that quoted Wallace as saying…

“The reason I’m a registered Democrat is that in Washington, D.C., there is really only one party,” Wallace told us yesterday. “If you want a say in who’s going to be the next mayor or councilman, you have to vote in the Democratic primary.”

So Wallace’s registration is just his way of being able to influence the outcome of primary elections for a party that he opposes. We know that he opposes the Democrats because of the way speaks about them publicly and slants his reporting. For instance…

  • Asking the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes “is it unfair to say that this is a president whose heart doesn’t seem to be into winning the war on terror?”
  • Asking Rush Limbaugh what Obama has done TO the country.
  • Awarding ACORN pimp, James O’Keefe, the “Power Player of the Week.”
  • Calling Democrats “damn fools” for declining to appear on Fox News.
  • [My favorite] Admitting that he “generally agrees” with Sean Hannity.
  • Jumping to the defense of George W. Bush after director Ron Howard suggested comparisons to Richard Nixon.
  • Declaring Sarah Palin to be a “new star in the political galaxy.”
  • Asking George Bush if he was “puzzled by all of the concern in this country about protecting [the] rights of people who want to kill us.”
  • In a criticism of Democratic health care plans, making the absurd observation that “people don’t even contemplate end of life until they’re in an irreversible coma.”

Never mind that Wallace has no experience in politics or government, and has never run any enterprise that might prepare him to be the manager of an Olive Garden, much less the presidency.

But the number one Democratic choice by the BigGovernment editor to replace Barack Obama is —-> Sen. Joe Lieberman – who is NOT a Democrat. Lieberman was run out of the Democratic Party by the voters of his own state who chose Ned Lamont in a senate primary. Lieberman’s ego refused to step aside, so he ran as an independent and was returned to the senate by a majority of Republican voters who abandoned their own nominee in favor of Lieberman.

Pollak’s article is a joke that has failed to inject a sense of humor. It is his effort to distract Breitbart’s flock so that they don’t focus on the hilarity of their own cast of characters running for the GOP nomination. I don’t blame him. If Democrats were running a pack clowns like those in the GOP, I’d want a distraction too.

A Smart GOP Would Cancel All MSM Debates and Stage Their Own

As I did a week ago with an article by Hugh Hewitt, my headline for this article is taken verbatim from one by John Nolte, editor-in-chief of Andrew Breitbart’s BigHollywood.

This article appeared on BigGovernment and it is great news. The rightist meme that Republican candidates should not participate in debates sponsored by those they deem the “mainstream” media is growing quickly. I can’t think of anything I would like to see more, with regard to the GOP debate season, than to not see them at all. If they actually had the guts to follow through on this threat it would be a great service to America.

Nolte’s primary argument is that candidates should not “willingly put themselves in a less than ideal situation.” That means not exposing oneself to probing questions that might have the disadvantage of revealing what you actually believe. He continues…

Nolte: Nothing is more important than getting our failed president out of office in 2012 and therefore nothing is more important than nominating someone who can win. This is why the number one quality we should be looking for among our otherwise superb field is someone who understands that when it comes to removing Barack Obama from office, the MSM is the existential threat of 2012 – not the President.

Nothing is more important to Nolte than unseating the current president – not jobs; not health care; not global warming; not terrorism; NOTHING!. And the most important quality that Nolte is looking for in a president is fear of the media – not experience; not leadership; not wisdom; not honesty; FEAR! That is the modern GOP in a nutshell (with an emphasis on the nuts). They have NOTHING to offer but FEAR.

Nolte wants the GOP field to stage their own “New Media” debates with folks like Jonah Goldberg and Rush Limbaugh asking the questions. Me too. Does Nolte think that this group won’t ask about issues like abortion or Medicare or the budget? If anything, I think they would be even more confrontational as they seek to elicit loyalty pledges from the candidates to establish their extremist bona fides. But in Nolte’s view, the purpose of the Republican debates should be to “make our side look as good as possible” and to “do as much political damage to President Obama as possible.” Oh yeah, he did throw in that they should also “help primary voters make a difficult choice.” How that would occur while in the midst of a GOP fluffing, Obama bashing festival is unclear.

It’s important to remember that it was Fox News CEO Roger Ailes who said “The candidates that can’t face Fox, can’t face Al Qaeda.” That was in response to Democratic candidates who refused to participate in a debate sponsored by Fox News. So what does that say about the candidates that can’t face NBC or CNN (who is co-hosting their next GOP debate with Tea Party Express)?

