BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG
We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
ben carson r tb won't be with us much longer, politically speaking. I wish him health and longevity, and really really hope he finds some extremely remote, isolated place to spend the rest of his days once his campaign collapses and the only known to be true fact about him is he is one crazy s.o.b! Let's start with this piece from +PolitiFact on carson defending his lack of experience hold an elected office, followed by Daily Kos Recommended loaded with ben carsonisities.......
"Every signer of the Declaration of Independence had no federal elected office experience."
— Ben Carson on Wednesday, November 4th, 2015 in an edited Facebook post
By Louis Jacobson on Sunday, November 8th, 2015 at 10:30 a.m.
John Trumbull's
1819 painting of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence depicts
the five-man drafting committee presenting their work to the Congress.
The original hangs in the U.S. Capitol rotunda.
This is the revised version of Ben Carson's Facebook post, with the edited line highlighted.
Ben Carson -- currently the top-polling Republican presidential candidate -- posted a message on Facebook on Nov. 4
to rebut critics who say his lack of experience in elected office would
be a serious obstacle to his serving as an effective president.
Soon after it was posted, we began hearing from readers asking us to check one of his claims.
"You are absolutely right — I have no political experience," Carson
wrote in the initial version of his post. "The current Members of
Congress have a combined 8,700 years of political experience. Are we
sure political experience is what we need. Every signer of the
Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience. What they
had was a deep belief that freedom is a gift from God. They had a
determination to rise up against a tyrannical King. They were willing to
risk all they had, even their lives, to be free."
After our friends at the Washington Post Fact Checker reviewed
Carson’s claim that "every signer of the Declaration of Independence
had no elected office experience" and gave it Four Pinocchios -- the
column’s worst rating -- the quote was changed. It now reads, "Every
signer of the Declaration of Independence had no federal elected office experience" (emphasis added).
We were already looking into Carson’s initial Facebook comment when
the wording change was made. We’ll address both versions here. The signers had 'no elected office experience'
Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had held
elective office before joining the Continental Congress, which produced
the declaration. We found a long list, so take a deep breath before you
start reading. They include:
• John Adams. Elected to Massachusetts Assembly, 1770; attended First Continental Congress, 1774-1776.
• Thomas Jefferson. Represented Albemarle County as a delegate in the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1769-1775
• Benjamin Franklin. Philadelphia councilman, 1748; elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, 1751.
• John Hancock. Elected to the Boston Assembly,
1766; president of the provincial congress of Massachusetts, c. 1773;
elected to the Continental Congress, 1774, and then president of the
congress in 1775.
• Samuel Adams. Elected to Massachusetts Assembly, 1765; delegate to the First Continental Congress, 1774.
• Elbridge Gerry. Elected to Massachusetts Legislature, 1773; provincial Congress, 1774.
• Roger Sherman. Elected to Connecticut General
Assembly, representing New Milford, 1755-1758 and 1760-1761; elected to
various offices representing New Haven in the 1760s and 1770s; elected
to the Continental Congress starting in 1774.
• Caesar Rodney. Elected to Delaware Colonial
Assembly, 1758-1770 and 1771-1776; delegate to the Stamp Act Congress,
1765; elected to the Continental Congress, 1774.
• George Taylor. Elected to Pennsylvania provincial assembly, 1764-69; elected to Continental Congress, 1775.
• John Morton. Elected to Pennsylvania provincial
assembly, 1756-1775; delegate to the Stamp Act Congress, 1765; president
of the provincial assembly, 1775.
• George Ross. Elected to Pennsylvania provincial assembly, 1768-1776; Elected to Continental Congress, 1774.
• James Wilson. Elected to Pennsylvania provincial congress, 1775; elected to the Continental Congress, 1775.
• Thomas McKean. Member of the Delaware Assembly,
1762-79; Delegate to the Stamp Act Congress, 1765; delegate to the
Continental Congress, 1774.
• Matthew Thornton. Member of the New Hampshire provincial assembly, 1758-1762.
• William Whipple. Elected to New Hampshire provincial congress, 1775 and 1776.
• Stephen Hopkins. Speaker of the Rhode Island Assembly,1750s; member of the Continental Congress beginning in 1774.
• Lewis Morris. Member of New York provincial legislature; delegate to the Continental Congress, 1775.
• Philip Livingston. Alderman, New York City.
• Carter Braxton. Virginia House of Burgesses, 1770-1785; delegate to the Continental Congress, 1774-75.
