Glenn Reynolds in the Wall Street Journal:

American journalists know how to be exquisitely sensitive when they want to be. As the Washington Examiner’s Byron York pointed out on Sunday, after Major Nidal Hasan shot up Fort Hood while shouting “Allahu Akhbar!” the press was full of cautions about not drawing premature conclusions about a connection to Islamist terrorism. “Where,” asked Mr. York, “was that caution after the shootings in Arizona?”

Set aside as inconvenient, apparently. There was no waiting for the facts on Saturday. Likewise, last May New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and CBS anchor Katie Couric speculated, without any evidence, that the Times Square bomber might be a tea partier upset with the ObamaCare bill.

So as the usual talking heads begin their “have you no decency?” routine aimed at talk radio and Republican politicians, perhaps we should turn the question around. Where is the decency in blood libel?

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Yesterday, we revealed yesterday’s examination of Rep. Andre Carson’s contemporaneous account that he gave reporters versus actual video footage of the events at the Cannon Office Building.   The video showing the congressmen walking down the steps unencumbered by the hostile, racist mob that we had been told was there proved that Rep. Carson’s description was exaggerated at best, fabricated at worst.

We asked our readers for any other footage and testimonials they might have from that day in Washington DC.  In the true spirit of citizen journalists holding our government accountable, we received many tips.  The following compilation further exposes the myth that Rep. Carson passed on to the eager media that day.

The recent statement published on Big Government by James O’Keefe and the existence of videotape showing the full project intended for Senator Landrieu’s office should put an end to the irresponsible chatter about Watergate Jr. or any other slanderous attacks of wiretapping by the “objective journalists” of the mainstream media.

We’re not naïve enough to believe the attacks will stop, but there is something to be said about holding your fire until you have some clue about what’s going on. The Washington Post and other outlets have been forced to walk back their outrageous statements of wiretapping and apologize for their accusations of seeking to destroy a phone system of the federal government. As amusing as it’s been to see O’Keefe’s antics demonstrate media bias, there is the concern about an obscure portion of the United States Code about misrepresenting yourself to gain access to a federal facility.

According to O’Keefe, videotape of the event will fully exonerate him. If we take that at face value, then all that is left is the charge of misrepresentation to gain access to a federal office. This may be the cause of some squirming by the four young men, because the federal government and
its officers do not like to be trifled with, and the ability to bring punishment to US citizens for minor offenses isn’t limited to smoking a joint without the benefit of having a judge as a blood relative.

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There are, within our midst, religious believers who are, it seems, so insecure in their faith that they must threaten–and try–to kill cartoonists. (Really?? Cartoonists?) Unfortunately, most of the Western Media have cowered to these threats. We now reprint the cartoon that sparked the threats and attacks:

Earlier today, while guest hosting on The Dennis Miller Show, Andrew Breitbart interviewed Kurt Haskell from Taylor, Michigan.  Mr. Haskell was a passenger on the now infamous Flight 253 on Christmas day from Amsterdam to Detroit.  We all know now how this flight ended (with the Flying Dutchman careening across multiple seats to stop a would-be-suicide bomber from exploding the plane and hundreds of innocent lives).  But, Mr. Haskell shared his story of what he witnessed before anyone even boarded the plane.

While waiting in the holding area in the Amsterdam airport, in a room designated for only the passengers of Flight 253, Mr. Haskell saw a well-dressed man of apparent Indian descent accompany a young, poorly attired man of African descent to the boarding gate.  What Mr. Haskell saw and heard next is of seemingly great significance:

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Many of us had no idea the Republican Party had it in them, but to devise and implement such a plan was ingenious. Think about it; party leadership acting totally inept while a charismatic young Democrat presidential candidate captures the imagination of the normally lethargic youth vote, captures the senior vote, women, and even sends a thrill up the leg of the media.

And within a few short months after attaining the presidency, he conducts himself in a manner (personally and in office) that had not only invigorated his political opponents, but has them so energized they take to the streets and even march on The Capitol (more than once). One would have to conclude Barack Hussein Obama is either the most politically clueless president ever, or… is really a stealth Republican destroying the Democrat Party from within.

Is Barack Obama a Republican plant?

