Confessed serial liar David Brock thinks you’re stupid.
His left-wing character assassination factory, Media Matters for America, has been caught lying once again. Media Matters uses deception and counts on you not making the effort to read the full quotations it truncates.
OK, to start, your link implies MM took some page down.
(Things have a habit of disappearing on the Web so here is a PDF copy of the blog post preserved for posterity.)
Yet I had no trouble finding the MM page. But this is beside the point.
What does MM say that the blogger calls a lie?
Media conservatives falsely claim Obama's Supreme Court criticism was "unprecedented"
MM said:
Right-wing media are attacking President Obama for his criticism of the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC during the State of the Union, calling it "unprecedented" and accusing the president of "intimidation." In fact, Obama's comments were not "unprecedented"; Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have previously used the State of the Union to criticize judicial actions, including those of the Supreme Court.
(emphasis mine) MM links to the right wing media's quotes and supports MM's statement, "previously used the State of the Union to criticize judicial actions, including...".
The blog link claims:
In fact the evidence that Media Matters presents—past State of the Union addresses from previous presidents—only demonstrates the opposite, namely, that Obama’s actions are unprecedented.
The blogger cites the following example:
Example #1: Media Matters writes that President Warren Harding criticized the high court:
Harding criticized the Supreme Court for overturning the Child Labor Law in his 1922 State of the Union.
The blogger claims Harding wasn't criticizing the court. Here's the blogger's interpretation:
This reads like a mere statement of fact. Harding recognizes the high court has produced a result he didn’t agree with and recommends that the Constitution be amended.
Here's
Harding's actual statement linked from the blogger's page:
Closely related to this problem of education is the abolition of child labor. Twice Congress has attempted the correction of the evils incident to child employment. The decision of the Supreme Court has put this problem outside the proper domain of Federal regulation until the Constitution is so amended as to give the Congress indubitable authority.
That is a statement of fact and not a criticism of a Supreme Court decision? That's a stretch.
The second and third examples from MM are Reagan's criticism of Roe v Wade and the school prayer ruling, and Bush's criticism of activist judges below the level of SCOTUS.
MM said:
Reagan directly attacked the Supreme Court for Roe v. Wade. In his 1984 State of the Union address, Reagan attacked the 1973 Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, during a discussion on abortion
MM also quotes Reagan's criticism that school prayer was unconstitutional.
The blogger claims this was not a President criticizing the court's decisions:
If Reagan’s criticizing the high court, he’s certainly going about it in an oblique fashion. The speech doesn’t reference any Supreme Court ruling.
What was Reagan criticizing then? Seriously. Did Congress pass a law Reagan was criticizing? Was Reagan saying he was happy with the Court's decisions and was merely suggesting Constitutional Amendments because Reagan recognized the Constitution really did outlaw abortion and school prayer?
MM added Bush's criticism of activist judges redefining marriage. The blogger's complaint: it wasn't a Supreme Court activist decision, it was a lower court Bush was addressing. MM never claimed Bush criticized the Supreme Court. So I guess the blogger's complaint was that the additional evidence that Presidents have criticized the Judicial Branch made MM a liar since the example wasn't technically the same as Obama's.
All in all this is a pretty weak claim that MM lied in their calling out the right wing media for trying to portray Obama as unpresidential.
