Free Republic

Maintaining his stature as one of the most forceful defenders of the Bush Administration's defense policies former Vice President Dick Cheney accused President Obama of committing "libel" against CIA interrorgators on Wednesday. Mr. Cheney’s criticized the Obama White House in a wide-ranging address on foreign policy matters for abandoning commitments to allies in Poland and the Czech Republic in favor of the Russians, sacrificing American intelligence officials to satisfy the political left and "dithering" on taking action in Afghanistan, among other things. The speech, delivered to the Center for Security Policy, comes as the White House considers U.S. Commander of...

Radio host Rush Limbaugh is interviewed on the sidelines before the start of the NFL AFC championship football game in Pittsburgh. Rush Limbaugh, who saw his bid to co-own a National Football League team sacked partly because of quotes he purportedly made regarding slavery, could have grounds for a libel suit, legal experts told Foxnews.com. The conservative radio host was dropped on Wednesday from a group seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams. Dave Checketts, chairman of the St. Louis Blues hockey team, who is leading the effort to buy the NFL team, said Limbaugh was dropped from the group...

Rush's enemies in the leftist media have come up with a clever but very shameless way to smear him. When he was bidding for the NFL team, the media came up with such outrageously shocking but blatantly false quotes allegedly made by Rush, that his NFL partners were forced to reject Rush's participation in the deal. The media knew fully well that the quotes were false. Can anybody sane make a claim that Rush made a statement supporting slavery? Having sabotaged Rush's business deal, CNN and the media are now admitting what they already knew, that the so-called quotes were...

During the 3:00PM ET hour of live coverage on MSNBC Friday, co-host David Shuster admitted that racially charged quotes he and other hosts attributed to Rush Limbaugh had not been verified: “MSNBC attributed that quote to a football player who was opposed to Limbaugh’s NFL bid. However, we have been unable to verify that quote independently. So, just to clarify.” Shuster did not formally retract the quote or apologize.

All week, intrepid bloggers have been trying to trace the source of two "racist" quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh -- quotes which poisoned the atmosphere to the point where he was dropped from a bid to purchase the NFL's St. Louis Rams. Now comes word that the quotations may have been added to Rush Limbaugh's Wikipedia entry by someone using a computer at a liberal New York law firm.

-- UPDATE-- Well, well, well, lookee here (from the firm's own website) Firm Establishes Sports Group September 21, 2009 Growing Cross-Disciplinary Practice Handles Disputes and Transactions for Numerous Sports-Related Entities NEW YORK, NY - September 21, 2009. Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP is pleased to announce the formal establishment of its interdisciplinary Sports Group. The firm's work in this area dates back decades and includes high-profile disputes and transactions involving professional baseball, basketball, hockey, tennis and golf, as well as the representation of sports-related media entities. Among other matters on behalf of various leagues, teams, and other sports-related entities,...

Not sure if anyone has picked this up yet, but the editors at the Huffington Post have pulled the fake Limbaugh "slavery" quotes from a 2006 Jack Huberman article. Huberman's book was one of the original sources for the fake quotes, apparently picking them up from the wikipedia entry where they first appeared. A note at the beginning of the article now states: Editor's Note: An earlier version of this post contained quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh, which Limbaugh has since denied making. As is our policy when a fact in a blog post is called into question, we gave...

Thanks to an intrepid blogger with the tag Trapdoc posting a letter to Mark Steyn, the search for the Wikipedia Libelist responsible for damaging posts to the Rush Limbaugh account has been narrowed to the IP address of a New York City law firm: "The quotes were added by a user with the IP address of 69.64.213.146. This address has been used mostly to make changes to the article about Rush, but also Karl Rove, Sean Hannity,.. James Dobson and Sara Palin from 2005 until earlier this year. "While others have noted this in various forums, no one seems to...

At the center of the controversy surrounding Rush Limbaugh's bid to purchase the St. Louis Rams are some apocryphal quotes attributed to the the king of talk radio. On Monday, CNN's Rick Sanchez attributed this quote to Limbaugh: "Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark." Limbaugh informed CNN that he never said those words, so Sanchez quoted Limbaugh's denial on Tuesday. Rather stating clearly whether or not the quote was false, Sanchez acted like the accuracy of the quote...

