A New Tack

We've spent some time here at 2PJ tracking the Scaife support given to think tanks mentioned in specific Tribune-Review editorials - for instance, yesterday.



But today I thought I'd try another strategy. How do things look if we look at all the editorials/opinion pieces published in one day?



So let's start.



This editorial about unemployment compensation, Scaife's braintrust cites the Cato Institute.



According to mediamatters, that's:

• $245,000 from the Scaife-controlled Carthage Foundation.
• $2,037,500 from the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation.

This opinion piece which chastises George Soros for, among other things, supporting the "openly leftist Open Society Institute" is by Mattew Vadum of the Capital Research Center.



According to mediamatters, that's:

• $225,000 from the Scaife-controlled Carthage Foundation.
• $4,675,000 from the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation.

This opinion piece by Colin McNickle, yet another anti-CFL bulb diatribe, cites the Manhatan Institute.



According to mediamatters, that's:

• $693,000 from the Scaife-controlled Carthage Foundation.
• $3,815,000 from the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation.

This piece by John Stossel cites the Competitive Enterprise Institute.



According to mediamatters, that's:

• $60,000 from the Scaife-controlled Carthage Foundation.
• $2,865,000 from the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation.

This piece is by Arnaud de Borchgrave of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.



According to mediamatters, that's:

• $100,000 from the Scaife-controlled Allegheny Foundation.
• $50,000 from the Scaife-controlled Carthage Foundation.
• $10,148,000 from the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation.

This piece by Tom Purcell cites Reason Magazine, which is published by the Reason Foundation.



According to mediamatters, that's:

• $366,000 from the Scaife-controlled Carthage Foundation.
• $2,016,000 from the Scaife-controlled Sarah Scaife Foundation.

Whew.



If my math is correct, that means that over the years the Scaife-controlled Allegheny, Carthage and Sarah Scaife Foundations have given about $27.3 million to the various think tanks cited on today's op-ed pages alone.



Had he not given that support, those think tanks would look vastly different. They might not even exist. And yet he did and they do and his op-ed page cites them with no mention of all that money.



Tell me again how there's no vast right-wing conspiracy.

Scaife Funded Judicial Watch Spins On Voter "Fraud"

From today's Tribune-Review:

Documents obtained by Judicial Watch show the perniciously corrupt, leftist influence of ACORN and its Project Vote affiliate on voter registration in Colorado.



Alleging violation of a federal law requiring public-assistance offices to offer registration, the groups threatened litigation in 2009. The Democrat then-secretary of state, backed by leftist billionaire George Soros and liberal MoveOn.org, responded by, among other things, sharing registration data with Project Vote and ensuring its approval of changes to registration forms.



The result? In 2009-10, 8 percent of Colorado registration forms rejected as invalid or duplicate -- thus fraudulent -- came from public-assistance agencies. That was more than four times the national 1.9-percent average.

I guess they gotta do this once a month or so. Last month (July 17th to be exact) they wheel-barrowed out some horse crap that included James O'Keefe's "research" into ACORN. On that blog post we reported:

According to Media Matters, the Scaife controlled Carthage and Sarah Scaife foundations granted $8.74 million dollars between 1997 and 2009.



Far more than any other foundation. In fact, if my math and the numbers are correct, Scaife's given about 20 times more than all the other foundations combined.

So while Scaife's braintrust uses phrases like "backed by leftist billionaire George Soros" we should all try to remember that when the braintrust quotes Judicial Watch or The Heritage Foundation or The American Enterprise Institute or the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy, each of those think tanks are "backed by rightwing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife."



But back to the Scaife-funded Judicial Watch spin. Beyond the absurdity of pointing out how Colorado's voting registration system rejecting invalid registration forms is evidence of how far:

ACORN, Project Vote and their successor organizations would not go to undermine voting's integrity.

But what of that 8 percentage rejection rate? Surely that's evidence of fraud, right? The editorial even says that invalid and duplicate registration forms are fraudulent. This takes a little digging. The Scaife braintrust's editorial points back to this page at the Scaife funded Judicial Watch. And here is the important paragraph:

As a result of this collaboration between ACORN, Project Vote and Colorado officials, the number of voter registrations at Colorado public assistance agencies rose from 3,340 in 2007 to almost 44,000 in 2010. (In a February 15, 2011, email to Project Vote, Christi Heppard, Special Projects Coordinator for the Elections Division of the Colorado Department of State, wrote, “…I think you will be pleasantly surprised by the numbers.”) However, the collaboration also led to a large number of invalid and duplicate voter registrations. A total of 8% of rejected registration forms came from public assistance agencies in Colorado in 2009-2010. This is more than four times the national average of 1.9% for that same time period.

Judicial Watch is usually meticulous with its linkage. But this time, not so much.



For instance, where do they get the "8 percent" data point anyway? That bit of information can be found via that last link - but it takes some hunting to get to - something the braintrust probably doesn't want you to do.



The link leads to this report by the US Election Assistance Commission. It's on page 52 where we find that 8 percent of the voter registration forms, 1681 in real numbers, were regarded as "Invalid or Rejected."



And how does this report define "Invalid or Rejected"? Oh, my friends, this is where the fun is. On the very next page we read:

Invalid registrations in Colorado include incomplete or pending applications where the elector has omitted a required piece of information.

No way to tell how much of what's left over is, as Scaife's braintrust so courageously declared, fraudulent.



See how it works? Scaife supports a think tank that spins and hides some very important details and then his newspaper's editorial board reports that spin as the truth.



How's that for fraudulent?

Another Lesson - The Right Wing Attack Machine

Congressman Mike Doyle uses the "hostage/terrorist" metaphor and the right wing doesn't like it. The editorial board at the Tribune-Review gets the story wrong:

Lance: To U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills. No effort to "walk back" his inexcusable comparison of tea party members to "terrorists," uttered during a closed-door caucus meeting on Monday, can change the fact that he said what he meant and meant what he said -- or cover the gross ignorance of basic economics betrayed by tax-the-"rich" rhetoric he used in trying to contain the damage.

In reality, he wasn't talking about "tea party members" but the members of Congress who were (to extend the metaphor) using the economy as a hostage to get what they want politically.

Can I point out at this point that the very very conservative Senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, approves of the tactic of political "hostage taking" for political gains? From the Washington Post:

“I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting,” [McConnell] said. “Most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done.”

Not "shooting" the hostage, of course. Just threatening to. But as they say, it's ok if you're a Republican and Mitch McConnell is a republican so it's OK to threaten to take the economy hostage - as long the political payoff is favorable to the Republicans.

For Congressman Doyle, however, the metaphor (even though they got it wrong) is "inexcusable."

