Pajama Boy Ethan Krupp Admits He's A"Liberal F-ck"

December 27, 2013 - (Language Advisory) - If you thought "Pajama Boy" Ethan Krupp was just another "liberal f-ck," you were were right. In fact, he proudly calls himself just that. It exploded on the Internet today that Krupp once described himself as "a liberal fuck" in one of his own blog posts. In the same post, he also admitted to using the tactics of Saul Alinsky. In fact, Krupp's definition of "liberal f-ck" is straight out of Alinsky's book "Rules for Radicals."

Krupp is the cocoa-sipping, flannel clad, unofficial face of Obamacare who gained notoriety by appearing in two horrid online promos and one absurd video that urged people to #GetTalking about healthcare. The propaganda pieces were made to encourage Americans to visit barackobama.com/health-care. Krupp has been dissected and ripped apart in the conservative blogosphere for about a week now, and many Leftists are not too happy that Krupp is now a permanently affixed meme of socialist healthcare.

Setting The Record Straight: The Washington Examiner Was NOT The First To Reveal Pajama Boy's Real Name

December 22, 2013 - The Internet exploded last week with laughter when it "discovered" a plaid clad flannel failure dubbed "PajamaBoy" by conservative bloggers. His real name was not known to more than a few of those bloggers.

In a post on November 1, titled "Creepy: OFA encourages parents to have ‘the talk’ with their children this holiday," Twitchy.com published PajamaBoy's real name:

Now OFA is urging parents this holiday season to have “the talk” with their children — you know, the talk about buying health insurance from the Obamacare exchange....Is it just us, or does that kid (actually Ethan Krupp, OFA’s content writer) look young enough to still be covered under his parents’ plan? And will the video help families #GetTalking?

Charlie Spiering

Was Twitchy.com the very first to publish his name? I don't know, but it was the earliest one I found. In any case, it was well before the Washington Examiner's post by Charlie Spiering on December 19, which was headlined "Meet Ethan Krupp: Pajamacare boy and Organizing for Action employee."

That headline is misleading because it makes it seem as though the Washington Examiner was the first to reveal that Pajama Boy as Ethan Krupp. Was Charlie Spiering really unaware of previously published references to Ethan Krupp?

Charlie Spiering probably likes hot cocoa, too.
Click to enlarge

Spiering never did tell us how he came to learn PajamaBoy's real name, which is a bit suspicious. Hard journalistic investigation? Diligent scouring of the Internet? Or did he learn it by reading Twitchy.com or some other website that named Krupp weeks before he "revealed" it?

As happens too often, other bloggers lazily reposted the Examiner piece without digging a little deeper. That spread the false impression that Krupp's name was not known until Dec. 19.

Could Saturday Night Live Have Saved Pajama Boy's Reputation? Maybe, But It's Too Late Now

Pajama Boy Ethan Krupp: Cocoa Puff

December 21, 2013 - Do I even need to explain who "Pajama Boy" is? He first appeared in early November, but the world was largely unaware of him until a few days ago. Suddenly, he became one of the hottest Internet memes and a favorite target of ridicule for conservative pundits.

"Pajama Boy"is a derogatory name that conservative pundits pinned on him. The actor's real name is Ethan Krupp, and he will forever be remembered as the dweeb in one-piece plaid pajamas, delicately clutching a cup of hot cocoa, in a piece produced by Organizing For America (OFA) for use by barackobama.com. There's a horrible video too (watch it below) in which Krupp portrays the same dweeby dude. His family is weirdly uncomfortable about having a frank discussion about getting health insurance.

Ethan Krupp is a 20-something grad of the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison. An aspiring actor, Krupp's career now seems suddenly aborted by the severe trashing he's gotten over the past few days. It's probably safe to say that Krupp has been forever typecast in our collective memory as a smirking little a-hole who has no idea what real life is about and wants to lecture you about how to live your own.

