Media Matters

• Steve Benen: Looking Longingly At Joseph McCarthy.
• Media Matters: Right-wing media eagerly spread absurd claim that Obama plans to "ban sport fishing".
• Think Progress: Conservative Catholic League President Bill Donohue Defends Beck: Many Of His Critics Are ‘Phonies’.
• Wonk Room: Girl Suing High School Over Canceled Prom: School Is Saying ‘You Can Be Gay, Just Don’t Be Openly Gay’.
• Alan Colmes: Neal Horsley Arrested For Terrorist Threat Against Elton John.

• Media Matters: Rep. Trent Franks: Blacks Better Off Under Slavery.
• Andy Birkey: Rosa Parks didn’t ‘move to the front of the bus to support sodomy.’
• Amanda Little: James Inhofe, Senate’s top skeptic, explains his climate-hoax theory.
• Stephanie Mencimer: Roy Moore: Next Alabama Governor?
• Alvin McEwen: Why won't One News Now tell us what 'Miss Beverly Hills' said about gays?
• Alan Colmes: Gun Paranoids Believe ObamaCare Is Step Toward Refusing You A Gun.
• Finally, as Steve Benen says, there is a key difference between the quality of our health care system and our health insurance system and if would be nice if Republicans could recognize that simple fact.

Earlier this year when it was announced that the conservative gay group GOProud would be serving as a co-sponsor of this year's CPAC conference, some Religious Right groups threatened to boycott though, in the end, only Liberty University Law School actually followed through.

Now that the event is underway, CNN is reporting everyone is playing nice:

GOProud has a booth at CPAC just two spaces away from the exhibition for the National Organization for Marriage, which wants the government to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

...

Chris Plante, who is running the booth for the National Organization for Marriage, said being two booths away from GOProud wasn't an issue.

As cameras rolled, he introduced himself to Barron.

"I hope we'll have more time to talk over the next four days. Maybe we can have a beer later," Plante said.

"We can have a beer summit later. It worked for Obama," Barron joked.

A meeting, yes. But don't expect a meeting of the minds.

"Gays and lesbians have the right to live as they choose, but they don't have the right to redefine marriage for the rest of us," Plante said.

But off camera, things look a little different, as NOM felt it necessary to send out a far less friendly statement to reporters on GOProud's participation in CPAC:

Many reporters, including Politico, have asked us how we feel about the fact GOProud is just a few booths over from us. We welcome everyone's right to participate in the democratic process, but we have a message for GOProud on marriage: If you try to elect pro-gay-marriage Republicans, we will Dede Scozzafava them. The majority of Americans, and the vast majority of Republicans, support marriage as the union of husband and wife, and NOM is here to make sure these voters and their voices are heard loud and clear.

Time's Jay Newton-Small also reports that GOPround had a run-in with representative of American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property which, just the other day, released a report defending Don't Ask, Don't Tell on the grounds that homosexuality is fundamentally evil and allowing gays to serve openly would destroy the military's honor.  Needless to say, TFP was not every welcoming of GOProud: 

These days, the group is particularly concerned with gays in the military. Beyond opposing the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the organization of lay Catholics would like to see all homosexuals banned from the military, according to a white and green pamphlet they were handing out. The case against gays in the military is laid out in a book, displayed prominently, called An American Knight: The Life of Colonel John W. Ripley, USMC, yours for just $14.95.

While I was flipping through the autobiography, a woman approached the booth. Catherine Sumner, it turned out, was part of GOProud, a group of openly gay Republicans and conservatives that for the first time is taking part in CPAC. “Is this your flyer?” Sumner demanded, waving the white and green pamphlet. Thus launched a debate about gays in the military that pretty much ended when the booth attendee told her that homosexuality is a sin and she's going to hell.

“It's insulting,” Sumner, 31, who edits a military magazine, said turning away. “Across the board the reaction to GOProud's presence here has been positive, but then you have guys like this. Even Dick Cheney came out and says he supports us. Conservatives have to be more inclusive, they have to be.” In fact, just one group, Liberty University, boycotted CPAC over the inclusion of GOProud, though the Catholic crowd weren't the only ones unnerved by their presence: one booth down from GOProud's set up in the fourth row, those manning the National Organization for Marriage, which works to ban gay marriage, kept casting nervous – and slightly envious – glances at the somewhat larger crowd surrounding GOProud's booth.

Considering that a who's who of right-wing leaders, including David Keene of the CPAC-founding American Conservative Union, joined TFP for a press conference yesterday supporting DADT at CPAC itself, its hard to imagine that GOProud or its supporters could have felt particularly welcome at the event:

UPDATE: Via Sarah Posner we see that GOProud's Jimmy LaSalvia is not at all impressed with NOM's tactics: 

UPDATE II: This video from Media Matters is absolutely remarkable: 

• Mother Jones: Sarah Palin's Tea Party Dinner Disaster.
• TPM: McCain Primary Challenger Hayworth: Obama 'Should Come Forward' With His Birth Certificate.
• Prop 8 Trial Tracker: This is a Witness for the Defense?
• Think Progress: Top DADT Advocate Says Abu Ghraib Abuses Happened Because Women Are Allowed In The Military.
• Media Matters: A guide to Andrew Breitbart's lies, smears, and distortions.
• Finally, what does is say about the state of the GOP that its members have to promise to be on their best behavior tonight during the President's State of the Union Address?

