Sadly, No!

We all know there’s an element of the Christian community that likes to speak in tongues and fall down when people smack them on the forehead. I’m sure they are an embarrassment to the mainstream Christian community, but by and large this element is fairly easy to ignore. I mean, it’s not like they’re smacking and falling on your front lawn or anything.

Until now.

They’re calling it a “Purity Siege”, and apparently groups of Christians think this is the perfect way to save the homosexual from his Satanic lifestyle. From what I can tell, it involves really bad singing in crowds on public sidewalks, combined with the aforementioned smacking and falling and speaking in tongues. Now, the sorts of things that usually only go on in tin shacks in Tennessee will be available for everyone who’s trying to have a fun evening out to see. This is going to do wonders for making people think the extreme edge of the Christian movement is something other than insane.

I just love that these brave Christian warriors think only to show up in front of gay bars. Because, you know, there’s no sinning going on in straight bars or anything.

Actually, I think it probably has something to do with certain preconceptions society tends to hold about gay people in general. These Jesus warriors, like most people, are probably operating under the assumption that all gay men are weak and passive. Thus, they have no fear of getting their asses beat by drunk guys coming out of a bar, which is frequently what happens when you harass drunk guys coming out of a bar and tell them to stop sinning. I think we need to start up a campaign to help these poor Christians realize that they need to worry about the souls of the poor folks who find themselves in biker bars each weekend. Don’t they need purity too?

Above: what brave souls will save these men from the sins of drinking and motorcycle riding?

Incidentally, guys…if you’re interested in saving teh gayz, something like this would probably work better.

You know what’s really awful? When private individuals manipulate the government for the benefit of their own special interests. Especially when they do this at the expense of the general good.

Just ask Paul Jacob. He’s got a righteous anger at the way those evil unions are always depicting Wal-Mart as a company that violates human rights, adds to the flood of dangerous imports, and destroys the American manufacturing base.

Now, to be fair, Jacob doesn’t think that groups should be prevented from smearing Wal-Mart in such a horrendous way – they just shouldn’t be allowed to bring political pressure to bear on them.

Above: Teh Steel Reserve Alliance has free kittens.

---

Of course, nagging is their very right. It is the continual use of the unions’ political teeth that should elicit opposition. Throughout the country, Wal-Mart’s union-sponsored harassers have attempted to ply the force of law to block Wal-Mart from opening new stores, from reaching customers (who very much want that choice). They’ve also pressured politicians to micro-manage what Wal-Mart pays in salary and benefits. By law.

Of course, there’s nothing particularly unusual about radical libertarians defending Wal-Mart. What makes Jacob’s defense unusual is that he’s currently under indictment for suborning the democratic political process in the state of Oklahoma. Jacob’s commitment to free market principles is so totalizing that when he brings initiative activists into a state to collect signatures — even when state law forbids such practice — Jacob makes sure the activists are paid by the signature, just like piecework was done in our own turn-of-the-Century American sweatshops, back when America was a free market paradise. Naturally, you can imagine the results that come from this paid-by-the-signature approach are, on occasion, somewhat questionable.

But hey, if the consumer indicates that there is a strong market demand for political corruption, then it must be allowed, because any attempt to regulate the market will take away our freedom. After all, this is what the market wants, and the market represents all of us. It’s not like one or two individuals could ever have an undue influence over an entire political market — is it?

Gavin adds: Hey, petition fraud is the hip new fad; all the cool Republicans are doing it:

As you can see in the video, the petitioners said that their petition would “help children with cancer,” and then proceeded to instruct well-meaning students to sign several petitions that were attached together on a single clipboard. The petitioners clearly tried to obscure the language on the petitions, using a rubber band to make it difficult for anyone signing to read beyond the first page. When pressed, the petitioners described some of the other issues (besides curing cancer) they were advocating, but their descriptions of the petition language on eminent domain and [the ‘California Counts’ electoral-vote-shifting scheme] was unclear or inaccurate.

According to an investigation from the UCSB Daily Nexus, the petitioners in Santa Barbara said that they work for Arno Political Consultants (APC), a notorious Republican consulting firm which has previously contracted to get signatures for tobacco companies, Mobil Oil, and they’ve been discovered tricking people into registering to vote as a Republican. APC has been in courts all over America, as you can see here.

