Smollett fiasco reveals much about leftists, and the news media

As President Donald Trump is inclined to do, he frequently comments and tweets about “fake news.” This most often upsets the news media, which maintains they do not indulge in fake news.

That, of course, is sharply debated by a large faction, those who are the targets of, or suffer from, those news stories. Some events are more useful than others in demonstrating how crazy some of these tales really are. For this noble purpose the fates have provided the celebrity bright light Jussie Smollett, who is called the “star” of a less-than-well-known TV show called “Empire.”

For those who may not know the gory details, when the story first broke, Smollett had reported that he was attacked about 2 a.m. on Jan. 29 in a Chicago neighborhood by two people who yelled racial and homophobic slurs at him, tied a rope around his neck, and poured a chemical substance on him, which he believed was bleach. Smollett said at least one assailant told him “this is MAGA country” during the alleged attack, as reported by The Washington Post.

He then appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” to further expound upon the racial and homophobic nature of the attack, to assert that the seriousness of the event was not being fully acknowledged by the public, and then proceeded to insult everyone who did not immediately rise to his cause.

However, Chicago police have discovered a substantial amount of evidence supporting the position that the reported hate crime was really a hoax. This evidence is sufficient to have caused the police to charge Smollett with a crime. The “Empire” bright light now looks like a dim bulb.

Even some of the left’s more dependable critics of all things not-liberal condemned Smollett, and others have moved from their previous joyous and unbounded support to a neutral “let’s wait and see’” position.

In the coming days, weeks and months, this story will play out, hopefully getting as much attention as the initial media-friendly story of racist Trumpsters attacking a gay black man in a troubled Chicago neighborhood in the middle of a 20-degree February night.

If there is anything good to come from this, it’s that is it is no longer a tale of horrible racism committed by Trump supporters. Given that a neutral body, the Chicago PD, has put the charge of racism to rest, and put a truthful perspective on this event, it opens the door to demonstrating other false narratives promoted by supposed victims of discrimination.

Many “fake news” stories are automatically accepted as fact without adequate vetting, or because they fit a particular narrative, or both. A few examples are:

** At Drake University, several students were targeted in racist notes this past December. The notes were, in fact, written by one of the students targeted in the notes.

** In the now infamous incident, Covington Catholic High School students in Washington, DC for a pro-life rally were blamed for hassling Native American Nathan Phillips. The disruption turned out to be caused by Phillips, a known troublemaker.

** A liberal journalist for Mic.com was fed a story about a Native American being harassed by a Trump supporter, but it was never confirmed … because it was a hoax.

** Reported hate crimes directed at Muslims, blacks and a bisexual student in different states recently were all later revealed to be hoaxes.

All of these examples were taken as truth and reported before their lack of credibility came to light. Real journalists practicing real journalism could have saved everyone affected by these false stories a lot of grief, had they done their jobs in the required way.

Much of – perhaps most of – the news media reveals itself to be biased toward certain topics – like racism, homophobia, anti-Islamism – and biased against other topics – like Donald Trump, conservatives, and white people, particularly men.

Among way too much of the news media new standards have replaced the traditions of truth, objectivity, fairness, due diligence and balance. The new standards seem to be: Getting it out fast is better than getting it out right; assuming truth is better than finding truth; and inches and minutes of ad sales, and mouse clicks, are foremost.

News should be news and opinion should be opinion and never the twain shall meet. That is a rule that is these days routinely broken. This represents a true crisis that has rendered news journalism a profoundly tattered and broken profession.

When President Trump calls bad news “fake news,” and when he says that purveyors of dishonest news are the “enemy of the people,” he is reacting to what the purveyors of these stories have created for themselves.

When the American people are deliberately misinformed by the very voice upon which they depend for essential information, how is that different from the work of propagandists?

Rather than reacting to the revealing of their corruption as a wake-up call, many of them merely issue denials, and keep traveling the same road.

Few things in life ever match their ideals, but news journalism has fallen to an historic low. The question now is: Can news journalism ever re-earn the trust of the American people?

Freedom of the press: a privilege to be honored by practitioners

Freedom of the press is a hallmark of the American experiment. Looking back to the days when the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights were created, we can see what the Founders had in mind.

Thomas Jefferson believed that the press was to serve both intellectual and political liberty. One goal, he wrote, was to establish that “man may be governed by reason and truth.” And desiring that, all avenues of truth must be open to the people. “The most effectual hitherto found,” he said, “is the freedom of the press.”

To Jefferson, the press was charged with the solemn duty to provide the truth to the people so that they may be well informed.

Press freedom was thought so important that it was specifically provided with protections in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution in the Bill of Rights, the first ten Amendments to the Constitution.

Press freedom has risen to the fore since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. His pugnacious attitude, that so often produces testy responses to what he sees as press offenses, has brought this issue into the news on a regular basis.

Members of the press and their allies see his criticisms of their work as attacking press freedom. But Trump’s allies agree with his position that some in the press have an anti-Trump bias that produces a steady stream of “fake news” and biased coverage.

Like Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin also championed press freedom, but did so while holding a realistic view of the real nature of the press. In 1789, in “An Account of the Supremest Court of Judicature in Pennsylvania, viz., The Court of the Press,” Franklin describes the operational environment of the press, with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.