The decision to let himself become the new face of Obamacare has probably destroyed his acting career. With his world seeming to crumble all around him, there might have been one thing that could have saved young Ethan's tattered reputation: An appearance on Saturday Night Live on the night of December 21. Any later date beyond that will be too late to resurrect him. Nothing else can undo what Krupp has done to himself, which is to retreat from public scrutiny, go silent and hide in the shadows.

An appearance on SNL is not as far-fetched as you might think. Krupp is a student at The Second City improv theater group, which in turn is well connected to Saturday Night Live. Krupp was a student at The Second City in Chicago when the video was made. The mother in the video is portrayed by Kimmie Companik-Warner, an associate faculty member of The Second City Training Center. One wonders if anybody at The Second City tried to arrange for SNL to invite Krupp onto the show.

Imagine a sketch that spoofs the "Get ready to have the talk" video. Envision a skit in which a frustrated Pajama Boy sits at his computer going crazy because the Obamacare website won't let him sign up. Imagine a skit that features the wussy Krupp as a tough guy super hero, tongue-in-cheek of course.

The result might have allowed a nearly instant rehabilitation of Ethan Krupp. He would have shed the "Pajama Boy" stink and stuck it to all those mean conservative bully bloggers. He would have turned it around.

But Ethan Krupp is one of those guys who runs for cover the moment any criticism comes his way. He was an editor of the Madison Misnomer, a  "humor" rag that had no problem with ripping other people apart. Now it's Krupp being publicly ridiculed, and he can't take the heat. Rather than ride his sudden notoriety and play it for laughs and do some self-promotion, the spineless fool has the last several days scrubbing the Internet of any traces of himself that he can access. He deleted or locked his accounts at YouTube, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and more after he was outed as Pajama Boy. How could he think that would preserve his image, and that the world would not notice that all of his online presence suddenly disappeared?

Think of it another way. Suppose some actor makes a debut in a major film, and his looks and performance are widely ridiculed in the media. In reaction, that actor deletes all of his social media accounts and refuses to answer the phone. He just... disappears. What would you think of that actor? Well, that's what Krupp did.

In light of his cowardice, it is not reasonable to expect that Ethan Krupp would have accepted an invitation to mock himself on Saturday Night Live. The folks at SNL are risk takers, after all, but they know a chicken-shit loser when they see one and are not willing to take that kind of risk. The last thing they want is a sniveling amateur like Krupp to freeze up on stage or do something to mess up the show, which is broadcast live.

Sure, he might have appeared on SNL if they had asked him. Sure, someone there might have talked him back to his senses - what few senses he had. Only a self-absorbed fool with no sense would not have foreseen the reaction to the Obamacare ad and video. For an aspiring improv actor, Krupp seems oddly out of touch with who he is and how guys like him are perceived. He's learning that now, the hard way.

"Well, if Krupp can’t achieve fame," wrote Jim Treacher at Daily Caller, "infamy is the next best thing." Sure, but Krupp has achieved world-class dork infamy, and that's never good.

Post Script: Check out "SNL Script: Pajama Boy Meets Duck Dynasty," a speculative script for a Saturday Night Live skit posted at Free Republic.

EXCLUSIVE: Breitbart Website's Dishonest Use of Two Photos In Stories About Sidwell Friends School

Does anyone at Brietbart know that L.A. is not in D.C.?
Click image to enlarge.

Sorry Breitbart: This is NOT Sidwell Friends School.
(AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) (Damian Dovarganes)
Click image to enlarge (see original story).

Dec. 29, 2012 - BUSTED: Breitbart's "Big Government" website is using two photos that they present falsely as being taken at the exclusive Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., attended by the Obama daughters. In my opinion, they did this deliberately. Sadly, both photos are being reproduced by bloggers who don't know how, or are too lazy, to do a little basic research to confirm facts.

One of the photos in question was most certainly not taken at Sidwell. The other is highly suspicious. Let me explain, and keep in mind that I am a conservative blogger who doesn't like fellow conservative bloggers presenting lies, whether on purpose or through stupidity. We all make mistakes. I sure do, but I correct them when I become aware of them. I would never do what the Breitbart kiddies did here.

