When a distant Obama controversy was resurrected last week by the president's most fervent media foes, the New York Times noted how Mitt Romney's campaign distanced itself from the debate, and from the president's extreme critics. 

The Times reported [emphasis added]:  

On Thursday, the Drudge Report posted a link on its Web site to a report that sought to revive the long-discredited assertion that Mr. Obama was not born in the United States.

...

The Romney campaign has kept a considerable distance from the anti-Obama fringe. It only turns off moderate and independent voters, while stirring up Mr. Obama's base. 

But has the GOP campaign really kept its distance? It's true that with last week's resurrection of the long-debunked conspiracy theory about Obama's true birthplace, the Romney campaign showed no interest in embracing the story.

In general though, the Republican Party's presumptive nominee has gone out of his way to embrace the anti-Obama fringe, in the form of today's right-wing media complex.  The Romney campaign has built strong ties with Fox News, The Drudge Report, and with an array of far, far-right websites that traffic in every imaginable type of anti-Obama hysteria, and do it on a daily basis.

Indeed, the Romney campaign seems determined to wage a general election campaign battle alongside the anti-Obama fringe, in a way that Sen. John McCain did not four years ago.

Recall that earlier this month the Huffington Post reported that in effort to reach out to right-wing bloggers and online journalists, Romney met with dozens of conservative writers for two hours during an on off-the-record gathering in Washington, D.C. The bull session centered around ways the bloggers and writers could help Romney's campaign with its messaging, and how they could most effectively distribute opposition research on Obama.

In other words, the Romney campaign deputized the right-wing blogosphere. And yes, the bloggers whom Romney so graciously met with represent a Who's Who of the anti-Obama fringe. Among those assembled for the Romney meeting were representatives from American Spectator, Human Events, RedState, Townhall, Powerline and PJ Media, among others.

Here's a sample of their recent work:

Read the full entry ...

If ever a more shining example of an inherent problem plaguing the media today exists, this is it. Just three weeks ago, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, two well-respected, centrist political commentators with records of accomplishment going back decades, charged in a Washington Post op-ed that the Republican Party is to blame for our "dysfunctional" Congress -- just days before the release of their book detailing this thesis, It's Even Worse Than It Looks.

But "the most quoted men in Washington" can't even get a booking on the opinion-setting Sunday morning talk shows, as Washingtonpost.com blogger Greg Sargent explained. Media Matters' own research reveals that while journalists writing for the top five national U.S. newspapers have frequently quoted Mann or Ornstein in news articles in the past, the duo is entirely absent from these pages since they publicized their latest observation about the state of Congress.

Such a thesis would seem "likely to generate widespread discussion," opined Steve Benen on Maddowblog recently. "Where's the debate?" he asked. That's a great question, and its examination reveals a structural problem with the way that journalists typically report the news.

Read the full entry ...

On Friday, the New York Times published a story profiling Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, a prominent psychiatrist who recently retracted and apologized for a study he conducted in 2003 which purported to demonstrate that some people actually could change their sexual orientation through therapy. In a recent letter to Dr. Ken Zucker, the editor of the journal that published Spitzer's study, Spitzer wrote:

I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy. I also apologize to any gay person who wasted time and energy undergoing some form of reparative therapy because they believed that I had proven that reparative therapy works with some "highly motivated" individuals.

With Spitzer's apology, perhaps the last iota of 'credible' scientific evidence for the belief that gays and lesbians can be 'cured' of their homosexuality has vanished. Unfortunately, few of the news networks that touted Spitzer's study in 2003 have covered its retraction.

In fact, the belief that a person's sexual orientation or gender identity can be changed is still alive and well at Fox News thanks to the work of Dr. Keith Ablow - a member of network's "Medical A-Team."

Ablow is notorious for peddling the false idea that children might decide to identify as transgender if they see a happy transgender person - like Dancing with the Stars' Chaz Bono - on television. He's also suggested that using pink nail polish and having same-sex parents might similarly cause children to abandon their gender identity. He's been open about his belief that transgender people are suffering from "psychotic delusions" and should be encouraged, through therapy, to identify as their biological sex.