In the first section, entitled “Power of this Court,” he wrote: “It may receive and promulgate accusations of all kinds, against all persons and characters among the citizens of the State, and even against all inferior courts; and may judge, sentence, and condemn to infamy, not only private individuals, but public bodies, &c., with or without inquiry or hearing, at the court's discretion”(emphasis in the original). 

And who shall be eligible for membership in the Court? Well, “about one citizen in 500 who by education, or practice in scribbling, has acquired a tolerable stile as to grammar and construction.” “This 500^thpart of the citizens have the privilege of accusing and abusing the other 499 parts, at their pleasure.”

Unlike courts of law, the press is not controlled by a higher power, which enables the carryings-on of mischief and misfeasance, if it decides to do so. It may use anonymous sources, which may or may not testify truthfully, since the press can not impose, nor need not fear fines or jail time. Mere accusations may be treated as absolute truth. Accusations may be made by anyone, against anyone, at any time, by the press.

Franklin wrote, “The accused is allowed no grand jury to judge of the truth of the accusation before it is publicly made, nor is the Name of the Accuser made known to him, nor has he an Opportunity of confronting the Witnesses against him; for they are kept in the dark, as in the Spanish Court of Inquisition.”

Whenever such misfeasance does occur, the press is protected by the freedom of the press guarantee of the First Amendment, and that protection is promptly and routinely called upon, as we have seen in the recent past.

The picture painted by Franklin is of a power with no limiting mechanism; it can do as it pleases without supervision, governed only by the integrity and adherence to ethical boundaries, which is completely voluntary for those working in the press.

Unfortunately, there is ample exercising of that un-governed power in play today, the defense of which seems to be only that “Trump made me do it.”

Looking at the broad swath of professional misbehavior in the press, government, and elsewhere, one might well conclude that Donald Trump is the most powerful human being ever. He is able to compel people to willfully abandon their honor, their integrity, and their professional ethics, all because of their overpowering hatred for him.

Being a journalist is an important job. As Jefferson said, providing the truth is essential to the nation, and he named the press as the mechanism to do that. Being a good journalist is very demanding; it requires a very high degree of self-discipline to prevent journalists from allowing personal ideas and political positions to color their reporting. Sadly, many journalists have shown themselves unable to maintain that high level of personal performance.

Press bias is in ample supply and is easy to find, so long as the searcher is as objective in his search as the press is supposed to be in search of the truth.

Can journalism ever restore its reputation as a trustworthy element in America? It would be helpful if there were a penalty for straying from the straight and narrow.

It will be a long uphill journey. The sooner that journey begins, the better.

New climate report not very different from other climate reports

There are many legitimate reasons to question the warnings of climate doom, including the millennia long history of alternating periods of warming temperatures and ice ages, demonstrating that warming and cooling periods occur naturally. 

Not the least of those reasons is the problems with climate science itself, as well as its proponents. 

The issue, of course, is for scientists to accurately determine whether and how much human activities affect Earth’s atmosphere. The record on this is spotty, at best.

The famous – or infamous – “Hockey Stick” graph that showed a sharp rise in temperatures over a rather short period of time was wrong: Bad science. But it nevertheless created a great deal of fear of a dangerously warming environment.

In 2007, NASA released data showing that contrary to the opinion of the climate change faction that the warmest year on record was 1998, the warmest year was actually 1934, and the warmest four years were in the 1930s.

NASA also released data in 2015 that challenged the 2013 conclusions of organizations including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that Antarctica was losing land ice. NASA’s data showed the opposite: that Antarctica was in fact gaining ice.

In October, a scientific paper published in the journal “Nature” suggested ocean temperatures had risen roughly 60 percent higher than estimated. However, it was soon discovered that this frightening finding was due to a mathematical error.

And, although he’s not a climate scientist, and doesn’t even play one on TV, we can’t overlook Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” a movie that provided gross misinformation, based upon predictions of doom of the grave threat of global warming. In 2006, The Washington Poststated that Gore "believes humanity may have only 10 years left to save the planet from turning into a total frying pan."

Well, 2019 is nearing, and things are roughly the same as they were at the time of Gore’s huge miscalculation. But no matter how far from reality his prognostications have been, his bank account swells pretty much in parallel with the growth of his carbon footprint. If carbon dioxide is so grave a problem, shouldn’t people like Gore show us the way to correcting that problem with their own behavior?

While Gore has implemented green energy mechanisms in his own home, he buys “carbon credits” to cover for his other excesses.

The day after Thanksgiving – Black Friday, interestingly enough – the 1,700-page National Climate Assessment went public, re-igniting fears of mass deaths, global food shortages, economic destruction, and national security risks resulting from climate change.

However, in keeping with past climate doom reports, this one also has some problems, which Nicholas Loris of the Heritage Foundation has discussed. Among the weaknesses he found are exaggerated economic costs.

One claim is that the worst climate scenario could cost the U.S. 10 percent of its gross domestic product by 2100, more than twice the percentage that was lost during the Great Recession. This is based on the assumption that the Earth’s temperature will increase by 15 degrees Fahrenheit, even higher than the worst-case scenario predicted by the IPCC. Is that realistic?

Further, “It estimates nearly impossible levels of coal consumption, fails to take into account the massive increase in natural gas production from the shale revolution, and ignores technological innovations that continue to occur in nuclear and renewable technologies,” according to Loris.