But this is all set-up. Take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Look at what the Trib does in its editorial and how it does it. The second half of the braintrust's criticism of the Congressman's outburst come from Allegheny Institute for Public Policy's Jake Haulk.

The same Allegheny Institute for Public Policy that gets about 87% of its grant money from foundations controlled by Tribune-Review owner Richard Mellon Scaife.

This is how the right wing attack machine works. The Scaife-owned paper needed a quote to attack a political adversary and it conveniently found it at a Scaife-funded right wing think tank.

And there's never ever any mention of the millions Scaife's poured into the Allegheny Institute.

ALEC In The News!

From today's Post-Gazette:

An analysis released Tuesday from Keystone Progress points to four Pennsylvania measures that they say are nearly identical to model legislation peddled by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council.

The right-leaning association of state legislators has drawn national attention recently for reports that its model bills are being duplicated in statehouses across the country, and it has been criticized for the influence industry representatives are said to have in the drafting of that model legislation. It has also taken flack for its annual conferences, which lawmakers can attend free of charge and learn about model policies.

While several state lawmakers -- including Cranberry Republican Rep. Daryl Metcalfe -- have attended those conferences and reported the expense-paid trip on their ethics forms, it was the mirror-image legislation that drew much of the criticism from liberal detractors.

You can download the report and read it for yourself from here.

In the report, they've identified some ALEC legislators from PA:

• GOP House Majority Leader Mike Turzai (whose participation in ALEC is paid by state taxpayers)
• GOP House Majority Caucus Chair Sandra Major
• GOP House Caucus Administrator Dick Stevenson
• GOP House Judiciary Chair Ronald Marsico
• GOP House State Government Chair Daryl Metcalfe
• GOP Senate Majority Caucus Secretary Robert Robbins
• GOP Senate Judiciary Chair Stewart Greenleaf
• And GOP Chairs of numerous committees, including Representatives Matthew Baker (Health), Stephen Barrar (Veterans Affairs), Paul Clymer (Educational), John Evans (Game & Fisheries), Robert Godshall (Consumer Affairs), Kate Harper (Ethics), Dick Hess (Commerce), Ronald Miller (Labor & Industry) and Senators Charles McIlhinney (State Government), Jeffrey Piccola (Education), John Pippy (Law & Justice)
• The only identified Democratic PA member of ALEC is Rep. Harry Readshaw, Minority Chair of Professional Licensure.
• Rep. John Evans (R- Crawford, Erie) currently serves as ALEC’s PA chair

Good to see our boy Daryl Metcalfe isn't alone.

There's some pushback in the piece:

"There's some who are trying to portray it as corporations trying to take over legislation -- that's not it," [Rep. Seth Grove, a York County Republican] said. He added that he also looks for policy ideas from the moderate National Conference of State Legislatures.

And:

However, it's unclear whether all of those lawmakers have maintained their involvement with the organization. A spokesman for House Majority Leader Mike Turzai, R-Bradford Woods, said the lawmaker is no longer involved with ALEC.

However from Salon.com we learn:

Republican Majority Leader Michael Turzai has also had membership dues paid for by the state, something that Turzai's spokesman, Steve Mishkin, defended.

"It’s always good to hear from the experience of other legislatures," he said. "That’s how you exchange ideas, best practices, and try to bring those to Pennsylvania’s problem."

Mishkin likened ALEC to the [National Conference of State Legislatures.], but the NCSL doesn't develop and promote model legislation with corporate input and is open to legislators regardless of their ideology. ALEC, by contrast, boasts that its conference "has been described as the 'largest gathering of conservatives held each year.'"

So Turzai's spokesman defended having his ALEC membership dues paid for by the state?

I think someone's trying to pull a fast one, Mr. Mishkin.

Let's assume both statements are correct - that Turzai had been a member of ALEC (with dues paid for by the PA taxpayers) but he's no longer a member. If that's the case, then I have some questions:

• When did the taxpayer support end?
• How long was he a member of ALEC?
• Why did he join?
• Why did he quit?

Maybe next time Turzai's on Night Talk, someone will call in and ask him.

But somehow I don't think this story will end up on the pages of the Tribune-Review. Why not? From the report:

Some of the major ALEC funding sources include Richard Mellon Scaife’s Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Foundation, the Scaife Family Foundation, Exxon Mobil and Koch brothers-related funding sources. [

Something we touched upon in mid-June.

Good to know the P-G is catching up.

ACORN: The Zombie Threat!

Even disbanded, ACORN scares the right wing if only by virtue of one of today's Op-Eds at The Trib.

But let me get the necessaries out of the way first.

The jeremiad was penned by Thomas Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. Judicial Watch, in turn, is heavily, heavily HEH-VILLE-LEE funded by Trib owner and publisher, Richard Mellon Scaife. According to Media Matters, the Scaife controlled Carthage and Sarah Scaife foundations granted $8.74 million dollars between 1997 and 2009.

Far more than any other foundation. In fact, if my math and the numbers are correct, Scaife's given about 20 times more than all the other foundations combined.

And of course there's no mention of this tremendous financial support given to Judicial Watch by Richard Mellon Scaife in the op-ed page that Richard Mellon Scaife owns.

Now onto the jeremiad itself.

Fitton's opening:

ACORN employees have been nailed time and time again for fraudulently registering voters -- including Mickey Mouse and the Dallas Cowboys -- allegedly for the purpose of sweeping Democrats into office.

They were caught on tape advising undercover reporters on how to evade tax, immigration and child prostitution laws.

Ah, registration fraud and the James O'Keefe edited tapes.

Good opening.

Let's talk about the registration fraud. Some credit (though not much) to Fitton for inserting the word "registration" rather than going with the usual scary "voter fraud". It must be noted, however, that voter fraud is simply implied by the last phrase of that paragraph - "allegedly for the purpose of sweeping Democrats into office."

The fraud was in the registration - not the voting. Fraudulently registering "Mickey Mouse" in an effort to be seen as doing a good job in no way leads to any more votes for anyone. And that's what happened. According to a CRS report done at the request of the then-chairman of teh House Judiciary Committee, Representative John Conyers:

Effect of alleged false voter registrations by ACORN workers. You asked CRS to research improper voter registrations that resulted in people being placed on the voting rolls and attempting to vote improperly at the polls. As discussed, a NEXIS search of the ALL NEWS file did not identify any reported instances of individuals who were improperly registered by ACORN attempting to vote at the polls.

Not that Fitton and the Scaife-funded Judicial watch would bother to tell you that, of course.

And then there's James O'Keefe and his tapes. From New York Post March 2, 2010:

The video that unleashed a firestorm of criticism on the activist group ACORN was a "heavily edited" splice job that only made it appear as though the organization's workers were advising a pimp and prostitute on how to get a mortgage, sources said yesterday.

