Wednesday, May 26, 2010

But who will edit the Editor?

Tea partier Jim Durbin likes to call himself "The Editor" with a capital E on his blog 24th state. Check out the melodramatic signoff on this post:
I am simply, the Editor.
But what happens when there's no one to fact check the editor? Well, you get posts like this one from yesterday, where he presented completely false information:
Here's the official summary.
Upon voter approval, this proposed constitutional amendment prohibits any person, employer, or health care provider from being compelled to participate in any health care system...
The problem for Durbin is that in fact the Missouri General Assembly did not decide to let people vote on a constitutional amendment: instead, the vote will be about the adoption of a new state statute. And this renders it completely useless for changing the law. Dave Roland at Show-Me Daily explains:
the text that might have been legally useful as a constitutional amendment will have zero legal effect as a statute... Thus, even if HB 1764 had purported to establish a fundamental right or liberty, courts would have been unlikely to take them seriously. It just so happens that HB 1764 does not even make such an effort, further diminishing any legal usefulness it otherwise might have had.
In other words, Durbin is presenting this as if it has a chance to actually alter the law, when in fact it doesn't.

Now, I suppose it's possible that Durbin already knows this and is just withholding information to keep his readers uninformed so they will continue to be motivated to vote. After all, in the Kenneth Gladney case, he admitted that he put out false information last year and knew it was false but did not issue a correction because he didn't want SEIU to have the info. He also suggested with Bob McCarty's completely misleading video last year that McCarty wait to "release the whole video." Given that Durbin is happy to withhold information and in fact is even willing to put out false information in order to try to "get" his opposition (which hasn't worked so far), it wouldn't be that much of a shock to find out that he's also willing to put out false information to try to trick people into voting for something that has no real chance of success.

Either way, it's the kind of misinformation a real editor wouldn't stand for.

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