BAD PHOTO #1: On Dec. 23, Breitbart's "Big Government" website published a photo as part of a story about security guards at Sidwell Friends School, the private institution in Washington, D.C. that the Obama daughters attend. The article, written by someone who calls himself A.W.R. Hawkins, is titled "D.C. School Posts Job Opening For Police Officer." A photo at the top of that article shows four burly, armed guards. The photo has no caption, and no source is given.

Trouble is, the photo was actually taken in February, 2011 on the other side of the continent, in Los Angeles. The armed men are Los Angeles Unified School District police, and they were guarding Miramonte Elementary school during a protest in Los Angeles on Monday, Feb. 6, 2012. Sadly, hundreds of conservative bloggers are mindlessly republishing the same photos as they follow Breitbart like zombies, telling their readers that the photo is of Sidwell Friends School.

Blog Launches Citywide Taxi-Top Ad Campaign in Chicago

CNB's new taxi-top "blogvertising" in Chicago

Sept. 18, 2012 - Some taxi cabs in Chicago will be sporting an ad for a political blog. Beginning this week, about 300 taxis in the city will feature an ad from Chicago News Bench (CNB), a conservative blog of news and commentary.

CNBs latest "blogvertising" campaign is an unusual way for a blog to promote itself. Many just scrawl their blog's web address (URL) on public restroom walls with a Sharpie marker, post irrelevant and unwelcome comments on other websites with a link back to their own site, or send pitifully desperate emails to the publishers of  larger blogs and websites. Still other bloggers will print up a few hundred cheap stickers and slap them on light poles, boarded up storefronts, and bus stop shelters.

"There are many ways to promote a blog, but most bloggers think small," says Erma Gerd. She is CNB's Advertising Director, and the taxi-top campaign was her idea. "Advertising on taxis is never even considered by most of them but I don't know why not. It seems like a pretty obvious thing to do, don't you think?"

CNB's taxi-top ad campaign is scheduled through mid-January, 2013. If the campaign is successful, CNB will has plans for billboards throughout northern Illinois. Ms. Gerd says that CNB is also producing a one-minute television ad to air during the next Super Bowl.

Neal Boortz's Fake Commencement Speech

Neal Boortz Faux Commencement Speech

Conservative radio talk show host Neal Boortz does not mince words, but some of his words have been given myth status by some bloggers who apparently never attended a journalism class.

When Boortz delivered the "commencement speech" to the graduating class of Texas A&M... uhm, wait, hold on.

Boortz did write a killer commencement speech, but he never delivered it at Texas A&M or anywhere else during an actual graduation ceremony. Oh, it was a real speech, and he really did deliver it (once), but it was never given as an actual commencement speech. Confused? Sure you are, but that's okay. Boortz himself titled his video "Faux Commencement Speech."

(Update, 2019: Despite exhaustive searching, we no longer find a video of Boortz's speech. Read the full text of the "Boortz Faux Commencement Speech" at Patriot Post.)

Boortz himself explains it best: "The speech was actually delivered one time .. but not at a commencement. A few years ago we filled up an auditorium at Kennesaw State College to give me the chance to don a robe and just … pretend."

The fact that Boortz never gave this speech to a graduating class in no way diminishes its power. Boortz is a brilliant writer and a talented speaker. Enjoy the speech, and share it, but please don't spread the myth that he gave it to a bunch of Aggie graduates.

Why I Removed Intense Debate Comments From This Blog

April 8, 2012 - The website of IntenseDebate is down today with no explanation. IntenseDebate is a widely used commenting system used by many websites and blogs. It was working for me last night, but tonight neither their login page and home page are not reachable. Although other parts of the website are available, bloggers who use IntenseDebate cannot log in to repond to, or moderate, comments on their own sites.