Even if climate data and the predictions resulting from it are accurate, how people react to this crisis is also relevant, and often problematic. See “Paris, December 2018,” where political climate change is actually occurring.

The protests followed the imposition of a fuel tax announced by French President Emmanuel Macron to curb diesel usage and invest in greener technology. For French citizens living in rural areas, where driving is a big deal, the tax would be very painful. Another factor is the immediate pain of higher taxes today for results to be achieved years or decades in the future.

And then there are the celebrity supporters of climate change measures who expect the rest of us to toe the line while they go along their merry way creating large carbon footprints.

Furthermore, if climate change is actually being significantly affected by the activities of mankind, who are the biggest offenders?

Well, you may be surprised to learn that the United States is neither a big offender, nor the least of those imposing carbon emission restrictions on its own citizens.

So, if action really needs to be taken to prevent the destruction of mankind and the planet, China and India are the first two places that need to change their ways. And there are many others who have not joined in, while the U.S. heads the list in reducing carbon emissions.

And, we cannot ignore that some of these climate scientists are activists, who have a political perspective that is fertilized by ample research dollars for the “correct” opinions on climate change.

No one, or at least few of us, wants to pursue a path that will actually be harmful to us, or our environment. But we must have truthful, accurate information upon which to determine our course of action. 

Yet another misguided effort to destroy our country’s history

It’s been more than a year since the movement to cleanse America’s past began, as the idea of erasing unpleasant, unpopular aspects of our history is now the way some try to make things better, and includes removing statues and memorials of America’s Founders and notable personalities of the War Between the States.

The reaction to America’s period of slavery is the prime impetus for this mania to destroy history. But as manias often are, this one is ill advised and will do great harm to future generations.

One of the most important of the Founders, Thomas Jefferson, is a target of the movement to cleanse the past by removing statues and other reminders of those days. Jefferson is recognized by the crowd bearing the cleansing equipment for one thing only: he was a slave owner, and therefore unqualified for any attention or actual appreciation.

But like nearly all of them, Jefferson had many positive things to his credit, among them intelligence and wisdom. And his ideas of the value of history are right on the mark and deserve consideration.

Regarding history, Jefferson wrote in “Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14,” in 1781, "History by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views."

Calling it “one of the most racist, pro-slavery, anti-black songs in the American lexicon,” The California NAACP now backs a movement to have Francis Scott Key’s anthem “The Star Spangled Banner” removed as America’s National Anthem. 

This furor arose from three lines in the third verse of Key’s 1814 poem that he wrote about the Battle of Baltimore in the War of 1812. How many could recite any of the other verses, or even knew the song has more than one verse? And if you are looking for “the most racist, pro-slavery, anti-black” song in the country, would three short lines in the third of four verses that hardly anyone knew existed really be the worst, or be worth all this hoo-hah?

At first glance, however, one might believe those three lines in the verse are racist. But, as with many controversies, a first glance is far less than is required.

Here is the text of the third verse, with those lines forming the basis of the objection highlighted in italics:

“And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”

However, american-historama.org informs what those lines really meant to the author at the time they were written.

● Francis Scott Key describes the British as arrogant and boastful in the lyrics “that band who so vauntingly swore.”
● He is venting his anger at the British with the "foul footsteps' pollution" lyrics inferring that the British poisoned the ground on which they walked.
● But the poison and corruption had been washed away by the blood of the British.
● The lyrics "the hireling" refers to the British use of Mercenaries (German Hessians) in the American War of Independence.
● The lyrics "...and slave" is a direct reference to the British practice of Impressment (kidnapping American seamen and forcing them into service on British man-of-war ships). This was an important cause of the War of 1812.
● Francis Scott Key then describes the Star Spangled Banner as a symbol of triumph over all adversity.

This is why context is important. Things do not always mean what someone thinks they mean, and by doing just a little research, the true meaning could have been discovered, and this particular tempest in a teapot could have been avoided.

The NAACP misinterpreted these lyrics, and assigned a completely false meaning to them. And therefore, its reaction is not appropriate, and there is no reason to seriously consider removing The Star Spangled Banner as the National Anthem on that basis.

However, even if the premise had been correct and the Anthem did contain racist language, America’s era of slavery, which began in the Colonies, ended a century and a half ago. Further, its lyrics represent a valid and beneficial historical record of a battle in an important event in America’s history.

“But history does matter. It has been said that he who controls the past controls the future,” as David Crabtree wrote in the article “The Importance of History” on the Gutenberg College Website. “Our view of history shapes the way we view the present, and therefore it dictates what answers we offer for existing problems.”

This is why we must preserve history, and learn from it, rather than destroy it.

News media has abandoned honesty and integrity

The news media has been referred to as the “Fourth Estate” for a long time. Thomas Carlyle, in his book "On Heroes and Hero Worship," attributes the origin of the term to Sir Edmund Burke: "Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all." Burke believed the Fourth Estate to be far more important than the other estates because its job was informing the public of what Parliament was up to.

The high regard for the Fourth Estate carried over to the colonies, and when the United States was formed the work of what we now commonly refer to as the news media warranted protections in the Constitution, specifically the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, because its function was viewed as essential to the republic and protected the purveyors of important information from those who might prefer their activities to not receive wide dissemination, and who might use the courts or other means to keep important information from being made public.