• Thomas Nelson Jr. Member of the House of Burgesses, 1774; Virginia provincial convention, 1775.
• Francis Lightfoot Lee. Member of the Virginia House of Burgesses 1758-1775; elected to Continental Congress, 1775.
• Benjamin Harrison. Elected to Virginia House of Burgesses, 1764; member of the Continental Congress, 1774.
• George Wythe. Member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1755-65.
• William Hooper. Elected to general assembly of North Carolina, 1773; member of Continental Congress, 1774-1776.
• Joseph Hewes. Member of the colonial assembly of
North Carolina, 1766-1775; member of new provincial assembly, 1775;
elected to Continental Congress, 1774.
• John Hart. Member of the New Jersey Assembly, 1761-1771; member of provincial assembly, 1775; elected to the Continental Congress, 1776.
• William Williams. Town clerk, selectman, provincial representative, elected state legislator, delegate to colonial conferences, 1770s.
• William Paca. Delegate to the Maryland Legislature, 1771; elected to Continental Congress, 1774.
That’s at least 28 of the 56 signers -- about half, and we were conservative in who we counted. The real number may be higher.
Either way, Carson’s original claim, that "every signer of the
Declaration of Independence had no elected office experience," is way,
way off. The signers had 'no federal elected office experience'
The edit Carson made to the Facebook post doesn’t help his case,
since there was no federal government before the Declaration of
Independence was signed. This makes his entire claim illogical, experts
say,
"Of course they did not have federal elected office experience
because there was no federal government at the time -- we were a British
colony," said Michael Gerhardt, scholar in residence at the National
Constitution Center and professor of constitutional law at the
University of North Carolina.
"It does not make sense to use the term ‘federal’ when no federal
government existed," agreed Danielle Allen, a political theorist and
author of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality.
"The signers of the declaration very often had leading political
experience in their colony or, as they called them, in their
‘countries.’ "
Jan Lewis, a professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark and the author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Family and Values in Jefferson’s Virginia, finds Carson’s claim ridiculous.
"It makes about as much sense as saying none of them had been to the
moon," Lewis said. "Of course they hadn't, because it was an
impossibility at that time. No one could possibly serve in the federal
government before there was a federal government, at least in the
absence of time travel."
Carson’s staff did not respond to an inquiry for this article. Our ruling
Both the initial and the revised versions of Carson’s claim are far
off base. About half or more of the declaration’s signers had held
elective office previously, a reality that severely undercuts Carson’s
overall point that the drafting of the Declaration of Independence
showed how a lack of political experience can produce landmark political
achievements. As for his later addition of "federal" to the comment,
this makes the claim nonsensical, since there was no federal government
prior to the signing of the declaration.
We rate Carson’s claim Pants on Fire.
Ben Carson, Facebook post, Nov. 4, 2015
USHistory.org, Signers of the Declaration of Independence, accessed Nov. 6, 2015 Washington Post Fact Checker, "Ben Carson’s absurd notion that the Founding Fathers had ‘no elected office experience,’ " Nov. 5, 2015
Email interview with Emily Sneff, research manager of the Declaration Resources Project at Harvard University, Nov. 6, 2015
Email interview with Andrew J. O'Shaughnessy, vice president of the
Thomas Jefferson Foundation and professor of history at the University
of Virginia, Nov. 6, 2015
Email interview with Michael Gerhardt, scholar in residence at the
National Constitution Center and professor of constitutional law at the
University of North Carolina, Nov. 6, 2015
Email interview with Jan Lewis, professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark and the author of The Pursuit of Happiness: Family and Values in Jefferson’s Virginia, Nov. 6, 2015
Email interview with Danielle Allen, political theorist and author of Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, Nov. 6, 2015
CONGRATS TO MOTHER JONES! Thank you for not giving up the good fight, for remaining true to kick ass investigative journalism. It really is a shame, and a disgrace that you don't have more competition. From +Mother Jones .....
Today we are happy to announce a monumental legal victory for Mother Jones:
A judge in Idaho has ruled in our favor on all claims in a defamation
case filed by a major Republican donor, Frank VanderSloot, and his
company, Melaleuca Inc. In a decision issued Tuesday, the court found that Mother Jones
did not defame VanderSloot or Melaleuca because "all of the statements
at issue are non-actionable truth or substantial truth." The court also
found that the statements were protected as fair comment under the First
Amendment.