There is no message about this from IntenseDebate anywhere on their website, not even on their own blog, where the last post was on February 23. As of 11:00 PM CDT tonight, their most recent post on Twitter was made on February 22.

Chicago News Bench has been using it for a couple of years instead of Blogger's own commenting system. There are a number of reasons why some bloggers choose third-party commenting systems, which I am not going to go into here except to say that they all offer more control and information about comments than does Blogger's own system.

However, because IntenseDebate has shown itself to be unreliable, I felt there was no choice but to uninstall it. I don't know why IntenseDebate's website is having problems, but this seems like the tip of the iceberg. I have had IntenseDebate on another blog, Homeless Patriot, but will remove it from that as well.

Consider this: No tweets on Twitter since February 22. No post on their blog since February 23. This says to me that they are either not aware of the problem with their own website, or they don't care enough to communicate with people who use their commenting system. Or, both may be true. This is not acceptable. Some blogs have IntenseDebate installed as a simple widget, as do I on some of my blogs.

On Chicago News Bench, though, I had it integrated in the html code of the template. The current problems that IntenseDebate is having were causing the load time of this website to be annoyingly slow. "Waiting for IntenseDebate" was the message. Fortunately, IntenseDebate's instructions for a manual uninstall were still online. Unfortunately, they were not completely accurate and it took me more than an hour of editing and testing to fully delete their code from mine. However, as soon as I successfully cleaned out all remnants of IntenseDebate, this blog loaded normally.

Another blogger posted briefly about earlier problems with IntenseDebate.

"Once again," wrote IslamInEurope on March 22, "IntenseDebate, my comment system, is acting up. This includes comments disappearing, or appearing only when the posts are viewed from the comment link. I'm debating what to do about this. Meanwhile, I have notified IntenseDebate and am waiting for their fix. Please let me know if you see any problems."

I noticed that IslamInEurope dropped IntenseDebate since that post and is now using Disqus, another third-party commenting system. By the time you read this, Chicago News Bench might have done that too. Then again, I'm in no hurry.

Department of Defense Visits Chicago News Bench and Moonbattery

April 3, 2012 - I just wanted say a quick "Thank you" to the hard working employees at the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) for visiting Chicago News Bench. Seems one of their urgent national defense tasks is to investigate my post about the  "Arrest Eric Holder" t-shirts.

Yep, someone at the DOD Network Information Center (IP 207.132.245.129) at 7:36 a.m. today, and someone else at the Department of Defense Network (140.194.140.55) at 5:57 a.m. visite Chicago News Bench.

Both visitors found that post via Moonbattery, where they linked to me. The first DOD employee, at 5:57 a.m. was using Internet Explorer 8.0 in Windows XP. The second one, at 7:36 a.m., was using Internet Explorer 7.0 on Windows XP.

This raises questions:

• Why are DOD employees using the outdated Windows XP?
• Although Moonbattery is a fine blog, why are DOD employees surfing the web on company time?
• If these employees were on break, and not on company time, were they using the company's laptops? Or using DOD computers? 
• If they used personal laptops, why are they allowed to use the DOD's connection to surf the Internet if it is not work related?
• Suppose their web surfing was work related: Why is the DOD busy surfing conservative blog sites?
• If the DOD is monitoring conservative bloggers (they are, of course), is it a neutral kind of observation or something nefarious?
• Will these employees buy an Arrest Eric Holder t-shirt, or the new Arrest Eric Holder coffee mug?

I hope the DOD employees bookmarked Moonbattery and Chicago News Bench. Hopefully, too, did they tweet our posts, or recommend them to Facebook?

Blog Attacked Via Facebook Group For Posting 'Blow Up The Koran'

"Leisture Man Ops" Facebook profile picture

March 12, 2012 - The counterjihad website Infidels United was temporarily brought down today by a mysterious group on Facebook. 

That group orchestrated a dedicated denial of of service (DDOS) attack by inviting others to a Facebook event called "DDOS http://www.infidelsunited.com."  The site was brought back online this evening just past 9:00 PM CDT, but the attacks continue.

