Right-wing talk radio host and frequent Fox News guest Neal Boortz, who has said that President Obama "is a bigger disaster to this country than 9-11," is now comparing Obama to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In a post on his Twitter feed, Boortz wrote: "Trying to convince myself that under the right circumstances Obama wouldn't be another Bashir [sic] Assad. Trying .... but I can't":

The Syrian government is currently engaged in cracking down on an 11-month-old uprising protesting the Assad family's 42-year rule of the country. The brutal suppression has resulted in many deaths. According to human rights organizations, the current military assault on the city of Homs has "killed at least 300 civilians and wounded 1,000." Numerous countries, including the United States, have pulled their diplomatic envoys from the country amid the mounting violence.

In October 2011, Boortz stated that "Barack Obama is a bigger disaster to this country than 9-11." Asked to explain his statement, he added that "killing 3,000 people is a tragedy," but that "killing the individualism, the self-reliance, and the self-respect of the American people, like Barack Obama has done, is much more of a tragedy." Boortz's comments drew fire from 9-11 victims' families, who said the comparison was an insult.

In December 2009, Boortz similarly wrote on his Twitter feed that 9-11 was "[h]orrible," but "the damage Obama and the Dems are doing will surpass this tragic event."

CBS Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson did not appear at the Conservative Political Action Conference today to receive her journalism award from fringe group Accuracy In Media (AIM), despite previous reports that she would speak at the event. Instead, CBS Vice President and Washington Bureau Chief Christopher Isham accepted the award on her behalf.

AIM said earlier this week that Attkisson had "confirmed and reconfirmed" her attendance at the award presentation and that she would address the audience for 8-10 minutes. Isham did not speak at length, telling the audience: "Sharyl was very sorry not to be here today. She is traveling out of town on assignment, so I'm going to accept this award on her behalf, on behalf of CBS News."

After saying Attkisson would be donating the award to the family of slain Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, Isham added: "CBS News is very proud of Sharyl's groundbreaking reporting, as you've described it. It represents the best at CBS News -- original reporting that we are extremely proud of."

Attkisson's reported decision to accept AIM's award -- which before this year had only been given to conservative commentators -- drew attention, due to AIM's history of promoting virulently anti-gay views and conspiracy theories. In less than 24 hours over 11,000 people signed a Media Matters petition urging CBS not to legitimize AIM by accepting the award.

Among other veteran journalists who questioned the move, former CBS Washington bureau chief Ed Fouhy said Attkisson risked becoming "another pawn in the ideological chess games being played with such intensity in Washington." Charles Davis of the University of Missouri School of Journalism added: "I'm not going to ever applaud a journalist for accepting an award that essentially recognizes the fact that the advocacy group likes what they reported."

In announcing this year's winners, AIM praised Attkisson for her January 13 "investigation" purporting to reveal 11 "New Solyndras." But Attkisson's report suffered from factual problems that CBS has yet to correct. Attkisson has also been criticized for a series of articles fueling unsupported claims about a link between vaccines and autism.

The recent announcement that the Obama administration would require most employers to provide birth control caused immediate outrage throughout Fox News and the right-wing media. (Churches and other religious institutions are exempt.) Today on Fox News' Happening Now, Jon Scott explained to fellow Fox News host Chris Wallace that critics are calling "the birth control mandate an attack on religious freedom" while "supporters say it's about woman's access to family planning and health care." Chris Wallace -- supposedly part of the network's straight news division and anchor of Fox News Sunday -- decided that the supporters of the mandate were totally wrong.

Wallace said: "I don't think it's just about birth control. I really think this controversy is about government intrusion. There are a lot of people who aren't Catholics who are very upset about this because they think the government shouldn't be in the business of telling anybody in any religion what they have to do. And so it becomes a question of government limits or government intrusion in the lives of institutions or of people." Wallace also said: "This idea of mandates is something I think you don't have to be Catholic to be upset about."