The findings by the Brooklyn DA, following a 5½-month probe into the video, secretly recorded by conservative provocateurs James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, means that no charges will be filed.

Many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister, sources said.

And from the Office of Attorney General of the State of California.

Videotapes secretly recorded last summer and severely edited by O'Keefe seemed to show ACORN employees encouraging a "pimp" (O'Keefe) and his "prostitute," actually a Florida college student named Hannah Giles, in conversations involving prostitution by underage girls, human trafficking and cheating on taxes. Those videos created a media sensation.

Evidence obtained by Brown tells a somewhat different story, however, as reflected in three videotapes made at ACORN locations in California. One ACORN worker in San Diego called the cops. Another ACORN worker in San Bernardino caught on to the scheme and played along with it, claiming among other things that she had murdered her abusive husband. Her two former husbands are alive and well, the Attorney General's report noted. At the beginning and end of the Internet videos, O'Keefe was dressed as a 1970s Superfly pimp, but in his actual taped sessions with ACORN workers, he was dressed in a shirt and tie, presented himself as a law student, and said he planned to use the prostitution proceeds to run for Congress. He never claimed he was a pimp.

"The evidence illustrates," Brown said, "that things are not always as partisan zealots portray them through highly selective editing of reality. Sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor."

The original storm of publicity created by O'Keefe's videotapes was instrumental in ACORN's subsequent denunciation in Congress, a sudden tourniquet on its funding, and the organization's eventual collapse.

Again, not that Fitton would tell you any of this stuff.

Great opening, Tommy.

But let's get to what Tommy Fitton calls "controversial and ridiculous". In October, 2009 President Obama signed the "Defund ACORN Act" and it:

...effectively prohibited the federal government from funding "ACORN and any ACORN-related affiliate."

Following a lawsuit filed by ACORN challenging the law -- which passed both branches of Congress by wide margins -- the federal courts in New York upheld the constitutionality of the funding ban on Aug. 13, 2010. And the Supreme Court last month refused to hear ACORN's appeal.

The problem:

On March 1, Obama's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced a $79,819 federal grant to ACORN-spinoff ACHOA to "educate the public and housing providers about their rights and obligations under federal, state, and local fair housing laws."

The advisory opinion by the GAO stating that ACORN isn't ACHOA is what's got Fitton in a snit. That's what he called "controversial and ridiculous."

Here's the ruling from the GAO by the way. Feel free to do something I don't think Fitton wants you to do - read it yourself.

Once you did, you'll see what the GAO based its opinion on. You know - the facts. Facts like:

The record does not show AHCOA to be directly or indirectly under the control of ACORN. AHCOA is not related to ACORN by shareholdings. Because AHCOA is organized as a nonstock corporation, ACORN cannot own shares in AHCOA. AHCOA Amended Articles of Incorporation, at 2. AHCOA also does not own any shares of ACORN.

And that:

• Neither ACORN nor any other organization has the authority to control the makeup of the AHCOA Board of Directors.
• No member of the AHCOA Board is also a member of the ACORN Board.
• While AHCOA and ACORN previously occupied offices in the same building, the two corporations no longer share the same facility.
• No employee of AHCOA is also an employee of ACORN.

There's also good stuff in there about how ACHOA is neither an affiliate or a subsidiary organization.

And did I mention that ACORN no longer exists? Thomas Fitton never actually gets around to telling you that, either.

All this over $79,819. This is another non-story the right wing noise machine is hoping to whip into a scandal.

By the way, last year alone, the Sarah Scaife Foundation gave $175,000 to Judicial Watch. Something to chew on.

More of ALEC Exposed

I think we'll be spending some quality time in the near future looking deeper at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

We've written about ALEC before, but for those who don't know what ALEC is, according to this post at crooksandliars it's:

...the high-level overview. ALEC is the acronym for American Legislative Exchange Council, a secret right-wing consortium created to write boilerplate legislation for states to use to advance the right-wing agenda. Some of ALEC's handiwork can be seen in Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Florida, to name a few.

And it's a good possibility we're seeing it's handy work here in Pennsylvania with Representative Daryl Metcalfe's Voter ID law.

The bad news is that so little about ALEC has been known. But that's changing. From John Nichols at The Nation:

The details of ALEC’s model bills have been available only to the group’s 2,000 legislative and 300 corporate members. But thanks to a leak to Aliya Rahman, an Ohio-based activist who helped organize protests at ALEC’s Spring Task Force meeting in Cincinnati, The Nation has obtained more than 800 documents representing decades of model legislation. Teaming up with the Center for Media and Democracy, The Nation asked policy experts to analyze this never-before-seen archive.

Here's ALECExposed.

We've already mentioned how Scaife money was involved in the formation of ALEC and how Richard Mellon Scaife continues to shuttle money from the foundations he controls to ALEC.

So whether it's legislation regarding Worker Rights or Voter Rights or Taxes or any number of other pieces of right wing legislation oozing through Harrisburg, we'll be checking to see if there's an analogous piece of ALEC legislation supporting it.

Feel free to peruse the archive yourself. I'm guessing that that's the last thing our ALEC legislators want.

Isn't that right, Daryl?

I Think I Hear ALEC Knocking At My Door

From In These Times:

On February 25, 2011, Florida State Representative Chris Dorworth (R-Lake Mary) introduced HB 1021. The bill sought to curtail the political power of unions by prohibiting public employers from deducting any amount from an employee’s pay for use by an employee organization (i.e., union dues) or for any political activity (i.e., the portion of union dues used for lobbying or for supporting candidates for office).

And:

Given the similarities between HB 1021 and a rash of like-minded bills in states across the country, including Wisconsin, on March 30 a public records request was sent to Dorworth’s office seeking copies of all documents pertaining to the writing of HB 1021, including copies of any pieces of model legislation the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) may have provided.

And finally:

Dorworth’s office delivered 87 pages of documents, mostly bill drafts and emails, detailing the evolution of what was to become HB 1021. Buried at the bottom of the stack was an 11-page bundle of neatly typed material, labeled “Paycheck Protection,” which consisted of three pieces of model legislation, with the words “Copyright, ALEC” at the end of each.

The ALEC "Paycheck Protection" documents can be found here.I get ahead of myself.

When I wrote about ALEC in mid-June, I ended the blog post with a set of questions, the first one being:

I wonder how much ALEC legislation has oozed into Harrisburg?

Given all of the above, I have to wonder about State Senator John Eichelberger's Public Workers Paycheck Protection Act.

Eichelberger's conservative bona fides are set. He's proposed an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman and has already insulted the commonwealth's LGBT community.

So I gotta wonder how much of Eichelberger's legislation has been enhanced by the Scaife and Koch funded secret society?

Wow. Just Wow.

I have no explanation for this. None what so ever.