This is the culmination of a lengthy, expensive legal saga that began
three years ago when the 2012 presidential primaries were in full
swing. On February 6, 2012, we published
an article about VanderSloot after it emerged that his company,
Melaleuca, and its subsidiaries had given $1 million to Mitt Romney's
super-PAC. The piece noted that VanderSloot had gone to unusual lengths
to oppose gay rights in Idaho, and that Melaleuca had run into trouble
with regulators.
VanderSloot's lawyers sent us a letter complaining about the article.
We reviewed their concerns and posted a correction about a few details.
So far, not an uncommon scenario; it's something every newsroom deals
with from time to time.
But that September, we broke the story of Romney's 47 percent
comments, which some have argued cost the GOP the White House. Four
months later, VanderSloot—who was also one of Gov. Romney's national
finance chairs—filed a defamation lawsuit against Mother Jones as well as Stephanie Mencimer, the reporter of the article, and Monika personally (for her tweet about the piece).
People have asked us whether we think these two things were
connected, and the honest answer is that we have no idea. What we do
know is that the take-no-prisoners legal assault from VanderSloot and
Melaleuca has consumed a good part of the past two and a half years and
has cost millions (yes, millions) in legal fees. In the course of the
litigation, VanderSloot sued a former small-town Idaho newspaper
reporter whose confrontation with him we mentioned in our article. His
lawyers asked a judge to let them rifle through the internal records of
the Obama campaign. They deposed a representative of the campaign in
pursuit of a baseless theory that Mother Jones conspired with
Obama's team to defame VanderSloot. They tried to get one of our lawyers
disqualified because his firm had once done work for Melaleuca. They
intrusively questioned our employees—our reporter was grilled about
whether she had attended a Super Bowl party the night she finalized the
article.
This was not a dispute over a few words. It
was a push, by a superrich businessman and donor, to wipe out news
coverage that he disapproved of.
Legally, what we fought over was what, precisely, the terms "bashing" and "outing" meant in the context of our article. (Read the decision for yourself.)
But make no mistake: This was not a dispute over a few words. It was a
push, by a superrich businessman and donor, to wipe out news coverage
that he disapproved of. Had he been successful, it would have been a
chilling indicator that the 0.01 percent can control not only the
financing of political campaigns, but also media coverage of those
campaigns.
Throughout this lawsuit, VanderSloot appeared to be engaged in
rewriting his own history of opposing the expansion of civil rights to
LGBT people. His complaint focused on two things: He asserted that we
defamed him by "falsely stating that Mr. VanderSloot 'bashed' and
'publicly out[ed] a reporter.'" He also claimed that Monika's tweet
about the article defamed him by referring to "gay-bashing."
In a way, there was something ironically hopeful about this: A
conservative Republican—someone who not long ago was quoted saying it
was "child abuse" to put a film about gay parents on public
television—had apparently come to believe that to call him a gay-basher
was so damaging to his reputation that he must fight the argument at
virtually any cost. It's a sign of just how far America has moved in
just a few years that this entire case felt like something from a time
capsule.
To be sure, VanderSloot has much at stake in reworking his public
profile. He's now widely recognized as one of the megadonors who will
help determine who wins the 2016 GOP nomination. He has vowed
to be even more "financially active" than he was in 2012, when he
raised between $2 million and $5 million for Romney. In burnishing his
image as a national figure, he might like people to forget about certain
aspects of his past, such as the fact that he financed an ad campaign
to amend the state constitution to ban marriage equality. (One of the
ads pointed out that such an amendment would also prevent marriages
between "a person and an animal.")
"I have learned a great deal about the debate of homosexuality and sexual orientation," he wrote in an op-ed this past February. "I believe that gay people should have the same freedoms and rights as any other individual."
That's a fascinating story. But it's also a frightening one. If
VanderSloot had prevailed, he would have proven that with enough money
to throw at lawyers, you can wipe the slate. You can go after those who
document the past and the present, and if you can't make them cry
"uncle" you can at least append a legal asterisk to their work
forevermore.
That's why we've pushed back. Frank VanderSloot may have evolved
along with America. We respect that. But it doesn't erase the past.