And as usual with these things, it just gets better and better…

Over a four-hour period, witnesses testified to having seen signature gatherers forge the names of those who had signed a [Massachusetts] petition that would allow the sale of wine in grocery stores onto the anti-gay petition. Citizens told of how they’d realized they’d been duped into signing the anti-gay petition when signature gatherers pretended that the anti-gay petition was the wine petition.

According to a new Gallup study, things are not at all as they so richly seem:

Republicans Report Much Better Mental Health Than Others
Relationship persists even when controlling for other variables
by Frank Newport

PRINCETON, NJ — Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent, according to data from the last four November Gallup Health and Healthcare polls. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans report having excellent mental health, compared to 43% of independents and 38% of Democrats. This relationship between party identification and reports of excellent mental health persists even within categories of income, age, gender, church attendance, and education. […]

Correlation is no proof of causation, of course. The reason the relationship exists between being a Republican and more positive mental health is unknown, and one cannot say whether something about being a Republican causes a person to be more mentally healthy, or whether something about being mentally healthy causes a person to choose to become a Republican (or whether some third variable is responsible for causing both to be parallel). […]

Have you spotted the basic, indeed the whoopingly asstarded problem with this analysis? It’s one so fundamental to the job of polling that Mr. Newport, Editor-In-Chief of Gallup, can’t possibly have typed up such a report in good faith.

But the key finding of the analyses presented here is that being a Republican appears to have an independent relationship on positive mental health above and beyond what can be explained by these types of demographic and lifestyle variables. The exact explanation for this persistent relationship — as noted — is unclear.

Yes, very educational. If we assume that people’s subjective, self-reported assessments of their own mental health are the same thing as actual, objective data on mental health, then tweet-tweet, look at the birdie.

Also the case: One cannot say whether something about having extraterrestrial nanobots injected into one’s brain causes a person to develop symptoms of clinical paranoia, or whether clinical paranoia alerts the extraterrestrials to initiate a nanobot implant (or whether some third variable is responsible for causing both to be parallel).

Since we’re learning so much this evening, now seems an excellent time for an excerpt from Robert Altemeyer’s latest book, The Authoritarians. The book is based on over thirty years of carefully-designed surveys and quantitative work on what Altemeyer calls the right-wing authoritarian personality type (RWA) — i.e., the sort of character that makes up the Republican base. It explains the results of the Gallup study quite a bit more elegantly:

If you ask people how much integrity they personally have, guess who pat themselves most on the back by claiming they have more than anyone else. This one is easy if you remember the findings on self-righteousness from the last chapter: high RWAs think they had lots more integrity than others do. Similarly when I asked students to write down, anonymously, their biggest faults, right-wing authoritarians wrote down fewer than others did, mainly because a lot of them said they had no big faults. When I asked students if there was anything they were reluctant to admit about themselves to themselves, high RWAs led everyone else in saying, no, they were completely honest with themselves.

Read the rest of this entry »

ABOVE: W. Thomas Smith Jr.

Over at America’s Shittiest Website™ (a/k/a National Review Online), they’ve discovered their very own Scott Beauchamp in their midst. It seems that W. Thomas Smith Jr. was making stuff up about Lebanon and putting it in his blog posts at NRO. Now he has been forced to admit it.

Specifically, Smith said he’d seen 200 heavily armed men in a Hezbollah tent camp in Lebanon near the Lebanese Parliament. In fact, he saw two guys with AK-47s. Additionally, he said that 4,000-5,000 Hezbollah gunmen had deployed in the Christian areas of Beirut without response from the government or army. Again, he only saw a few guys he assumed were Hezbollah at several intersections. And they didn’t have guns; they had radios. Worse yet, not one other news source in Beirut reported such a massive deployment of “gunmen”:

In retrospect, however, this is a case where I should have caveated the reporting by saying that I only witnessed a fraction of what happened (from a moving car) … .

So, of course, we should expect an orgy of outrage from Jonah the Whale, Victoribus Davibus Pluribus Hansen, and all the rest, equivalent to the calumny that they hurled at The New Republic when there were questions raised about the articles in TNR by Scott Beauchamp. Probably not so much — if by “not so much” you mean “not at all.”

