The latest ridiculous rumor making its way around the right wing media and blogosphere — and even Congress — is that the Obama administration is negotiating with Egypt to release Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind imam responsible for the first bombing at the World Trade Center in 1993.
As much fun as our regular fundies are, the really loopy ones like Bill Keller are just a barrel of laughs. Keller, who bills himself as “the world’s leading Internet Evangelist,” seems to do little more than put out press releases taking his fellow wingnuts to task for not being pure enough — especially if they would vote for a Mormon. Here’s his latest:
I have long used the phrase argumentum ad labelum to describe a particular type of logical fallacy that is almost ubiquitous in political discussions. This type of argument is used to dismiss someone’s arguments rather than answer them. It’s pretty much the only form of argument David Barton ever uses, and more so now than ever as he attacks his critics as liberals, atheists and “academic elitists.” Evangelical historian John Fea blasts him for it:
Wow. This is very surprising to me and is sure to provoke howls of protest and claims of persecution from Barton, Glenn Beck and the rest of those liars. Thomas Nelson has decided to pull David Barton’s book The Jefferson Lies because it contains so many falsehoods.
David Barton is responding to some of the critics of his new and aptly-named book The Jefferson Lies and, true to form, his response is little more than a laundry list of logical fallacies with almost no substantive argument whatsoever. His most common form of argument is what I often call the argumentum ad labelum, or argument by label.
Equality Matters takes a look at that group of social scientists tried — and failed — to defend the legitimacy of the Mark Regnerus study on same-sex parenting. Equality Matters takes a look at who those people are, with entirely unsurprising results.
One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers compiled the data on Politifact’s findings on most of the leading Republican and Democratic leaders and media pundits, as well as President Obama and Mitt Romney, and found that the Republicans are dishonest — especially highly dishonest — significantly more often than Democrats.
David Barton joined Glenn Beck on James Robison’s TV show and went all meta on his own hypocrisy, not only falsely claiming that we all are trying to set up a “secular theocracy” but that it’s his opponents who accuse him of doing what they are guilty of. It’s kind of like a triple negative.
As I’m sure you know by now, Keith Olbermann has left Current TV in a huff, just as he did with ESPN, Fox and MSNBC (twice). It reminds me of someone who gets married and divorced 7 or 8 times; after a while, maybe you should realize that the problem is you. Keith is very smart and entertaining. But he has a giant ego and he just doesn’t play well with others. And where the heck does he go now? What network would have him? He may have to go the Glenn Beck route and start his own online network.
Dispatches From the Culture Wars
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