Wallace's comments directly contradicted comments that Democratic senators had made about the contraception issue. For instance, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) said: "We have news for Republican: This is about contraception. The attacks on women's rights never come without being disguised as something else."

And it's ridiculous to suggest that this isn't about access to contraception. According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, "[e]mployer-based coverage is the primary form of health insurance for 64% of women of reproductive age, but a sizable minority of women lack coverage for contraceptives." Notably, poorer and college-aged women are the ones who struggle the most with the cost of prescription birth control.

But that's Fox's straight news division for you: always ready to rebut the progressive position regardless of the facts. 

Yesterday Heritage released an "Index of Dependence on Government" report. Fox and others in the conservative media trumpeted the report. But even a quick look at Heritage's report reveals its true intent: a thinly-veiled attempt to discredit important government programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

The report suggests that times were better when, rather than relying on a government-provided social safety net, Americans of limited means had to hope for "support provided by families, churches, and other civil society groups." Here is what the Heritage report has to say about Social Security and similar government programs:

Financial help for those in need has also changed profoundly. Local, community-based charitable organizations once provided the majority of aid, resulting in a personal relationship between those who received assistance and those who provided it. Today, Social Security and other government programs provide much or all of the income to low-income and indigent households. Nearly all the financial support that was once provided to temporarily unemployed workers by unions, mutual-aid societies, and local charities is now provided by federal income, food, and health programs.

This shift from local, community-based, mutual-aid assistance to anonymous government payments has clearly altered the relationship between the receiver and the provider of the assistance. In the past, a person in need depended on help from people and organizations in his or her local community. The community representatives were generally aware of the person's needs and tailored the assistance to meet those needs within the community's budgetary constraints. Today, housing and other needs are addressed by government employees to whom the person in need is a complete stranger, and who have few or no ties to the community in which the needy person lives.

Both cases of aid involve a dependent relationship. However, support provided by families, churches, and other civil society groups aims to restore a person to full flourishing and personal responsibility, and, ultimately, to be able to aid another person in turn. This kind of reciprocal expectation does not characterize the dependent relationship with the political system.

And it's nostalgia for the good old days is just as strong when it comes to Medicare. The report says: "Regardless of whether the medical and financial results are better today, the relationship between the people who receive health care assistance and those who pay for it has changed fundamentally. Few would dispute that this change has affected the total cost of health care, and the relationships among patients, doctors, and hospitals, negatively."

But how good were the good old days? Poverty was far more prevalent among the elderly back in those days. With the implementation of Social Security and subsequent increases in Social Security expenditures, elderly poverty experienced precipitous declines, falling from 35 percent in 1960 to 10 percent in 1995. In other words, back in the good old days, more than a third of the elderly were poor. Now it's down to less than one in 10.

From the National Bureau of Economic Research: 

Read the full entry ...

Conservatives have a simple, and false, narrative when it comes to the Constitution.  In their telling, they cherish, protect, and defend our founding document, while progressives at best ignore and at worst actively seek to undermine it.  And, ever since the heady days of Brown v. Board of Education and "Impeach Earl Warren," they are always on the lookout for opportunities to tell this tale.

With that in mind, right-wing bloggers' and pundits' explosion of indignation at Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's inoffensive recent comments in Egypt is wholly predictable.  Reacting for the most part to a heavily redacted transcript (which reduces the 16-minute interview to 356 words) released by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the right-wing outrage machine has seized on a single sentence:

You should certainly be aided by all the constitution-writing that has gone one since the end of World War II. I would not look to the US constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary... It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the US constitution - Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It dates from 1982. You would almost certainly look at the European Convention on Human Rights. Yes, why not take advantage of what there is elsewhere in the world? (emphasis added)

Cue the vitriol.  Among the first to weigh in was Liberty Counsel, which claimed Ginsburg "insulted" the Constitution. The Daily Caller accused her of "dissing the Constitution while abroad." Breitbart.tv charged the Justice with showing "disdain" for the Constitution. Daniel Horowitz of RedState.com thought he detected evidence of a "perverted judicial philosophy." The headline of William Tucker's essay on the The American Spectator website blared:  "Justice Ginsburg should resign." Former Supreme Court law clerk and Harvard Law School graduate Ed Whelan decided to elevate the discourse by encouraging his readers to take a RedState.com "pop quiz" asking "Which of these artifacts is too old and irrelevant to be useful to America?" The choices?  Justice Ginsburg and the Constitution.