Where news media is concerned, the First Amendment provides: “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press …”

However, while the Constitution can protect the media from those who dislike it by guaranteeing its freedom to tell all it knows, it does not have the ability to enforce integrity, honesty and fairness on the media. Those qualities are expected to be organizational and personal, ingrained in news providers and students of journalism, who should be taught and adopt the ethics of journalism and practice them always.

People in certain positions in our society have the job and the duty to play it straight down the middle, without allowing whatever personal feelings they may have to enter into the performance of their job. Among these are referees and other sports officials; judges in legal proceedings and other adjudicatory activities; and the news media, the people who provide the public with the critical information necessary for people to be able to make informed decisions.

The mechanisms for defending news reporting remain intact, but sadly the same cannot be said for the ethical imperatives of news reporting, as is being demonstrated daily in the national media. The most glaring example of this lack of ethics and integrity is the coverage of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump vs. that of Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.

One of many examples arose during the final presidential debate. When asked by debate moderator Chris Wallace if he would pledge to accept the results of the election, Trump’s answer was influenced by his oft-stated belief that the election system has many flaws, and he said, “I will look at it at the time.” Clinton slammed him for his answer, saying he is “undermining the pillar of our democracy,” the peaceful transfer of power.

Well, no, he was not. Who can really blame someone for wanting to wait until the election is over before deciding whether is was handled fairly? But Clinton’s position on that issue is much more highly favored by the media than Trump’s, so guess what the major news outlets told the world?

Things like this fire Trump’s claims that the news media are biased against him, and a new Quinnipiac University poll finds agreement among a majority of those polled. Fifty-five percent of likely voters agree the press is biased against Trump.

Earlier this month, Trump said some American soldiers “can't handle” the horrors of war, which causes their PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder). This statement was then distorted to suggest Trump disdains those who suffer PTSD.

This farcical misinterpretation was identified by Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, no great friend of Trump, who said: "The bias that is in the media. What he is saying is that some people, for whatever reason, and we really don’t understand why, suffer from PTSD, and others don’t.”

The news media's reaction to Trump’s PTSD comment appears to be the reaction of someone with an IQ south of 70, but we know that most media types are not stupid: Lack of intelligence is not the problem; media bias is the problem.

The media’s yearlong thinly disguised dislike for Trump has erupted into an open sore, and the collapse and disgracing of a critical component of our society is now inarguable. Attempting to justify this flagrant abandonment of professional ethics, New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg writes, “If you view a Trump presidency as something that’s potentially dangerous, then your reporting is going to reflect that … That’s uncomfortable and uncharted territory for every mainstream, non-opinion journalist I’ve ever known, and by normal standards, untenable.”

But some reporters, editors and producers regard Trump as so bad that normal standards no longer apply, and journalistic ethics that once were sacrosanct and provided a substantial measure of balance and fairness in news reporting have become obstacles to a media agenda.

One of the worst possible situations is when the source of critical public information abandons neutrality and takes sides. Like widespread corruption in government, widespread corruption in the information system is deadly to liberty.

News media decline in credibility took less than a hundred years

Some recent media meltdowns call attention in the worst way to the continuing failures of much of the American news and information media. Bad judgment and abandonment of basic principles in three recent cases call attention to a long-standing slide from respectability to corruption for the nation’s news purveyors. Some examples from the recent past include: 

First, the Rolling Stone rape story, in which contributing editor Sabrina Rubin Erdely wrote about a female freshman at the University of Virginia identified as “Jackie,” detailing an alleged sexual assault by seven members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.

Ms. Erdely did a poor job of fact-checking the story and failed to interview key individuals involved in the episode. The story was unfit to be printed in any credible publication, and caused quite a bit of turmoil at UVA. 

In defense of this journalistic malfeasance, the following notion has been floated: “Just because it wasn’t true in the Rolling Stone case doesn’t mean it isn’t true somewhere.” Such foolishness is a common defense of beliefs thought to be so important that truth takes second place.

Although Rolling Stone is a pop culture magazine, not a “real” news source, it is not excused from following the rules.

The New York Daily News, however, is a real news source, and has no excuse for this failure:
“Sarah Palin has gone rogue again - this time, giving her fans a fleshy surprise as a holiday gift,” wrote Adam Edelman in the Daily News, describing a video of Ms. Palin.

“In the episode, Palin demonstrates how to make her favorite iteration of blueberry pie, but as she delicately kneads the dough, her sweater falls down to her arms, revealing a whole lot of sun-kissed Alaskan skin and a sexy black undergarment,” wrote Mr. Edelman, a political writer for the paper.

Clearly implying that Ms. Palin was deliberately provocative, the headline blared: “Ho, ho, ho! Sarah Palin wishes fans holiday cheer as sweater falls down,” alleging she “gifted them with the naughtiest Christmas present of all – flesh.”

Perhaps Ms. Palin’s good looks dazed Mr. Edelman, confusing him about what he saw. Or didn’t see. She wasn’t wearing a sweater, as anyone who watched the video knows. The political writer’s imagination ran wild, and visions of underthings danced in his head.
It appears the delicious opportunity to ridicule Ms. Palin easily overpowered whatever journalistic ethics he and the newspaper might once have had.

For the third example, when a white police officer in Ferguson, MO shot and killed an 18 year-old black youth, the media widely portrayed the black youth as a gentle giant who had his hands up in surrender, saying “don’t shoot.”