A DDOS is "is an attempt to make a computer or network resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the concerted efforts of a person, or multiple people to prevent an Internet site or service from functioning efficiently or at all, temporarily or indefinitely." (source: Wikipedia)

Click image to enlarge it

"Leisture Man Ops" is the group or individual responsible for the DDOS. (No, that's not my mispelling: The fool can't even spell "Leisure" correctly.)

The reason for the attack is not clear, but is probably connected to the fact that Infidels United posted "Blow Up The Koran" on March 5.

Infidels United tells Chicago News Bench that the DDOS attacks have been "unceasing" since the FB event "DDOS http://www.infidelsunited.com" was posted on March 6th.

"Leisture Man Ops" seems to be Malaysian. Many of the phrases uses at their Facebook pages are in the Malay language.

Click image to enlarge it

The phrase "teruskan attack" is used a number of times, and "teruskan" means, roughly, "keep trying" or "don't stop" in Malay, which makes sense in this context for a persistent denial of service attack on a website.

"I have reported it to Facebook and the FBI via http://ic3.gov," said the owner of Infidels United, "and nobody seems to give a crap!"

He wonders, as do we all, why Facebook does not police this kind of activity more closely.

Related articles

• Anonymous Members Hacked During Their Own DDoS Attacks (gizmodo.com)
• Too Big To Fail: Why Anonymous And Hacktivism Will Go On After Sabu (techcrunch.com)
• Facebook Goes Down Temporarily In Parts Of Europe (kayceeweezy.wordpress.com)
• Denial-of-service attacks are on the rise, anti-DDoS vendors report (oracleidentity.wordpress.com)

UPDATED: ANDREW BREITBART DEAD AT 43 OF NATURAL CAUSES

Andrew Breitbart at Right Nation 2010
Chicago News Bench photo (c) T.H.Mannis

March 1, 2012 - Conservative commentator, former liberal, political warrior and internet publisher Andrew Breitbart has died of natural causes.  Breitbart was pronounced dead at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center "about midnight" according to the Los Angeles Times.

Reuters reports that Breitbart's time of death was 12:19 a.m. Breitbart was taken to the hospital after collapsing while taking a walk near his home in L.A. Reuters hints at the possibility that Breitbart died of a heart attack, but that has not been confirmed. ABC News notes that Breitbart had history of heart problems.

"He collapsed on the sidewalk," Reuters was told by Breitbart's father-in-law, actor Orson Bean, "and the paramedics were there very quickly and they couldn't revive him." Bean spoke to Reuters by phone.  An autopsy may be performed as early as tomorrow.

The International Business Times (IBT) says that Los Angeles Coroner told them via e-mail Thursday morning that the Breitbart's cause of death was not yet known and an examination of the body was still pending. "Craig R. Harvey, chief coroner investigator and chief of operations for the Los Angeles Coroner's Office confirmed Andrew Breitbart's time of death as being 12:19 a.m. Thursday at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles," says IBT.

Breitbart and his team of citizen journalists have broken ground by highlighting stories that most or all other media ignored. 

The Anthony Weiner scandal ("Weingergate") of 2010 is one example, as are the exposes of ACORN. He was a giant figure in the world of Internet journalism, helping get both the Drudge Report and the Huffington Post off the ground.

The NY Daily News gives this capsule history of Breitbart:

He was the "adopted son of a restaurant owner and a banker — was raised in a liberal, Jewish household in Los Angeles. He said his political outlook shifted after the Clarence Thomas hearings, in which the future Supreme Court Justice was grilled by Senate Democrats over Anita Hill's accusations of past workplace sexual harassment.... The Tulane graduate got his start in the online news world as an assistant to conservative news aggregator Matt Drudge in the 1990s. He helped turn the struggling Drudge Report into one of the most influential websites on the Internet, read daily by opinion makers and power brokers.

