David Barton Again Falsely Claims Obama Administration Has Not Prosecuted Child Pornography

Repeating a false claim he made in 2011, David Barton told his Wallbuilders audience yesterday that the Obama Administration has not prosecuted any child pornography cases. In contrast, Opposing Views links to six different FBI cases in just the last week (e.g., this MS case).
According to World Magazine, the Obama administration has been less than active on adult cases but has been vigorous in prosecuting cases involving children.  The Department of Justice has placed emphasis on enforcement and has a special task force devoted to child protection. A quick review of the press releases for the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the DOJ’s website reveals numerous actions by the Obama administration to prosecute crimes involving children (see 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014). A search of the FBI website reveals numerous actions as well.
Barton often stretches the truth when it comes to history and public policy, but this claim is a complete falsehood. In addition to misleading his listeners, Barton owes an apology to the hard working men and women who work for the FBI, the DOJ and other federal agencies who daily try to make the world a little safer for kids.

Department of Justice won’t defend DOMA, advocates “heightened scrutiny”

Old news by now, but I am including the post by request to facilitate discussion.

Some see it as a way to maintain support among younger voters since they favor gay marriage. I think this puts more pressure on the GOP to come out strongly against gay marriage in order to differentiate the party on the issue. While I think that would be misguided and cut against them in the general election, I am pretty sure this will be a big deal during the primary season.

To better understand the legal issues involved, see this article which reviews the different types of scrutiny a discriminatory law must go through. Also here is AG Holder’s letter laying out the Administration’s position and support for a heightened scrutiny analysis.

To those who say equal rights is not linked with legal assessments of status, I say read the letter and this article.

Paul Kengor: God Gets His Healthcare Bill

Note: The recent healthcare reform certainly is historic, in the sense that it most likely will be considered an important, perhaps defining, event in the Obama Presidency. Whatever eventually happens politically as a result, there are important elements of public discourse which marked the debate. One of those elements –religious rhetoric– is the subject of Dr. Kengor’s column.  

God Gets His Healthcare Bill

By Dr. Paul Kengor 

The most frustrating thing I’ve dealt with in professional life was eight years of outrageous, baseless charges against President George W. Bush on matters of faith. Even when Bush was simply asked about his faith, and responded with utterly benign statements, like saying he couldn’t imagine surviving the presidency “without faith in the Lord,” or noting he prayed before committing troops, echoing every president from Washington to Lincoln to Wilson to Carter to Clinton, he was viciously assaulted.

“We are dealing with a messianic militarist!” thundered Ralph Nader.

“He should not be praying,” intoned Lawrence O’Donnell to the MSNBC faithful.

Repeatedly, I was called to respond to this nonsense. My retort was agonizingly simple: I merely ran through example after example of American founders, presidents—Democrats and Republicans—saying either precisely what Bush said or something far more extreme, like Woodrow Wilson claiming God called upon him to found the League of Nations, or FDR mounting a battleship leading troops in a rendition of “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

What I said rarely mattered. Every Bush mention of God was a signal, somehow, that this Bible-quoting “simpleton” was trying to transform America into a “theocracy.”

Alas, there was another tactic I used: I quoted current Democrats on the campaign trail, from Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, invoking the Almighty. I knew that if these politicians reached the White House, they’d say the same as Bush, or much worse—with no backlash from the secular media. Quite the contrary, liberals would roll out the red carpet, enthusiastically welcoming faith into the public square.

All of that is prelude to my point here today:

The Religious Left, from “social justice” Catholic nuns and Protestant ministers to the Democratic Speaker of the House and president of the United States, have been incessantly claiming God’s advocacy of their healthcare reform. That’s no surprise, just as it’s no surprise that the press is not only not outraged but silently supportive. There’s nary a whimper, let alone howls, of “separation of church and state!”

Consider a few examples, most telling in light of passage of the healthcare bill:

Last August, President Obama addressed a virtual gathering of 140,000 Religious Left individuals. He told them he was “going to need your help” in passing healthcare. Obama penitently invoked a period of “40 Days,” a trial of deliverance from conservative tormentors, from temptation by evildoers. He lifted up the brethren, assuring them, “We are God’s partner in matters of life and death.”

Like a great commissioning, in the 40 Days that followed the Religious Left was filled with the spirit, confidently spreading the word, pushing for—among other things—abortion funding as part of an eternally widening “social justice” agenda. The Religious Institute, which represents 4,800 clergy, urged Congress to include abortion funding in “healthcare” reform, adamantly rejecting amendments that prohibited funding. To not help poor women secure their reproductive rights was unjust, declared the progressive pastors. As the Rev. Debra Hafner, executive director of the Religious Institute, complained, federal policy already “unfairly prevents low-income women and federal employees from receiving subsidized” abortions.

Here we see the Religious Left’s continued perversion of “social justice.” Behold: social justice abortions.

Early last week, a group of 59 nuns sent Congress a letter urging passage of the healthcare bill. This came in direct defiance of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which insisted the bill “must be opposed” because of its refusal to explicitly ban abortion funding. What the bishops said didn’t matter, one nun told Fox’s Neil Cavuto—supporting the bill is what “Jesus would do.”

The liberal media cheered on the nuns, gleefully exaggerating the sisters’ influence. In a breathtaking display, the Los Angeles Times beamed, “Nuns’ support for health-care bill shows [Catholic] Church split.” Quoting the nuns, the Times reported that the letter represented not more than 50 nuns but over 50,000. (I’m not kidding, click here.) Like Jesus with the loaves, the militantly secular/liberal Times had displayed miraculous powers of multiplication.

