Andrew trusted me to tell the truth about the media when he first started this web site, Big Journalism. I owe him much more than this small tribute. When Andrew first started this site and asked me to be a contributor I had no hesitation. He wanted a media guy who could tell the “inside stories” on the business, and I have been proud to do that. Thanks to the First Amendment the media is supposed to police itself. They have stopped doing that, if they ever have, and Andrew spotted that early on. I knew this problem with the media years ago, but had no outlet. This became my outlet.

I was with Andrew in Chicago September 2010 at a conservative convention when he simply, boldly approached a group of liberal protesters. You’d think Satan himself had confronted them. Satan might have had a warmer reception. Andrew was yelled at, screamed at, and homophobic slurs were hurled at him from the “progressives” in the crowd. We spoke afterwards before he addressed the convention, and he still seemed surprised that this group would do this while he had a full TV crew with him. We were two west coast guys sweating from the Chicago humidity that day, and we spoke of the fearlessness that it would take to expose the left with a media unwilling to do so. With my small, hand held camera, we spoke of Liberty. His answer to my simple question, “What does Liberty mean to you?” has new meaning today. (more…)

When 30-year-old progressive activist and Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke appeared at a Democrat press conference last week (chosen specifically for the former, not that latter), she spoke of the “hardships” female students face in affording contraception. I call it a press conference because that’s what it was. The media calls it a hearing, but it was not, it was an event with no Congressional authority put together explicitly to put out a specific message. I put “hardships” in quotes because nearly everything said there was a lie, spin meant to give the leftist media talking points with a veneer of officialdom attached to it.

Like well-trained seals, the media and progressives drones who live to attack took their place in the outraged brigade. And they’re striking.

Progressives are pretending to be angry with Rush Limbaugh because he pointed out that Fluke, who was asking the government (READ: us) to cover the cost of her contraception, was essentially asking for a subsidy for her sex life. When he compared her to another group of people who require a “subsidy” for sex, prostitutes, and used the word “slut,” the Left saw their opportunity.

It’s noteworthy that progressives aren’t objecting to the sentiments Limbaugh expressed, they’re seizing on the words he chose to use to express them.

They focus most of their manufactured outrage on the word “slut.” It’s an old fashioned word meant in a derogatory way about people who sleep around with a lot of people. Considering where the culture has gone, it carries no weight and is routinely thrown around on just about every show on MTV as a badge of accomplishment or a term of affection. I’ve called male friends sluts because A) they were, and B) who cares?

It carries no stigma. If sexual promiscuity carried a stigma in society anymore, would Fluke, or any woman, go on CSPAN and beg for free contraception so she could have sex? No.

But the reality doesn’t fit the needs of the progressives who manufactured this issue in a desperate attempt to distract from gas prices, high unemployment, credit downgrades, surreal deficits and all other failures of the policies advanced by them and President Obama.

It has worked because the progressive flying monkey brigade in the media and online, those who sit around waiting to be outraged on behalf of others, waiting to protest, jerked into action and spread the lie like a cold virus on a cross country flight. It won’t work for long because conservatives are no longer passive observers of left-wing lies.

The recent death of Andrew Breitbart inspired millions to hear his message about left-wing media corruption and the need to fight it. And we won’t stand for it.

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Andrew Breitbart has been vilified by the left for doing what they’ve been doing for decades: Questioning authority. But when it comes to the left you aren’t allowed to be contrary with them. You’re supposed to accept their propaganda, their deceit, and tyrannical overreach without dissent. This is one of the many reasons they are so unAmerican. All Andrew wanted was some very fair and reasonable things. A truthful media and an honest government. It’s what we all want and don’t get.

But Andrew wouldn’t accept the plate that was put in front of him. He sent it back and asked that they get it right.

For that he has been attacked by the very people who don’t want us to live in a free, open society. The people who characterize average Americans as stupid and worthless and who believe we should all accept the government telling us what to think, eat, and believe. Or else. The people who claim to believe in fairness and equality but who spend every waking moment trying to insure no one has it. The very wannabe elites who mock the rest of us and act like they’re the moral authority while brazenly committing crimes, mendacity and deception on a daily basis.