Breitbart friend Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post Media Group released this kind statement today:


I was asked many times this morning for my thoughts on what Andrew meant to the political world, but all I can think of at the moment is what Andrew meant to me as a friend, starting from when we worked together -- his passion, his exuberance, his fearlessness. And above all, what I'm thinking of at the moment is his amazing wife Susie and their four beautiful young children. My love and thoughts are with them right now.

Predictably and sadly, the conspiracy theorists are already wondering aloud whether Breitbart's death was really natural. Some are saying Brietbart might have been assassinated. More on that later, although I do not wear that tinfoil hat.

Andrew Breitbart's websites are: BigGovernment, BigJournalism, BigHollywood, BigPeace, BreitbartTV and Breitbart.com.

Homeless Blogger Scoops Madison Media on Brittingham Park Body Story

July 21, 2011 - Madison, WI - A homeless blogger beat the local media outlets in reporting the discovery of a man's body in a local park yesterday. The "Homeless Patriot" reported at 7:40 p.m. on Wednesday that "Reports are circulating that a body was found a Brittingham Park this afternoon. Brittingham Park is on the northwestern shore of Monona Bay." The Homeless Patriot's posting of the report beat out all of the local media and bloggers. The Homeless Patriot scooped the local media again today by reporting that the body was badly decomposed (see HP's update here). WKOW TV reported the story online at 7:43 p.m., three minutes after the Homeless Blogger posted his report. WISC TV did not report the story online until 8:04 p.m. It was not until today at 10:45 a.m. that the Cap Times newspaper reported the story. They are reporting that the body is that of an unidentified man, age 36. Police have not yet said what the cause of death is, but the Homeless Patriot reports today in an update that the body was badly decomposed, making initial determination of sex difficult. If you have information that could help the investigation, call Madison police at 608-266-4924. Full disclosure: I am the Homeless Patriot.

New Blog, "The Homeless Patriot"

New blog to make note of, but you could say I'm biased. Here is an excerpt from the first post at the "Homeless Patriot" blog:

"I am pressed for time. With days left before I must vacate my apartment in Chicago, I am trying to get this blog in order while I still have the luxury of easy computer access. Once I'm out, I will probably not have this laptop....There are other things I must do, too. I need to get a backpack, a survival knife, some walking shoes. Toilet paper, I suppose, but that will run out eventually." Continued at the "Homeless Patriot"...

Updated: Blogger Is Back, But Posts Are Gone, Widgets Displaced

UPDATED: May 13, 2011 - Google's "Blogger" blog site is was down for an incredibly long time. It went out of service for bloggers late on Wednesday night and I am only now able to log in to post this. The outage was spotty, however: I was able to post three items yesterday but now I see that they are missing. Thanks a lot, Blogger. My layout was effed up, too, which I just scrambled to fix. Update, 7:00 pm CDT: Yesterday I posted three items, all of which disappeared. Two have now reappeared after Blogger did its under-the-hood fixes, but one is still lost in the ether.

Bloody Reuters Bin Laden Photos Are Still Up

May 4, 2011 - This afternoon, Reuters posted some very graphic photos of corpses, killed in Sunday's raid in the bin Laden compound in Pakistan. You can see them here, in the Reuters story titled "Photos from the Bin Laden Compound." Some hasty bloggers have snagged the Reuters photos and have are claiming - in error - that Reuters took the photos down. In fact, they are still up (as of 7:30 p.m. EDT). Bungalow Bill's blogspot ran some of the amazing Reuters photos in a post titled "The Reuters Images of the Attack Against Osama Bin Laden That Were Removed From Reuters Web Site." Ah, sorry, your headline is misleading. American Power blogspot has some pointless commentary and over there, where they at least acknowledge that Reuters re-posted the photos in "an update." (Actually, American Power hat tipped blogger Iconic Surrealism for the update info.) Even one of my all-time fave websites, iOwnTheWorld, fell for the Reuters-pulled-the-photos hysteria. In a wonderfully titled post, "Warning: These photos might be too graphic if you’re a progressive pussy," my good friend Big Fur Hat wrote, "These photos were pulled by Reuters about one hour after they were published. But the genie cannot be re-corked on the internet." Well, no, the photos are still up at Reuters.com. I still love iOwnTheWorld, though. See, my fellow bloggers, now and then news sites post updates and move stuff around - kinda like we do - and so all of the hysteria about Reuters "pulling" the photos is nonsense. It was housekeeping, dudes. Reuters simply moved the furniture around, so to speak. They didn't hide it.