Syndicated radio host Lars Larson struck the shrillest note on Fox News, calling Justice Ginsburg "anti-American."

Lost in the rush to yet again tell the false fable of progressive perfidy regarding the Constitution was just about everything else Justice Ginsburg said in the lengthy interview. Although you wouldn't know it from MEMRI transcript, which contained the outrage-triggering quote and not much else, watching the unedited video posted to YouTube by the U.S. embassy in Cairo reveals that Justice Ginsburg was eloquent and effusive in talking about how well the Constitution has served America, rather than Egypt. She touched on the power of the simple phrase "we the people;" the vital role played by the First Amendment; the brilliant insight by the Founders that establishing three branches of government, each with a foothold in the others, would preserve a republican form of government; the importance of guaranteeing all people the equal protection of the laws.  In short, she offered much regarding the U.S. Constitution as a source of guidance for the Egyptians' thinking about the form their new government should take.

Read the full entry ...

On January 20, the Obama administration reaffirmed that under the Affordable Care Act, most employers must provide health care plans that cover contraceptives for women free of charge. Religious employers such as churches, synagogues, and mosques are exempt, but hospitals and schools run by religious organizations that employ people of many faiths are not. Catholic clergy have been protesting the decision, asserting that contraception is counter to the teachings of the Catholic faith.

Right-wing media, with Fox News leading the charge, have seized on the ruling as evidence of a supposed "war on religion" that they have long claimed Obama is waging. Desperate to keep this narrative alive, Fox News this morning hyped a Rasmussen Reports poll that purported to show that the "majority" of Americans oppose the contraception rule. But Fox failed to note (though one Fox contributor tried) that two other polls in recent days have found that a majority of Americans do support the rule -- as do a majority of Catholics.

Rasmussen has a history of asking loaded questions to produce Republican-friendly findings; not only did this poll fit that pattern, but it actually asked a question that misleads about the contraception rule.

Fox & Friends began hyping the Rasmussen poll at the top of their show, during a segment in which they attacked the president and his administration for the decision. Co-host Steve Doocy reported the results of the poll, saying:

DOOCY: Rasmussen did a poll, called up 1,000 people, and here's the -- here's some of the results: 50 percent oppose, 39 percent favor it, 10 percent undecided. Interestingly enough, when you get into the small print about it, a plurality of Republican and independent voters as well are against it, and for the White House, that is a problem.

The co-hosts hyped the poll results again in a later segment with Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin. Co-host Brian Kilmeade again cited Rasmussen's findings and said, "In this political season, how does it make political sense for the president to do this?" Malkin replied, "It really doesn't."

Neither of these segments acknowledged, however, that two other recent national polls determined the opposite.

Read the full entry ...

Fox News' Andrea Tantaros has been very vocal in blasting the Obama administration for its decision to require all health insurers, including church-affiliated organizations, to provide plans that cover contraception. In her haste to criticize the administration tonight, she distorted comments by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to make the point that the administration's mandate "has nothing to do with women's health," but is more about "population control."

In fact, the requirement has everything to do with women's health.

When political commentator Jehmu Greene pointed out that contraception is also used to treat other health issues, including ovarian cancer, Tantaros dismissed the argument:

According to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, "[e]mployer-based coverage is the primary form of health insurance for 64% of women of reproductive age, but a sizable minority of women lack coverage for contraceptives." Notably, poorer and college-aged women are the ones who struggle the most with the cost of prescription birth control.