Tony Harnden has an excellent column that appears in the Telegraph on the effort to smear Rush Limbaugh. Even for the Left, this is quite extraordinary. It’s not simply a matter of taking quotes out of context; it’s a matter of making up quotes out of whole cloth to cast Limbaugh as a racist — and then placing those quotes on Wikipedia, considered the gospel truth, and spreading them on the Internet and various television news outlets... READ THE REST AT COMMENTARYMAGAZINE.COM

Charles Johnson Now So Anti-Racist He's Denouncing Fake Racist Quotes Charles Johnson was against fake but accurate before he was for it. No link for the idiot. I'll just quote him. From a thread: Top 10 Rush Limbaugh Racist Quotes. All out of context, and sarcasm. Right? That link I've left in provides a flurry of extremely dubious Limbaugh "quotes" -- and not a single link or citation. Including the ones created wholesale by noted scholar "zedladdy" and spread by no lesser authority than "cobra." Given that "zedladdy" and "cobra" previously invented own quotes, spread them around, and then uploaded...

Media Research Center President Brent Bozell today demanded that CNN and MSNBC prove that radio talk show king Rush Limbaugh uttered a racist quote they have attributed to him as fact after Limbaugh publicly denied having ever said, “Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back. I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark” on his nationally syndicated airwaves. "CNN and MSNBC must immediately and publicly source when Limbaugh uttered this phrase. He has unequivocally denied it. Now it is up to the same news media that reported...

Drew Sharp quoted an NFL football player who claimed that Rush had defended slavery. Sharp apparently never bothered to research this claim further, and instead just went ahead and published it. Sharp then went on The O'Reilly Factor and repeated the claim. Sharp has refused to back his claim up with an original source (because none exists), or offer a retraction and apology. Drew Sharp needs to be fired for this disgraceful bit of hack pseudo-journalism.

Joseph Stalin's grandson in legal battle to defend tyrant's reputation Tony Halpin in Moscow In what must rank as one of Russia’s strangest legal cases, a court began a libel hearing yesterday in defence of the reputation of Joseph Stalin. Yevgeni Dzhugashvili, Stalin’s grandson, is taking part in a demand for ten million roubles (£200,000) in damages from Novaya Gazeta, a liberal opposition newspaper, over an article that accused the Soviet tyrant of personally approving executions. The case is being brought by Leonid Zhura, a devoted Stalinist, who insists the dictator never actually killed anybody — despite the deaths of...

.... Would you please sit down and shut up you old fool! Yup. Think about this one for a moment. You're a young black man or woman, you're finishing up your education and hope to have a career in politics. Along comes Barack Obama and you're just elated! The barrier has been broken and a black man is now President of the United States! Your path is clear! But wait! In the early months of Obama's presidency his inexperience starts to show. He fails on several big fronts: Health care, cap-and-trade and the union card-check bill. He tries to convince...

"Glenn Beck 1990" is an exercise in the politics of retribution - a spoof of Glenn Beck's outrageous assertions and obfuscations - an Internet meme engineered by those seeking justice - a theater of the absurd. "Glenn Beck 1990" is short for "Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990", a web site dedicated to tracking the meme questioning Glenn Beck's guilt in 1990. Glenn Beck is not pleased, and is taking legal action against the website tracking the meme. tech dirt reports: It turns out that Glenn Beck isn't happy about this either. He's filed a domain name...

WASHINGTON, DC – Another sex scandal has rocked a South Carolina conservative. The trail of evidence has led reporters to erotic fiction authored by Dick Cheney. Kristin Maguire, a respected South Carolina conservative, has been discovered to be the author of hardcore erotic short fiction. Maguire was the Chair of the Board of Education for years, and appointed by Mark Sanford. Investigation has uncovered several stories written by Maguire under the pen name “Bridget Keeney.” Maguire was also a devout advocate of “abstinence only” sex education. Further investigation of websites Maguire would frequent and chat room exchanges reveal even more...

The Nebraska Supreme Court says someone who commits sexual harassment shouldn't be able to later sue the victim when the original harassment complaint was true. So the high court declined Friday to intervene in a dispute between two Creighton University Spanish professors. Creighton officials sanctioned Roxana Recio in 2004 for harassing Michelle Evers. Recio later sued Evers in 2006, saying the harassment complaint improperly interfered with Recio's job at Creighton.

