Piggie Park and Hobby Lobby

The following is a bit of rant mixed in with (perhaps unnecessary) background.

You might have glimpsed the following headline posted around Facebook and Twitter yesterday:

SC Restaurant Owner Refuses To Serve Blacks, Cites Religious Beliefs

What drew my attention to the above was the passion with which my FaceBook pals shared the link amidst great outrage: “Oh my God! It’s started!” “We knew this was going to happen!” “Of course it’s the South that starts it!” and so on. In other words, they’d read the headline, reposted the link with commentary, and they did so without reading the actual piece.

The story, credited to Manny Schewitz, primarily reviews the Supreme Court case of Civil Rights Era racist, Maurice Bessinger, who owned and operated six barbecue restaurants called “Piggie Park.” each of these restaurants resisted racial integration despite the Civil Rights Act. According to John Monk of South Carolina newspaper, The State, the case against Bessinger began when, “in 1964, Bessinger . . . . stood in the door of one of his stores to prevent a black minister from entering. Bessinger would allow blacks to buy food to take out, but not to eat in his restaurant. African-Americans, represented by then-civil rights lawyer Matthew Perry, took him to court.” Bessinger’s defense relied on a few key points that may sound familiar. From the SCOTUS transcript:

They asserted that the petitioner had a constitutional right under the Thirteenth Amendment not to be subjected to involuntary servitude and serve persons against his will.

It was the First Amendment religious privilege claim that petitioner asserted that his religion required him to act this way.

The Supreme Court, referencing the 1964 Civil Rights Act, ruled against Bessinger in 1968.

While he’d been forced to integrate his restaurants, Bessinger apparently continued to propel racist ideas that remained entwined with religious belief. His actions gained national attention when The State revealed in 2000 that Bessinger was selling racist tracts in his restaurants. According to a contemporary account in The New York Times,

The [tract] attracting most attention is entitled ''Biblical View of Slavery,'' by John Weaver, a Baptist minister from Fitzgerald, Ga., and argues that slavery is not inherently evil because it is permitted in the Bible.

''Don't let anyone try to load you with guilt and say you need to make reparations for what your forefathers did . . . No! What our forefathers did was not evil in and of itself. That doesn't mean that some of our forefathers did not act evilly, wickedly themselves, and if they did, they are responsible for their own sins.

The pamphlet also argues that many African slaves ''blessed the Lord'' for allowing them to be enslaved, because their life in slavery was better than in Africa.  (Firestone)

The revelation of such tracts led to boycotts by individuals as well as supermarkets, which pulled Bessinger’s barbecue products off their shelves. According to The State's John Monk, “Bessinger later would claim the boycott cost him $20 million.” His beliefs weren’t changed, perhaps, but the notoriety certainly harmed his livelihood . . . and his reputation. He'll forever be identified as a White supremacist who endorsed slavery as Biblical.

Schewitz at ForwardProgressive suggests that a similar response will now meet Hobby Lobby. However, people do seem genuinely divided over the ACA’s contraception mandate, and that issue is enormously different from that of segregation. I understand my Facebook friends' concerns--their very real fears about being silenced, discriminated against, and harmed. However, I don't buy the dire warnings that SCOTUS's decision leads us on a slippery slope--where, for example, religious freedom means women will be banned from management decisions because of Biblical exhortations to female submission, where LBGTQ rights will be overturned, and so on. If such cases are brought, then they may well be opportunities to attack and, eventually, overturn the Hobby Lobby et. al. ruling.

Listen, don’t take my word for it. My area is lit not law. But I do think, overall, we're a nation of moderates, and questionable rulings will be righted.

Schewitz’s original story seems little more than click bait—that’s an awfully sensationalist, and frightening--but he makes a valid point: if people object to the Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood outcome, then they’re likely to stop doing business at those places, and if the drop in profits is steep enough, Hobby Lobby may revisit the ACA issue on their own. Unfortunately, that message was lost on my Facebook pals. No. Kneejerk political hysteria isn’t a new phenomenon. People do seem to prefer moments of outrage over learning about or reading an issue or an event, and it’s a tendency that crosses all gender, racial, political, class, and educational lines. Purely anecdotal example: on my FaceBook TL, easily the majority of people who repost inflammatory headlines, expressing anger and indignation without reading what they’re posting, have PhDs. 

Works Cited

Firestone, David. “Sauce Is Boycotted, and Slavery Is the Issue” New York Times. 29 Sep 2000.