The reaction to this seemingly tragic event was swift and angry. And wrong.

You see, it never happened. The “gentle giant,” Michael Brown, who was a giant, but was anything but gentle, had just minutes before the confrontation with officer Darren Wilson stolen cigars from a store and assaulted a store worker, disobeyed the police officer’s lawful instructions to move out of the middle of the street, attacked the police officer in his car and attempted to take his gun, then ran from the police officer. An autopsy revealed that he had marijuana in his blood, and according to grand jury testimony, never put his hands up and never said, “don’t shoot.” Instead, he attacked the officer again and died from gunshot wounds in response to his attack.

The media rushed to judgment, accepting without examination the idea that an innocent 18 year-old black youth was murdered while he was surrendering to police with his hands up. Was it because this scenario fit the preconceived notions of much of the mainstream media?
It is the reporter’s duty to scrupulously avoid injecting opinion in his or her reporting, and to carefully label unverified information, so that those in the audience have reliable information from which to form their opinions. 

American journalist and educator Walter Williams founded the world's first journalism school at the University of Missouri in 1908, and in 1914 created the Journalist’s Creed. Among the elements of the Creed are the following:

**I believe that the public journal is a public trust; that all connected with it are, to the full measure of responsibility, trustees for the public; that all acceptance of lesser service than the public service is a betrayal of this trust.

**I believe that clear thinking, clear statement, accuracy and fairness are fundamental to good journalism.

Now, one hundred years after its creation, after witnessing so much news coverage that falls so far short of the lofty standards of the Journalist’s Creed, one may justifiably wonder whether the Creed was ever a part of the training of so many practitioners, or has merely been forsaken by them, and is as carefully concealed from journalism students as so much information is hidden from the public by our government.

The three examples listed previously only scratch the surface of the of the failure of modern news journalism to adhere to its moral and ethical mandate. Like our nation’s founding principles, journalism’s ethics and morality need to be restored.

More crazy stuff from the world of “You can’t make this stuff up!”

Everyone says something dumb once in a while, some more than others, of course, but some people in prominent positions have a real knack for it, and others seem to think they can say whatever they want to, and people will believe them. Worse, though, is that for some of these people, like politicians, there are millions of folks who do believe what they say, no matter how weird it may be, how unlikely to happen it is, or how simply unbelievable it is.

In the most recent example, you may remember that IRS official Lois Lerner was called to testify by three Congressional committees looking into the abuse of IRS power in the intimidation of conservative applicants for 501(c)(3) status, and after making a lengthy statement declaring her innocence then availed herself of the 5th Amendment protections against self-incrimination, and then refused to answer any questions. She apparently forgot that as a hired government worker, she is accountable for her actions to the American people.

The committees had requested Ms. Lerner’s emails months ago, but, Shazam!, the IRS announced the other day that, darn the luck, those emails have just disappeared.

Adding considerable interest to this much-too-convenient occurrence is that Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen testified in March that Lois Lerner’s emails were archived.

Oh, well. Maybe the NSA or Edward Snowden has copies.

Just a couple of days earlier, Hillary Clinton, told the world that when hubby Bill finished his eight years as President of the United States they were broke and in debt.

That fails both the smell test and the laugh test. Is it possible? Yes, but doubtful.

The American taxpayers paid President Clinton $200,000 a year in wages, $1.6 million over his eight years in the White House. Presidents may have to pay for some of their normal expenses, like food, clothes, and such, but there are several expense accounts that enter into the picture, so it is difficult to imagine exhausting $1.6 million in only eight years with all the help presidents get through expense accounts.

On the other hand, given the liberal penchant for spending money they don’t have, it is entirely possible they really were broke and in debt, and if that is true, maybe we ought to remember that if Mrs. Clinton decides to seek the presidency.

Outlandish statements sometimes serve to cover up misdeeds of government employees and burnish the bona fides of politicos. Sometimes it’s difficult to make up things that are more ridiculous than what reality gives us, as we have just seen, while other times making stuff up is precisely what people do to mislead the public for some narrow political end, as the next example shows.

“Since the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, CT, there have been at least 74 school shootings in America.” So states the Website for “Everytown for Gun Safety,” which explains, “Everytown is a movement of Americans working together to end gun violence and build safer communities.”

If you are wondering why you haven’t heard about 74 more Sandy Hooks or Newtowns, it’s because there haven’t been 74 of them. In fact, CNN investigated these claims, and found that only 15 percent of them – 11 incidents – involved “a minor or adult actively shooting inside or near a school.”

Politifact “quotes a former member of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit as stating ‘[t]here is an ocean of difference’ between what average people consider a school shooting and various episodes in the Everytown accounting.”

Stipulated: Even one shooting in a school is one too many. But the dishonest use of data to try to scare people is intolerable.

Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) shows that the annual number of school-associated violent deaths, and the annual number of homicides and suicides of students ages 5-18 at school, were lower during the 2010-2011 school year than at any time in the last 20 years. And, in fact, they had been reduced by almost half.

Five of the 74 incidents involved accidental non-fatal shootings; and two other incidents were apparent acts of self-defense. Again, any shooting at a school, other than in self-defense or to stop someone from hurting or killing people, is unacceptable. But that is a very different matter than when someone intentionally shoots and kills or wounds kids.

