Smearing Brownback

In today's Lawrence Journal-World, letter writer Phil Minkin writes the following:

"After an unfavorable tweet by an 18-year-old high school senior, a Brownback henchman, whose job it must be to monitor social media, sniffing out criticism, contacted the girl’s high school principal seeking some retribution."

This is factually incorrect. As the Journal-World also noted today, "When the governor’s office saw the tweet during monitoring of social media comments, it was reported to Youth in Government officials." News reports over the weekend also noted that the governor's office contacted the Youth in Government program.

There is no indication that Brownback's staff ever contacted the student's principal. There is also no indication that the staff pressured the Youth in Government program to contact the student's principal, which it did. The only person who attempted to punish the student was the principal. If the Brownback staff sought retribution against the student, it seems to me that they would have contacted the principal themselves. They did not.

While the purpose of a letter to the editor section is to allow readers to express their opinions, those opinions should be based on facts. In this case, Mr. Minkin's opinions were not based on facts, and the Journal-World was fully aware of what the facts were.

Journal-World publishes canned letter--twice

This morning, the Lawrence Journal-World published the following letter to the editor, purportedly written by Sammie Locke of Lawrence:

"The divisiveness in Washington is costing American jobs. Over three weeks have passed since President Obama sent his American Jobs Act to Congress, but the Republicans refuse to even look at it.

"President Obama’s American Jobs Act is exactly the type of solution that we need: a bill full of ideas that both parties support. It is a deal that creates jobs by lowering taxes and investing in our future. And, the best part: It is fully paid for.

"We need relief for the middle class now. It’s time for our politicians to get over politics and put America back to work."

It seemed to me that I had read this same letter before. Why, yes, I did--two days ago in the Lawrence Journal-World! The J-W published this letter by Mike Lawrence on October 10:

"The divisiveness in Washington is costing American jobs. Over three weeks have passed since President Obama sent his American Jobs Act to Congress, but the Republicans refuse to even look at it.

"President Obama’s American Jobs Act is exactly the type of solution that we need — a bill full of ideas that both parties should support. It is a deal that creates jobs by lowering taxes and investing in our future. And, the best part: It is fully paid for.

"We need relief for the middle class now. It’s time for our politicians to get over politics and help put Lawrence, northeast Kansas and America back to work."

Did Sammie plagiarize Mike? Not quite. The same letter has been published throughout the country. Here are two other examples:

http://www.nwfdailynews.com/opinion/jobs-44312-american-act.html

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/chi-111011butler_briefs,0,6044589.story

Yael Abouhalkah gets caught in lie

Yesterday, The Kansas City Star's Yael Abouhalkah offers a blog item entitled "'Occupy' movement is pro-American, anti-Republican." According to Abouhalkah, "I know the Occupy movement is having some effect, because ultra-conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh called the Americans involved in the group 'idiots,' 'clowns' and other names Monday."

Of course, anyone who actually listened to Limbaugh's program on Monday knows Limbaugh had a guest host, Mark Davis.

Scott Rothschild's biased article on the Koch brothers, American Legislative Exchange Council

I found liberal activist Scott Rothschild's July 24 hit piece on the Koch brothers and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) quite biased. While he painted the Kochs and ALEC as being motivated by ideology, he presented the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Common Cause--two groups critical of the Kochs and ALEC--as "public watchdog groups."

Those familiar with CMD and Common Cause know that both groups have very liberal/progressive agendas. CMD was founded by liberal environmentalist writer and political activist John Stauber. Stauber's books include titles such as Banana Republicans, The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq, and Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq.

Bob Edgar, a former Democratic congressman, heads Common Cause. Its chairman is Robert Reich, who served as Bill Clinton's Labor Secretary. Reich's anti-conservative views are well-known.

Both CMD and Common Cause have received financial support from the Open Society Institute, headed by liberal financier George Soros. Soros, you may remember, spent nearly $25 million in a failed effort to defeat President Bush in 2004.

Rothschild is the Lawrence Journal-World's "statehouse reporter," which means he is supposed to be engaged in objective reporting. If he cannot report both sides, perhaps the Journal-World should make him an op-ed columnist.

Journal-World hits Palin again

On June 10, one day after the Lawrence Journal-World published a Leonard Pitts column in which the Miami Herald columnist claimed that Sarah Palin got her facts wrong regarding Paul Revere (historians have backed up Palin's version), the J-W published a Pat Oliphant cartoon that repeated Pitts' error.

A Boston Herald article that quotes several historians who back up Palin's comment regarding Paul Revere was published on June 6.

Lyin' Lenny Strikes Again

In the June 9 issue of the Lawrence Journal-World, columnist Leonard Pitts writes the following:

"[Sarah Palin] makes mistakes like Apple makes iPhones, so there is a temptation to catalogue her recent bizarre claim that Paul Revere’s midnight ride in April 1775 was to “warn the British.” (He actually rode to alert patriots Samuel Adams and John Hancock that British troops were coming to arrest them) as superfluous evidence of intellectual mediocrity. The instinct is to think her historical illiteracy speaks ill only of her."

However, in a June 6 Boston Herald article with the headline "Experts back Sarah Palin’s historical account," several historians point out that Palin had her history right.

According to Boston University history professor Brendan McConville, “Basically when Paul Revere was stopped by the British, he did say to them, ‘Look, there is a mobilization going on that you’ll be confronting,’ and the British are aware as they’re marching down the countryside, they hear church bells ringing — she was right about that — and warning shots being fired. That’s accurate.”

Cornell law professor William Jacobson said Palin’s critics are the ones in need of a history lesson. “It seems to be a historical fact that this happened,” he said. “A lot of the criticism is unfair and made by people who are themselves ignorant of history.”

Pitts appears to be both ignorant of history and dishonest.

Leonard Pitts smears Rep. Peter King

In his March 18 column in the Lawrence Journal-World, Leonard Pitts writes, "Then there is the fact that King has a history of Muslim bashing. He claims, for instance, that 85 percent of mosque leaders in this country are extremists. It is a 'statistic' based on nothing."

That's not true.

On Fox News, King told Martha MacCallum the following: "Martha, let me just first say, to me, it's a badge of honor to be attacked by CAIR, which was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a major terrorist financing case. Number two, I said in 2004 that up to 80 percent of the mosques in America were controlled by Islamic radicals. I based that on the testimony of Sheikh Kabanni, a national Muslim leader, who was testifying at a State Department hearing in 1999. That was his testimony, saying that the imams in this country were out of touch with the Muslim community. So I was basing my statement on what a national Muslim leader had said."

I found Kabanni's 1999 comments after just a few seconds, and assume Pitts could have done likewise. Kabanni's argument was that Islamic extremism posed a national security threat to the U.S., and he made it two and a half years before 9/11. He wasn't taken seriously by the left then, and it appears that the left is dismissing the threat again in 2011.

As he so often does, Pitts lied in his column.