Monk, John. “Barbecue eatery owner, segregationist Maurice Bessinger dies at 83.” The State. 24 

     Feb. 2014.

Newman v. Piggie Park Enterprises. The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. 03 July 

     2014. 

Schewitz, Manny. “SC RestaurantOwner Refuses To Serve Blacks, Cites Religious Beliefs” 

     ForwardProgressives.com. 02 July 2014.

Nugent? Nothing New Here

According to the response to Ted Nugent's recent diatribe against President Obama (video here), you'd think that Nugent had said something out of character, but he wasn't. He's been something of a jerk with an inclination for violent language since...forever. Consider his onstage rant at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama from a few years back, or just about any of his appearances on television. My point is, Nugent's extremism is hardly breaking news. The pearl-clutching Shock! Horror! response feeds the beast--gives him what he wants.

Aside: In 2006, Nugent sat down for an interview with a U.K. broadsheet while visiting for a Monsters of Rock festival. The piece references, and partially debunks, a revealing bit of Nugent legendry:

At 18, he was called up to serve in Vietnam. "In 1977 you gave an interview to High Times [the cannabis user's journal of record] where you claimed you defecated in your clothes to avoid the draft."

("I got 30 days' notice of the physical," Nugent told them. "I ceased cleansing my body. Two weeks before the test I stopped eating food with nutritional value. A week before, I stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants. My pants got crusted up.")

"I never shit my pants to get out of the draft," says Nugent, good-naturedly.

"You also told them you took crystal meth [methamphetamine, the highly destabilising drug sometimes described as poor man's crack] before the medical - as a result of which, and I quote: 'I got this big juicy 4F.'"

"Unbelievable. Meth," he replies, in a tone of deep sarcasm. "Yes, that's my drug of choice. You've got to realise that these interviewers would arrive with glazed eyes and I would make stories up. I never did crystal meth. And I never pooped my pants."

"But you did dodge the draft." "I had a 1Y [student deferment]. I enrolled at Oakland Community College." (The Independent).

Also in the interview: in 2006, Nugent was thinking about running for Michigan governor in 2010.

So now you know.

Added: Rosie Gray's post at Buzzfeed, "Threatening Obama is Only the 10th Craziest Thing Ted Nugent Has Done," pretty much says it all. I didn't know that he was his underaged girlfriend's guardian. Now that is just . . . ugh.

Pre-SOTU '12

I hadn't really planned on tuning into the State of the Union tonight (it's not that I'm apathetic; I'm pretty disgusted with the current Congress for a number reasons--gridlock, smug finger-pointing, juvenile tribalism, etc. etc.), but Andrew Sullivan, having received a heads-up about the speech's details, posts that we "should get some caffeine ready." It's pretty ambiguous (the address's contents are embargoed), but that statement suggests that we'll be up late tonight. Of course, it could also mean that we'll require extra energy to keep us alert during the speech, but Sullivan says that hearing the argument from the White House's communications team "is not the same as listening to Obama deliver the case," so I'll go with my initial interpretation of the caffeine recommendation and get that coffee going.

Seconded

John Cole's response to the "Firebaggers"--the ideologically liberal purists who've complained incessantly about the President's inability to achieve the agenda he campaigned (while ignoring or underplaying Congress' role in such "failures")--is delightful. Cole aims his criticism at a specific few commentators at Balloon Juice, but it's applicable to the larger group of ideological purists:

"My problem is you morons can’t tell the difference between holding someone’s feet to the fire and burning someone at the stake."

I concur.

U.S., U.K. Far Right Hook Up?

According to a story in The Guardian, The English Defence League, a far-right, anti-Muslim group, is joining forces with Tea Party figures in the U.S.A. The English are concerned that Tea Party-funding would find its way to the EDL, thereby facilitating "wider recruitment and activism." Because the EDL is often associated with violent activity, England's unease is understandable. But why is the Tea Party, or figures within the Tea Party, associating itself with this group? In the words on one human rights expert,

"As we move farther and farther away from the Tea Party origins, that were ostensibly around debt and bail-outs, social issues like Islamophobia are replacing that anger, that vigour. The idea that there is a war between Islam and the west is becoming commonplace."

Of course, as the economy improves and Americans begin to feel better, many won't grow less angry--they'll simply appoint a new cause for the anger. Paul Starobin's National Journal article on paranoia in politics in offers a fairly thorough examination of the phenomenon.