But it tells you everything you need to know about how skewed the thinking is with Scaife's braintrust when it comes to climate science.

Take a look at this from today's Sunday Pops:

In the Orwellian moment of the week, the American Association for the Advancement of Science warned that efforts to promote transparency in "climate change" research, among other things, are inhibiting scientific inquiry. Transparency demands "make no constructive contribution to the public discourse," says the group. How utterly bizarre.

Now let's go see what they're actually talking about.

If you google the phrase they quote (""make no constructive contribution to the public discourse") you eventually make it to this board statement, dated June 28, 2011, from the Board of Directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Begin to read it and you'll see it's NOT about transparency at all.

The quotation is taken from the last sentence of the statement's opening paragraph:

We are deeply concerned by the extent and nature of personal attacks on climate scientists. Reports of harassment, death threats, and legal challenges have created a hostile environment that inhibits the free exchange of scientific findings and ideas and makes it difficult for factual information and scientific analyses to reach policymakers and the public. This both impedes the progress of science and interferes with the application of science to the solution of global problems. AAAS vigorously opposes attacks on researchers that question their personal and professional integrity or threaten their safety based on displeasure with their scientific conclusions. The progress of science and protection of its integrity depend on both full transparency about the details of scientific methodology and the freedom to follow the pursuit of knowledge. The sharing of research data is vastly different from unreasonable, excessive Freedom of Information Act requests for personal information and voluminous data that are then used to harass and intimidate scientists. The latter serve only as a distraction and make no constructive contribution to the public discourse. [Emphasis added.]

This is not about "transparency" (which the AAAS clearly states that it supports) but about excessive FOIA requests for personal data that'll then be used for harrassment and intimidation. Then there's the death threats.

Only those infected with teh climate crazie could possibly equate the two.

Here's what else the AAAS has to say about science. Stuff the braintrust curiously omits:

Scientists and policymakers may disagree over the scientific conclusions on climate change and other policy-relevant topics. But the scientific community has proven and well-established methods for resolving disagreements about research results. Science advances through a self-correcting system in which research results are shared and critically evaluated by peers and experiments are repeated when necessary. Disagreements about the interpretation of data, the methodology, and findings are part of daily scientific discourse. Scientists should not be subjected to fraud investigations or harassment simply for providing scientific results that are controversial. Most scientific disagreements are unrelated to any kind of fraud and are considered a legitimate and normal part of the scientific process. The scientific community takes seriously its responsibility for policing research misconduct, and extensive procedures exist to protect the rigor of the scientific method and to ensure the credibility of the research enterprise.

And yet Scaife's braintrust whittles all that down to the AAAS declaring efforts to promote transparency are inhibiting scientific inquiry.

Tells you everything you need to know about the mendacity that doubles for editorial policy with Richard Mellon Scaife's braintrust. How truly bizarre.

The editorial page an embarrassment to us, the news-reading public. As it also must be an embarrassment to all the fine reporters who find themselves working for Richard Mellon Scaife. They must realize that all their good work is being undermined, tainted or otherwise sullied by teh climate crazie dripping off of Scaife's editorial page.

I feel sorry for them. I really do.

Another Lesson In How The Right Wing Message Machine Works

We'll start at the end and work backwards. Today in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review we find an editorial that begins thusly:

Eric Holder's coddling of terrorists -- during both the Clinton and Obama administrations -- makes him manifestly unfit to be U.S. attorney general.

At a National Press Club conference in Washington this week, Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc., and speakers personally affected by terrorist beneficiaries of Mr. Holder's lax approach laid out his damning record.

When we head to the website for America's Survival Inc., we find this:

America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI) President Cliff Kincaid, who also serves as the Director of the Accuracy in Media (AIM) Center for Investigative Journalism, has announced a national conference in Washington, D.C. to examine Communist Cuba’s sponsorship of anti-American terrorism and harboring of fugitives from justice and the need to keep Cuba on the official U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Evidence will also be presented of how Castro’s agents of influence continue subversive operations on American soil and how the Obama Administration’s expansion of travel to and from the communist island undermines American national security.

On June 29, the Trib's news division published this:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder "has lied about his role in granting pardons to terrorists" under Presidents Clinton and Obama and should be removed from office, according to Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc.

Kincaid moderated a daylong conference on Tuesday at the National Press Club, sponsored by his Washington-based investigative organization.

Which then was reposted at the America's Survivial website here:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder "has lied about his role in granting pardons to terrorists" under Presidents Clinton and Obama and should be removed from office, according to Cliff Kincaid, president of America's Survival Inc.

Kincaid moderated a daylong conference on Tuesday at the National Press Club, sponsored by his Washington-based investigative organization.

And then finally editorialized this morning at the Tribune-Review.

Why the trail?

You guessed it. America's Survival's got some serious funding support from the foundations controlled by Trib owner, Richard Mellon Scaife.

• $200,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2010
• $150,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2009
• $150,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2008
• $60,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2007
• $110,000 from the Carthage Foundation in 2007
• $100,000 from the Carthage Foundation in 2006

That's about three-quarters of a million dollars worth of support from foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, owner of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Any mention of any of that in the coverage?

Nope. Not a peep. Even from the Trib's news division. It's one thing for the editorial page (which I am told has no connection with the news division) to want to cover for the boss, but it's another when the more or less straight news division does the same. It's an embarrassment all the way round.

And we didn't even get to the Scaife money used to support Kincaid's other employer, Accuracy in Media. According to the media transparency project (or whatever it's called) Scaife's supported AIM to the tune of $4.36 million dollars.

Why does all this matter? Think of it this way, if Scaife hadn't given all that money to America's Survival, then it probably wouldn't exist. And if it didn't exist, there probably wouldn't have been a conference/discussion about AG Eric Holder at the National Press Club. And if there wasn't a discussion of the AG, there wouldn't have been any news coverage of it in the Scaife owned Tribune-Review.

The fact that none of the financial ties that bind Kincaid to Scaife are mentioned in the Trib's coverage of ASI is another example of the journalistic conflict of interest that's defining the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's editorial page and has tainted the Trib's news division.

Anti-Science News (Climate Change Edition)

This week, our favorite Ex-Senator, Rick Santorum, came out and said it:

There is no such thing as global warming.

Watch it:


Rick must've missed the NOAA report that it was undeniable.

They got the charts, they got the graphs, they got the science.

Rick's got nothing.

Then there's this at the Trib:

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled correctly that the Environmental Protection Agency -- not judges -- should lead "greenhouse gas" regulation under the Clean Air Act. But EPA's fallacious classification of carbon dioxide as a pollutant was left unaddressed.

The 8-0 decision rejected a lawsuit that sought to use public-nuisance laws to force utilities to cut CO2 emissions.