Now along with Hugh Hewitt, we have Andrew Breitbart’s web site calling for a media embargo by Republican candidates. Sarah Palin has previously made similar remarks. They may be surprised to learn that I agree with them completely. I hope they have the courage to follow through, but I doubt it. That kind of strength and integrity is not what the GOP is known for.

As an aside, I have been following the Breitbart’s BigGovernment web site since the Anthony Weiner story broke. It has now been 17 days and still…


EVERY SINGLE HEADLINE at the top of the page (with the exception of a plug for Breitbart’s lame book), is about Weiner. There is a word for the kind of psychosis Breitbart is exhibiting: Obsession.

James O’Keefe May Be Heading Back To Jail

Fox News Investigative TeamAndrew Breitbart’s pet pimp impersonator, James O’Keefe, was just sentenced last week to three years probation, 100 hours of community service, and a $1,500 fine for having trespassed the offices of a United States senator in Lousiana under false pretenses. He pleaded guilty to reduced misdemeanor charges in order to avoid prosecution for a felony. But this experience has apparently failed to moderate his proclivity for criminality.

O’Keefe’s latest adventure in psuedo-journalism was revealed today on Breitbart’s BigGovernment, as well as ABC’s Good Morning America with George Stephanopoulos. The new effort was aimed at alleged waste and/or corruption at the Census Bureau. O’Keefe, armed with a camera, and a smug disregard for ethics, set off to embark on a career in the federal bureaucracy where he says that…

“What I found were census supervisors systematically encouraging employees to falsify information on their time sheets.”

First of all, it’s kind of funny that O’Keefe has been reduced to investigating incorrect time cards (his own). It’s not as if there aren’t other scandals percolating (I heard something about some oil in the gulf). At least he isn’t railing about Census Bureau concentration camps in Idaho.

O’Keefe only worked for the census for two days of training. He never actually performed any census field work. In the new video he says that a census crew leader told him to use a false time sheet as a template for filling out future time sheets. However, it was not a “false” time sheet. It was a practice time sheet used for training. But O’Keefe characterized the crew leader’s instructions during a training session as a directive to falsify the later forms. Never mind that the crew leader in the video said explicitly to use the practice form as a template. So when the crew leader said to fill the form out the same way every day, he simply meant to follow the instructions, not to input the same hours and other data. That would be obvious to most people, but O’Keefe has a blind determination to mislead, which he continues to do as the video proceeds.

In the portion where O’Keefe “confronts” the crew leader at a Dunkin’s Donuts, he asks whether it will be a problem that he quit working at 3:30 or 4:00. The implication is that his time sheet reflected something different. But we can’t see the time sheet that the crew leader is reviewing, so for all we know it said 3:45. A bigger problem is that if you watch the time code on the video, almost a full minute was edited out between the time O’Keefe asked his question (3:59:04) and the time the crew leader responded (4:00:00). So when the crew leader responded saying “No, that’s not a problem,” he could have been responding to a different question entirely. And given O’Keefe’s history of deceptive editing, the last thing he should be given now is the benefit of a doubt.

But there’s another revelation in this video that ought to attract the attention of the authorities. O’Keefe noted that the time sheets contain a warning at the bottom just above where they are signed that says:

Employee’s Certification – Under penalty of fine and/or imprisonment, I certify that the information on this form is true and correct to the best of my knowledge.

In the video, O’Keefe sought to portray that as applying to his supervisor. But the actual time sheet shows that this is only applicable to the employee. The supervisor has a somewhat lower standard of certification that relies on representations made by the employee:

Supervisor’s Certification – I certify that I have reviewed the entries made and they appear to be reasonable and accurate.

So what we have here is O’Keefe confessing again to a crime. He knowingly signed the time sheet despite his having lied on it about the hours he worked. He knew that it was unlawful to do so, yet he did it anyway. This couldn’t be a more clear cut case. What’s more, there are laws against interfering with the conduct of the census. Since O’Keefe never intended to provide the services to which he agreed upon on employment, he could be liable for additional charges in that regard. And that’s not all. The Washington Post reports that O’Keefe may also have broken laws relating to surreptitiously recording Commerce Department conversations. Stephen Buckner, a Bureau spokesman told the Post that…

“In his video, Mr. O’Keefe, an admitted criminal, does not disclose that he previously worked for the Census Bureau for nearly two months in 2009 without incident, allegation or complaint.