They tried to make Andrew look bad for exposing the corrupt organization ACORN which was involved in vast amounts of criminal fraud while receiving millions in tax dollars. They tried to make him look like a liar for telling the truth about Anthony Wiener until Wiener himself had to confess. The big sites constantly expose the lies and disinformation of the left for the simple reason that we expect those in power to be honest with us. It’s a perfectly sensible request. Certainly one that doesn’t merit the scorn and attacks it’s gotten.

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You know the story by now, right? Republicans run the he-man women haters club. As the media has it the story goes like this: poor, unassuming, innocent Georgetown coed, accidentally ends up in front of Congress pleading for “reproductive rights.” Evil mean conservatives led by scalawag Rush Limbaugh unfairly call her a slut and announce a war on women to end their “access to contraception.”

Of course, that’s the left-wing media’s narrative. The real tale is that this is as manufactured a story as you can find, one created for the purpose of assisting Obama and his Democrat cohorts win the upcoming election. It’s all a scam.

The “coed” in question is one Sandra Fluke, a young woman that has been presented as some sort of expert in “reproductive rights” (another one of those faux rights we that have been foisted onto the public debate of late), but is she? Where did Mz Fluke really come from and what is her background? Why was she presented as some sort of “expert” by a sitting Congresswoman, the former Speaker of the House, no less?

The media is presenting this Fluke character as if she is just a fresh-faced, wide-eyed, 23-year-old coed that has been accidentally swept up in this story. But the fact is, this Fluke woman is hardly the simple Georgetown coed that she’s being portrayed as. Fluke has years of big government, left-wing activism under her belt. It’s hardly a “fluke” that she was the one picked to ladle out this coordinated election season campaign game plan.

As early as 2009 Mz. Fluke was involved in left-wing efforts to create the nanny state. As her bio on the Georgetown Law website tells us:

…Sandra is the Development Editor of the Journal of Gender and the Law, and served as the President of Law Students for Reproductive Justice, and the Vice President of the Women’s Legal Alliance. In her first year, she also co-founded a campus committee addressing human trafficking. Cornell University awarded her a B. S. in Policy Analysis & Management, as well as Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies in 2003.

Other notations include her gay rights activism and other “women’s rights” activism. No mention made of her concern for the rights of men, naturally.

She is also not an innocent young kid. She’s 30 years-old despite being reported as but an innocent 23-year-old student.

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Andrew and I first met three years ago at a party. We would run into each other everywhere: at parties, functions, and left-wing protests we both happened to be crashing. I was at the time a lesser-known 22 year-old freelance filmmaker and journalist, and while at events he would be surrounded by a galaxy of high profilers, Andrew always seemed to notice me, remember my name, and say hello.

For the next three years up until he hired me just a month ago, I did freelance journalism for other clients, and wherever I traveled, Wisconsin, Palm Springs, Washington, D.C., we would run into each other as a pleasant surprise and within minutes find ourselves devilishly co-scheming, sharing secret footage, and laughing excitedly about what the media was in for upon release.

I wish I could catalogue all the memories, projects, laughs, and even random moments that on the surface seem insignificant but would prove eerily poignant in retrospect. But I will name just a few.

I was in Palm Springs a year ago to go undercover at a left-wing Common Cause rally headlined by Van Jones. It was not more than a week after the Tucson shooting that had the left erroneously presumed Jared Loughner was a “right-wing extremist” and that the tea party was somehow responsible for the tragedy due to “racist and violent rhetoric.”

I decided drop a nuclear bomb on that narrative and put it to permanent rest, and with an Obama T-shirt and a camera, I approached several unrelated protesters and asked them what we should do with Clarence Thomas after we impeach him. Their responses all seemed to harbor a similar motif: “String him up,” “Hang him,” “Send him back to the fields,” “I’m all about peace but I would say torture.”

It was then that I ran into a familiar friend on rollerblades being accosted by raging, foaming-at-the-mouth detractors yet jovially inviting them to Applebee’s.

He then noticed me and smiled. Noting my Obama T-shirt and intuiting immediately what I was up to, he restrained himself from the usual pleasantries and said, “I remember you! You’re that Code Pink guy!” After the rally (and minutes before the clueless, groupthinking protesters actually did congregate at Applebee’s), Andrew and I snuck away from the crowd and huddled, relaying our delicious footage finds with deviant rapture.

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Radio host Rush Limbaugh has apologized to a Georgetown University law student for calling her insulting names. He had come under intense criticism from women’s groups, politicians from both political parties and some of the advertisers on his talk show.