Four Years and Almost 500 Blog Banners (Video)

Started in October of 2006, Chicago News Bench has become one of the most read conservative political blogs in Illinois, averaging over 10,000 readers monthly. We like to change our banner often, getting a bit artsy-fartsy now and then (it keeps the creative juices flowing, and it's fun). This video is a rapid-fire compilation of nearly 500 of our banners, set to a fun music track, created by blogmeister Tom Mannis. Enjoy.

Shame On You, Pamela Geller (Atlas Farts)

Last night's odd encounter between Obama's Secret Service detail and Nation of Islam bodyguards will also be distorted by some irresponsible bloggers. Pamela Geller, for example. What a disappointment. I used to be a fan of Pamela Geller. No more. Geller writes a very popular conservative blog called "Atlas Shrugs," and she posted this amazingly inaccurate headline on her blog today: "Atlas Exclusive: President Obama Skips Arlington to Spend Memorial Day with Louis Farrakhan amidst Nation of Islam Thugs." The only thing "exclusive" about that post, which draws on a pooled press report, is the way that Geller twisted the facts to conform to her hatred for Obama. Hey, I'm no fan of Obama, and I love to jab him on my blog. But I don't intentionally lie about him, as Geller did in her post. Note to Geller: You do yourself no favors in the Credibility Department when you badly and intentionally distort facts. Obama did NOT "spend Memorial Day with Louis Farrakhan," as you wrote. As we see from the Jackie Calme pool report that you yourself quoted from, Obama was at a friend's home that happens to be near the Farrakhan house. Shame on you, Pamela Geller. In writing such hysterical distortions you do a disservice to all other conservative bloggers.

Bully Dan Proft Sics His Lawyer On Me...

My May 8, 2010 post about Dan Proft has been removed involuntarily and under threat of legal action. Dan Proft did not like what I posted about him, and he had a lawyer send a letter to me demanding that I remove it (see it below).

I'll play Proft's silly little game - for now. All of the original text of that post has been removed, and the headline altered. I believe that to be in compliance with the spirit of the letter from Proft's attorney. All that remains there is a note that the post was deleted, with a link to this post. The html code for that May 8 post has been saved. So now, we watch and wait. The code is ready to be reinstalled at a moment's notice.

Ironically, the story that this deleted post is based on continues to develop, and I didn't start it. We only reported the startling claims of another person against an important Illinois political figure. Late this evening (May 10, 2010), that person (our source) said that Proft has not demanded that she remove her post from her Facebook page, which was posted before my May 8 blog post. Although the attorney's letter demanded that I remove the post right away (although you'll notice she did not give any deadline), she agreed by phone this afternoon to give me until midnight tonight. (It is now 11:58 p.m. by my clock.)

Her letter, below, is filled with bizarre assumptions and wild misinterpretations of the post. (Out of concern for my legal situation, comments will not be accepted on this post at this time.)

RELATED:

Leaked Emails Show WLS Host Bullying Illinois Tea Party Leaders (Part 1) April 4, 2012 https://illinoiscitizensforethicsreform.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/leaked-emails-show-wls-host-bullying-illinois-tea-party-leaders-part-1/

Andrew Breitbart Lays Into Rachel Maddow

Hey Andrew, tell how you really feel! HOT interview by Kenneth P. Vogel at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting this week. See Vogel's full report at Politico. Big hat tip to Pat Dollard. Check out breitbart.com. ALSO SEE: Andrew Breitbart OWNS Max Blumenthal at CPAC Leave a Comment * Conservative T-Shirts * Follow CNB on Twitter * RSS Feed

Every Blogger Should Read This

Chuck DeVore has written, in my opinion, the definitive explanation of why conservative political bloggers blog. He compares (as have I and others in the past) the modern blogger to past heroes of free speech, people such as Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, and many of our Founding Fathers.