It appears the anti-gun fanatics will stop at nothing, even creating fairy tales to try to persuade people to their point of view. In doing so, however, they prove that their point of view is unworthy of public attention.

“Everytown” is the brainchild of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and unfortunately contains the same absurdities as Mr. Bloomberg’s other manias, like his war on sodas.

If making things illegal actually worked, we’d have no drug problems, robberies, murders or rapes. If limiting the right of law-abiding citizens to own weapons as powerful as those criminals possess made any sense, people would support it.

Does anything say, “Come on in” to a criminal more succinctly than posting a “No Guns Allowed” sign on the door?

Gun violence is the result of the desire to commit violence, not the gun.

Lack of media integrity represents yet another serious crisis

A major factor in this year’s presidential campaign is something that should not be a factor at all: the media.

What the nation needs, what the media are expected to provide, and what some Americans think they are getting, is objective, balanced and fair coverage of the events of the day.

That, of course, is what the Society of Professional Journalists intends its profession to provide, and so stated in its Preamble: “Members of the Society of Professional Journalists believe that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy. The duty of the journalist is to further those ends by seeking truth and providing a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. Conscientious journalists from all media and specialties strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist's credibility. Members of the Society share a dedication to ethical behavior and adopt this code to declare the Society's principles and standards of practice.”

America suffers mightily because the media have largely abandoned their ethical and moral obligations in favor of pursuing political goals; no longer information purveyors, they are partisan players, who instead of providing accurate, objective news now push deliberately distorted partisan messages.

This has earned the media a few derisive names: the lame stream media, the drive-by media, the lapdog media or press, the Ministry of Propaganda, the Talking Point Monkeys, presstitutes … the list goes on.

The bias exhibited by the major media exists not only in how they present information, but also in what information they present, what they don’t present, and the amount of emphasis certain items receive.

The issue is further clouded by the fact that many media outlets provide both news and opinion. There is nothing wrong with that, so long as news and opinion are carefully handled and kept separate, and opinion is clearly labeled as such. Far too often, they get mixed together.

It doesn’t get much worse than when the media take sides, as they have done in the presidential campaign. One recent example resulted from a meeting Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney held with a few supporters in a private home in Florida. Speaking to a group of like-minded supporters, Mr. Romney made comments that on the surface conveyed a message that seemed to show his apparent lack of concern for approximately half the country.

Such an interpretation doesn’t pass the smell test, of course, as indicated by the high level of charitable giving the Romneys donate each year – nearly 30 percent of net income in 2011 – but it makes a good story and helps the media boost their candidate, Barack Obama.

Some facts need to be considered: First, it was a private, off-the-record meeting; no press invited, and he spoke to people who understood that his comments were not intended to be taken absolutely literally. Furthermore, a whole lot of the people in that 47 percent that Mr. Romney mentioned not only know what he meant, but agree with him.

Second, a spy secretly – perhaps illegally – recorded his comments, and then an openly left-wing publication edited the comments and published them without explaining the circumstances of the meeting or confessing that it had doctored the contents.

The recording became a handy Romney-bashing tool for other media outlets, which either didn’t research the source or notice the clandestine nature of the recording, or just didn’t care about the lack of honesty and forthrightness.

There can be no reasonable doubt that this cheap-shot episode was designed solely to hurt Mr. Romney to the benefit of Mr. Obama. Such “reporting” is dishonest and beneath responsible journalists, who are now in short supply.

However, stripped of the spy’s and the media’s disreputable conduct, and the media’s opportunistic parsing and misstating of his beliefs, what Mr. Romney said was true, and important: Half of the country pays taxes to the government and half receives money from the government. In fact, 70 percent of federal spending goes to 47 government dependence programs, according to the Heritage Foundation, and that is a serious problem.

The national media largely reported the Romney non-story rather than objectively cover the nation’s fiscal crisis and the disastrous presidency of Barack Obama, whose administration danced, dodged and twisted into knots to avoid admitting that the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Libya was a terrorist attack.

The public has taken notice. Distrust of the mass market mainstream media – newspapers, TV and radio – hit a new high this year, with 60 percent in a Gallup survey saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news “fully, accurately, and fairly,” while only 8 percent have a “great deal” or a “fair amount” of confidence.

Last year, Gallup found that almost half of Americans (47 percent) believed the mainstream media had a liberal bias, but in the 1970s trust in the media was as high as 72 percent.

Alas, the good old days of the media, like the good old days of many other things, are long gone, and the American media seems not to care about its reputation.

A Powerful Movie

By Thomas Sowell

8/22/2012

Years, and sometimes decades, pass between my visits to movie theaters. But I drove 30 miles to see the movie "2016," based on Dinesh D'Souza's best-selling book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage." Where I live is so politically correct that such a movie would not even be mentioned, much less shown.

Every seat in the theater was filled, even though there had been an earlier showing that day, and more showings were scheduled for the rest of the afternoon and evening. I had to sit on a staircase in the balcony, but it was worth it.

The audience was riveted. You could barely hear a sound from them, or detect a movement, and certainly not smell popcorn. Yet the movie had no bombast, no violence, no sex and no spectacular visual effects.
The documentary itself was fascinating, as Dinesh D'Souza presented the story of Barack Obama's life and view of the world, in a very conversational sort of way, illustrating it with visits to people and places around the world that played a role in the way Obama's ideas and beliefs evolved.