Update: In the article "Mainstreaming Hate" in Foreign Policy, Ferry Biedermann profiles Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who is famously anti-Islam. Biedermann quotes an analyst who draws a link between Wilder and the Tea Party:

[Alfred] Pijpers says that Wilders has more in common with the Tea Party activists in the United States than with any old-style European right-wing party, because he can't really be classified as either right-wing or left-wing. His party has also embraced a left-wing populist defense of the Netherlands' besieged welfare system, and he scores points with his tough stance against crime, which he often links to immigrants.

Although the analyst's comparison ends at "he can't be classified as either right-wing or left-wing," the undefined cries of "I want my country back" imply an affinity to the ideas that Wilders gives voice to.

The Paranoid Style--Redux

"the spokesman of the paranoid style finds [the hostile and conspiratorial world] directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life whose fate affects not himself alone but millions of others." -- Richard Hofstadter

In The National Journal, Paul Starobin explores the re-emergence of an arch-conservatism akin to The John Birch Society (famously, the leader of that group asserted that Dwight D. Eisenhower was "a dedicated, conscious agent of the communist conspiracy"). Conspiracy theories about an imminent Communist coup-from-within provided the bedrock of that nativist association. Similarly, The question of "who is an American" has run throughout our political discourse recently. Conservative luminaries, including Newt Gingrich, have roused suspicions against President Obama by identifying him as "Kenyan," and opportunists (both political and commercial) take full advantage of people's anxieties by reciting unconfirmed claims (beheadings in the Arizona desert), amplifying far-fetched "what if" scenarios (sharia law replacing our current legal system), and insinuations that Caucasians' rights are floundering under the presidency of a bi-racial man. Certainly, a national paranoia seemed to reach a boiling point over the summer with the accusations of varying degrees of anti-Americanism targeting supporters of the Park51 development, legal and non-legal immigrants (and their children), and so on.

Starobin's argument about the contemporary "nativist agenda" certainly rings true. Triggered by 9/11 and the financial meltdown, people have grown paranoid. People clamor that they "want their country back" without defining what that might be. Yet these groups, Starobin suggests, will be met by a re-emergent Radical Left, similarly energized by recent events . . . and then? Who knows. Of course passions will ease, suspicions will recede, but we will have changed. Anyway, I recommend highly Starobin's "The Radical Right Returns," for a solid, and dispassionate, historical overview and analysis of "the paranoid style" in contemporary political discourse.

A Petty Quibble

While reading arguments over who has experienced worse treatment at the hands of America's political partisans, George W. Bush or Barack Obama (a fairly childish argument in and of itself), I commonly see references to a "snuff film," a "liberal assassination fantasy" about President Bush, with the implication that American leftists were responsible for it. Not so.

That film, titled Death of a President (2006), was not, as is often believed, a product of the "professional left." It was not produced in the United States nor by an American citizen. It is a British film, with a British director, British writers, and British financing.

Like this post's title indicates, it's merely a petty quibble, and my wish here is to clarify.
Cheers

Venting Anger vs. Fixing What's Broken

At Slate, Jacob Weisberg posts an article musing on how the Tea Party is analogous to the New Left of the 1960s. In "The Right's New Left," he suggests that the major similarity rests in the party's "streak of anarchism—its antagonism toward any authority, its belligerent style of self-expression, and its lack of any coherent program or alternative to the policies it condemns." On the other hand, the Party also exhibits such tendencies as resentment, nostalgia (for an undefined past), and reinvention of reality. These characteristics, Weisberg asserts, underscore the Party's concerns with personal identity--the possible loss of status, of a secure social, cultural, and economic position--in a changing environment. The question is, how does the party reconcile its anarchic qualities and identity focus and move forward as a coherent political movement--if it can?

Freak Out for Freedom

Oh yeah.

If I could be just about anywhere on Saturday, 10/30/10, it would be in Washington DC. Although ostensibly a "spoof" of the Restoring Honor Rally on the National Mall, Jon Stewart's message seems sincere (remember his 2005 Crossfire appearance?). People need to chill the heck out--craziness does not legitimize an argument.

Obviously, my poliblogging has been sporadic at best; largely, it is because I have been astoundingly frustrated with the domestic news cycle. Especially in politics, lawmakers' increased exaggerations, indirections, and ad hominems regularly go unchallenged by reporters and pundits, and a person can only stand so much. Happily, Stewart and Stephen Colbert, both of whom I've only recently began watching regularly, have sucked me back in. If, like me, you're one of the moderate millions (or if you want to poke gentle fun at extremity)--head for the Rally to Restore Sanity or to the March to Keep Fear Alive.