Ablow has also voiced his support for the claim that homosexuality is a product of environmental factors and, as a result, can be changed or reversed. In the past year alone, Ablow has argued that:

• Homosexuality can be caused by environmental factors, including a lack of access to women
• Homosexuality can be caused by "unresolved issues" with important females in adolescence
• Homosexuality is a "lifestyle choice"

And last week, Ablow condemned the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for declassifying Ego-Dystonic Homosexuality (EDH) as a mental illness in 1987. EDH, which was the diagnosis given to people who were distressed by their same-sex attractions, continues to play an important role in the pseudoscientific research produced by modern "ex-gay" groups today.

Although Ablow has thus far avoided explicitly condoning "ex-gay" therapy, he's provided all of the allegedly 'expert' medical opinion one would need to buy into the myth that LGBT people can be 'cured': LGBT people made a choice, they're LGBT because of bad parenting, their identities can be influenced by external factors, etc.

So while Spitzer's apology seems to have left reparative therapy in critical condition, over at Fox News, the doctor is in.

On Hannity, Dick Morris returned to fearmongering over potential Senate ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty. Morris previously suggested that the treaty was part of a plot by the Obama administration to create "one world government." Tonight his anti-Law of the Sea Treaty push took the form of a series of falsehoods about the treaty.

For instance, Morris suggested that the Law of the Sea Treaty would harm our Navy's control over the high seas. But the Navy actually supports the relevant treaty provisions and has done so since 1983.

Morris claimed: "This treaty basically sets up a judicial arbitration tribunal appointed by the United Nations to resolve disputes about sea lanes. Now, currently the dispute resolution mechanism is the U.S. Navy that goes out and polices the world's waterways because we're incomparably the world's greatest naval power and keeps the sea lanes open. But this would give the UN a veto over our Navy's decisions."

The reality is: The Navy strongly supports the provisions discussed by Morris. In 2003, Admiral Mike Mullen stated: "Since 1983, the Joint Chiefs and the combatant commanders have supported the navigational provisions of the convention because of the core belief that a comprehensive, widely accepted, and stable legal basis for the world's oceans is essential to U.S. national security."

Morris claimed: "[O]nce it's passed, a treaty is forever. You can't repeal it. It has the force under the Supremacy Clause of a constitutional amendment. ... And nobody is talking about this."

The reality is: Morris just made this up out of thin air. The Law of the Sea Treaty itself allows nations to repeal it. From the treaty: "A State Party may, by written notification addressed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, denounce this Convention and may indicate its reasons. ... The denunciation shall take effect one year after the date of receipt of the notification, unless the notification specifies a later date."

Furthermore, if treaties were really "forever" and couldn't be repealed, this would come as news to former President George W. Bush. In late 2001, Bush announced that the White House was withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. If Morris were correct, the ABM Treaty would still be in effect.

Morris' constitutional interpretation is also pure fantasy. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution states: "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land." If Morris' interpretation were correct, all federal laws would also have the force of constitutional amendments since the Supremacy Clause makes no distinction between "laws of the United States" and treaties.

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Fox is hyping comments by former RNC chairman Michael Steele in which he criticized the NAACP for "signing up with an organization like Planned Parenthood," which he said had worked in the past to "eliminate and limit" African Americans and other minorities. Guest hosting for Bill O'Reilly, Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham aired Steele's comments, which were made earlier today on Ingraham's radio show. Steele's comments were also touted by Fox Nation. 

Unmentioned by Ingraham and Fox Nation, however, is that fact that Martin Luther King Jr. accepted an award from Planned Parenthood and praised the organization for its dedication to family planning. 

During a discussion of Planned Parenthood on Ingraham's radio show, Steele stated: "I have yet to understand how when you look at something like the NAACP signing up with an organization like Planned Parenthood that has a part of its history and its charter and its existence, you know, the use of abortion to eliminate and limit the number of African American and other minorities in this country, I -- to me, it's just beyond the pale." 

Tonight on The O'Reilly Factor, after discussing the NAACP's recent endorsement of same-sex marriage with Fox's Juan Williams and Mary Katherine Ham, Ingraham said: "I interviewed Michael Steele on my radio show this morning about the views of black voters on the issue of abortion and abortion in the Democratic Party." She then aired Steele's comments:

Steele's comments were also hyped by Fox Nation, which linked to a Mediaite article on the comments with the headline "Michael Steele: Planned Parenthood Used Abortion To 'Limit' African-Americans."