Perhaps fittingly,
a major element in this case about the right of the press to afflict
the powerful was a piece of investigative journalism. In 2005, a young
reporter at the 26,000-circulation Post Register in Idaho Falls
got a tip about a pedophile in the local Boy Scouts. The reporter,
Peter Zuckerman, dug into the story and discovered legal documents
indicating that Scout leaders had received multiple warnings about a
camp employee but had not removed him. The documents also indicated that
the man's bishop in the Mormon Church had been warned about him as
early as 1988 and had sent him to counseling, but had told the Scouts
years later that he saw no reason the man should not be a camp leader.
In one case, according to a court decision,
a 10-year-old's parents told Scout leaders they were concerned about
the man's behavior. When he was arrested the following year, Scout
leaders learned that he had molested the child, but decided not to tell
the parents.
The series made a huge splash. It won a string of prestigious journalism awards. It became the subject of a PBS documentary. But there were also angry phone calls to the paper. Advertisers pulled out. And Frank VanderSloot got involved.
VanderSloot is reportedly the richest man in Idaho,
and among the most powerful. His company, Melaleuca, sells tea-tree oil
supplements and personal-care products via an Avon-like system of
individual marketers who recruit others to sell. His net worth has been
estimated as $1.2 billion, and for decades he has been a major power in
Idaho politics, especially on LGBT issues. He financed an ad campaign
that helped defeat a state Supreme Court justice on grounds that she
might vote to legalize same-sex marriage. His wife gave $100,000 to the campaign to pass the anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 in California.
Throughout this lawsuit, VanderSloot
appeared to be engaged in rewriting his own history of opposing the
expansion of civil rights to LGBT people.
In the late 1990s, he helped pay for billboards across the state protesting Idaho public television's plan to air a film
intended to teach kids respect for different kinds of families. The
government, he said, should not "be spending our tax dollars to bring
the homosexual lifestyle into the classroom and introduce it to our
children as being normal, right, acceptable, and good and an appropriate
lifestyle for them or anyone else to be living."
VanderSloot has long been active in the Mormon church, and he was a strong supporter of the Boy Scouts. When the Post Register's series ran, he swung into action. He took out full-page ads
in the paper attacking the investigation and Peter Zuckerman, the
26-year-old lead reporter on the series. One of the ads noted that
Zuckerman had written an article about his sexual orientation for a
journalism site while on a fellowship in Florida. The ad said he had
declared "that he is homosexual and admitted that it is very difficult
for him to be objective on things he feels strongly about."
"Much has been said on a local radio station and throughout the
community," VanderSloot's ad continued, "speculating that the Boy
Scouts' position of not letting gay men be Scout Leaders, and the LDS
Church's position that marriage should be between a man and a woman may
have caused Zuckerman to attack the scouts and the LDS Church through
his journalism."
"We think it would be very unfair for anyone to conclude that is what
is behind Zuckerman's motives," the ad continued. "It would be wrong to
do. The only known facts are, that for whatever reason, Zuckerman chose
to weave a story that unfairly, and without merit, paints Scout leaders
and church leaders to appear unscrupulous, and blame[s] them for the
molestation of little children." Decoding the message between the lines
is left as an exercise for the reader.
The ads had a dramatic impact. Though Zuckerman had been open about
his sexual orientation before he came to Idaho, his editor Dean Miller
later wrote
that in Idaho Falls the reporter "was not 'out' to anyone but family, a
few colleagues at the paper (including me), and his close friends."
Zuckerman had already gotten some negative reactions after a local talk
show with a tiny audience discussed his sexual orientation. But
according to Miller's article and Zuckerman's testimony in the
litigation, things got much worse after VanderSloot's ads. "Strangers
started ringing Peter's doorbell at night," Miller said. "Despite the
harassment, Peter kept coming to work and chasing down leads on other
pedophiles in the Grand Teton Council. I spoke at his church one Sunday
and meant it when I said that I hope my son grows into as much of a man
as Peter had." (Later that year, Zuckerman moved to Portland, where he
took a job with the Oregonian while his partner was elected the city's first openly gay mayor.)
Fast forward to 2012. Miller's article about the Boy Scouts
controversy was one of the stories that our reporter Stephanie Mencimer
found after VanderSloot's name popped up in the January campaign finance
filings. It was the first presidential election of the dark-money era,
and Mother Jones' politics team had zeroed in on the huge new
super-PACs being created to pump unrestricted money into campaigns of
both parties. VanderSloot stood out because Melaleuca was among the top contributors to Restore Our Future,
the super-PAC supporting Romney. Mencimer wrote an article about him
that included a few paragraphs on his history of anti-gay-rights
activism and his run-in with the Post Register.