And then:

Not at issue was EPA regulating CO2 as a pollutant -- an absurd label for a substance intrinsic to nature and living creatures that stretches the Clean Air Act too far.

The anti-CO2 efforts of the Obama administration's ideologically driven, anti-growth EPA are an end run around congressional rejection of "global warming" legislation premised on junk science.

A case involving that issue can't reach the Supreme Court soon enough.

See that last sentence? Scaife's braintrust has to know that that issue already has reached the Supreme Court. In 2007 and they found that CO2 can be regulated by the EPA.

From Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, the Court held that:

Because greenhouse gases fit well within the Act’s capacious definition of “air pollutant,” EPA has statutory authority to regulate emission of such gases from new motor vehicles. That definition—which includes “any air pollution agent..., including any physical, chemical,...substance...emitted into...the ambient air...,”—embraces all airborne compounds of whatever stripe. Moreover, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are undoubtedly “physical [and] chemical...substance[s].”

Justice Stevens even began his decision with this:

A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Respected scientists believe the two trends are related. For when carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, it acts like the ceiling of a greenhouse, trapping solar energy and retarding the escape of reflected heat. It is therefore a species—the most important species—of a “greenhouse gas.”

Yet another example of Scaife's braintrust misleading his audience.

Then there's the scientist. Again from today's Trib:

A professor emeritus at Colorado State University who's a credentialed longtime member of the American Meteorological Society blasts the AMS for allowing a small band of administrators to "hijack" the group's mission in support of "climate change."

Bill Gray, on the website Climate Realists (climaterealists.com), writes of his "disappointment" with the AMS' "downward path" over the last decade in advocating anthropogenic global warming. This, he says, when many AMS members do not support that conclusion.

"We believe that humans are having little or no significant influence on the global climate and that the many Global Circulation Climate Model (GCM) results and the four (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) reports do not realistically give accurate future projections," Mr. Gray says.

The link leads ultimately to this piece at Icecap.us. Go read it. Then go back to NOAA's assertion that climate change is undeniable.

Then ask yourself the question "Does Gray's complaint about the AMS uproot all of that science?" If it does, then he's made his case. If it doesn't, then the science stands.

Simple and undeniable as that.

The Noise Machine At Work (Again)

Another lesson in how the right-wing noise machine works. Pay attention, please.

In today's Tribune-Review, there's an editorial that begins like this:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency soft-pedals rigorous analysis showing its policies kill growth and jobs while trumpeting as truth junk analysis portraying burdensome regulations as economically beneficial.

A new National Taxpayers Union (ntu.org) study makes the mendacity clear: The EPA publicly proclaims bogus findings from its second report on the Clean Air Act's costs and benefits that fit its anti-growth agenda -- but is mum about that report's contradictory findings of economic harm.

We've done this before and so I don't want to spend too much time on it.

According to the Mediamatters transparency project, the largest chunks of foundation money, by far, come from foundations controlled by the publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Richard Mellon Scaife. About $1.5 million over the years (unadjusted for inflation, by the way).

So this is how the right wing noise machine works, Richard Mellon Scaife lays out gobs and gobs of money to support a conservative think tank (in this case the National Tax Payers Union). That think tank produces a report that is trumpeted on the pages of the Tribune-Review, the newspaper Richard Mellon Scaife owns.

And none of this is ever mentioned to the Trib's readership.

The circle jerk continues.

ALEC - The American Legislative Exchange Council

Yesterday I happened across this posting at Crooksandliars. It's about something called the American Legislative Exchange Council:

If you're not familiar with ALEC, here's the high-level overview. ALEC is the acronym for American Legislative Exchange Council, a secret right-wing consortium created to write boilerplate legislation for states to use to advance the right-wing agenda. Some of ALEC's handiwork can be seen in Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Florida, to name a few.

ALEC has a new game called Publicopoly. Some of the "properties" include government operations, health, environment, telecommunications, infrastructure, education and public safety. But of course, it's not such a new game after all. The object of the game is to privatize everything. To that end, they have aggregated the reports of think tanks like the Mackinac Center, the Reason Foundation, the Platte Institute, and the Heartland Institute. [Emphasis added.]

The "secret" isn't the website but who's writing this legislation for the right wing legislators to use. Here's what ALEC has to say about it's legislation:

One of the most important resources ALEC provides to its members is model legislation. Through the combined effort and unique partnership of public and private sector members, model legislation is drafted, deliberated and approved by one of ALEC's nine Task Forces. These bills provide a valuable framework for developing effective policy ideas aimed at protecting and expanding our free society.

While ALEC provides the resources, our members, long known for their legislative activism, introduced hundreds of bills based on ALEC model legislation. During the latest legislative cycle, dozens of ALEC model bills were enacted into law.

And guess, JUST GUESS who's got all this started? According to the mediamatters transparency project, the Richard Mellon Scaife controlled Allegheny Foundation has given $1.7 to ALEC over the years.

That's even more than the $1.25 million Exxon gave to ALEC.

Of all the foundation donations, Allegheny Foundation is the biggest.

And these numbers may be low. In 1999 the Washington Post published:

Another form of proselytizing is conducted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich. ALEC's members are predominantly conservative state legislators. The organization provides training, information and draft legislation to make them more effective. Of the country's 6,500 state legislators, 3,000 belong to ALEC, including dozens of leaders of state legislatures and senates. Twelve sitting governors are ALEC graduates, as are 77 members of Congress. The group's first president was a then-member of the Illinois House named Henry Hyde.

ALEC makes a mark with its model legislation. The last time it counted (1995-96), 132 ALEC bills were enacted in various states, from charter school legislation to pro-business bills on environmental and regulatory topics. Many states used its version of welfare reform legislation.

ALEC is unabashedly pro-business. Its expert task forces, which write the model legislation, are composed of legislators and business representatives. About two-thirds of ALEC's $6 million budget comes from corporate contributions.

Scaife has given ALEC more than $2 million since 1975, keeping the group alive in its early years. Now his donations ($75,000 last year) are an insignificant part of its budget.

The "insignificant" support of between $15K and $75K per year has continued since then.

I wonder how much ALEC legislation has oozed into Harrisburg? I wonder how much commentary Scaife's braintrust has written about it? I wonder if ANYONE knew that without Scaife's millions, ALEC probably wouldn't be the organization it is today.

The Trib Calls The Kettle Biased

From the editorial page of today's Tribune-Review:

Federal Communications Commission documents confirm that the supposedly independent agency is anything but neutral on so-called "net neutrality."

The damning paper trail -- obtained by Judicial Watch via the Freedom of Information Act -- begins after March 2009, when President Obama's "Democrat appointees solidified their 3-2 control of the agency," The Washington Times reports.

It shows coordination with the far-left group Free Press, which opposes faster Internet service for those willing to pay for it.