And those struggles have real consequences for women's health. Contraceptives are indeed used to treat a wide array of medical conditions, including reducing the risk of ovarian cancer. USA Today recently reported that "[o]varian cancer is the deadliest of cancers that affect the female reproductive system, with about 22,000 women diagnosed each year and, in 2011, approximately 15,460 deaths." According Dr. Hyun J. Bang, a radiologist quoted by USA Today, "this cancer produces few, if any, symptoms in early stages. ... This is why 75 percent of all women present with advanced disease which has already begun to spread to other areas of the body."

Read the full entry ...

Raising questions about whether he will continue to donate money to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, Bill O'Reilly once again downplayed the role that Planned Parenthood for America plays in providing cancer screenings for millions of American women..

Contrary to O'Reilly's claim that Planned Parenthood "doesn't really do much" in the area of cancer prevention, Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses provide nearly 750,000 breast cancer screenings annually. According to their 2009-2010 Annual Report, "cancer screening and prevention" combined with "other women's health services" account for almost 25% of their total services:

O'Reilly also pushed the discredited claim that grants given to Planned Parenthood by Komen are used to fund abortions. In an open letter to Komen CEO Nancy Brinker, The Washington Post's Sally Quinn noted that "not one penny" of the money the Komen Foundation has granted to Planned Parenthood "went toward abortion":

It is clear, despite what you told Mitchell, that you were under enormous political pressure -- and had been for some years -- from conservative donors to cut your ties to Planned Parenthood. This was because some of its money (about 3%) goes to fund abortions. Nevermind that of the $680,000 or so given to Planned Parenthood last year by your organization, not one penny went toward abortion. It was targeted to breast cancer screening for low-income and uninsured women. In the past five years Planned Parenthood has, with your funds, been able to provide 170,000 breast exams and thousands of referrals.

Fox News' Eric Bolling has said some pretty awful things about the Occupy Wall Street movement. He's called the protesters "petulant little children," compared them to Communists and Nazis, and even slammed them as "pot-smoking, sex-addicted morons." When Bolling has been forced to specifically address the substance of the protesters' claims -- namely that of rising inequality and an economic system tilted to overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy -- he has employed a different tack: denial or diversion.

Tonight, confronted with the fact that Americans share the protesters' concerns about rising income inequality in the United States, he chose to negate the claim, arguing that income inequality doesn't exist in this country.

Bolling's efforts to dismiss inequality comes as an overwhelming majority of Americans voice support for policies meant to address inequality. Results from a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll indicate that 68 percent of Americans believe the current tax system favors the wealthy, and 72 percent of Americans support raising taxes on millionaires. 

Here are the facts:

• Taxes on top earners are at historic lows

• CBPP: "Typical middle-class households face higher tax rates than some high-income households."

• The Center for Economic and Policy Research has shown that income for the top 1 percent increased 256 percent from 1979-2006, while the lowest quintile saw incomes rise 11 percent

• Federal Reserve Bank of Boston: Mobility has "not been sufficient to offset the considerable rise in short-term inequality."

Read the full entry ...

In 2009, conservative media perpetually mischaracterized a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report on potential increases in right-wing terrorism to suggest DHS was targeting conservatives for political reasons. On Sunday, PJ Media correspondent Patrick Poole extended this long-running attack by criticizing a new DHS document that defines categories of "domestic terrorism and homegrown violent extremism." The document doesn't mention conservatives, but does include a definition of "militia extremists." According to the document DHS defines "militia extremists" as:

Poole's flawed analysis of the DHS document concludes that DHS classifies essentially everyone that dislikes or distrusts the government for conservative reasons as "militia extremists." In a post titled "Homeland Security: You're All 'Militia Extremists' Now," Poole quotes the DHS definition of "militia extremists" and then complains:

So despite the fact that "militia extremists" are classified as "Groups or individuals who facilitate or engage in acts of violence," Poole suggests DHS would unfairly target conservatives not engaged in or facilitating violence. In reality DHS isn't saying militia extremism is "demonstrated by opposing" federal laws and regulations, but by opposing them through violence.