But neither Ingraham nor Fox Nation mentioned Martin Luther King Jr.'s praise of Planned Parenthood for its dedication to family planning or the fact that he accepted an award from the organization. 

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Fox News' flagship "straight news" program, Special Report, dedicated a segment to Arizona's secretary of state Ken Bennett saying that he might remove President Obama from the Arizona presidential ballot because he "has been asking for two months for Hawaii officials to prove President Obama was born there" but hasn't received an answer that satisfies him.

BRET BAIER (host): Arizona's Secretary of State Ken Bennett says he has been asking for two months for Hawaiian officials to prove President Obama was born there. Hawaiian officials won't budge until Bennett satisfies a number of requirements, and both sides disagree about whether he has actually done it.

Bennett says he might remove President Obama from the ballot in Arizona if the proof doesn't arrive from Hawaii soon, a move Democratic critics say is politically calculated and aimed at capturing support from a fringe group of Republicans as Bennett weighs a run for governor. Bennett says he is not quote "a birther" but wants to clear up the issue for concerned Arizonans.  

Baier did not mention that Obama made his birth certificate public four years ago, and as FactCheck.org noted, it "meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship." Nor did Baier mention that, in the midst of a relentless birther attack by Baier's network, the White House also released Obama's long-form birth certificate.

In January Baier also gave undo credence to birther conspiracy theories. On January 7 Baier did a segment highlighting birther arguments saying some in the birther movement call Obama's birth certificate "a fake" and "others say the real issue is that he's not a natural-born citizen." Less than a month later, Baier updated the story, again giving credence to the birther movement.      

In addition, Baier's report comes on the heels of a Wall Street Journal article that similarly treated birtherism as one legitimate side in a factual dispute.

Both the Journal and Fox News are owned by News Corp.

Are lawmakers pursuing a "fundamentally misguided" goal when it comes to U.S. energy security? That's the concern voiced by a group of retired military officers and business leaders in a recent report warning that strategies focused on reducing imports of "foreign oil" are missing "the true nature of the problem." This spring, when average U.S. gasoline prices jumped 70 cents, the news media had an opportunity to clarify which policies and candidates actually stand to improve energy security. On the whole, they failed.

The report from the Energy Security Leadership Council (ESLC) says the notion of "energy independence" is "widely misunderstood" in a way that "misdiagnoses the problem as one characterized largely by import levels," when in fact "energy security is almost entirely a function of the importance of oil consumption in the domestic economy." In other words, it's how much oil we need that makes us vulnerable, not where the oil is produced.

After all, countries like Canada and Norway, which have long been net oil exporters, saw the same debilitating price volatility that Americans have faced in recent years. The report, echoed by a subsequent analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, says expanded domestic oil production benefits the trade deficit and employment, but not energy security -- contrary to the claims of industry, politicians, and commentators. Instead, it is vehicle fuel economy standards that the panel identified as "the most important energy security accomplishment in decades."

CONNECTING THE DOTS

While experts agree that policies reducing oil consumption do more to protect Americans from price shocks than policies increasing oil production, this fact has not been clearly communicated by the news media. Our analysis of news coverage of rising gasoline prices earlier this year found that only 2% of broadcast coverage, 4% of cable coverage, and 13% of print coverage mentioned fuel economy standards.  Out of 69 print items on gas prices, only three acknowledged that reducing oil consumption is the most effective solution. Instead, the coverage often discussed domestic oil production or the Keystone XL pipeline. There are persuasive arguments in favor of both of these, but energy security and gas prices are not among them. (Unfortunately, energy security and gas prices are two of the arguments used most frequently by proponents and relayed uncritically by reporters.)

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The Senate is scheduled to consider the nomination of Paul Watford, one of President Obama's stalled judicial nominees, on May 21. Journalists covering the debate on the nomination would do well to consider the judicial vacancy crisis that is denying many Americans their day in court, Watford's record, and the bipartisan support his nomination has received. They need not, however, devote much attention to the so-called "Thurmond Rule." The "rule," which some have argued is a reason for the Senate to slow or even halt the confirmation of judges during a presidential election year, turns out to have been so inconsistently applied over the years that it is less a rule than a free-floating excuse for obstruction. In the face of a judicial vacancy crisis, such a vague and standard-free "rule" deserves little weight.