Free Press, partially funded by far-left billionaire George Soros, was founded by a Marxist journal's editor and a contributor to the leftist "flagship" The Nation, and advocates expanding government control.

Can you guess where this is going? Can you?

Scaife's braintrust is looking to undermine the credibility of Free Press by pointing out that it's "partially funded by far-left billionaire George Soros," but, of course, they conveniently fail to mention the money (more than $8 million, as it turns out) poured into Judicial Watch by far-right billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, owner of the Tribune-Review and boss of bosses at the editorial page there.
You can stop giggling now.

And they get "net neutrality" wrong as well. Here's how PC Magazine defines it:

A level playing field for Internet transport. It refers to the absence of restrictions or priorities placed on the type of content carried over the Internet by the carriers and ISPs that run the major backbones. It states that all traffic be treated equally; that packets are delivered on a first-come, first-served basis regardless from where they originated or to where they are destined.

Only in the echo chamber of the right wing media could this be called "government regulating online content" as the braintrust dutifully does later in the editorial.

And what of this "damning paper trail"? You can see the Scaife-funded Judicial Watch page here. Media matters describes what the Scaife-funded Judicial Watch found:

The evidence Judicial Watch uses to justify their allegation comes from emails between FCC Commissioner Michael Copps and media reform organization Free Press. The e-mails detail communications between Copps and Free Press regarding the placement of an op-ed in favor of net neutrality regulations (which would guarantee that internet service providers can't favor their own content over others) , as well as arrangements for a meeting between Copps and a representative of Free Press.

And they go on to say that:

None of this is unusual. Government officials regularly meet and speak before outside groups, like the conservative Heritage Foundation and the progressive Center For American Progress.

We can talk about the tens of millions Scaife's given to the Heritage Foundation (which also opposes neutrality on the net, by the way) but I think we all know that story.

Only in the wingnut press could "neutrality" become a guv'ment intrusion on our liberties. And by "our" they mean "big business."

Of course.

Yawn...They're Doing It Again

Who? The Editorial Board of the Tribune-Review.

What are they doing? Richard Mellon Scaife's braintrust is, yet again, failing to disclose his financial ties to the think-tank they reference in an editorial. Take a look:

The Obama administration's lax immigration enforcement includes failure to reform immigration courts that illegal aliens routinely ignore.

Mark Metcalf, a former Miami immigration court judge, extensively details the problems in a new Center for Immigration Studies (cis.org) report, "Built to Fail: Deception and Disorder in America's Immigration Courts."

Media Matters lists about $1.4 million dollars in grants from foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife between 1991 and 2007. This does not count the additional grants of $150,000 and $125,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2008 and in 2009, respectively.

Of course no mention of the millions of dollars of Scaife Foundation money funneled to the CIS can be found in the editorial on Scaife's editorial page. That would be transparent but that's not how the right wing propaganda machine works.

Now take a closer look at the editorial. Or you can read the report first hand, if you like. Notice something? The Obama Administration is being criticized for (now wait for it) not cleaning up a mess left behind by the Bush Administration.

From the editorial:

He says deportation orders are rarely enforced -- in part because immigration judges lack authority to enforce their own orders -- even when those targeted ignore them or skip court. Among 1.9 million aliens freed to await trial from 1996 through 2009, 40 percent vanished.

Department of Justice statistics mask the grim truth, too. Justice contends 39 percent of aliens missed immigration court dates in 2005 and 2006; Mr. Metcalf says the real figure is 59 percent.

Look at the dates. Tell me again who was president from 2001 to 2009? This can't be Clinton's fault can it? I mean he was President from 1996 to 2001. Those were also the Lewinsky years. Brought to you, in part, by the Scaife funded Arkansas project. Thanks, Dick.

There's some more from Metcalf's report:

From 2002 through 2006 — in the shadow of 9/11 — 50 percent of all aliens free pending trial disappeared. Court numbers show 360,199 aliens out of 713,974 dodged court.

In the Shadow of 9/11 the Bush Administration allowed this to happen?

And it's Obama's fault for not cleaning it up in 2 years.

This is Scaife's braintrust at work.

Thanks again, Dick.

Yes, Let's Meet David Evans

From the editorial page at today's Tribune-Review:

It's most unsettling to the cluckers of climate change when one of their own leading adherents, who formerly toed the line, becomes skeptical and drop-kicks the "science."

Meet David Evans.

A scientist with six university degrees, Mr. Evans consulted for the Australian Greenhouse Office (today's Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005. He studied carbon in plants, debris, forestry and agricultural products.

The remarks Scaife's braintrust uses come from this column at the Financial Times.

The thing you should've noticed in the op-ed is how the braintrust describes Evans - "a scientist with six university degrees." But which six? You'd think one of them is in climate science.

But you'd be wrong.

Here's the description from the bottom of the FT column:

David Evans consulted full-time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part-time 2008 to 2010, modelling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. He is a mathematician and engineer, with six university degrees, including a PhD from Stanford University in electrical engineering. The comments above were made to the Anti-Carbon-Tax Rally in Perth, Australia, on March 23.

Given that the Trib cut and pasted whole phrases from this description, they had to know that he wasn't a climate scientist. But still, it's a PhD in electrical engineering - and that's nothing to sneeze at.

But you'd think that were he an expert in the field, he'd have some peer-reviewed publications under his belt, right?

Um, no. According to this "skeptic watch" page, Evens published one peer-reviewed paper. In 1987. And it wasn't about climate change. Interesting.

Also the material in the presentation Evans made at that Anti-Carbon-Tax Rally in Perth, that became the FT column that the braintrust used to "debunk" climate science was itself debunked.

In 2007.

Nice going, guys. You made this one easy.

When Scaife News Sources Collide

First there's the Scaife-Funded Heritage Foundation on the "connection" between the killing of Osama bin Laden and the "enhanced interrogations" of the Bush Administration:

A senior official who briefed the press early this morning explained that “detainees in the post-9/11 period flagged for us individuals who may have been providing direct support to bin Laden and his deputy, [Ayman al-] Zawahiri, after their escape from Afghanistan.”

He continued: “One courier in particular had our constant attention. Detainees gave us his nom de guerre, or his nickname, and identified him as both a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of September 11, and a trusted assistant of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the former number three of al-Qaeda who was captured in 2005.” The United States obtained this information four years ago, the official stated.

One more crucial fact: According to the “detainees” (note the plural), this individual was “one of the few al-Qaeda couriers trusted by bin Laden.”

Think about that: This lead was developed during the Bush Administration, most likely from al-Qaeda associates picked up and transferred to Guantanamo and subject to interrogations that critics have repeatedly deemed to be pointless in terms of intelligence value. Whether these detainees remain at Guantanamo is an open question.