It was refreshing to see how addressing adults as adults could be effective, in an age when so many parts of the media address the public as if they were children who need a constant whirlwind of sounds and movements to keep them interested.

Dinesh D'Souza's own perspective, as someone born in India who came to America and became an American, provided a special insight into the way people from the Third World often perceive or misperceive the United States and the Western world.

That Third World perspective is Obama's perspective, D'Souza demonstrates in this documentary, as in his book -- and it is a perspective that is very foreign to that of most Americans, which may be why some believe that Obama was born elsewhere.

D'Souza is convinced that the president was born in Hawaii, as he claims, but argues that not only Obama's time living in Indonesia and his emotionally charged visits to his father's home in Africa, have had a deep and impassioned effect on his thinking.

The story of Barack Obama, however, is not just the story of how one man came to be the way he is. It is a much larger story about how millions of Americans came to vote for, and some to idolize, a man whose fundamental beliefs and values are so different from their own.

For every person who sees Obama as somehow foreign there are many others who see him as a mainstream American political figure -- and an inspiring one.

This D'Souza attributes to Barack Obama's great talents in rhetoric, and his ability to project an image that resonates with most Americans, however much that image may differ from, or even flatly contradict, the reality of Obama's own ideological view of the world.

What is that ideological view?

The Third World, or anti-colonial, view is that the rich nations have gotten rich by taking wealth from the poor nations. It is part of a much larger vision, in which the rich in general have gotten rich by taking from the poor, whether in their own country or elsewhere.

Whatever its factual weaknesses, it is an emotionally powerful vision, to which many people have dedicated their lives, and for which some have even risked their lives. Some of these people appear in this documentary movie, as they have appeared throughout the formative phases of Barack Obama's life.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright is just the most visible and vocal of a long line of such people who played crucial roles in Obama's evolution. When Jeremiah Wright thundered about how "white folks' greed runs a world in need," he captured the essence of the Third World or anti-colonial vision.

But many of the other mentors, allies, family and friends of Barack Obama over the years were of the same mindset, as this documentary demonstrates.

More important, the movie "2016" demonstrates how so many of Obama's actions as President of the United States, which D'Souza had predicted on the basis of his study of Obama's background, are perfectly consistent with that ideology, however inconsistent it is with the rhetoric that gained him the highest office in the land.

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Voter photo IDs: Are they evil incarnate or electoral salvation?

There is great consternation and wringing of hands throughout the land over the idea that in order to vote a person must show a photo ID to verify that the voter is who he or she says they are, and is registered and eligible to vote. The resistance to this common sense requirement is astonishing.

Why are so many people afraid of measures to assure that potential voters are legal and registered?

The popular excuses are 1) that requiring a photo ID places an unnecessary hardship on some legal voters, and 2) that it is really just an excuse to disenfranchise minority voters. And, some suggest, racism is at the root of this movement.

On the cable channel MSNBC, anchor Thomas Roberts interviewed former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chairman Julian Bond, who said that voter ID laws were racist in intent.

Claims of racism are so common these days, and are an automatic response to so many things, that the term is now just one more meaningless buzzword, and that demeans true instances of racism.

Unhappy with the photo ID requirement, Georgia Democrat Congressman John Lewis, also on MSNBC, said this about voting: “To be able to cast a vote should be very simple, like getting a glass of fresh water.”

Yes, Mr. Lewis, it should be, for every legal voter who has the proper credentials.

Voting is one of the most cherished rights we have. If a right is highly cherished it is therefore important, and if voting is important, shouldn’t our electoral system have integrity beyond reproach? That is why we must insure that only legal, registered voters exercise that most cherished right.

However, the fact is that many state election systems lack integrity and are simply a mess.

An analysis by the Pew Center on the States found that close to 2 million Americans who had died were still on the books as active voters. It also found that nearly 2.75 million people were registered in more than one state, and that 12 million voter records had incorrect addresses or other errors.

There are other election problems, as well. “From voter fraud to election chicanery of all kinds, America teeters on the edge of scandal every November,” according to Dr. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.

Despite efforts to downplay it, there is ample evidence of voter fraud in the country. Remember the ACORN voter registration scandal where Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck turned up on registration forms in Nevada?

We have dead people voting and people voting who claim to be someone whose name is on the voter rolls, but is not who they are, one of the most ridiculous examples of which occurred in Washington, DC, in the shadow of the Justice Department where an undercover reporter recorded himself giving his name as (U.S. Attorney General) Eric Holder and being offered a ballot without showing an ID or being questioned about his identity.

Instead of championing efforts to clean voter rolls of dead people and non-citizens, however, Mr. Holder’s Justice Department has ordered Florida’s elections division to halt a systematic effort to purge the state’s voter rolls of non-citizen voters, and is a vocal opponent of photo ID laws.

And on the topic of voter suppression, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported those concerns are not supported by the facts: "In Georgia, black voter turnout for the midterm election in 2006 was 42.9 percent. After Georgia passed a photo ID law, black turnout in the 2010 midterm rose to 50.4 percent,” an increase of more than 17 percent. “Black turnout also rose in Indiana and Mississippi after photo IDs were required," the newspaper reported.