Aside: New York Magazine has a recent profile of Stewart online. Is good.

Smoothing the Hallers

Thank you, Tom Coburn. Amidst the outrage over health care reform and hysteria about armed IRS agents comin' to getcha, the Senator urged town hall attendees towards civility and consideration of more than one news source on a given issue (e.g., "don't just rely on the folks who agree with you").

Political Purging

Over at FrumForum, Chris Currey details "How the GOP Purged Me." A lifelong Republican--a religious, free market, social conservative (who originally opposed Medicaid and Medicare)--Currey apparently began reconsidering in the 1990s, when,

The leaders of the GOP grew belligerent. They became too religious, almost zealots. They became intolerant. They began searching for purity in Republican thought and doctrine. Ideology blinded them. I continued to vote Republican, but with a certain unease. Deep down I knew that a schism happened between the modern Republican Party and the one I grew up with. During the fight over the impeachment of President Clinton, the ugly face of the Republican Party was brought to the surface. Empty rhetoric, ideological intolerance, vengeance, and religious zealotry became the common currency. Suddenly, if you are pro-choice, you could not be a Republican. If you are for smart and sensible taxes to balance out the budget, you could not be a Republican. If you are pro-civil rights, you could not be a Republican.

He continues by noting how minorities, women, and the young began leaving the party, which, he suggests "We should rename the Republican Party the OSWF [Old Straight White Folks] rather than the GOP." Now, he insists, the GOP has entered "the era of craziness," where populist outrage, paranoid declarations, and religious fervor has replaced thoughtful consideration and logical argument, thereby leaving him in a position of not trusting the reins of power to the Republican party in its current stage. He goes further in suggesting that, as a result of its recent history, the GOP has lost the nation.

It's a heartfelt article, and I recommend it highly.

He Can't Be Bothered

We've all heard about the Florida doctor who taped a sign in a window directing people who voted for Obama should "seek urologic help elsewhere" (noting cleverly that "Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years"). The good doctor, of course, is free to do as he likes, and I certainly take no issue with him critiquing health care reform, nor with his "warning off" patients. What I do find concerning is that the doctor doesn't actually know what is in the health care bill. That's right. Although it's been online for months, apparently, tl;dr. In fact, as he told Alan Colmes, he opposes the bill because "I’m not the guy who wrote the plan." From the interview:

Cassell: Hospice cuts in 2012…Does the government want people to die slowly?
Colmes: Do you really think the government wants people dead?
Cassell: Well I think that they’re cutting all supportive care, like nursing homes, ambulance services…
Colmes: What to you mean they’re cutting nursing homes?
Cassell: They’re cutting nursing home reimbursements
Colmes: Isn’t what they’re cutting under the Medicare plan what was really double dipping; they were getting credits and they were getting to deduct them at the same time.
Cassell: Well you know, I can’t tell you exactly what the deal is.
Colmes: If you can’t tell us exactly what the deal is, why are you opposing it and fighting against it?
Cassell: I’m not the guy who wrote the plan.
Colmes: But if you don’t know what the deal is why are you speaking out against something you don’t know what the deal is?
Cassell: What I get online, just like any other American. What I’m supposed to understand about the bill should be available to me.
Colmes: It is; it’s been online for a long time; it’s also been all over the media…

In fact, the National Association of Home Care and Hospice praises much of the bill

Don't you rather expect a doctor to have an eye for details? Or at least to realize the significance of seeking evidence to support one's claims--of fact-checking--and of not assuming to know the truth or falsity of an issue based on hearsay? Of course we find this all over the place--well-educated people asserting "truths" that are certainly shaky or undeniably false, but, at least in terms of health care reform, this has become all-too common. As Steve Benen writes, "some of the loudest, angriest critics of the Affordable Care Act are also some of the least informed, most confused, embarrassingly ignorant observers anywhere." The question is, under media exposure, do these critics carry on asserting a questionable "truth", or do they revise their assertions in the face of evidence? Based on the media's history of privileging of the loudest, more notorious Obama critics--despite how ill-informed they might be--my guess is that the good doctor will continue to assert his version of "the truth," and he will enjoy another 12 minutes of fame.

H/T Balloon Juice

Teabonics

A little late to this party, but behold: a plethora of signage from Tea Party events. Some (ahem) language issues--as in usage--are on display.

I Got Mine; You Sod Off

Just passing this along . . . .