And then, a paragraph later:

For years, we have heard that strategic interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo was worthless, that the information is (at best) stale and almost certainly of dubious reliability. The most strident call such interrogations illegal.

So, yes. Torture led to the intel that led to the bullets that killed Osama bin Laden.

Then there's Salena Zito, columnist at the Scaife-owned Tribune-Review:

Commandos killed bin Laden in a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that began with the intelligence community identifying his courier last year and tracking his movements in the months leading up to Sunday.

In the past decade, critics assailed the CIA for not connecting the dots before the 9/11 terror attacks, for failing to capture bin Laden and for using enhanced interrogation techniques.

Remember, the "enhanced interrogation" was water boarding. Though Zito is unsure what connection there is between Abbottabad and waterboarding:

It is unclear whether interrogations played a role in identifying the bin Laden courier whose trail led to the terror leader's door.

Then there's the Scaife-owned Newsmax, interviewing none other than Don Rumsfeld himself:

Asked if harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay played a role in obtaining intelligence on bin Laden’s whereabouts, Rumsfeld declares: “First of all, no one was waterboarded at Guantanamo Bay. That’s a myth that’s been perpetrated around the country by critics.

“The United States Department of Defense did not do waterboarding for interrogation purposes to anyone. It is true that some information that came from normal interrogation approaches at Guantanamo did lead to information that was beneficial in this instance. But it was not harsh treatment and it was not waterboarding.”

So which is it? Waterboarding led to Abbottabad or didn't it? They really should get their stories straight.

Waterboarding's still illegal, though.

More Anti-Science Chicanery At The Trib

They must've been running low on teh crazie at the Tribune-Review over the past few days. Take a look at this convoluted route to try (yet again) to do their pro-business science debunking:

Kudos to JunkScience.com's Steve Milloy for debunking suspect blame-mankind research behind demonization of humanity's mercury emissions.

A new Harvard University study links such emissions with increasing levels of methylmercury -- "inorganic" smokestack and tailpipe mercury in the food chain -- and reproductive problems in black-footed albatrosses over the last 140 years.

But as Mr. Milloy points out, the study is manifestly flawed.[Italics in original.

This being the braintrust the first thing a rational person would do is to ask about the source. And the writer, Steven Milloy.

What those sources don't tell you is that Milloy according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute he's (or at least had been, depending on the reliability of the website) an adjunct analyst at CEI as well as an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute.

What the braintrust won't tell you is that both institutes have been beneficiaries of Scaife Foundation funding.

• $2.9 million for CEI.
• $2.5 million for Cato.

Shouldn't they have?

Milloy is also an "expert" over at Fox "News" and accourding to sourcewatch.com

In January 2006, Paul D. Thacker, a journalist who specializes in science, medicine and environmental topics, reported in The New Republic that Milloy has received thousands of dollars in payments from the Phillip Morris company since the early nineties, and that NGOs controlled by Milloy have received large payments from ExxonMobil. A spokesperson for Fox News stated, "Fox News was unaware of Milloy's connection with Philip Morris. Any affiliation he had should have been disclosed."

Someday the braintrust will disclose that info, too.

The Tribune-Review Cheers For The Ryan Budget

I wanted to post on this stuff yesterday but other things (doncha know) got in the way. (Hey, that's dactylic!)

Now here's something that no one would have suspected. No one. Never. Nope.

The Editorial Board of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review likes Congressman Ryan's budget:

A monumental moment occurred in the city of monuments Tuesday as Republicans battled to fix the fiscal 2011 budget mess inherited from Democrats (who, conveniently, forget that they put last November's election ahead of their fiduciary responsibility).

House Republicans, led by the plain-speaking Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, introduced a fiscal 2012 budget that pulls no punches and minces no numbers in finally getting serious about addressing the federal government's fiscal mess.

It slashes trillions in spending over the next decade, including nearly half-a-trillion dollars through 2013. It boldly tackles Medicare (an even worse ticking time bomb than Social Security), phasing in a private-sector, market-based solution that's far more senior-friendly.

The Tribune-Review is in favor of abolishing Medicare - just so you know.

But that's not the big news here. Take a look. From the Huffingtonpost:

When Paul Ryan unveiled his budget today, he touted it as a "Path to Prosperity" and he and his colleagues kept saying it was "based in fact." In reality, Ryan's claims of prosperity are based on an analysis - written at his request by the conservative Heritage Foundation - that has more basis in magic than economics. [emphasis added.]

Now, who would have guessed that Scaife's braintrust would be cheering about a budget that's based on an analysis by the Scaife funded Heritage Foundation?

But even that's not the big news. What's the big news, you ask?

From the National Journal:

The Republican budget’s economic projections are rosy, including growth rates of over 3 percent for the next three years. An analysis performed by the conservative Heritage Foundation at Ryan’s request found the unemployment rate would be reduced to 4 percent in 2015 by Ryan’s budget, an incredibly low number when many economists believe the economy will not return to so-called “full employment” of about 5 percent until years after that.

As Matt Yglesias points out:

It’s worth noting that this is not just unrealistic, it’s impossible. When unemployment drops beneath 5 percent, the Federal Reserve starts raising interest rates until a recession pushes it back up. This is deemed necessary to prevent inflationary wage increases.

But even that's not the big news. The big news is that the Scaife-funded Heritage foundation got the numbers wrong and pulled them from the report. Krugman has the evidence, if you wanted to go see it.

Not a word about any of this from the braintrust, of course. They dutifully cheer what their boss has already paid for (flawed as it is).

Scaife's Tantrum Continues

With this from the Trib:

For those who don't know what's going on, we'll turn (wisely and reverently) to Potter's Slag Heap:

I've often thought of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's editorial page as a form of performance art: Reading it is like watching a performance by Karen Finley ... except when it's time to simulate the smearing around of fecal matter, the creators use newspaper ink instead of chocolate.

Even so, I never thought of the Trib's editorial page as a place to find art criticism. Until today, with the publication of this rather singular piece of journalism.

Headlined "A slip and a slap at the Carnegie," the unsigned editorial denounces the Carnegie for the marketing of its current exhibit, Paul Thek: Diver. [Italics in original.]

Potter finds the bud of the bud:

On the one hand, [The Trib editorial board] affects to be speaking for us dumb yinzers, who just like art if it's got pretty "kellers" n'at. On the other hand, the paper's real gripe is with cultural institutions who ignore the demands of wealthy elites -- the people who "butter its bread."

It's because of this:

From the Trib's art criticism:

But what's even more tasteless is that for one of the billboards used to promote the retrospective, the Carnegie chose a Thek work that features the phrase "Afflict the Comfortable, Comfort the Afflicted" in yellow paint surrounded by a sea of purple.