Furthermore, some states with voter ID requirements offer free voter ID cards. Mississippi voters approved a constitutional amendment that would require photo IDs to vote but ensured that "any voter lacking government issued photo identification may obtain photo identification without charge from the Mississippi Department of Public Safety."

Also, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, some states allow voters without ID to vote if they sign an affidavit affirming under penalty of perjury that they are the person they claim to be. And, most states allow provisional balloting so that no one would be turned away from the polls by election officials for lack of a photo ID.

If it is true that photo IDs are difficult for some voters to obtain, groups that help people register to vote can simply adapt their service to help voters acquire photo IDs, and ACORN, or whatever it now calls itself, can substitute this service for creating fraudulent voter registrations.

Complaints that photo ID requirements are efforts to disenfranchise minorities appear to be so much election year hot air, and may be aimed at blocking efforts to get unqualified voters off voter rolls.

Every honest, freedom-loving American should insist upon a system that allows only legal, registered voters to vote. Nothing less is acceptable.

Side note: A photo ID will be required to enter the 2012 Democratic National Convention this September in Charlotte. Wonder if Eric Holder will oppose that?

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You can’t make this stuff up: reality is often stranger than fiction

A couple of items recently in the news illustrate the weirdness of some of the ideas that are put forth for serious consideration these days, and that actually gain support from some Americans.

Labor unions in Indiana are upset over the state’s recently passed right-to-work law. According to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a right-to-work law “affirms the right of every American to work for a living without being compelled to belong to a union. Compulsory unionism in any form – ‘union,’ ‘closed,’ or ‘agency’ shop – is a contradiction of the Right to Work principle and the fundamental human right that the principle represents.”

Individual freedom such as the option not to belong to a labor union was a fundamental component of the United States Constitution, but that concept has Indiana’s unionists all out of sorts. They fear the new law will cause a decline in union membership, something that is so far not supported by the data in other right-to-work states. Nevertheless, Indiana unions recently filed a suit to overturn the law. The suit cites two reasons that the law violates the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude. First, the suit complains that it requires dues-paying union members to work alongside non-dues-paying workers, terming that condition “compulsory service and/or involuntary servitude within the meaning of the amendment.”

Translation: If all workers are not forced to join the union, union workers effectively become slaves.

The second point, however, seems a fair criticism: that it is unfair to force “unions to furnish services to all persons in bargaining units that it represents, but it may not require payment for those services,” and once again they make a “slavery” connection. However, this complaint is even more foolish than the first one, since the unions asked for and received monopoly rights over collective bargaining, meaning they asked to be the bargaining agent for all workers, and were granted that status. You cannot rationally seek and accept the monopoly right to bargain for everyone, and then complain that representing non-union members effectively makes slaves out of union members.

Moreover, if we are talking about slavery, it is a far more persuasive argument that forcing workers to join the union and pay dues in order to have a job makes slaves of those who prefer not to join the union.

Next, in an irrational effort at political correctness (excuse the redundancy), the Applied Research Center (ARC) and its news site, Colorlines.com, are demonizing Americans who use perfectly proper language to accurately describe a law-breaking activity.

“Drop the I-Word” is a movement that attempts to do through distraction and demagoguery what rational thinking precludes. The “i-word” – illegals – is “a harmful slur,” according to the ARC, “a racially charged slur used to dehumanize and discriminate against immigrants and people of color regardless of migratory status. The i-word is shorthand for ‘illegal alien,’ ‘illegal immigrant’ and other harmful terms,” it says. The organization hopes that a majority of Americans will fall for this grand fraud that attempts to persuade us that the criminal act of people who sneak into the United States is really not a crime.

Somewhere in the Great Beyond George Orwell is smiling.

By accurately labeling the method willfully chosen by illegal immigrants to enter the U.S., the ARC asserts that we are denying people “basic human rights.” “No human being is illegal,” it proclaims. That may be true, but human beings can do illegal things, and sneaking into the country is one of them, thus the completely appropriate terms “illegal alien” and “illegal immigrant.”

Like the Indiana unions, the ARC does identify one piece of truth: “Immigrants without documents are regularly hired as cheap, exploited labor.” But this is not a result of correctly labeling them “illegal,” it results from the failure of the federal government to stem illegal immigration by enforcing immigration laws and guarding our borders. Businesses cannot hire and exploit illegal immigrants unless they are available to be hired and exploited.

Taking this absurdity to its illogical extreme, a video posted by the radical leftist organization MoveOn.org says calling illegal immigrants “illegal” fits the definition of a hate crime and calls for the word to be banned when used in the context of immigration. Rather than discuss the pros and cons of this issue, MoveOn.org prefers to silence the opposition, or better yet, imprison opponents to keep them from challenging goofy ideas like this one.

For Indiana unionists, apologists for illegal aliens/immigrants, and others inhabiting this strange other-world, working beside non-union workers is “slavery,” and illegal aliens are not illegal. Fitting nicely into this madness is the case of a Muslim U.S. Army officer crying "Allahu Akbar" while committing the jihadi murder of 12 soldiers. He is considered to have committed "workplace violence," but an American citizen with a Tea Party bumper sticker is regarded as a "domestic terrorist."

In this bizarre world the trees are a bright orange, the sky is chartreuse, the clouds are a rich puce, and standards and definitions change with the political winds. A society in the throes of such idiocy cannot long survive.