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5. Hide the Decline: “Climategate” and the CO² ruling

Why it’s important: The unauthorized release in November of 61 megabytes of confidential files and emails hacked from the computers at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit – Ground Zero of the “anthropogenic global warming” racket – shocked nearly all sentient people into the realization that scientists could be just a corruptible as your average politician or, worse, your average “environmental journalists” as they sought to “hide the decline.” While each country’s capo di tutti capi was gathering in Copenhagen to hatch yet another scheme to beggar the industrialized West in the name of collective guilt, the scandal burbled along under the radar as rational people finally had the proof they needed that the Chicken Little alarmists were, well – crowing capons.  For years, skeptics had been derided by such barking lunatics as Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., as “deniers” – the word was deliberately loaded to evoke the Holocaust – even as the Man Who Flunked Out of Divinity School did his best to dodge all challenges to his newfound religion:

Meanwhile, with AGW going up in smoke like a fruitless sacrifice to a god that failed, and the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” extortion bill faltering in Congress, along came the EPA, right on schedule, with its “endangerment finding” that carbon dioxide – you know, the stuff you breathe out when you exhale, and the same stuff that makes the good green plants happy, healthy and wise – is, of all things, a “pollutant.”  Still, the news for the Karbon Krazies just keeps on getting worse.

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Last week, Dick Morris became the first pundit to predict a Republican sweep of both houses of Congress next year. Looking at Obama’s sliding poll numbers, and increasing voter frustration, Morris said, “This erosion of support makes the elections of 2010 look more and more like a rerun of 1994.”

Yeah, yeah, I know — it’s Dick Morris saying this, take it with a silo of salt and all that. But Mort Kondracke is one of the more level-headed pundits in DC, and he noted Pew’s study saying that “voters’ anti-incumbent mood is approaching 1994 and 2006 levels,” when Congress changed hands. Kondracke added that he thinks that “there’s reason to believe that the public’s anger is even deeper than Pew’s estimate because voters believe – correctly – that ‘the way things are going’ is not getting better.”

Kondracke was saying all this in the context of seeing “an opening” for a third party to make it big in 2010. But don’t be too certain.

Usually, third parties coalesce around a single candidate (like Ross Perot) or a single issue (like the Greens [no relation]). America’s current funk isn’t really about a single issue, but about a whole host of issues — and Washington’s inability (Democrat and Republican alike) to deal with them. If that seems like fertile ground for a third party, in this case it isn’t. Because what the country really needs is a second party.

Please, let me explain. You might want to pour yourself a lovely adult beverage, because I’d had one or two when this occurred to me.

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A little known corollary of Copernican law tells us that, like the Earth, Big Media is also not, in fact, the center of the Universe. Just because the ‘journalists’ willfully choose to ignore ClimateGate–the proverbial tree falling in the enviro’s beloved rainforest–doesn’t mean the public and the political class aren’t paying attention. Of course, other than Barbara Boxer calling for criminal investigations into the hacked/leaked e-mails, it is mostly the political classes in other countries paying attention.  (If Boxer’s fantasy comes to pass and there are criminal charges pressed, how, pray tell, will Big Media report on it, since their readers presumably know nothing about the scandal.)

Fortunately, with the internet, we are no longer captive of Big Media for our news. The government-owned Canadian Broadcast Corporation, of all things, has been covering the controversy extensively. In this clip, noted commentator Rex Murphy lowers to guns to deck level on the scandal. It should be noted that Murphy is a former man of the left, having served in the leadership of the Liberal Party in Newfoundland.

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From the American Spectator:

It was the biggest story of 2009.

If you doubt, ask ACORN. Or Van Jones. Or the So We Might See campaign. You won’t need Timemagazine’s once clout-filled “Man of the Year” issue to figure it out, either. Just take a look back at the bestseller lists, the ratings of Fox News or simply turn on your local AM radio dial.

The single most important news event of 2009 was the emergence of The Virtual Newsroom. A newsroom run by a virtual army of conservative journalists famous and unknown, their individual and collective impact multiplied exponentially by millions of Internet users, radio listeners, readers and television viewers.

How did this happen? How does it work in practice?

First, perspective is needed here. Like other big news events, it didn’t happen overnight. There is history, lots of it.

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Yesterday, Washington Post columnist and former Bush II speechwriter Michael Gerson played a long slow violin solo over the death of the mainstream media. There’s nothing new in his piece. Dazed with panic as the circle of financial ruin closes in, we’ve heard this song many times before from our ink-stained dinosaurs. And true to form, Gerson can’t break the mold. It’s all there, the rose-colored glasses, denial, and a heaping helping of rationalization.