• PFAW Statement: Guess Who's Coming to the McDonnell Inauguration.
• Rev. Byron Williams, a member of PFAW Foundation’s African American Ministers in Action program, weighs in on the Pat Robertson saga.
• As always, the Family Research Council has something useful and insightful to say when it comes to Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
• Media Matters tracks the Interpol conspiracy theory through right-wing media.
• If Michael Steele wasn't chairman of the RNC last summer, who was?
• Finally, Rep. Steve King puts every other absurd response to the crisis in Haiti to shame with this statement: "Illegal immigrants from Haiti have no reason to fear deportation but if they are deported, Haiti is in great need of relief workers and many of them could be a big help to their fellow Haitians.”

• Alan Colmes: The Republican National Committee’s War On Christmas.
• Steve Benen: Mary Matalin's Alternate Universe.
• Box Turtle Bulletin: Focus On the Family Denounces Uganda’s Anti-Gay Bill.
• Media Matters: O Tannen-Mao? The right-wing's White House Christmas tree freak-out.
• Ezra Klein: Republicans try and fail to justify voting for Medicare Part D.
• Think Progress: DeMint Uses Failed Terrorist Bombing To Attack Unions.
• Finally, just when you think the Orly Taitz saga can't get any stranger, it does.

• Guess who is co-sponsoring the next CPAC? The John Birch Society.
• Alan Colmes: FCC Chief Diversity Officer Blames “Right-Wing Smear Campaign” For Death Threats.
• David Weigel: Nervous About Health Care, Tea Partiers Look to 2010.
• Andy Birkey: Is candidate Quist still the religious right candidate?
• Steve Benen: Die-In Struggles to Come to Life.
• Media Matters: Jawa Report calls for "ass kicking" of Jennings defenders.
• Hanna Rosin: One of the great ironies of Oral Roberts' life was that he could not heal his own broken hip.
• Finally, Stephen Colbert and the "The Blitzkrieg on Grinchitude":

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Blitzkrieg on Grinchitude - Treesus & CHRIST-mas Tree
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor U.S. Speedskating

Last week, Media Matters ran this piece exposing the views of Lord Christopher Monckton:

Media Matters Action Network, our partner organization, has unearthed a 1987 American Spectator article in which Lord Christopher Monckton -- one of the right's favorite global warming deniers -- advocates requiring the entire population to undergo monthly HIV tests and forcibly quarantining "for life" those who test positive.

You would think that such views would have made Monckton a marginal figure. But apparently there are no views too extreme for the right-wing media.

On October 23, for instance, Glenn Beck said on his Fox News show that Monckton is "one of the world's foremost authorities on what the global warming hoax is really all about and what they are about to sign over in Copenhagen."

Monckton appeared as a guest throughout Beck's October 30 Fox show. Beck introduced Monckton by saying: "With me now, Lord Christopher Monckton, former adviser to British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher and climate change expert."

On October 19, Rush Limbaugh described Monckton as "a voice of sanity," saying, "The hysteria on the left on virtually everything is all over the place. So you got to hear a voice of sanity in this. Last Wednesday, St. Paul, Minnesota, during a presentation at Bethel University, a portion of remarks made by Lord Christopher Monckton regarding the United Nations' climate change treaty."

Allow me to just remind everyone that Mike Huckabee said more or less the same thing ... in 1992, which was five years after Monckton wrote his piece and four years after the federal government had distributed a pamphlet penned by then Surgeon General C. Everett Koop entitled “Understanding AIDS” which explained that the disease could not be contracted through everyday contact:

"It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population," he said. "This deadly disease, for which there is no cure, is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.

"If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague."

Huckabee is currently a leading contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, a highly sought-after speaker, and host of a television program on Fox News.

Considering that such views didn't turn Huckabee into a marginal figure, it shouldn't come as much of a shock to see someone like Monckton hailed as a "voice of sanity" because, as Media Matters notes, there simply are "no views too extreme for the right-wing media."

UPDATE: Over at Open Left, Nick Berning points out that Monckton is not actully a "lord," nor is he a "Nobel Laureate."

• Matthew Yglesias: War on Christmas Just Got More Fierce.
• Pam's House Blend: GOProud calls for President to speak out against Uganda's execute gays bill (You know, maybe GOProud should be calling on some of its CPAC allies to speak out as well.)
• Sarah Posner: Rick Warren condemns the punishment but not inflammatory rhetoric.
• Think Progress: Tea Party activists to ‘storm Senate offices’ and ‘stay there until they force us to leave.’
• Tapped: CAIR Tipped Off The FBI.
• Media Matters: AIM blog post smearing Jennings as a "pedophile" removed from site.
• Finally, it's amazing that ABC let an insightful media professional like John Stossel get away.