Poole's argument further falls apart given that DHS isn't even focusing on conservative ideologies. While listing "militia extremists" as one category of extremist activity, DHS also defines non-conservative categories such as, "anarchist," "animal rights," and "environmental rights." Under Poole's logic, DHS would also be saying that opposing environmental degradation makes you a terrorist.

Violent militia extremism isn't a hypothetical concern for our nation's law enforcement. A 2009 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center concluded that militia and other right-wing extremists groups were experiencing a "second wave" of growth following the election of Barack Obama. Last summer militia members in Alaska were arrested on charges of conspiracy to murder judges and State Troopers. In November four members of a Georgia militia were arrested in connection with an alleged plot to kill federal employees.

Veteran journalists and media ethicists -- including a former CBS News Washington bureau chief -- are criticizing CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson for accepting an award from Accuracy in Media, a conservative group with a long history of promoting anti-gay views and conspiracy theories.

Attkisson is scheduled to accept the award in person Thursday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.

Several longtime news experts contend Attkisson is hurting her own credibility and that of CBS by participating in the event.

"If you go out and you've received an award from any organization with an agenda, then any reader of your work or viewer of your work has a right to question your impartiality or your fairness," Ken Auletta, media writer for The New Yorker, told Media Matters in an interview. "I don't think journalists should accept awards from either right-wing or left-wing, conservative or liberal organizations, or from any other organized group that has an agenda. We're not supposed to have an agenda. By accepting those awards or appearing, you are raising questions about your own dispassion. We have enough of those questions already about journalists."

Ed Fouhy, a former long-time CBS News producer and one-time Washington bureau chief for the network, called Attkisson a "pawn."

"Sharyl Attkisson is making a mistake in accepting an award from A.I.M. By doing so she becomes just another pawn in the ideological chess games being played with such intensity in Washington," Fouhy stated. "Her acceptance helps to legitimize A.I.M., a fringe group, whose sole agenda is and has been for many years, to undermine the credibility of the mainstream media, fueled by the donations of millionaire conspiracy theorists."

Fouhy, also a former CBS News vice president, then noted A.I.M's past efforts against the network dating back many years:

"Reed Irvine, founder of A.I.M., and his political heirs have long made CBS News a special target in their fevered attempts to propound the myth of the liberal media. Going back to Watergate days, A.I.M. has relentlessly tried to intimidate and harass CBS News journalists. Ms. Attkisson may not be aware of that history but she should know that accepting awards from groups with political agendas, whether of the right or the left, is a bad idea."

Read the full entry ...

Sean Hannity is terribly vexed. In his mind, Democrats are weak on national security, for no other reason than they're Democrats. It's a foundational belief -- not just for him, but for a good portion of his and the rest of Fox News' conservative audience.

So how does he deal with the fact that Osama bin Laden met his end under a Democratic president? Denial.

The president's role in the hunt for Bin Laden has been well documented. The New Yorker published an exhaustive account of the raid on the Al Qaeda chief's compound in Abbottabad and the president's decision-making in the months leading up to the moment when he personally authorized it. More recently, Vice President Biden divulged that he had advised the president not to approve the mission, but was overruled. And yet, Hannity is insisting not just that Obama did not want Bin Laden killed, but that there exists taped evidence to prove it. The psychology at work here is fascinating.

The death of Bin Laden has proven to be an intractable problem for a conservative commentariat that relies upon facile and outdated stereotypes of the opposition. Say what you will about the Obama administration's expanded use of drone warfare and targeted assassinations, but it certainly does not comport with the flower-child caricature that has served as a foil for talk radio tough guys. And the death of the world's most prominent anti-American terrorist is not easily explained away.