Limbaugh said Saturday on his website that he had chosen the wrong words in his comments about law student Sandra Fluke. He said he “did not intend a personal attack” on her.

Limbaugh had called her a “prostitute” and a “slut” after she testified before Congress about a need for insurance coverage for birth control. President Barack Obama had telephoned Fluke on Friday to express his support.

BBC’s General Director, Mark Thompson, freely admits to practicing bias when it comes to reporting on Christians and Muslims. What we see here coming from the mouth of a chief media figure is an admission of cowardice to justify a double standard in the media. Our own liberal media should take note:

“The point is that for a Muslim, a depiction, particularly a comic or demeaning depiction, of the Prophet Mohammed might have the emotional force of a piece of grotesque child pornography. One of the mistakes secularists make is not to understand the character of what blasphemy feels like to someone who is a realist in their religious belief.”

AP Photo, Photographer: Bob Edme

Was this even a story worth mentioning? Of course the major media covers Muslim and Christians differently. One side will write a letter to the editor, or simply set aside time to pray for the offender, the other will mail in death threats or blow up city buses.

From the London Daily Mail:

He suggested other faiths have a ‘very close identity with ethnic minorities’, and were therefore covered in a far more careful way by broadcasters.

But he also revealed that producers had to consider the possibilities of ‘violent threats’ instead of polite complaints if they pushed ahead with certain types of satire.

Mr Thompson said: ‘Without question, “I complain in the strongest possible terms”, is different from, “I complain in the strongest possible terms and I am loading my AK-47 as I write”. This definitely raises the stakes.’

But he added that religion as a whole should never receive the same ‘protection and sensitivity’ in the law as race.

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The Obama administration withered for several weeks under the intense criticism from Catholic leaders regarding the forced violation of religious liberty within the HHS mandate. In an effort to turn the tables, Democrats suggested that the GOP want to abridge women’s rights because Republicans expect women to obtain and pay for their own birth control. This afternoon John Boehner, Carly Fiorina, and Rick Santorum bravely provided cover for the President and the ridiculous narrative of “the war on women.”

Each of them utterly failed in this response, but unlike Santorum, Boehner and Fiorina aren’t running a presidential campaign with the hopes of becoming the nominee so they can battle the media in the general.

This reason right here is why Republicans defeat themselves: It doesn’t matter what Barack Obama’s record is if Republicans so willingly allow the media to reframe a debate about religious liberty as a fight over women’s rights.

More have admonished Limbaugh’s description of Sandra Fluke than admonished a 30 year-old woman embarrassing herself before congress by testifying that she simply cannot stop getting it on and her inability to control her urges constitutes infringing upon everyone else for a bailout. CNS News did the math:

But, back to this woman’s complaint that women are spending $3,000 for birth control during her time in college.

“For a lot of students, like me, who are on public interest scholarships, that’s practically an entire summer’s salary,” she complains.

So, they can earn enough money in just one summer to pay for three full years of sex. And, yes, they are full years – since that could translate into having sex nearly three times a day for three years straight, apparently.

At a dollar a condom if she shops at CVS pharmacy’s website, that $3,000 would buy her 3,000 condoms – or, 1,000 a year. (By the way, why does CVS.com list the weight of its condom products in terms of pounds?)

Assuming it’s not a leap year, that’s 1,000 divided by 365 – or having sex 2.74 times a day, every day, for three straight years. And, I thought Georgetown was a Catholic university where women might be prone to shun casual, unmarried sex. At least its health insurance doesn’t cover contraception (that which you subsidize, you get more of, you know).

And, as noted, the bailout would come by way of jacking up everyone else’s premiums. The excess cost can’t be covered by magic.

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Despite having only met Andrew twice, he had much influence over me.  I was invited to contribute to BigGovernment in late 2009.  Right from the start I was offered a forum to express some modest thoughts without being censored by anyone, including myself.  The Big websites have become my thinking ground, where thoughts are expelled into the ether and often insightful feedback is returned.  It’s an exercise in intellectual and political development.  Andrew’s first gift to me, then, was allowing me this intellectual playground.  I’ve learned that (not surprisingly) I’m not always right, I’m not always wrong, and that it’s perfectly fine to be provocative … in fact, it’s required.