Finally, last Friday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Roman Catholic, invoked the Solemnity of the Feast of St. Joseph on behalf of the healthcare bill. She urged American Catholics to “pray to St. Joseph”—earthly guardian of the unborn son of God. Such overtures are hardly new for Pelosi, who routinely exhorts Democratic disciples to vote the liberal/progressive agenda as an “act of worship.”

All of that is prelude, of course, to what happened the evening of March 21, 2010, A.D., with a rare vote not merely on a Sunday—God’s day—but the final Sunday in Lent, the week before Palm Sunday that initiates the Lord’s Passion. To President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and the Religious Left faithful, Jesus, presumably, has gotten his healthcare package.

Amid that process, secular liberals got religion, as their political soul-mates spearheaded this “change” in the name of Jesus Christ. It’s a quite radical departure from eight years of scourging George W. Bush every time he confessed he prayed. At long last, there is room for Jesus in the inn, so long as the Savior “supports” a certain agenda. Who says conversions don’t happen?

Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values at Grove City College. His books include “God and George W. Bush,” “God and Ronald Reagan,” and“God and Hillary Clinton.” The topic of this op-ed will be discussed at length by several speakers at our coming April 15-16 conference on “The Progressives.” Click here for more information.

Gibbs: FOX News is unfair (sniff)

I have not followed the White House whining about Fox News very closely but I took notice of this:

White House officials once again advanced its contention that Fox News and its commentators are not journalists, rather a propaganda wing of the Republican Party. During the gaggle, an informal on-the-record but off-camera briefing between the White House press secretary and some members of the media, Robert Gibbs and ABC’s Jake Tapper had this conversation:

Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –

(Crosstalk)

Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.

Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say –

Gibbs: ABC –

Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?

Gibbs: You and I should watch sometime around 9 o’clock tonight. Or 5 o’clock this afternoon.

Tapper: I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization” — why is that appropriate for the White House to say?

Gibbs: That’s our opinion.

Read the whole report. The White House and the left-leaning press is unhappy. Moveon.org wants Dems to stay off Fox, a kind of boycott.

I have trouble getting worked up over this given the savaging that Sarah Palin took during the campaign, especially from MSNBC. As noted in this blog report, an unnamed White House contact said the purpose of the FOX war is to get journalists to think twice about what to cover.

“We’re doing what we think is important to make sure news is covered as fairly as possible,” a White House official told POLITICO, noting how the recent ACORN scandal story started because Fox covered it “breathlessly for weeks on end.” 

Yeah, that’s going to work. When an administration actively attempts to control the press coverage in this manner, they expose their real objective. FOX News will probably work a little harder to find the stories which the other networks ignore. And perhaps, one hopes, the real journalists in the other organizations will wake up.

Additional thoughts: I should have paired this story with the one about the unnamed White House advisor telling the liberal left to take off their pajamas and get dressed. Message to right or left who question the big boys: How’s your cat?

UPDATE: David Axelrod tells the New York Times Thursday:

“This is a discussion that probably had to be had about their approach to things,” Mr. Axelrod said. “Our concern is other media not follow their lead.”

Crashing the pajama party

I am pretty sure Andrew Malcolm nails it here.

Saturday night before he was asked about “don’t ask-don’t tell” Obama told the banqueting but impatient Human Rights Campaign crowd (full text right here) all the Democratically-correct things it wanted to hear before the big march for LGBT equality the next day.

So it was very surprising — even jarring — when on Sunday CNBC’s John Harwood, long a respected political journalist, reported a conversation with an anonymous White….

… House “adviser” about the growing grumbling coming not from the predictable party of No but from, oh my, Obama’s own political left, described as the “Internet left fringe.”

Here, just hours after Obama’s warm remarks to his applauding gay constituency, is how Harwood described the conversation on-air:

For a sign of how seriously the White House does or doesn’t take this opposition, one adviser told me today those bloggers need to take off their pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely-divided country is complicated and difficult.

As it turns out, the “adviser” was talking about the entire internet-left, but gay bloggers went off.

AmericaBlog’s thoughtful John Aravosis wrote:

So the gay community, and its concerns about President Obama’s inaction, and backtracking, on DADT and DOMA, are now, according to President Obama’s White House, part of a larger “fringe” that acts like small children who play in their pajamas and need to grow up. (And a note to our readers: The White House just included all of you in that loony “left fringe.”)

I wonder how the Human Rights Campaign is going to explain how the White House just knifed our community less than 24 hours after he went to their dinner and claimed he was our friend.

Malcolm sees a method to the madness of giving first and then taking away:

Also, Obama enjoys overwhelming support generally among the nation’s Democrats. So what if his popularity there plummets to 80%?

Now, who’s the president gonna need to support healthcare reform and bandage this Afghan mess heading into the 2010 midterm election year when history says he’ll likely lose seats on the Hill? Bingo, those same conservative/centrist House pals of Emanuel’s whose incumbencies are a main shield against any Republican resurgence.

Oh, and about those crucial independents who elected Obama last November and then started falling away all summer as Obama’s liberal spending, reforms and deficits metastisized? What better way to let those swayable folks come back home than by asking the helpful question, how can Obama possibly be an ultra-liberal if he’s being so publicly vilified by angry ultra-liberals?

So it was no accident whatsoever when that wily White House “adviser” explained, “governing a closely-divided country is complicated and difficult.”

Or, as that wily, briar-patch denizen Br’er Rabbit pleaded of his ursine captor in the old Uncle Remus tales, “Please, please don’t throw me in that briar-patch over there!”

What he said. Conservatives can’t crash this party alone. If moderates and conservative Dems view Obama as a moderate, then we’ll have the pajama party for the duration.