Let’s face it, “fact-checking” radiates from the same noxious fever swamp of ideological zealotry that dominates most newsrooms in Big Media. An example is the herd of “fact-checkers” rushing to defend Xavier Becerra’s verbal gymnastics in yesterday’s (2/25/2021) confirmation hearing to hide the fact that he assiduously worked to force religious charities into sinning. With a straight face he said,
“I have never sued the nuns, any nuns. I’ve never sued any affiliation of nuns, and my actions have always been directed at the federal agencies.”
And with an equally straight face, the Washington Post’s fact-checker, Salvador Rizzo, came to the demagogue’s defense: “It’s misleading to say Becerra sued the nuns . . . . the California attorney general has not filed lawsuits or brought enforcement actions against the Little Sisters of the Poor, a charity run by Catholic nuns.”
The Sacramento Bee chimed in as if the two newsrooms were working off each other’s Twitter feed. This vaunted exemplar of truth in the fourth estate bellowed that Becerra “did target a federal government exemption”, not a specific group. Then, the clowns went on to smear Sen. Ben Sasse’s assessment of the obvious as “misleading”. If this was a football game, the WaPO and SacBee were the pulling guards for a wide sweep left.
The vast majority of today’s journalists aren’t referees; they are huddling with one team. Their team was caught with a teammate who wanted to coerce not just one group of nuns but every church and denomination with traditional morality and a calling to help the needy. To be clear, Becerra did target the nuns (Little Sisters of the Poor), and nearly every tithe-paying Christian, Muslim, Jew, and pagan.
Becerra began the feud in 2017 when he couldn’t tolerate the fact that many established churches have beliefs that he decreed shouldn’t be allowed to stand in the way of Obama’s edict in Obamacare that everyone, including nuns, provide birth control and abortifacients in their health coverage, a sin for them and many other people of faith. For Becerra, if they don’t cooperate, they must be made to cooperate. Trump saw the injustice in this authoritarian act and granted religious exemptions. Becerra, as the not-so-Golden State’s AG, sued the Trump administration (one of 100 lawsuits in his personal jihad against Trump) in a case that appeared in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as California v. Little Sisters of the Poor.
So, it’s worse than an assault on one faith group. The commissar wanted to force all of them into perdition, or get entirely out of Christ’s mission to help the needy.
Becerra’s verbal slight-of-hand reaches right up there into the highest ranks of public buffoonery. Earlier, his comrade, Sen. Alex Padilla, came to the defense of his fellow California revolutionary by invoking the race card in his gambit to one-up Becerra in tomfoolery. The race card is a pity card. He sat next Becerra to invoke pity for the times that he and Becerra were the only Latinos in the room. What? What’s that got to do with handing over control of the nation’s healthcare to a lefty zealot? A person’s high level of melanin doesn’t inoculate the person from foolishness. One can be Latino, Anglo, Asian, Black, a man or woman, gay or straight, and a man-one-day-but-a-woman-the-next, and still be stupid.
“Fact-checking”, and much the rest of the fourth estate, can no more be trusted than the race-hustlers seeking a promotion at taxpayer expense, like Becerra. Our public discourse more resembles the babblings of an asylum than the interactions of mature adults. The problem: others around the world are watching the madness. What a sobering thought.
RogerG