Read the full entry ...

While CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson attends the far-right Conservative Political Action Conference this week to accept an award from the far-far-right group, Accuracy In Media, perhaps she will have extra time to take in some of the discussions scheduled to take place.

According to the posted agenda, these will be among the CPAC offerings Attkisson could sit in on:  

-"How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America" 

-"Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department"

-"Obama vs. The Constitution: How a Harvard Law Graduate President Is Shredding the Constitution"

Fascinating topics, no doubt.

Of course, last year CPAC made news when it banned the conservative gay group, GOProud, from being a conference sponsor in 2012. GOProud's inclusion in 2011 prompted angry boycotts from social conservative groups. AIM itself has a long and disturbing history of publishing columns condemning gays and their "sympathizers" as subversive agents of death. 

There really is no cockamamie conspiracy AIM hasn't pursued over the years, including its pathetic attempts to promote the "cover-up" surrounding the death of Clinton aide Vince Foster. 

Which reminds me, when Attkisson has finished her ten-minute award ceremony remarks for the appreciative CPAC audience, maybe she'll get a chance to ask Cliff Kincaid, director of AIM's Center for Investigative Journalism, about all the reporting he's done on President Obama's birth certificate.

In case Attkisson hasn't had time to read up, here's a sample of Kincaid's penetrating birther analysis:

-"By releasing a copy of my own birth certificate, I have tried to demonstrate what other necessary information is lacking about Obama's birth."

- "The contrast between what is on so many birth certificates for ordinary Americans, such as mine, versus what the Obama campaign has released, is striking."

-" The only way to address these questions is to identify where exactly he was born, in what hospital, and what doctor was present."

-"Anybody who has an original copy of their own birth certificate, or a certified copy of their own original birth certificate, should immediately understand that the Obama version is lacking in basic information that should be publicly available."

You get the idea, even if CBS News does not: Sending a straight news reporter to an Obama-bashing conference to receive an award from a proud birther organization is a very, very bad idea, and one that will do needless damage to CBS' reputation.

As Media Matters accurately noted this week, AIM represents a "cesspool of hate and conspiracy theories." That's not hyperbole. That's the documented truth; go read for yourself.

So that's a problem in terms of CBS News maintaining its reputation as an honest news broker. But that's not all. When you add onto that the myriad of loony conspiracy theories that AIM has pushed, the Attkisson decision makes even less sense. And when you top it off with the fact that AIM represented an engine that helped drive the blind idiocy behind the birther charade, then you really have to wonder what CBS News is trying to accomplish this week at CPAC.

According to a network spokesperson, "CBS News journalists are regularly honored by a broad spectrum of organizations for their outstanding original reporting." That makes sense and I'm sure it's true. But at some point common sense ought to come into play.

Here's a simple, hypothetical question for CBS News executives: Eight years ago, would you have allowed a straight news reporter to accept an award from a radical left-wing group that dedicated untold hours trying to document how the Bush administration was behind the 9/11 attacks? And would you have allowed your straight news reporter to receive the award, and to address an appreciative crowd, at a national conclave of Bush-hating nut jobs?

I didn't think so.

Amid a Fox News campaign to portray President Obama as anti-Catholic, The Five's Greg Gutfeld dismissed the struggle faced by millions of women in trying to access contraceptives.

While protesting the Obama administration's new guidelines aimed at improving women's overall health -- that health insurance plans cover contraceptives without a copay -- Gutfeld said:

GUTFELD: This makes no sense to me. There are two elements that kinda drive me crazy here: The decision is supposed to help make birth control affordable to millions. How much more affordable can you make it? It's like 50 bucks a month. I mean, do we -- should we start up like a "buy the pill" campaign? Like "feed the children" where we make sure we all adopt one woman and pay for her pills? Anybody can afford this.