There is a real judicial vacancy crisis in the federal courts, with more than more than 75 judgeships currently vacant. Over 30 "judicial emergencies" exist, in which vacancies leave courts so understaffed that cases pile up and people and businesses seeking justice are faced with lengthy delays in having their cases heard. The crisis is in large part the result of unprecedented obstruction President Obama's nominees have faced. Presidents Clinton and Bush had just over 200 lower court judges confirmed during their first terms, but after three and a half years of the Obama presidency, the Senate has confirmed only 145 of his judicial nominees. The vacancy crisis will persist, and deepen as a result of additional retirements, unless the Senate picks up the pace.

The vote on Paul Watford's nomination could say a lot about whether it will do so. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has broken a threatened filibuster of Watford's nomination, and a vote will take place today. Journalists covering the vote might want to look into to Watford's record as a former Supreme Court clerk and the endorsements he has received from leading conservative and libertarian lawyers, including leaders of the Federalist Society. 

Some have also raised the so-called Thurmond Rule (attributed to former Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond) as a factor to consider regarding nominations. Already in January 2012 Senator Charles Grassley, the ranking minority member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, invoked the rule as a justification for an even slower pace by the Senate on judicial confirmations. Journalists need not, however, spend much time puzzling over the so-called rule in trying to understand either Watford nomination or the Senate's broader role in the nominations process. 

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In 2010, 48.8 million Americans lived in food-insecure households, including 16.2 million children. The worst economic downturn since the Great Depression has swelled the numbers of Americans receiving SNAP benefits (commonly referred to as food stamps) to more than 46 million people.

But according to Fox contributor and New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin, the problem that struggling Americans receiving SNAP benefits have isn't really hunger or poverty. It's that they're not ashamed enough about taking the help.

Plugging his latest Post column on this morning's Fox & Friends, Goodwin lamented that the "sense of shame is gone" in receiving government assistance.

GRETCHEN CARLSON (co-host): Are too many Americans avoiding work to collect welfare? Well, check this out. Just last year, 45 million Americans received food stamps. That's a 70 percent increase since President Obama took office. So you have to wonder: Are entitlements the new American dream. Joining me now, Michael Goodwin, Fox News contributor and columnist for the New York Post. You know, I almost get a stomach ache saying that because when you think of the American dream, you certainly don't think about handouts, but is that what we're becoming?

GOODWIN: Well, it's interesting. The thing I write about in here is the idea that shame used to be part of this. In other words, people didn't want to accept a handout because they were ashamed to do it. There was a kind of social contract that said you don't do it. You're independent, you're reliant. That was part of the American founding virtue, as Charles Murray calls them.

And yet now we look at them, we see this explosion of entitlements. The sense of shame is gone. So I focus this week on food stamps, which I think is a real cultural issue, because it's now 47 million people in the country are on food stamps.

Goodwin is upset that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently proposed regulations that would prohibit New York City from fingerprinting food stamp applicants. In his Post column, Goodwin calls this opposition to the city's policy part of the "left's war on shame."

But Cuomo and advocates for the hungry say that the city's policy causes some people who are eligible not to apply for assistance because of the stigma associated with fingerprinting. The New York Times quoted Albany Bishop Howard J. Hubbard as saying, "Poverty and hunger are not crimes."

According to Jennifer March-Joly Further, the executive director of the Citizens' Committee for Children executive director, "The finger-imaging requirement has long deterred thousands upon thousands of potentially eligible applicants from applying for food stamps."

Goodwin joins the growing list of Fox News figures who have demonized those who receive food stamps and minimized the struggles of poor Americans. Charles Payne once castigated the poor for not being sufficiently ashamed of their poverty. Stuart Varney dismissed "the image we have of poor people as starving and living in squalor," claiming that "many of them have things -- what they lack is the richness of spirit." Sean Hannity recently urged people struggling with food insecurity to make pots of beans and rice "for relatively negligible amounts of money," claiming that the "idea Americans are going to bed hungry" isn't true.

Nearly 50 million Americans are struggling with food insecurity. Fox News wants them to pass a shame test before they can get help to buy food.