A domestic meat importer yesterday filed a lawsuit against the broadcast network MBC and five producers of an investigative news program for reporting false facts about U.S. beef. Park Chang-kyu, president of A Meat and meat and restaurant chain Orae Dream, filed the lawsuit with the Seoul Southern District Court. He is seeking about 300 million won (240,000 U.S. dollars) in damages against MBC, five producers of “PD Notebook,” and actress Kim Min-sun. “Our companies suffered about 500 million won (410,000 dollars) in operating losses due to distortion of facts on American beef by the MBC program ‘PD Notebook.’” A...

Jesse Griffin, the Alaska blogger who Saturday claimed in an "exclusive" report that Todd and Sarah Palin were divorcing, will no longer work as an Anchorage kindergarten teaching assistant, school officials confirmed Wednesday. Griffin's resignation followed revelations that the 49-year-old Griffin had posted (under the alias "Gryphen") sexually explicit advocacy of pornography and masturbation on his "Immoral Minority" blog. . . . Griffin blamed "the Palin team and their minions" for discovery of his "Gryphen" online alias, which he says resulted in death threats and harassment. . . .

By now you have probably seen the wave of Sarah Palin rumors in the dinosaur media and the liberal blogs’ focus on the story that Sarah Palin and husband Todd are headed for divorce because of extramarital affairs by both. As you may imagine, the rumor was like a dream come true for many lefty bloggers. Look at the “name in the paper” syndrome that followed Palin resigning her office and the stir that caused on the left. Not only did she reinforce her name recognition with that move with publicity you couldn’t buy from the dinosaur media at any...

An attorney for Sarah Palin has delivered a letter threatening legal action against an anti-Palin blogger who was the source of a divorce rumor that the attorney for the former Alaska governor called "categorically false." Publication of the letter at a Web site that repeated the rumor has uncovered circumstantial evidence that the anti-Palin blogger "Gryphen" is a kindergarten teacher at an Anchorage elementary school.... CNN stringer/anti-Palin blogger Dennis Zaki published ... a copy of a letter from Palin attorney Thomas Van Flein, ordering "Gryphen" to retract the allegations -- calling them "complete fabrications, false and defamatory" -- or face...

I would like you to know that Gryphen of Immoral Minority (Palin divorce smear) is actually one Jesse Griffin. He must value his identity because he had his fellow Palin Hater, Dennis Zaki, black out his name in this document: (Click the link above to read more...)

<p>Investigator: Palin May Have Violated Ethics Laws An independent investigator has found evidence that Gov. Sarah Palin may have violated ethics laws by accepting private donations to pay her legal debts.</p> <p>"All options are open in terms of legal remedies. It is a clear violation of Alaska law that Mr. Daniel explicitly reviewed with Ms. Chatman prior to her illegal actions. We will be contacting the appropriate authorities for review and action."</p>

If Sarah Palin decides to go ahead with a defamation suit against blogger Shannyn Moore, who wrote that the Governor resigned because she was under criminal investigation, it may give others who have been defamed the courage to go after other bloggers who can be accused of "malice" in creating unfounded rumors about them on the Internet. Should Palin sue Moore, it could mean thousands of dollars of legal fees in order to defend herself. It might send a message to other bloggers who can be accused of using "malice" in defaming public figures. (See an explanation below.) Palin's attorney...

RUMORS WRONG: Agent rebuts circulating allegations cited by Anchorage blogger. The FBI is taking the unusual step of declaring that Gov. Sarah Palin is not under investigation, as Palin herself left for Western Alaska and communicated to the world through her Twitter account. "We are not investigating her," FBI spokesman Eric Gonzalez said on Sunday. "Normally we don't confirm or deny those kind of allegations out there, but by not doing so it just casts her in a very bad light. There is just no truth to those rumors out there in the blogosphere." Palin has ignored requests for an...

The flap with Shannyn Moore is over remarks the liberal blogger made about why Palin is quitting her job as governor ... Palin, through her lawyer, on Saturday threatened to explore "legal options" against Moore and media outlets that choose to republish like-minded "false and defamatory allegations" about Palin's resignation. Lawyer Thomas Van Flein said that soon after Palin's surprise announcement, several unscrupulous people "asserted false and defamatory" allegations. Moore is the only person named specifically.

Beyonce has officially been cleared of all bad singing charges -- the atrocious supposed "board mix" of her performance on "The Today Show" last year was altered after all. Just as Mathew Knowles told us, the audio clip that many people believed was leaked from "Today" was indeed a fake. In fact, TMZ found the person behind the prank who was surprised it went as far as it did, saying, "It's a little bit crazy. No one in their right mind would sound like that, and no one would cheer for someone singing like that." Apparently, the dude never went...