Those paragraphs are what VanderSloot and Melaleuca sued us over.
They filed the suit in Bonneville County, Idaho, and asked for damages
of up to $74,999—exactly $1 under the amount at which the lawsuit could
have been removed to federal court. That ensured the case would be
decided by jurors from the community where his company is the biggest
employer and the sponsor of everything from the minor league ballpark to
the Fourth of July fireworks.
Since then, Mother Jones and our insurance company have had
to spend at least $2.5 million defending ourselves. We also took up the
defense of Zuckerman, whom VanderSloot sued halfway through the case for
talking to Rachel Maddow about his experience. (VanderSloot did not sue
MSNBC or its deep-pocketed parent company, Comcast. Make of that what
you will.)
Here's a moment that gives you a sense of what it was like. At one
point, Zuckerman was subjected to roughly 10 hours of grilling by
VanderSloot's lawyers about every detail of the controversy in Idaho
Falls, including the breakup with his boyfriend of five years.
(VanderSloot also threatened to sue the ex-boyfriend, backing off only
after he recanted statements he'd made about the Boy Scouts episode.) As
the lawyers kept probing, Zuckerman broke down and cried as he
testified that the time after the ads appeared was one of the darkest
periods of his life. VanderSloot, who had flown to Portland for the
occasion, sternly looked on. (His lawsuit against Zuckerman is ongoing.)
And that wasn't the end of it. VanderSloot's legal team subpoenaed
the Obama campaign, which had run ads naming him as a major Republican
donor. Apparently they believed we had somehow fed the campaign that
information—never mind that our article, and the Federal Election
Commission data that prompted it—was on the internet for anyone to read.
When officials from the Obama campaign refused to turn over their
records—offering to confirm under oath that there had been no
communication between them and Mother Jones—VanderSloot's
lawyers dragged them into court, resulting in the spectacle of a major
GOP donor seeking access to the Democratic campaign's emails. His
lawyers did the same thing to a political researcher who had gathered
information on VanderSloot and who also had no connection to Mother Jones.
This kind of legal onslaught is enormously taxing. Last year, Lowell Bergman, the legendary 60 Minutes producer (whose story of exposing Big Tobacco was chronicled in the Oscar-nominated film The Insider), talked about a "chill in the air"
as investigative reporters confront billionaires who can hurt a news
organization profoundly whether or not they win in court: "There are
individuals and institutions with very deep pockets and unaccountable
private power who don't like the way we report. One example is a case
involving Mother Jones…A superrich plaintiff is spending millions of dollars while he bleeds the magazine and ties up its staff."
Litigation like this, Bergman said, is "being used to tame the press,
to cause publishers and broadcasters to decide whether to stand up or
stand down, to self-censor."
Over the past three years, we've had to face that decision over and
over again. Should we just cave in—retract our article or let
VanderSloot get a judgment against us—and make this all go away? It
wasn't an easy choice, but we decided to fight back. Because it's not
just about us. It's about everyone who relies on Mother Jones
to report the facts as we find them. It's about the Fourth Estate's
check on those who would use their outsized influence and ability to
finance political campaigns to control the direction of the country.
It's about making sure that in a time when media is always under
pressure to buckle to politicians or big-money interests, you can trust
that someone will stand up and go after the truth.
And it's about one more thing. Just a few years ago, no one thought
that America could move so far, so fast, toward respecting the rights of
gays and lesbians. No one thought that by 2015 same-sex couples would
have a constitutional right to marry or, for that matter, that the Boy
Scouts would rescind their ban against gay troop leaders and the Mormon
Church would back them up. That happened because a lot of people stood
up to threats and discrimination. They came out to their families and
communities. They declared their love for everyone to see. They didn't
let themselves be intimidated. Nor will we. Postscript: In her decision
Tuesday, the district court judge found in our favor on every single
claim VanderSloot had made. She also included a passage expressing her
own opinion of Mother Jones, and of political news coverage in
general. For his part, Vandersloot issued a statement saying he had been
"absolutely vindicated" and announced that he was setting up a $1
million fund to pay the legal expenses of people wanting to sue Mother Jones or other members of the "liberal press." We'll leave it with the reaction from our lawyer, James Chadwick: This was "a little like the LA Clippers claiming they won the NBA Finals. I think everyone can see what's going on here."