ABOVE: Confederate Yankee

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Mark Steyn, you might recall, went so far as to say this at NRO:

[I]f that Weekly Standard story is correct, it moves Private Beauchamp into full-blown Stephen Glass territory. In essence, they made the same mistakes all over again – falling for pat cinematic vividness, pseudo-novelistic dialogue, all designed to confirm prejudices so ingrained the editors didn’t even recognize they were being pandered to. But this time they did it in war, which is worse.

Does the Confederate Yankee know about this yet? Isn’t it time for him to start a boycott of NRO advertisers?

<chirp><chirp><chirp><train whistle in the distance><breeze rustling through the trees>

Gavin adds: As of early this afternoon, Mr. Yankee has found this story to be more to his liking:

Another Media Account Disputed

Hala Jaber’s American-backed killer militias strut across Iraq has been challenged by an American soldier on the ground.

1LT Brendan Griswold, 1-5 CAV in Ameriyah writes:

I do not know how long Ms. Hala Jaber’s trip to Ameriya lasted or where exactly she visited inside the city, but the events that she describes in her recent article (“American-backed killer militias strut across Iraq,” November 25), totally contradict the progress I have personally witnessed in the past 13 months here in Ameriya. […]

You have to see the original London Times story to appreciate how vague the rebuttal is (although Lt. Griswold has turned up in the press before, and seems like a straight enough shooter). With accidental trenchancy, Mr. Yankee sums up the situation for his readers:

Which account you find more credible, of course, may depend on your own biases.

Update: Indeed, if our eyes aren’t deceiving us, Mr. Yankee just deleted one of the two comments on the above post. The first comment is here. The second, deleted comment politely linked to this post at Balloon Juice.

Woo, busted!

ABOVE: Confederate Yankee

Clif adds: Sheez, they are still pimping the Beauchamp story over at NRO’s Corner. W. Thomas who?

Earlier, I noted that our old pal Fudgehammer had his Bacon Ranch Pringles-stained boxers in a bunch over the extraordinarily non-alarming statistic that Islam is now the third-largest religion in Ireland.

Never one to let a juicy story slide, or pass up an opportunity to kill time on a Friday afternoon, I did a little¹ research and discovered the shocking fact that the third-largest religion in Brunei, Malaysia, Mali, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates is…Christianity! And it’s the second-largest religion in Albania, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, the Gambia, Guinea, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan², Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Syria, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan!

I wonder if there’s some tubby skidmark in his mom’s basement in Rabat getting a panic boner over the increasing deadly Christianist foothold represented by the 1.1% of Moroccans who worship Jesus? Given that certain members of the G.O.P. seem to believe that “we³ are being outpopulated by the blacks”⁴, I wouldn’t be too surprised…

¹: Very little.

⁴: African-Americans now constitute around 12% of the population, a lower percentage than at any time from the founding of the U.S. to 1890. But, terrifyingly, whites now outnumber blacks in America by a mere 7 to 1, an even more frightening figure than the 135:1 ratio of Irish Christians to Irish Muslims! Won’t someone do something?

Gavin adds:

And it’s the second-largest religion in Albania, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti…

This is news liable to shake Djibouti.

Unfolding currently:

Man Takes Hostages At Clinton Campaign Office
POSTED: 1:14 pm EST November 30, 2007
UPDATED: 1:55 pm EST November 30, 2007

ROCHESTER, N.H. — ROCHESTER, N.H. An armed man has taken two campaign workers hostage at the Hillary Clinton campaign office in Rochester, police said.

Officials with the campaign confirmed that there were two workers taken hostage in the office on 28 North Main St.. A woman and her baby told workers at a neighboring business that she was released by the hostage-taker.

“A young woman with a 6-month or 8-month-old infant came rushing into the store just in tears, and she said, ‘You need to call 911. A man has just walked into the Clinton office, opened his coat and showed us a bomb strapped to his chest with duct tape,'” witness Lettie Tzizik said.

There are several police officers positioned across the street from the office, crouched down behind cruisers with guns drawn, according to a reported at the scene.

“I walked out and I immediately started running, and I saw that the road was blocked off. They told me run and keep going,” said Cassandra Hamilton, who works in an office adjacent to the building.

Nearby businesses have been evacuated, and the St. Elizabeth Seaton School has been locked down.

“There are sharp shooters on the roof, and police are negotiating with someone in the building,” said another witness, who did not want to be identified. “The police are notifying all the business owners on the street to evacuate. There are fire trucks behind the Hillary Clinton office.”