Press critics often use the term "false balance" to describe the practice of presenting a matter of clear-cut fact as the subject of dispute. Some media outlets have made progress on avoiding this problem in their reporting recently.

The Wall Street Journal, however, published an egregious example of false balance in its May 21 edition. In a news article about Arizona's secretary of state asking Hawaii to "verify it has" President Obama's birth certificate, here's how the Journal described the birther conspiracy theory (emphasis added):

A spokesman for [Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett] said Sunday that his request was "simply done at the request of thousands of voters in Arizona."

A spokesman for the Obama campaign in Arizona said the secretary of state's "flirtation with a conspiracy theory that has been debunked time and time again will have no bearing on the election."

The "birther" movement contends Mr. Obama wasn't born in the U.S. or at least hasn't shown beyond a doubt that he was born in Hawaii, as Mr. Obama and the state say. The U.S. Constitution requires that to be eligible for the presidency, a person needs to be a "natural born" U.S. citizen. Hawaii on its website links to a long-form copy of Mr. Obama's birth certificate that he posted last year.

That's a ridiculous way to present this subject. Obama's birth certificate was made public four years ago, and as FactCheck.org noted, it "meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship." The Honolulu Advertiser published a contemporaneous announcement of Obama's birth.

None of this is in dispute. Except, apparently, in the news pages of The Wall Street Journal.

In a May 21 blog post, Politico's Dylan Byers noted the decline in Rush Limbaugh's ratings:

Rush Limbaugh took a significant ratings hit in some key radio markets last month in the wake of the Sandra Fluke controversy.

The conservative radio host's ratings fell 27 percent in the key 25-54 demo in New York City, 31 percent in Houston-Galveston, 40 percent in Seattle-Tacoma, and 35 percent in Jacksonville, according to a selection of the March 29-April 25 Arbitron ratings provided by an industry source.

Limbaugh's detractors attribute the losses to a rejection of the show following his controversial comments about the Georgetown law student.

"Clearly Sandra Fluke isn't the only one who didn't like Rush calling her a 'slut' given how many viewers that comment incinerated," one radio insider said.

But defenders say that what looks like a decline actually represents a leveling out following increased attention from the controversy. In late March, Limbaugh boasted that his ratings had increased by as much as 60 percent in the month since he had called Fluke a "slut" and a "prostitute" on air.

[...]

A spokesperson for Limbaugh declined to comment.

Limbaugh, without offering any substantiation, bragged about increased ratings as recently as last Friday's show.

Previously:

Limbaugh Affiliate Cumulus Media Reports Millions In Lost Revenue

The Limbaugh "Slut" Firestorm

Limbaugh Launched 46 Personal Attacks On Fluke; He Apologized For Two Words

"Slut" Firestorm Sends Limbaugh Into Crisis Management Mode

No matter how many times they say it, the facts still don't change: The Rev. Jeremiah Wright story was covered endlessly in 2008 by the press, including The New York Times.

But that doesn't stop people like Breitbart's Joel Pollak from pushing one of the right's most beloved, albeit comically inept, lies: The liberal media refused to address the Wright story.

Breitbart.com headline:  

NY Times Ignored Obama's Wright, Focuses on Romney's Mormon Faith

This stubborn untruth is crucial because the far-right's ongoing obsession with Obama's former pastor only makes sense if conservatives can argue it's a new story and that new information is coming out all the time. They need to whitewash the past  because Obama foes have to pretend voters were never informed about Obama's association with Wright and his incendiary rhetoric; that the press hid the truth about Obama.

In other words, there needs to be a conspiracy. Or, Obama was never vetted!

For the record, the Times "ignored" the Wright story so often in 2008 that it managed to publish just 200-plus articles and columns that mentioned both Obama and Rev. Wright, according to Nexis. The Times published more than 126 rticles and columns that mentioned Obama and Wright at least three times each, and 33 hefty pieces that mentioned both men at least eight times each.

As we've noted before, the avalanche of non-stop Wright coverage became so intense in 2008 that at one point the press was covering it more closely that Hillary Clinton's campaign, and she was running for president at the time. Also, just five percent of Americans thought the story received "too little" media attention, according to a CBS/New York Times poll in 2008. 

