Day: 4/10/2012

Tea Party Marine Gary Stein Lies To CNN

Posted by on April 10, 2012 at 11:37 am. 3 Comments :

Last week Gary Stein, the Marine sergeant who runs the Facebook page Armed Forces Tea Party, was found to have violated military rules of conduct when he made hostile remarks directed at his commanders, including his commander-in-chief, President Obama. The board hearing his case ruled unanimously to recommend an “other than honorable” discharge for Stein and he is now awaiting a final decision from the base’s general.

As if he weren’t already in enough trouble, Stein appeared on CNN this morning for an interview with Soledad O’Brien where he was given the opportunity to defend his behavior. In response to a question from O’Brien, Stein somehow thought it would advance his position to blatantly lie.

Gary Stein CNN

Stein: First of all let’s talk about those comments. Those comments were made on a closed forum. They were up for five minutes, which we found out from testimony in the hearing. And only three people saw them. In fact the only reason anybody has a picture of those posts or knows what those posts are is because a Marine master sergeant decided that he was gonna take a screen capture and send it out to God knows who.

This is shockingly stupid on Stein’s part because the truth is so easy to verify. Stein’s assertion that the comments were made on a closed forum is rebutted by the fact that the forum is still available and is wide open for anyone on Facebook to access. His claim that the comments were up for only five minutes is rebutted by the fact that some of them, including one specifically cited by O’Brien (pictured above), are still there weeks later. And he must surely know that his comments were seen by more than three people because they have “Likes” and responses attached to them (note the 114 “Likes” and 32 responses on the image above). Finally, that image was not sent to me by a Marine master sergeant. I captured it myself on Stein’s Facebook page, and so can you.

So Stein’s remarks on CNN were entirely, and certifiably, false. That dishonesty is surely going to be apparent to anyone reviewing his case. It is startling that his attorney, sitting next to him for the whole interview, permitted him to be so brazenly deceitful on national television.

That brings us to the identity of his attorney, Gary Kreep, of the United States Justice Foundation. Kreep’s biography reveals that he was the general counsel to the racist, anti-immigration group, The Minutemen. He has been affiliated with the radical and violent anti-choice group, Operation Rescue. He was a California delegate to the Republican National Conventions in 1976 and 1980. He was also the creator of the “DefendGlenn” web site launched to counter the opposition to Glenn Beck that eventually led to his ouster from Fox News.

Most notably Kreep has been a leader of the “birther” movement that seeks to nullify Obama’s election on the grounds that he is not a U.S. citizen. Kreep has been one of the most vocal proponents of the birther myths going back to at least November 2008, when he tried to prevent California delegates to the Electoral College from casting their votes. He originally worked with birther queen, Orly Taitz, representing several clients, including Alan Keyes. He later replaced Taitz as counsel to birther litigant “Rev.” Wiley Drake. Drake is notable for publicly praying for the death of President Obama.

When a man like Drake selects you to represent him, over Orly Taitz, that is quite an endorsement. It is likewise revealing that Stein should retain Kreep out of all the lawyers available to represent him. He received help during his discharge hearing from the ACLU, and Tea Party organizers FreedomWorks are rallying support for his dubious cause. Yet the best he can do for legal representation is this Kreep (and how ’bout that tie?).

[Update] On April 25, 2012, the Marines formally discharged Stein as the commanding general of the base accepted the administrative board’s recommendation for discharge.

The James O’Keefe Crew Commits Voter Fraud Again

Posted by on April 10, 2012 at 3:07 am. 4 Comments :

In his obsessive campaign to demonstrate that there is rampant voter fraud in America, James O’Keefe once again proves that the only fraud being perpetrated is by himself and his cohorts.

James O'KeefeThe latest in a series of comically lame videos features one of O’Keefe’s minions entering a polling place in Washington, D.C. and requesting the ballot for Attorney General Eric Holder. This is a ruse that O’Keefe’s camp has tried before with similarly pointless results.

By requesting a ballot in the name of someone else, the O’Keefee proved that he could break a law that has severe penalties including fines and imprisonment. The notion that enough scofflaws to sway an election would expose themselves to such risk is preposterous. What the O’Keefee did not prove is that there is any evidence of such criminality taking place. That’s what is so dishonest and lazy about this sort of stunt. A legitimate journalist would not waste time pretending to commit a crime that is not being committed by any actual criminals. A legitimate journalist would attempt to document whether any such crimes were actually occurring and what effect they have had on elections. In fact, such journalism has been conducted and revealed that the problem being hyped by O’Keefe is practically non-existent.

This phony exercise by the O’Keefee is something like walking into a convenience store, pulling out a banana and demanding all the cash from the register, then posting the video of the “robbery” online along with a conclusion that holdups at banana-point are a serious national problem and that laws must be enacted to prevent them. Of course, to the best of my knowledge, there are very few banana-related crimes, and the act of pretending to commit one is not an argument for stricter law enforcement to protect innocent citizens from felonious fruit.

Advocates of voter ID laws often insinuate that opponents are in favor of voter fraud. They ask, with all the sincerity of a snake oil peddler, why anyone would oppose such laws. Then they refuse to actually listen to the answer. If there any of them reading this, here is the simple answer that you are so desperate to avoid: Enacting laws that will have the effect of preventing as many as 21 million eligible citizens from exercising their right to vote, in order to prevent barely a handful of illusive fraudulent votes, makes no sense from the perspective of either law or democracy.

The voter ID laws proposed by conservatives only make sense if your goal is to disenfranchise voters who have difficulties acquiring IDs that satisfy the arcanely crafted laws – typically students, seniors, and low-income citizens. It’s a tactic that amounts to stealing elections by not permitting your political adversaries to cast ballots.

The hackneyed and irrelevant stunts performed by O’Keefe and company provide no justification for denying the voting rights of millions of Americans. They only serve to further embarrass O’Keefe and expose him to additional criminal penalties such as those to which he pleaded guilty in Louisiana.