Clinton, who is not in New Hampshire, is attending a National Democratic Committee meeting in Virginia. Presidential candidate Barack Obama also has an office in Rochester, and it has been evacuated. There were no reports of any injuries.

Refresh this page for updates

*Context below.

Update: Here come the Freepers. Major reactions:

1) Ha ha!

POPCORN…POPCORN…GET YOUR POPCORN HERE…..

200 posted on 11/30/2007 10:59:38 AM PST by SnarlinCubBear (“Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.” — Thomas Mann)

2) It is clearly a leftist conspiracy.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if some rabid Clinton supporter pushed some whack job to do this”

I think you’re right. My friends and are at work are saying that if it’s a plant, they most likely threatened him to release photos or some such, and promised him he’d be okay. In real life, I think this guy will have to end up having his brains blown out. You watch. He won’t be allowed to live. Mark my words. They couldn’t leave him alive to talk. He will be dead soon.

1,123 posted on 11/30/2007 1:05:11 PM PST by sulu

3) Unlike leftists, we take no pleasure in the suffering of others.

Because FR is not DU, where death and suffering are celebrated, prayers up for anyone in harm’s way. If this is actually a hostage situation, rather than a bomb threat as Rush is reporting, I can’t imagine too many things more terrifying.

35 posted on 11/30/2007 10:36:06 AM PST by lonevoice (It’s always “Apologize to a Muslim Hour”…somewhere)

4) Ha ha!

ROFLMAO

996 posted on 11/30/2007 12:45:54 PM PST by A. Morgan (Fred Thompson/Duncan Hunter 2008 Thank me!)

Why can’t two hostages take down one sick, tired, and disturbed individual?

Oh, right—they’re Democrats.

1,361 posted on 11/30/2007 2:28:50 PM PST by Palladin (“How do we beat The Bitch?”–John McCain Supporter)

5) Shall we target and harass this man’s family?

Want his address and phone number? 😉

1,048 posted on 11/30/2007 12:52:27 PM PST by FishTale

6) Soon we will know the truth.

I think we’ll find that all the hostages were really “so-called” hostages….That he had no gun and that he told them it was not really a bomb at all “and proved it”.

That Monica “hostage” look a like didn’t have a bit of fear on her face when she walked out.

Let’s wait it out. Just remember…the “hostages” are Hillary boot lickers!! I’m sure she’ll gather them in one room, promise them compensation and an internship so they can continue their boot-licking careers.

1,518 posted on 11/30/2007 3:38:59 PM PST by Sacajaweau (“The Cracker” will be renamed “The Crapper”)

Another classic from Lois Romano’s appalling chat transcript:

Immigration and GOP Reputation: Giuliani and Romney are not single-issue yahoos, but they seem to be letting their hunger for power overwhelm their better judgment and decency. Recklessly bashing illegal immigrants may score them points with one angry segment in the GOP base in these debates, but what are they doing to their party’s reputation — and their own?

Lois Romano: But wasn’t it great theatre? Admit it.

Hey, this movie was pretty good theatre as well:

…but that doesn’t mean the people starring in it should be put into positions of high power.

As I’ve said before, friends, we are incredibly doomed.

Also:

Anonymous:”…how to address something that people are talking about, that has clearly become a factor in the race, without taking a position…” But Lois, you should take a position. Not only has he denied it, but every legitimate report says it isn’t true. I assume you take a position on the earth being round, because it is verifiable. Obama is verifiably not a Muslim … if only because he denies that he is.

It isn’t a question of fair and balanced when there isn’t any serious foundation to the report. For The Post to perpetuate it without clearly stating it isn’t true is a disservice to journalism, your readers and a U.S. senator. Let’s not even get into the question of the fact that it isn’t a crime to be a Muslim and run for office — which isn’t the Obama story at all.

Lois Romano: But we do chronicle his denials.

And that’s it. That’s her entire response to this extremely well-reasoned objection.

I can’t even snark this. The majority of the WaPo’s political reporting staff should be out on the street begging for food, not writing for one of the most powerful news organs in the country. Get outta here, ya maniacs!!

Gavin adds: The rumors deserve to be addressed of Lois Romano’s untidy performance in the alleged erotic video, Der Scheisslich Gruppeknall, (a.k.a. Shitty Shitty Gang Bang).