In fact, not everybody can afford birth control pills, which can range from $15 to more than $50 a month. Other methods can be even more cost-prohibitive. According to Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, "nearly one in three women finds it difficult to pay for birth control."

Read the full entry ...

Critics of the 9th Circuit decision striking down Proposition 8 have labeled the ruling "breathtaking," "absurd," and an act of "judicial tyranny." In fact, the decision is very restrained.

The majority opinion did not hold that the Constitution requires all states to allow same-sex couples to marry. Instead, the decision held that a law that has no purpose or effect "other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians" violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

Indeed, even anti-gay rights zealot Matthew Staver has reportedly acknowledged that this is not a "broad ruling" and does not find that the Constitution mandates same-sex marriage.

The majority took great pains to explain the special circumstances in California that led to this decision. In California the state constitution previously allowed same-sex couples to marry. California then enacted a constitutional amendment that stigmatized same-sex couples by taking away the designation of marriage from their relationships, but the state -- by retaining a civil union law -- did not change any substantive legal rights involved.

Read the full entry ...

The editor of Rupert Murdoch's Times of London conceded today that the newspaper misled a British public inquiry in 2009 regarding an incident in which a Times reporter hacked into the email of an anonymous blogger who wrote about police activities.

Three years ago, the newspaper told a British High Court it had obtained the name of the newsworthy blogger via "self-starting journalistic endeavor." Editor James Harding today admitted that was not true, and that hacking into the blogger's private email was how a Times reporter obtained the information.

The concession is embarrassing for News Corp., since the Times is considered to be a "serious" newspaper, offering a counter-balance to Murdoch's London tabloids; the same tabloids that are at the center of the long-running phone hacking scandal. Also, Monday's admission means that Murdoch's News Corp. has now publicly admitted to hacking phones, computers and emails. 

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that the FBI if focusing its investigation into allegations that British tabloid employees, working for the U.S.-based News Corp., may have violated American law by paying police officers in exchange for news stories:  

The FBI is conducting an investigation into possible criminal violations by Murdoch employees of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), a law intended to curb payment of bribes by U.S. companies to foreign officials, a U.S. law enforcement official said.

The U.S. official said that if any law enforcement action was pursued by U.S. authorities against Murdoch employees, it would most likely relate to FCPA.

Reuters reports that U.S. investigators have found "no evidence" to corroborate a British press report from last year claiming Murdoch's now defunct tabloid News of the World had tried to obtain voice mail messages from cell phones belonging to victims of the 9/11 terror attacks. 

Fresh off her resignation as vice president for public policy at Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Karen Handel headed to (where else?) Fox News for her first TV interview to give her side of the story regarding the breast cancer charity's controversial decision to cut funding to Planned Parenthood for cancer screenings.

Echoing an argument that has become popular among conservatives in the media, Handel denounced Susan G. Komen's critics and said that the private foundation's decisions on how it disburses money should be free from outside pressures. Unfortunately for her, she also stomped all over that argument when she tried to justify Komen's initial decision to cut off Planned Parenthood.

Here's the key part of the interview.

For those who can't watch the video, Handel said: "The last time I checked, private non-profit organizations have a right and a responsibility to be able to set the highest standards and criteria on their own, without interference, let alone the level of vicious attacks and coercion that has occurred by Planned Parenthood." She returned to the argument a couple of minutes later, saying "all of us should be saddened that an outside organization will put this kind of pressure on another organization around their processes and granting and how they do it and to whom they are going to grant."

A minute later, however, Handel laid out Susan G. Komen's justifications for altering their policies to cut off Planned Parenthood, and she listed among them the fact that they had been "under pressure for some years" regarding the "controversies" surrounding Planned Parenthood:

HANDEL: I think the Congressional investigation, along with the various state investigations [of Planned Parenthood], those were a factor in the decision. But make no mistake about it, it was a bigger picture than that. There was the granting criteria as well as the controversies that were surrounding Planned Parenthood. And it's no secret, Megyn, that Komen and other organizations that were funding Planned Parenthood had been under pressure for some years, long before my time, that had been going on -- the pressure around the controversy.