Maybe Breitbart editors just have a different definition of "ignored."

On ABC's This Week, George Will and Laura Ingraham engaged in a bit of revisionism to try to distance conservative billionaire Joe Ricketts from an incendiary plan to re-manufacture the Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy, and in the process accused the New York Times of journalistic malpractice. Will claimed that Ricketts, who commissioned the plan, immediately repudiated the proposal, while Ingraham asserted that he "didn't even see" it. In fact, the proposal stated that Ricketts had given "preliminary approval" of the plan and commissioned it in part because he thought it was a mistake that John McCain's campaign refused to use Wright to attack Obama in 2008.

During a discussion of the plan, which was made public by the New York Times, Will claimed that Ricketts "repudiated [the proposal] the instant he saw it." Will went on to accuse the Times of fudging the facts of Ricketts' involvement because "it didn't fit their narrative: billionaire behaving responsibly."

Fellow panelist Ingraham added: "As far as I know, he didn't even see this proposal -- I believe, George -- and the idea that he was considering it was a total false narrative put forward by the New York Times to send a message to other people, don't you dare get involved in this election in any type of, quote, 'controversial,' way."

But their contentions aren't supported by the facts.

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In her May 18 Washington Post column, Kathleen Parker disputed the notion that the Republicans behind the proposal that sought to make a campaign issue out of President Obama's association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright are "racist," by suggesting that Fred Davis, who oversaw the proposal for the ads, recognized the ads' "racial sensitivity" and planned to hire a conservative African-American as spokesman.

She wrote that although the proposed ads "were not a good idea" and that "to question Obama's character based on his association with Wright at this point seems too much too late,"  it is "unfair" to cast the Republicans who would do so as racist. She then suggested that the fact that the PAC would have enlisted "prominent African Americans" to "question Obama's character" would have somehow mitigated the racial aspect of the proposed ads:

Obama has a record as president and can be challenged on that record. Raising Wright now would have been a serious miscalculation and would have been interpreted as attempting to inspire racial animus. But it is unfair to smear [ad creator Fred] Davis as a racist, as some have suggested. He obviously created a proposal based on his sense that this would appeal to Ricketts, who said upon viewing the rejected ­McCain ad: "If the nation had seen that ad, they'd never have elected Barack Obama."

Davis, whose creativity is widely acknowledged, was obviously aware of the possible racial sensitivity, which is why he also hoped to include prominent African Americans, such as radio host Larry Elder, questioning Obama's character. Whites cannot do this without suffering the consequences now in play.

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On the heels of what some in conservative media circles are heralding as a "breakthrough" story and "journalism in its purest form" -- the Breitbart.com piece highlighting a 1991 pamphlet that erroneously listed President Obama's birthplace as Kenya -- Rush Limbaugh entertained the "thought-provoking theory" on Friday that Obama is actually the one who started the birther conspiracies to take advantage of an "affirmative action opportunity that was available only to those born in Africa."

Limbaugh stated that he agreed with this premise and that the final takeaway from all of this was that "the guy" -- Obama -- "will exaggerate, make it up, lie, what have you. That's the lesson to be learned here."

It's unclear where this "theory" originated, but Limbaugh was referring to a piece posted at Pajamas Media on Friday by Roger Simon, who purported to guide readers through the "mystery of the Kenyan birth" and offered several "explanations" for why the pamphlet, published by Obama's former literary agency in 1991, said Obama was "born in Kenya." He ultimately concluded that "the agent's source for Obama's birthplace was... Barack Obama." Simon went on to write:

Why would he lie about where he was born?

Well, he might have wanted to glamorize his past, but if that's so, it's pathetic. I suspected there was a more substantive reason, one that would cause him to leave his African birth place in place in the bio. But to take the risk of being found out, it would have to be strong.

[...]

What if, we thought, as others have suggested, the reason Obama's school records have not surfaced is that he enrolled, at one of those institutions at least, as a foreign student -- a Kenyan?

But why would he choose to do that? Well, maybe for a grant, a subvention, a scholarship that was available uniquely to students from Africa or similar locales.