The Washington Monthly has been noting some curious contradictions amongst certain Tea Party adherents who suffer a serious disconnect between professed beliefs and actual practice: namely, enjoying federal programs while decrying said federal programs. As noted in The New York Times, such folks "do not see any contradictions in their arguments for smaller government even as they argue that it should do more to prevent job loss or cuts to Medicare."

sigh.

But head over to the Monthly for the details.

Yardsticks

Greg Sargent's question of the day:

If there continues to be a lack of a successful terrorist attack, at what point does the refusal by conservatives to credit Obama for it enter the media narrative, given that this is precisely the yardstick they use to extoll Bush’s counter-terror record?

Will the media simply ignore this double standard, or will conservatives redefine what makes for successful counter-terrorism? My guess is the latter: we're going to have a glut of memoirs by Bush administration officials in the next year, all of which we might expect to include some score-settling and attempts to revise the history of the Bush-era (DougJ at Balloon Juice proposes that we'll see a "concerted effort to rehab Dubya fairly soon." The upcoming books by Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, as well as both George W. and Laura Bush, will certainly feature efforts to rehab the Bush years, if not the former president himself).

Breakdown

Newsweek offers an overview of Stanford professor Morris Fiorina’s book, Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics, which argues that although political parties are becoming more fiercely partisan, the majority of Americans remain firmly in the ideological center. This might seem a questionable assertion, given the media emphasis on ultra-vocal ideologues. However, as Newsweek’s Evan Thomas and Stuart Taylor Jr. suggest, this perception stems from an insular feedback loop in which partisan “politicians are egged on by ever-more powerful interest groups and the attack-mode spirit of radio talk shows and cable TV.” Sadly, this loop locks out the vast majority of Americans’ interests, and there is no indication that it will widen in the near future. In other words, there will be only increasing bitterness on Capitol Hill, at least until voters get bored with the petty line-drawing and fallacious either/or arguments, and decide to remind politicians to whom they are supposed to listen (wishful thinking, eh?).

Anyways, do take a look at Newsweek’s discussion of Professor Fiorina’s book.

Panarin, Panarin, where do you Roam?

In Texas, apparently.

It seems that American Conservatives are entranced with the theories espoused by a Russian academic, Igor Panarin, who is a professor at Russia's Diplomatic Academy, which is associated with the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry. He is also a former member of the KGB.

Professor Panarin predicts that by this time next year the USA will consist of six disparate regions, each of which will be controlled by a foreign power (you can see a map of his fragmented U.S.A. here). The fragmentation, Panrain claims, will result from a civil war stemming from economic, ethnic, and moral divisions.

In 2008, he predicted that this civil war would commence "next fall." In other words, this year.

It seems strange to me that Americans, especially patriotic Americans, would so cheerfully embrace the theories of someone who even Russians consider anti-American--and who is closely identified with the Kremlin--that Tea Party activists sponsored one of his lectures while he was in Texas earlier this month (see FaceBook announcement here). Granted, overall, it seems like it's only a minority who have completely fallen for Panarin's ideas, but the fact the he is feted just puzzles me.

I'm curious to know more about the American activists' attraction to Panarin. For example, does he present support material to build his case, or is it based on "what ifs" and "maybes"? When he speaks to these activists, does he suggest how national dissolution might be avoided, or is it merely doom and gloom? In other words, what about Panarin's theories do some people find so compelling?

Aside: Panarin asserts that the American west, post-breakup, will fall under Chinese rule or, at the very least, Chinese influence. His reasoning? "Panarin points out that most Californians' laptops are made in China and that the West has a 'growing Chinese population'" (Mother Jones). Yes, the laptops and the Chinese immigrants (a minority last time I checked) mean that the west coast will, very soon, be part of China.

John McCain: "Be Respectful"

You can disagree with a person, but you can still acknowledge that person as a human being and treat that person with courtesy and respect. John McCain showed us how it's done today.

Think back to his campaign, and when his audience would boo or shout when then-Senator Obama's name came up. Senator McCain would chastize his audience and insist on Obama's decency.

Today, Senator McCain held a town hall for seniors in Sun City, Arizona. When an attendee claimed that President Obama's health care plan is "against the Constitution," and asked "Doesn't he know that we live under the Constitution?'' McCain negated that statement and asked that people treat the President with respect. His audience responded by booing him. McCain certainly differs with Obama on most issues, but he won't cave to the audience and cater to its paranoias and conspiracy theories.