And I'm not going to get into too much on the internal aspects of things, but this organization had a right to make what it felt was the best decision for the mission. For the mission. And I think everyone can agree that if you have a grantee where there's this type of controversy surrounding it, Komen was doing its level best to move to neutral ground.

Who was the "pressure" coming from? Outside anti-abortion rights groups that sought to influence how Susan G. Komen disbursed its grant money.

So to sum up Handel's argument: We cut off Planned Parenthood's funding because outside groups were pressuring us, and how dare outside groups pressure us because we cut off Planned Parenthood's funding.

UCLA constitutional law professor Adam Winkler took to The Daily Beast yesterday with a confusing message: Gun violence prevention is a "serious issue that deserves our leaders' attention," but those who care about the issue should avoid at all costs actually discussing it in public. He claims that doing so puts both progressive electability and gun violence prevention itself in peril before a wrathful gun lobby and its massive  political war chest.

This argument simply doesn't hold up: the gun lobby is planning a massive campaign whether progressives push for stronger gun laws or not, and progressives have won in the face of such efforts in the past.

The impetus for Winkler's befuddled argument is Sunday's Super Bowl ad in which New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston mayor Thomas Menino, the leaders of Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), state that they "both support the Second Amendment and believe America must do more to keep guns out of the hands of criminals."

In the past, Winkler has been criticized for "tr[ying] too hard ... to present himself as one of the few rational voices" in the debate while improperly implying that the gun violence prevention movement is "defined by extremists." But while Winkler calls gun violence "a serious issue that deserves our leaders' attention," he never actually engages with the solutions that Bloomberg and Menino have brought to the table. At least not in this piece; in a previous op-ed for the Beast, he wrote:

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's organization, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, has proposed a viable and worthwhile set of reforms that would provide more funds to states to help cover the costs of record-keeping; stiffening penalties for states that don't submit records to the federal government; and clarifying the current gun laws' definition of mental illness.

So Winkler agrees that gun violence is a "serious issue," and largely approves of how the group would deal with that problem. And yet, he opposes the group actually trying to enact the legislation he supports. When or how this "serious issue" could receive "our leaders' attention" without anyone pushing for it goes unmentioned.

Read the full entry ...

Drenched in contempt, Fox News contributor Sandy Rios appeared on Rupert Murdoch's cable channel last Friday to address the controversy surrounding the Susan G. Komen foundation's decision to cut longstanding ties with Planned Parenthood. In the process, Rios perfectly captured two of the conservative media's least redeeming, yet dominant, traits: perpetual victimization and an inability to lose with class.  

When the Komen news first broke last week, conservative activists cheered it as a political and cultural victory. ("A remarkable turning point.") Indeed, activists had been applying political pressure on Komen for years to not support health care provider Planned Parenthood because it offers abortion. But then last Friday Komen backtracked. Facing a furious grassroots response from women, progressive activists, and Democratic members of congress, Komen shifted its stance with regards to Planned Parenthood.

Furious far-right pundits quickly targeted their anger not on the national breast cancer awareness group, but on activists who took up Planned Parenthood's cause and applied pressure on Komen.

Which brings us to Rios on Fox News and one of the more amazing outbursts you're likely to hear on an American "news" channel. First, Rio decried the "absolute shakedown" Komen allegedly faced from critics who responded to the foundation's funding decree. Then, with her anger rising, Rios condemned Planned Parenthood for wallowing "in the business of killing women."

In the business of killing women.

Keep in mind, the Komen fight was one that conservatives had wanted the foundation to wage for years. But when it did, and when it lost the battle, a conservative bully on Fox News suddenly cried foul, denounced any effort to politicize the issue ("shakedown"!), and accused her opponent of murder.

Turns out the bullies have a glass jaw.

Read the full entry ...