Following are a few excerpts from DeVore's column at BigGovernment.com "These Are the Times That Try Men’s Blogging Souls" (emphasis added):

These are interesting times. Under President Obama and the most liberal Congress since 1965, the United States government is expected to borrow a trillion dollars per year for the next decade while the size and power of our federal government will grow at the expense of our liberties. In this environment, Democrats in Congress are working on a bill to give President Obama emergency control of the Internet (S.773) which would permit the President to seize control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency. 

Let me interrupt here and acknowledge the liberal bloggers screaming "What about us? We blog for the same reasons!" Well, yes and no. Conservative bloggers are trying to preserve the freedoms given to us by the Constitution and God. Generally speaking, Liberal bloggers write in an attempt to destroy those liberties - whether they realize it or not. Every time a Liberal blogger writes anything in support of, say, a rebirth of the Fairness Doctrine, they are supporting an erosion of our freedoms. To stay with DeVore's theme of the Franklinesque blogger, the Liberal blogger's analog would be a pro-England writer in 1776 who thinks George Washington is Satan's son and the King was right to raise the tax on tea. Into this breach come the bloggers. There are about 120 million blogs today. Many of them are political, most are not. America’s political bloggers trace their heritage, their place in the body politic, to the Colonial era. Most of today’s political bloggers would have been quite comfortable defying the British Stamp Act of 1765, were they around 244 years ago. 

10 Great Events in the Rise of the New Media

Friend Jerry Agar wrote a great piece about the influence of blogs and bloggers on American politics. He came up with a great list of "transformative moments" in recent political history. Those moments range from the influence that bloggers and micro-bloggers (Twitter) had on the aftermath of the Iranian election to major elected officials being taken down. It's a fascinating list that serves as a touchstone for any researcher. Jerry Agar can be heard on WGN 720 AM in Chicago. He has worked at other superstations, such as WLS in Chicago and WABC New York. He is currently also involved with the Illinois Policy Institute. 10 Great Events in the Rise of the New Media by Jerry Agar Not so long ago in America if it wasn’t on Walter Cronkite’s news report or in the pages of the New York Times, it wasn’t news. Most of the rest of the electronic and print reporters and commentators relied on those two entities to show them what was important. A person who knew something the big news operations did not, especially if their news contrasted with the way the media chieftains saw the world, was labeled as a crank and dismissed. The cost of setting up a competing news operation was a barrier to entry only a select few could penetrate. It is so cost prohibitive to start a daily paper that former KGB General Oleg Kalugin told me that it was the only piece of the “long march through the institutions” the Russians were unable to achieve. No more. The recent explosive story exposing the depths some ACORN employees were willing to sink to in order to thwart “the man” is the latest example of how powerful a tool the Internet is to the little guy and gal. With the help of local bloggers listed below I have compiled a list of the “10 Great Events in the Rise of the New Media.” We have tried to make a list of transformative moments.The Virginia Tech shootings, the landing on the Hudson and the 7/7 Tube bombings in London were initially reported by cell phone and blog, showing the power of on-site reporting with new media, but were perhaps not seminal moments, as they would have been reported anyway, and quickly, by the mainstream media (MSM). The list is an attempt to put these events in order of importance, rather than chronology, but it is not presented as definitive. Lists like this are inevitably arguable and worthy of discussion. Please, leave comments and discuss. That is the point. SEE THE LIST at Illinois Policy Institute The following bloggers helped with the list: The Chicago News Bench, Wilmette, Publius' Forum and Thoughts of a Regular Guy Conservative Hats & Shirts Leave a Comment - Chicago News Bench RSS Feed Visit us on Twitter!