Further, when it appeared that a woman was trying to introduce a spot of "Birtherism" into the town hall by stating, out of the blue, that "we" should stand behind Representative Franks, he ignored her comment (as did the entire audience). Granted, the woman did not clarify why people should stand up for Representative Franks, but he's been in the news lately, and roundly mocked, for initially supporting, then backing away from, a Birther lawsuit. Today he signed onto the "Birther bill."

Anyway, it's great to see Senator McCain resisting the recent trend of demonization.

And the bit about health care reform being "against the Constitution"? Thanks go to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann for that one. It's a faulty claim, but it's the current one.

UPS Stops Advertising on Fox News

Well, that call for a boycott against Glenn Beck's FNC show really backfired, didn't it?

33 companies have removed advertising from Glenn Beck's show or have requested Fox that ads run elsewhere in the day. This isn't really news, as it's been posted and discussed everywhere.

What is news? UPS "has temporarily halted buying ads on Fox News Channel as a whole" (AP). UPS's spokesman declines to say how long this moratorium will last, but UPS is a huge company, and this could signal the beginning of a serious shift in media. As political talk show hosts grow more hyperbolic and histrionic, chances are that advertisers will become less eager to associate themselves with divisive characters--be they Olbermann, Hannity, or Dobbs--who may alienate the broader public. Clorox, for example, has declared that it will no longer advertise on any political talk shows. But if companies begin yanking ads from entire networks . . . well, then networks will be forced to make changes. Otherwise, what's the point? They'd be losing monies regardless of their audience share.

Also, a good read: Russ Smith on American political dialogue: "Our Never-Ending Political Anger." Smith situates the health care debate along a continuum of similar arguments in the past, and he asserts that the anger expressed in the current argument--over health care--serves as a sort of catch-all for our collective dissatisfaction with government. Smith concludes, that, unfortunately, the current discussion about health care is, or has become, only oppositional: "The issue has become like abortion, you're either for it or against it, and no middle ground exists."

Rumor Central: Obamacare (Updated)

Taking a break from The Project to post some links regarding the plethora of rumors on health care reform.

1. For seniors concerned about Medicare and the fears of the government controlling "life and death decisions": the AARP has a page on "Myths vs. Facts"

2. "Health Insurance Reform Reality Check" addresses the claims that health insurance reform will:

-lead to a "government takeover" of health care or lead to "rationing."
-would encourage or even require euthanasia for seniors.
-will affect veterans' access to medical care.
-will harm small businesses.
-would be financed by cutting Medicare benefits.
-will force people out of their current insurance plans / force them to change doctors.

3. The rumors and distortions--on both sides--have kept Factcheck.org pretty busy. See the entries under:

"Health Care"
"Health Insurance"

4. The Truth-O-Meter at Politifact goes wild in the "Health" category.

5. The Associated Press fact checks rumors about "death panels" and clarifies the bill's statements on advanced care planning.

6. The Institute for Southern Studies corrects some of the misinformation presented by, among others, The Liberty Counsel (you can see the Liberty Counsel's full list of talking points here. This list appears to be one of the sources for Sarah Palin's much debunked claim about government run "death panels").

Note: Politifact approached the Liberty Counsel about a particularly specious claim on the list: that the health care bill "'will establish school-based 'health' clinics. Your children will be indoctrinated and your grandchildren may be aborted!". . .the bills now before the House say nothing about the school clinics being able to offer abortions." Politifact "spoke with Sarah Speller at the Liberty Counsel, who told us that the group had been getting a lot of calls about the memo and that everyone there was very busy as a result. However, she assured us that 'as far as our office can tell, everything in the overview is accurate. That's about all I can tell you,' she said. 'I'm just relaying what I've been told to say.' [Politifact] see no language in the three main versions of the bill that would allow school-based clinics, which have a long history of providing basic health services to underprivileged students, to provide abortions. Nor would the clinics even be new — they have been around for three decades. So we rate the claim Pants on Fire!

7. McClatchy publishes "Headed to a health care 'town brawl?' Read this first," a brief guide to wild claims about health care reform.

8. C Q Politics does a decent job at "Vetting the Health Care Rhetoric."

9. Factcheck has a fresh entry tackling a chain-email currently making the rounds: "Twenty-Six Lies About H. R. 3200." Factcheck notes that the email makes 48 claims. Of these, 26 are demonstrably false, 18 are misleading, and 4 are true.

If you find yourself in a muddle from all the misinformation floating about, the sites included above offer some clarity.

And it's back to The Project.