Yes, I know that's not "fair," in the lexicon of the Lord of Fairness, to have adopted a phony identity and deprived others of an opportunity they may have more richly deserved. But it would certainly fit with Obama's early need to be recognized as a Kenyan by his agent and, presumably, his publisher. As we all know, it's not the crime, but the cover-up. (In this case, actually, it's both.)

As time went on, of course, college drifted away and politics reared its head. The Kenyan identity became less necessary, even a liability, so it was dropped.

I don't know about you -- but this makes sense to me. It also fits with the tomb-like silence around his college years.

But I could be wrong.

The conservative Powerline blog, which Limbaugh cited, jumped on Simon's thread, calling the theory "intriguing" and "thought-provoking."

Sadly, there is nothing "intriguing" or "thought-provoking" about entertaining conspiracies that are being pulled, as far as I can tell, from the air -- especially when so many holes have been poked into this particular birther bubble:

Read the full entry ...

In a National Review blog post, Katrina Trinko falsely accused Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren of plagiarism. She alleged that Warren lifted passages for her 2005 book All Your Worth, which she co-wrote with her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi, from another book:

Trinko has since deleted that blog post and published a correction:

I took down my earlier post on Elizabeth Warren plagiarizing from the book Getting On the Money Track.  On Amazon.com, the Warren book All Your Worth is listed as having been published January 9, 2006. As it turns out, that is the paperback publication date; the hardback book was published in March 2005. As such, it appears that Getting on the Money Track (published in October 2005) plagiarized from All Your Worth, not the other way around. 

I apologize for the error.

On Fox News' flagship news program, Special Report, guest host Shannon Bream repeated National Review's false report:

Will Special Report issue a correction on Monday?

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Latching onto a Congressional Research Service report commissioned by Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Fox News suggested today that government investments in clean energy hurt our military. But experts agree that investments in clean energy technology and climate mitigation benefit our national security.

The report found that the federal government has spent more than $68 billion since 2008 on climate-related activities. The majority of these funds went to the Climate Change Technology Program, which invests in renewable energy and other energy technologies that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Although only a small fraction of that funding -- about 0.01% -- went to the Defense Department, Fox anchor Martha MacCallum suggested that climate change programs are being funded at the expense of national security, asking: "Is the White House putting green energy ahead of defense?" And the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore added: "I do think this national security issue is really the crux of the issue about whether we want money that should be spent to keep us safe and keep us secure going for green programs."

Let's put things in perspective. According to the Congressional Research Service, the Pentagon has spent $776 million on climate change programs over the past 4 years. This accounts for approximately 0.0002% of total defense spending over that time frame -- hardly excessive to address a problem that military experts agree poses a major national security threat.

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During a May 18 appearance on Fox's America's Newsroom, conspiracy peddler Katie Pavlich made a number of far out claims concerning how the doctrine of separation of power relates to the ongoing investigation of the ATF's failed Operation Fast and Furious by congressional Republicans. 

As you may recall from high school civics class, separation of powers refers to the system of government we have in the United States where the authority of the federal government is divided among three co-equal branches. This equilibrium between branches of the federal government is maintained through the system of checks and balances established by the U.S. Constitution.

But in Pavlich's world, the legislative branch reigns supreme and the Department of Justice must supply any and all documents requested by House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) during his committee's investigation. This ridiculous theory would disrupt the system of checks and balances and is refuted by Congress' own research department and court precedent concerning the right of the Executive to withhold certain types of information. 

But the biggest error made by Pavlich -- one that she repeated three times during her appearance -- is that the Department of Justice must turn over every single document requested by the House Oversight Committee in order to be in compliance with Issa's subpoena.

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So opined the editorial board of the New York Daily News in response to public scrutiny of the New York Police Department's "stop-and-frisk" policy -- a controversial program that last year alone resulted in over 685,000 stops of primarily black and Latino residents (only 12% of persons stopped were charged with a crime). This week, Manhattan Federal Court Judge Shira Scheindlin granted class action status to a group of victims of the policy who are bringing suit against the city for what they argue is a discriminatory and unconstitutional practice. The Daily News, as well as the New York Post, viewed the ruling -- which they inexplicably believe risks the existence of the "stop-and-frisk" practice altogether -- as nothing less than life-threatening.

The NY Post's editors weighed in as well, attacking outspoken critics of the program whom the editors say "won't rest until the murder rate skyrockets":

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