It looks like Baron Bodissey had too much root beer last night and made some unwise Google choices, because he’s gone beyond his usual fusty racist paranoia and achieved gabbling lunacy. Let’s poke the wreckage tentatively with a stick.

That Fascist Pledge of Allegiance
by Baron Bodissey

Fascism and Nazism have deep roots, even in the United States of America.

Apparently so. As we’re about to learn, a hand gesture at the very root of Fascism and Nazism was used in the US long before anybody knew what it meant. And here’s the thing: It’s magical and its effects transcend time and space.

A compelling demonstration of this sad fact can be found in the seemingly innocuous Pledge of Allegiance, which was originated in 1892 by Francis Bellamy. Many Americans are unaware of the fascist origins of the Pledge.

Perhaps this unawareness stems from the fact that the Pledge of Allegiance was published in 1892, or maybe it’s also the fact that Bellamy was merely a Baptist minister hired by the merchandising department of the magazine, The Youth’s Companion, to sell flags to schools.

The photos at the left show American schoolchildren saying the Pledge of Allegiance during the first half of the 20th century. In those days, as you can see, pledging the flag included a gesture known as the “Bellamy Salute”, which was identical to the “Sieg Heil” salute made notorious by Hitler’s Nazi regime!

…Which attained power 41 years after the salute was introduced in America, proving that the Nazis were actually American schoolchildren. . .or was it the other way around?

Untold thousands of American schoolchildren were corrupted by this devious indoctrination until the U.S. government became aware of the practice and put a stop to it.

Whew! End of story, then.

Oh wait, no, there’s more.

According to the Veterans’ Administration website:

Originally, the pledge was said with the hand in the so-called “Bellamy Salute,” with the hand resting first outward from the chest, then the arm extending out from the body. Once Hitler came to power in Europe, some Americans were concerned that this position of the arm and hand resembled the salute rendered by the Nazi military. In 1942, Congress established the current practice of rendering the pledge with the right hand placed flat over the heart.

Obviously, anybody who ever engaged in this kind of proto-Nazi behavior has been tainted by the practice and should be considered unfit for any decision-making position in our nation’s public affairs.

Meaning, everyone who attended school in America between 1892 and 1943. For example, Ronald Reagan. Also for example: Every member of the Eisenhower, Truman, and Kennedy administrations, every living or deceased World War II veteran, and probably Carey Roberts, who graduated high school in 1892.

Most Americans are unaware of — and would be shocked by — how many of their respected political leaders have engaged in this repugnant practice.

Not as shocked as when they find out about the so-called ‘Native Americans’:

Above: NAZOMG!

But wait, it seems like the Baron is about to make his main point — a point that perhaps he was cleverly setting up all along, even when it looked for all the world as though he was just strolling disinterestedly through the vales of history, commenting on whatever took his fancy.

Yes, it does seem like he has a point coming up here.

Historians have tentatively identified at least two current political leaders in the above photos. In the top photo, the boy who is second from the left (in the back) appears to be Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI). In the bottom photo, the seventh child in the fifth row back is thought to be none other than Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA).

I believe I speak for all of us when I say, what the fuck…!??

Is this a joke? I’m looking for a sign that this is a joke. Where am I? Who’s the object of this humor — is it us? Is it Crazy Upside-Down Day today, and Baron Bodissey is celebrating by making fun of something in a bizarre reversal of the natural order of things? (I.e., people making fun of Baron Bodissey.)

Citizens should demand that the leadership of our country be cleansed of former proto-Nazis. There is no place in public office for anyone with this kind of stain on his or her record.

Hmmm.

[Hanx! TomMil]

Update: Upon further study, we must invoke #1 on Conservapedia’s instructional list, Examples of Liberal Style:

1. calling conservative humor “unprofessional and meaningless, and degrades the quality of your encyclopedia.”

Baron Bodissey making fun of Little Green Footballs for being too squeamish about allying with neo-Nazi groups is funny in so many ways we can’t count them unprofessional and meaningless, and additionally, conservative humor is very degrades-the-quality-of-your-encyclopedia.

Update II: Holy moly.