Andrew was also a living example of something my high school math teacher exemplified.  Edwin Barlow – whose face I use as my avatar – announced in one class that “to be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.” Mr. Barlow extrapolated this thought to one’s profession, describing it as akin to Immanuel Kant’s “categorical imperative.”  Andrew’s categorical imperative consumed him, as it should.  He pursued it relentlessly, with love and devotion, and was totally and unequivocally committed to it.  He was, and shall remain, a constant reminder that I must do the same in any endeavor.

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Professors Morgan Cloud and George Shepherd of the Emory University School of Law have released a ground-breaking study showing that law school deans all over the country have been lying in order to obtain better rankings from U.S. News & World Report.

They write:

A most unlikely collection of suspects – law schools, their deans, U.S. News & World Reportand its employees – may have committed felonies by publishing false information as part ofU.S. News‘ ranking of law schools. The possible federal felonies include mail and wire fraud, conspiracy, racketeering, and making false statements. Employees of law schools and U.S. News who committed these crimes can be punished as individuals, and under federal law the schools and U.S. News would likely be criminally liable for their agents’ crimes. Some law schools and their deans submitted false information about the schools’ expenditures and their students’ undergraduate grades and LSAT scores. Others submitted information that may have been literally true but was misleading. Examples include misleading statistics about recent graduates’ employment rates and students’ undergraduate grades and LSAT scores. U.S. Newsitself may have committed mail and wire fraud. It has republished, and sold for profit, data submitted by law schools without verifying the data’s accuracy, despite being aware that at least some schools were submitting false and misleading data. U.S. News refused to correct incorrect data and rankings errors and continued to sell that information even after individual schools confessed that they had submitted false information. In addition, U.S. News marketed its surveys and rankings as valid although they were riddled with fundamental methodological errors.

This should not shock anybody. As I wrote back in my first book, Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth, the U.S. News rankings are supremely flawed. They rely on how much money each school spends per student – a terrible measure of efficacy – and other professors’ rankings of the schools, which tends to benefit long-established institutions. Even seemingly sure measures, like employment rate of graduates, are problematic; as the authors of the report write, “Schools have been able to count as employed graduates with part-time, minimum wage jobs, even those not requiring legal training or a law degree.”

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- Remembering an icon:

- You say that Matt Taibbi’s Wikipedia page was “vandalized.” I say that it was corrected.

- The New Media Champion.

- Trending on Twitter:

- A South Portland reporter is fired for plagiarism.

A reporter for a weekly newspaper was fired last week after competing newspapers discovered he had plagiarized their work.

Editors from The Forecaster and the Current, weeklies that also cover the city, contacted the South Portland-Cape Elizabeth Sentry after discovering text from their stories published Feb. 17 also appeared in articles written by Michael J. Tobin in the Sentry’s Feb. 24 edition.

And the mainstream media is worried about the unwashed masses of “unchecked” citizen journalists?

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Could you imagine how the media would be if this happened under President Bush’s administration: Two gun walking programs directly linked to the vicious murders of two federal agents? Red flags waved after Sharyl Attkisson at CBS uncovered how the second gun used to murder Mr. Zapata was part of a separate gun walking program.

The gun wasn’t from Operation Fast & Furious. The gun was from another gun walking program. Why is Ms. Attkisson the only one reporting this story? I did a Google search on Jaime Zapata and received 10 hits on this story. Ten hits and none of them are considered mainstream media.

Even though Senator Charles Grassley and Representative Darrell Issa are asking questions the media is still not reporting it. We have two dead federal agents. These guns were purchased by straw purchasers. These guns were allowed to be purchased knowing they would land in the hands of drug cartels. These guns were used to murder federal agents. The suspects that murdered Mr. Zapata had been documented by the ATF with criminal activity, but they never took action.

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- Susan Sarandon said Tuesday that Occupy Wall Street was “ridiculed, demonized, simplified, and distored by the media in most instances.” Yeah, that whole thing about the media making up all the rapes, murders, and other criminal acts really “demonized” the movement.

Remember when the media ridiculed over the Occupy rapes? Oh, I mean ridiculed that they ever happened which I’m sure made the victims feel fabulous.

- FLASHBACK: The most epic press conference ever.

- The Drudge Report today:

- How do you define Andrew Breitbart?

- Lifetime picks up Bristol Palin’s 10-episode reality series, “Life’s a Tripp.”