I thought that the acting was a bit stiff. Not a good date movie.

So what would you call it if someone picked some elderly man's name out of a phone book, then sent a mailing in his name out to people to convince them that a political cause is worth supporting? Would you call it identity theft? To a degree. A newer term might be astroturf. But what ever you call it, at the very least it is a lie. Well, leave it to Democrats to perpetrate this theft/lie to gin up support for a political cause. This is what happened in Massachusetts as uncovered by newspaperman Matthew Nadler of the Halifax-Plympton Reporter...

LAS VEGAS — Ethan Hawke might want to avoid crossing paths with Toby Keith in the near future. The country star lit into the actor for an article Hawke wrote in the new issue of Rolling Stone about Kris Kristofferson. In it, Hawke refers to a blowup Kristofferson had with an unnamed country star back in 2003 that sounds a lot like Toby Keith. But a furious Keith, speaking backstage at the Academy of Country Music Awards, said it wasn't true, and added that Hawke did not name him in the story because he did not want to face him...

Part Four: Lawfare By Kathy Shaidle RightSideNews Copyright © 2009 Military strategist Karl von Clausewitz famously said, "War is merely politics by other means." It could just as easily be said that "lawfare" is war, politics and religion by other means. What is lawfare? Lawfare is sometimes known as "stealth jihad," "soft jihad," "legal jihad" or "creeping sharia." In the same way that Muslim terrorists hijacked American planes and flew them into American buildings on 9/11, some Muslims are hijacking the West's freedoms and legal system to undermine civilization itself. The strategy might even be called "jihadist jujitsu." As expert...

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2009/02/04/breaking-juicycampus-comes-to-an-end/

Washington lobbyist Vicki L. Iseman has filed a $27 million defamation lawsuit against The New York Times for a February article about Iseman and her relationship with Sen. John McCain. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Richmond on Tuesday, alleges the article falsely communicated that Iseman and McCain had an illicit “romantic” relationship in 1999 when he was chair of the Senate Commerce Committee and she was a lobbyist representing clients before Congress. The suit also names the executive editor of the Times, its Washington bureau chief and four reporters who wrote the story as defendants. William Keller,...

ROME, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- Comparing a woman to Monica Lewinsky is an egregious enough offense to be grounds for libel, Italy's high court says. The Cessation Court ruled Tuesday such is the reputation of the former White House intern for U.S. President Bill Clinton that when a Puglia woman sued a lawyer for saying she had a "Lewinskian nature," it was a bad enough insult to be considered libel, the Italian news agency ANSA reported. The woman, identified only Gennarina M., reportedly was angry that a lower court ruled the unidentified lawyer did not libel her with the jibe,...

The woman who North Carolina prosecutors determined falsely accused three Duke lacrosse players of raping her at a team party maintains in a new memoir that she was attacked. Crystal Mangum, who appeared publicly Thursday for the first time since making the allegations more than two years ago, says in her forthcoming book she is not "looking forward to opening old wounds" but that she had to defend herself. "Even as I try to move on with my life, I still find it necessary to take one more stand and fight," she writes in the book, "The Last Dance for...

“W.” is a “fair and balanced” movie, says its creator, Oliver Stone. “I think in this present political state, the real George W. Bush might not approve of this movie,” Stone told the Chicago Sun-Times. “But this movie tries to understand George W. Bush: the good, the bad, and the ugly.” Stone definitely puts the emphasis on the “ugly” in the film, which opened in theaters Friday. He basically acts as cinematic shrink and psychoanalyzes the parent-child relationship between elder George H.W. Bush and junior George W. Stone presents the son as a twisted foul-mouthed drunk with a daddy complex...

Rusty at TheJawaReport connects the dots between the Obama campaign, a major PR firm, and a variety of baseless anti-Palin smears being circulated by lefty bloggers. As he notes, "Within an hour of this post going up, YouTube videos implicating Ethan Winner were yanked, sockpuppet accounts deleted, and more importantly, the Wikipedia entry on David Axelrod began to edit out mentions of his well-known astroturfing campaigns." If he were totally off base, would everything be coming down off the net? Sure seems like somebody's got something to hide. UPDATE: I like the way Ace puts it: "eswinner" is not sitting...