Once again, from that familiar MSM perch where one can look down their nose at the great unwashed who just don’t understand the magnificent tradition of journalism they’re about to lose, Gerson blames We the People for no longer wanting  to pay for our news and choosing partisan sources “that reinforce and exaggerate … political predispositions.”

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Just a few weeks after the first undercover ACORN videos were released, Big Government received a recording of a robocall from ACORN that ran in the Los Angeles area. Around this time, ACORN’s Chief Organizer Bertha Lewis went before the National Press Club to stress that the actions of her employees revealed in the videos “made her sick.” She reiterated that she fired the employees involved and promised a thorough internal review and reform of ACORN.

So, the robocalls were a mea culpa and promise that ACORN would do better in the future? Hardly. Away from the kleig lights of the national press, ACORN continued to deny wrongdoings and deflect attention to “extremists” attacking her. On the calls, ACORN even reiterates the lie that James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles were turned away in Los Angeles.

Listen for yourself (in English and Spanish):

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Transcript and more after the jump.

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From the Nashua Telegraph:

The state of New Hampshire last week agreed to guarantee 75 percent of a $250,000 loan from an Upper Valley bank to the new owner of the Eagle Times, an unusual deal because it involves a daily newspaper and the government it covers.

The Executive Council on Wednesday unanimously approved without debate the “working capital loan guarantee,” which would be administered by the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority.

Under the deal, the BFA and the state would be liable to pay up to $187,500 to Connecticut River Bank if Eagle Printing & Publishing LLC defaulted on the $250,000 line of credit it would receive from the bank.

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The withdrawal of Dede Scozzafava from the special election for Congress in upstate New York has predictably set off another wave of media-led hand-wringing about the health of the GOP. (See here and here, for example.) These stories are like crack for reporters, especially those with a hard-left slant. It is always framed as a battle between ‘conservatives’ and ‘moderates,’ but the focus is actually much narrower.

To Big Media, conservatism comes in only one flavor, social conservatism, namely anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage and a smattering of other issues that would fall flat over canapés and seltzer (liberals don’t seem to drink anymore). That Dede was pro-choice and pro-gay marriage fits the narrative perfectly for the media. End of story.

But, the media, and political leaders would be wise to dig a bit deeper into the story. Yes, Dede was pro-choice and pro-gay marriage, but she was also pro-government spending, pro-taxes and pro-Big Labor, to name just a few other issues. When a Republican candidate regularly seeks out the endorsement of ACORN and wins the endorsement of DailyKos, it isn’t much of a stretch to imagine that large segments of the party might have some misgivings about supporting the candidate. (And they would be right, since she has now endorsed the Democrat in the race.)

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A couple weeks ago, we brought you the funny video of a Big Media Camerawoman trying to dismiss the relevance of home-grown citizen journalists. Today, we have new video from that same event, only this video is of patriotic tea party activists speaking some truth to Big Media’s power. Enjoy

As always, tip your waitress.

The “Pimp and Pro” ACORN story hit America hard a few weeks ago. It is a ripe story with endless angles to report on, and yet the Mainstream Media’s favorite approach seems to be the method in which James and I orchestrated and gathered the information.

It’s like going fishing, but instead of taking a picture and raving about the 750lb Mako shark you caught, you blather on about the bait that was used.

What happens when people get bored? They stop paying attention. What happens when people stop paying attention to an already suffering press industry?

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From the Associated Press:

Circulation at newspapers shrank at an accelerated pace in the past six months, driven in part by stiff price increases imposed by publishers scrambling to offset rapidly eroding advertising sales.

Average daily circulation at 379 U.S. newspapers plunged 10.6 percent in the April-September period from the same six-month stretch last year, according to figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

It’s the largest drop recorded so far during the past decade’s steady decline in paid readership — a span that has coincided with an explosion of online news sources that don’t charge readers for access. Many newspapers also have been reducing delivery to far-flung locales and increasing prices to get more money out of their remaining sales.

The latest decline outstripped a 7.1 percent decrease in the October 2008-March 2009 period and a 4.6 percent decline in last year’s April-September window.

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Yesterday, tea partiers gathered in Troy, Michigan. (If any state needs a bit of the lower-taxes and less government spending old-time-religion…it is Michigan.) This time, their protest was focused on the Big Media itself, specifically the local NBC headquarters. Anyway, a camerawoman from Big Media NBC didn’t seem to appreciate that just about anyone can now chronicle events with video.

H/T to videographer GrassFireFilms. Speculate in the comments what the camerawoman is telling police…