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There are three “M’”s that Mitt Romney’s consultants know determine his plausibility as a candidate: Massachusetts, millionaire, and Mormonism.

The first M is a liability in the primary, where Romney will try to be the rare Massachusetts conservative (he has largely overcome this one, though perhaps not among the base); the second M is he is very, very wealthy (he is nearly out of the woods with this, in part, because Americans want to be among the rich, not against the rich; and now, the final M–’Mormonism’–is upon us.

Not surprisingly then, as Romney does better in the polls and in the states, this past week has seen a flurry of bigoted things said by left-wing pundits about Mormons, the latest of which are comments tweeted by Charles Blow of The New York Times and Joan Walsh, editor in chief for Salon. Both articles misunderstand the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I shall treat each in turn, explain why the left hates Mormons, and recommend means by which to protect Mormons, and Romney particularly, against this hateful prejudice.

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Last week The Huffington Post published Larry Doyle’s  “satire” article “The Jesus-Eating Cult of Rick Santorum.” It’s a disgusting piece of bigotry that’s disguised as satire. I think Mr. Doyle should leave The Simpsons” and work on “South Park” where they perfectly nail satire every single week. I even enjoy their satire episodes on the Catholic Church. The best part about “South Park” though, is they are consistent and will go after everyone. No one is sacred.

I’m a Catholic. I converted in April 2006. When I went through RCIA I was amazed at how the Church was more than willing to admit their mistakes in the past. They’re not perfect. Far from it! But they admit their mistakes. My teacher even told me he didn’t blame Martin Luther for rebelling against the Church because they were corrupt. But that’s not enough for people.

But let’s dissect and refute Mr. Doyle’s hit piece. He mentions the supposed “bloody jihads his [Santorum] so-called church has carried on for centuries.” First off Mr. Doyle, jihad is an Islamic term. So while you try to make Catholics look bad by using the word you in turn just make yourself look like a bigger idiot because you’re accusing the Catholic Church of waging a holy war on behalf of Islam. The key word is has, as in they’re still carrying out bloody “jihads.” Like I said, the Catholic Church isn’t perfect, but taking a look into the Catholic past Mr. Doyle I couldn’t find a single incident of them waging a holy war on behalf of Islam.

You know who is waging a holy war on behalf of Islam? Islam. I can think of a few very bloody jihads. Remember Osama bin Laden? Yeah, he declared jihad on America back on August 23, 1996. One incident, you may remember, happened on September 11, 2001. Shall I continue? I’d rather not. You may also remember Pope John Paul II. He went through so much to make amends for wrongs the Catholic Church did in its past. Thing is Islam is still waging a holy war on all non-Muslims and has been since before the formation of the Catholic church.

I also love how Mr. Doyle doesn’t call us Christians. Here’s some history Mr. Doyle: The Catholic Church was started by Jesus. The Protestants broke off from the Catholic Church. So yes we are Christians. Without the Catholic Church there wouldn’t be Methodists or Lutherans. But we are all Christians because of Jesus. You do realize that the different sects of Protestants are, in fact different from each other. So do you think Methodists aren’t Christian either because they worship differently than the Lutherans? How about Baptists? Anglicans? Presbyterians? Are they non-denomination Christians non-Christians too?

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In the 90s, Richard Scaife Mellon was the evil moneybags bogey man of the Left, the one who was bankrolling all the unwarranted attacks on Bill Clinton. As readers of this site know, the current bête noir of progressives are the Koch Brothers. The Kochs receive constant rhetorical attack from all fronts amongst the liberals.

Media Matters for America has taken it upon themselves to lead the attack on the charitable giving of these private citizens. Not only has MMfA been on the warpath, but the Obama administration itself has used the Koch brothers to scare potential Democrat donors into giving to Obama’s reelection campaign.

There is a deep, dark secret though, that has just surfaced, one that puts play to the liberal narrative of the Kochs as hyper partisan bank rollers of the extreme Right. It also highlights the rank ingratitude of Barack Obama and his administration.

While it is true that Koch Industries give more money to Republicans, they did donate to a large number of Democrats as well. As a matter of fact there were 10 Senate Democrats who received campaign contributions.

On the list of recipients of “tainted” Koch cash during the 2008 race? Barack Obama (D-IL) with $4,300, Hillary Clinton (D-NY) with $3,500 and Joe Biden (D-DE) receiving $500. Obama and Biden also got donations in 2006.

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