The fuss over Jill Greenberg's photography.--- The Atlantic offered an apology to John McCain this week after the photographer for the October cover, Jill Greenberg, posted doctored pictures of the Republican nominee on her personal Web site. It also emerged that Greenberg, a fierce anti-Republican, had photographed McCain for the magazine while he stood over a deliberately unflattering green light. In 2006, Jim Lewis discussed whether "the photographer who makes kids cry" unfairly exploits her subjects. The article is reprinted below.

Rush Limbaugh, featured in a new, Spanish-language Barack Obama ad, says the commercial distorts his past statements and amounts to "race-baiting" by the Democratic nominee. The commercial, to air in Limbaugh's home state of Florida as well as Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, features a picture of the conservative talk show host and shows his words on the screen: "Mexicans are stupid and unqualified" and "Shut your mouth or get out." It was first reported by the Washington Post's Ed O'Keefe. "Obama is now stoking racism in the country," Limbaugh wrote in an email. "Obama is a disgrace - he...

The Obama campaign has released new radio and TV ads in Spanish that seek to tie Sen. John McCain to anti-immigrant comments made by radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh. The ads also suggest the Republican has "dos caras" -- "two faces" -- when it comes to his relations with Latino voters. The new messages, airing in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, come in response to recent Spanish-language ads by the McCain campaign that suggest Obama is responsible for the collapse of last year's bipartisan immigration reform efforts. "They want us to forget the insults we've put up with, the...

Check it out here

WASHINGTON - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has charged her state a daily allowance, normally used for official travel, for more than 300 nights spent at her home, The Washington Post reported Tuesday. An analysis of travel statements filed by the governor, now John McCain's Republican running mate, shows she claimed the per diem allowance on 312 occasions when she was home in Wasilla and that she billed taxpayers $43,490 for travel by her husband and children. Per diem payments are meant for meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business. State officials told The Post her claims — nearly...

Can someone please start a thread on all the Palin rumors that are coming out. Include any references that show the rumors to be false. It would be great if we could have this all at one spot to work on. Thanks!

The father of three, who was married four times, told CNN, "I'm trying to move on and be the best dad I can to my children. Be the best trooper that I can be. You know, I love my job. I love this state." He added that McCain's choice of Palin as his running mate was "absolutely wonderful for the state of Alaska."

The Internet provides vast amounts of information but it can also spread vast amounts of misinformation, or even deliberately misleading disinformation. For more than two weeks, scarcely a day has gone by without e-mails pouring in to me, asking about columns that someone has written and brazenly spread around the Internet with my name on them. Most of these e-mails have come from regular readers who are savvy enough to recognize columns that have a different style and substance from my own columns. We usually think of "identity theft" as involving using someone else's name for economic fraud. But identity...

The youth pastor once charged with sex abuse is sharing his story. It’s the first time he’s said anything publically since the charge was dismissed in court. Clayton Pruett says he’s been fighting to get his name and reputation back. He says he knows it won’t be the same, but he is out to prove that he did nothing wrong. His family is behind him and he wants people to know how serious it is when allegations of sex abuse are brought to police. Pruett says he believes the teen and her mother brought the charge against him to get...

Our Constitution is one of our greatest assets in the fight against terrorism. A free-flowing marketplace of ideas, protected by the First Amendment, enables the ideals of democracy to defeat the totalitarian vision of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. That free marketplace faces a threat. Individuals with alleged connections to terrorist activity are filing libel suits and winning judgments in foreign courts against American researchers who publish on these matters. These suits intimidate and even silence writers and publishers. Under American law, a libel plaintiff must prove that defamatory material is false. In England, the burden is reversed. Disputed...

Democrats also falsely accused of crimes at Obama’s official Web site We are not attorneys, and we are not qualified to give legal advice. We know, however, that a false accusation of a crime is automatically libel under U.S. law. ...Furthermore, while it is harder to libel a public figure than a private citizen or corporation, it is not impossible. A member of Congress could probably, for example, sue someone who falsely and maliciously accused him of taking a bribe or committing some other crime. We are not going to re-post the specific libelous material that pervades Barack Obama’s official...

It has now been two days since we filed an explicit report of libelous content at My.BarackObama.com, which is under the editorial control of the official Obama campaign. There is no question as to whether the entry is libelous, because it levies a false accusation of a crime against an identifiable person (corporate or individual). We are not attorneys but we know that a false accusation of a crime is automatically libel; that is, the plaintiff does not even have to prove that he or it was damaged.As of today (July 10, 12:25 EST) the libelous material is still present....