“That employment with us was well before his indictment and prior to his conviction of a federal crime last week. The Census Bureau obviously does not condone any falsifying of or tampering with time sheets by its employees.”

In his appearance on Good Morning America, Stephanopoulos asked O’Keefe if he regretted having broken the law in the affair at the senator’s office in Louisiana. While fudging on the matter of regret, he did concede that he would be more “careful” in the future. But his actions in this new episode show that he is an incorrigible criminal with no intention of respecting either the law or the standards of ethical journalism. And on top of all of that, he is an arrogant SOB who considers himself a victim. In his article at BigGovernment he whines that…

“The government took our camera, so I bought another. The government put us in jail and deleted our tapes, but we got out and we’ll just make more.”

It’s pathetic that O’Keefe needs to be reminded that the government didn’t put him jail. He put himself there by breaking the law. I’m sure Charles Manson has the same position on his incarceration as O’Keefe does, but it doesn’t make sense for either one of them. O’Keefe belongs in jail for his unrepentant criminal behavior. And the terminally choleric Andrew Breitbart ought to have a nearby cell for his role in facilitating O’Keefe’s crimes. And remember, this latest crime was committed while O’Keefe was on probation. So he is not only liable for the new violations of the law, but he could have violated his probation as well.

Finally, it would be a huge mistake for other media outlets to give these charlatans any additional exposure. Breitbart is already bragging about having been on GMA and is touting that appearance as opening the door to more press. The media was fooled before by these phonies. They were duped into thinking that they had “missed” the ACORN story, but when the whole story was revealed, it was clear that Breitbart’s crew had deceptively altered their video, and the only crimes were those committed by O’Keefe and company.

These people are confessed criminals, exposed liars, and they do not deserve to be treated as legitimate producers of news. Which is why they will probably be all over Fox News for the next couple of weeks. O’Keefe and Breitbart are already promising more videos, and O’Keefe says that he is assembling an “army” of citizen journalists. I guess we’ll have to assemble an army of debunkers. And Jon Stewart’s writing staff is going to have their hands full.

Why Does Andrew Breitbart Support Child Molesters?

The terminally choleric Andrew Breitbart (or Boogerman as he’d prefer to be known) is featuring a story on his BigGovernment web site that illustrates a disturbing affinity for child sexual abusers.

The article is authored by Jason Mattera, who appears to be auditioning to be Bill O’Reilly’s next ambush geek. If so, he has some pretty big clown shoes to fill: Stuttering Jesse Watters and Griff Teabaggin Jenkins. But Mattera is off to a good start with a video of him pestering Rep. Alan Grayson. The video is titled: “Why would Alan Grayson want to give your money over to Native American child molesters?”

In the video Mattera is shown slyly gaining Grayson’s trust by talking about his Brooklyn upbringing. But it doesn’t take long before he reveals his psycho side – and Grayson picks it up immediately asking, in an understatement, if Mattera is a kook. But Mattera presses on undaunted in his attempt to tie Grayson to a government program that Mattera says gives money to child molesters. The source for Mattera’s allegation is this language in the recently passed health care bill that addresses…

“(2) perpetrators of child sexual abuse who are Indian or members of an Indian household.”

What Mattera leaves out is that the bill does not give any money to abusers. It funds treatment programs to prevent future incidents of abuse. In the section of the bill immediately following the one Mattera cites it explicitly describes the use of funds, including:

(5) To identify and provide behavioral health treatment to Indian perpetrators and perpetrators who are members of an Indian household–

(A) making efforts to begin offender and behavioral health treatment while the perpetrator is incarcerated or at the earliest possible date if the perpetrator is not incarcerated;
‘(B) providing treatment after the perpetrator is released, until it is determined that the perpetrator is not a threat to children.

So apparently Mattera and Breitbart are opposed to protecting children from child molesters. They are openly advocating a position wherein criminal deviants would be permitted to maintain their perversions and pose a continuing threat to kids. Perhaps Breitbart and company don’t want such treatment mandated because they might find themselves at risk of being obligated to participate in such treatment. I don’t know, I’m just asking. But it is undeniable that Breitbart is more interested in the rights of child molesters than in the child victims.