The saying is a variation of one coined by late 19th- and early 20th-century journalist/humorist Finley Peter Dunne, actually part of a much larger cautioning against some newspapers' proclivity to misuse their power. Since that era, the phrase has been roundly misemployed -- interpreted literally -- by liberal media types and their oftentimes socialist acolytes.

For what it's worth, the Trib's braintrust underplays Dunne's quotation - and inadvertantly gets caught in it's own sticky. For some background into Dunne's line, here's journalist and writer Michael Geffner:

Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. “In the 1960 movie Inherit the Wind, an H.L. Mencken-like newspaper editor says, ‘It is the duty of a newspaper to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.’ Credit for this credit gets passed around. In his 1942 quotation collection, Mencken attributed the saying as ‘author unidentified’ – although Mencken himself is sometimes thought to have been that author. (He was prone to quoting himself anonymously.) Four decades before Mencken’s collection was published, however, Finley Peter Dunne wrote this observation by his philosophizing bartender, Mr. Dooley: “The newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis force an’ th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young, marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable, buries th’ dead and’ roasts thim aftherward.”

It's a complaint about the level of power exercised by all the media (not just some, as the Braintrust self-servingly tried to assert). I would imagine Dooley shaking his head at a newspaper trying to influence, for example, the administration of a museum.

Potter, thatlousybastid, puts it much better (of course):

Hmmm ... newspapers that abuse their own power? You don't say. I can see why a paper owned by Richard Mellon Scaife wouldn't want me to interpret such a warning literally. If you did that, after all, you might suspect that the publisher could be using his paper's editorial page to settle a personal grievance.

For lo! That "afflict the comfortable" business is, it seems, disrespecting wealthy benefactors ... like the ancestors of Mr. Scaife himself!

And then:

But what's really interesting about this editorial is not what it says about the museum ... but what it suggests about the Trib's ideas of philanthrophy. Apparently, the Trib believes that once you take money from a rich person, you are to consider yourself bought and sold. You are never to say anything that your benefactor -- or his heirs -- might disapprove of. When you take a check from a guy with a lot of money, in other words, you are supposed to be his bitch, forever.

That, I'm guessing, is what it means to be Dick Scaife's editorial writer. Similar rules may apply to the numerous think tanks that have been bankrolled with Scaife's money. Whether such rules should apply to a museum, however, is a matter for debate.

I don't think there's much debate on this point for Richard Mellon Scaife. You take his money you do as he says.

The tantrum continues.

A Visit To Crazie Central

And by that I mean, of course, World Net Daily.

If ever you want to see what teh crazie is thinking, go check out WND. Just make sure you're not drinking any sort of beverage as you read. An involuntary spit take may commence.

I was going to write primarily about this Victoria Jackson column I found over the weekend. She manages to cram a lifetime of crazie into a few hundred words. It's breath taking. First there's the religious bigotry:

Frankly, I'm afraid to say anything about Muslims. Why? Because they kill people.

In fact she, opened with that. Then there's the religious bigotry mixed with just random dishonesty:

Why do liberals embrace Shariah law even though "beheading your wife" seems to go against the feminist movement's mantra? Why do liberals embrace Islam knowing it frowns on homosexuality?

Because they have the same goals. Progressives, communists, liberals, globalists and Muslims want to destroy America.

Pay attention to teh gay. It bubbles up later. After her opening, Jackson wrote out a skit/interview (and I am guessing she thinks it's comedy) with Katie Couric about a new al-Qaeda woman's magazine (and no I did not make that past part up). Jackson concludes:

This new al-Qaida magazine for women has beauty tips and suicide-bomber tips! Gimme a break! That is as ridiculous as two men kissing on the mouth! And I don't care what is politically correct. Everyone knows that two men on a wedding cake is a comedy skit, not an "alternate lifestyle"! There I said it! Ridiculous!

Did you see "Glee" this week? Sickening! And, besides shoving the gay thing down our throats, they made a mockery of Christians – again! I wonder what their agenda is? Hey, producers of "Glee" – what's your agenda? One-way tolerance?

I am always amazed that you tend to see how often that one particular metaphor ("shoving the gay thing down our throats") is used by the anti-gay crusaders in America. I am guessing it signals a particular homophobic fear - usually among men. That fact that a woman strapped it on to a WND rant doesn't make it any less homophobic.

As crazie as Victoria Jackson is, she's outshown by Scaife beneficiary Larry Klayman (he of Judicial Watch) who had this published in WND this weekend. First he spouts out basically every Clinton era conspiracy theory out there and opens with, you guessed it, Vince Foster:

During the so-called "Clinton years," when I took the testimony of nearly everyone in the White House, it became well-known that Hillary Rodham Clinton was in effect the operational chief of the administration and its "hit man" – the evil point person for destroying adversaries – and head of the "War Room," which also comprised James Carville and George Stephanopoulos. Hubbie Bill was the "creative genius," not only with regard to foreign policy, but literally with regard to "domestic affairs." Just ask Monica Lewinsky and the cigar industry. But there is one statement I will always remember: "Hillary rules the school," testified to by Linda Tripp, the former assistant to mysteriously deceased Hillary law-firm partner and Clinton Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster – giving a new meaning to the French expression "femme fatale." As also suggested during the testimony, Vince was the "love slave" who "watered Hillary's office plants" and may have died for being honest and not wanting to go along any longer in helping her execute evil deeds. Over 80 material witnesses and others "died" during the Clinton years, and poor Vince was only one of them.

I guess the fact that Ken Starr's own investigation reaffirmed Foster's suicide only proves that either Hilary threatened Starr himself or that that maybe he's in on the conspiracy.

Maybe Ken Starr's Hilary's love slave, too!

The whole point of Klayman's column is to pose a few more kinks in the kinky Clinton conspiracy:

• Barack Obama named didn't want to name Hilary Clinton as Vice President because he was afraid that if she were Vice President, she'd kill him.
• He also named her Secretary of State because then she'd get the blame for his planned foreign policy of "anti-Americanism, appeasement, weakness, prevarication and hostility toward Israel and nearly all things Jewish and Christian."
• He's doing this to undercut her chances of challenging him in 2012.

On the other hand, she's got her own plan:

In 2011, it may be passé for Hillary to get rid of people by having them disappear. But with Obama there is an easier way that I suspect may, in this age of "civility," be the femme fatale's new modus operandi. I have come to conclude, through sources close to Hillary, that she herself may again be working on the so-called "birther" issue, which she first raised during her 2008 presidential campaign. For if Hillary can finally obtain proof positive that President Obama was born in Kenya, and not in Hawaii as he claims, then she will not have to send him on a day trip to Fort Marcy Park to retire him as president. What could be cleaner?

This is the guy who runs Judicial Watch, beneficiary of $8.74 million in Scaife funds over the last few decades.

Teh Crazie - for all to see.