I tell you, folks, if you aren’t checking in on a regular basis with Conservapedia (a.k.a. Wikipedia for Stupid People™), you’re missing out on some of the surest comedy on the internet. LG&M has already done fine work in bringing us their latest high point in hilarity, a list of hallmarks of the liberal style. Pick your favorite! Here’s mine:

33. using non sequiturs in argument, such as responding to the point above that liberals over-rely on accusations of hypocrisy by citing an example of conservatives’ observing liberal hypocrisy. But their example does not help their argument. Quite the contrary, use of that example tends to prove that liberals do over-rely on accusations of hypocrisy (relativism). Think about that.

THINK ABOUT THAT. Seriously, THINK ABOUT IT.

But oh, there’s so much more! When right-wingers aren’t fantasizing over what they think liberals are like, or obsessing over homesexuality, what do they talk about among themselves? What passes for real debate in the Gasbag-American community?

Presented without comment, a selection of debate topics from Conservapedia.

If there is no objective truth, then is the claim “there is no objective truth” also not an objective truth?

Can any man live without some code of morality?

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Was Jesus born in the right time and place?

If Jesus were alive to day, where on the political spectrum would he fall?

Could God create a rock so heavy that he himself could not lift it?

Is it possible to be a conservative and not a religious person or even an atheist?

If most Muslims learned their religion from their parents, just like us Christians, they will probably be hard to convert. So what can we do to save their souls?

Should all access to Conservapedia be banned on Sundays?

Why is homosexuality so bad?

Was the European colonization of the Americas good for the native people?

Is illegal immigration control the answer to illegal immigration?

You think these Phd’s are nuts?

Does the European Union pose a threat to United States Security?

Is it even possible to install democracy in a Muslim country?

Crusades… Good or Bad?

Which is a more powerful ideology, Islam or Communism?

Should the United States intervene in small countries to defeat communism there?

Should people genetically engineer a cure for homosexuality?

Women in the Military?

Should students learn a foreign language?

Should American companies be allowed to send their own troops into a war which America is participating in?

Does porn actually cause (not merely correlate to) violence?

Has Russia reinstalled stealth communism?

Why did God place most of the world’s oil in politically unstable places?

Does Darwinian natural selection suggest that bigotry is a necessary self-defense mechanism?

Why are God’s works always questioned?

Is Rap music torture?

Amazingly, cartoonist Tom Toles is showing more journalistic integrity than any of the Washington Post’s editors (via the good Dr. A):

Can I get one “heh” and one “indeed,” por favor?

And the estimable Mr. Greenwald points us to this horrifying chat transcript with Lois Romano, the WaPo’s national political reporter:

Obama and “the rumors”: Lois: I object to today’s story in The Post talking about the “rumors” floating around that Obama is Muslim. It is simply inaccurate and poor reporting to call them rumors. They are false claims. Obama is not a Muslim; calling them rumors gives them credence. In fact, even using the phrase “Obama’s Muslim ties” is debatable. Having a stepfather who did “occasionally attend services” at a mosque and having a Muslim grandfather who lived on the other side of the world are pretty slim “ties.” Why is The Post perpetuating these unfair attacks?

Lois Romano: We are getting many questions of our story on Obama today. I’ll try to address this as best I can. These are always very difficult decisions– how to address something that people are talking about, that has clearly become a factor in the race, without taking a position.

Above: Disagreements exist regarding hollowness of Earth

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By “people,” she means “crazy assholes.” By “talking,” she means “posting crazy shit on a damn Internet forum.”

Hey Lois, people are also talking about the vast underground cities that exist within the Hollow Earth. Maybe you should write a balanced article giving them equal time with geologists.

Part of our job is to acknowledge that there is a discussion going on and to fact check and lay out the facts. The Internet has complicated this responsibility because there is so much garbage and falsehoods out there.

Well duh. And CNN, of all places, had already debunked these rumors. Why bother revisiting crazy shit that’s already been debunked by a damn cable news network? Does the Post blow this many goats?

This discussion has reached a high pitch on the Internet and our editors decided it was in the readers interest to address it.

Again, I refer you to the Hollow Earth crowd. They’d like to have their story plastered on page 1 of what used to be America’s most reputable newspaper as well.

I have heard people say that they won’t support Sen. Obama because they read he doesn’t put is hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance. He has denied this– so airing some of this and giving him a chance to deny its accuracy could be viewed as setting the record straight.

Lovely. Next week you should do a story about the allegations flying around that Bush withdrew the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination because she was Hitlery KKKliNtoN’s seKKKret l0v3r. Bloody losers.