Tag Archives: Andrew Breitbart

TGIF morning’s 6 sort of interesting things

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1) Rush Scrubs ‘Slut’ Comment, Demand for Fluke Sex Tapes - RushLimbaugh.com appears to have removed parts of his radio transcripts from February 29 and March 1 in which he called Sandra Fluke a “slut” and demanded a sex tape as a thank you to taxpayers for subsidizing her birth control. The links to “Butts Sisters Are Safe From Newt and Rick” and “Left Freaks Out Over My Fluke Remarks” now show blank stretches of white space. On March 3, Limbaugh posted an apology on his website. On March 5, he apologized at length on his show. In between, he was not apologetic at all. It’s the first round of insults and that bit of doubling down that appear to have been scrubbed.

Limbaugh, the perverted, chemically enhanced sex tourist, can never scrub the internet:

2) Dead Air On Rush Limbaugh’s Show - Rush Limbaugh has characterized the almost 50 advertisers that have ditched him as an insignificant number compared to those that remain. “It’s like the couple of french fries left in the bottom of the bag you get at the drive thru.” And yet Media Matters reports today that twice during the Limbaugh show there were periods of dead air, the second of which lasted 2:38. How many french fries was that again?

  • As Media Matters reports, of the 86 ads that made it on the air today, 77 of them were free public service announcements donated by the Ad Council. An additional seven ads were from companies that are in the process of pulling their spots from the show, leaving just two ads during the entire three hour broadcast that were purposefully paid to appear during the program.

3) Quote of the Morning - “To Rush Limbaugh: Hey Jackass, stop using our music on your racist, misogynist, right wing clown show. Sincerely, Rage Against The Machine” Tom Morello ——- HA! And so they join Peter Gabriel and Rush. Who’s next?

4) Jon Stewart mocks Breitbart’s Obama footage - In the video from 1990, Obama is seen encouraging students to “open up your hearts and minds to the words of Professor Bell” and then hugging the Harvard law professor. “Oh. He hugged the professor. Is there something else I’m missing?” Stewart wondered. “But who is Sean Hannity?” he asked. “Because as he has shown us in the Facebook era, you are who you like.” Stewart then played clips of Hannity describing Oliver North, who was involved in the Iran-Contra affair, as his “good friend.” He said the same about Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy, convicted murderer Don King, and rockstar Ted Nugent. “How radical is the crowd Hannity runs with?” asked Stewart. “The guy threatening to stick a gun in the president’s mouth is the one who hasn’t seen the inside of a jail cell yet. Sean, digging through twenty and thirty years of old archives to find evidence of how radical Obama will be as president is wasting valuable time you could be spending bedazzling American flag jean jackets.”

…

  • Obama Hugs Black Guy - Scoopers Ben Smith and his Buzzfeed team, see, were “selectively editing” their version of the clip to remove any shocking material that would damage their cherished food-stamp president’s reelection chances. Yes, this is the wingers’ fallback angle. And it makes sense, right? We all know how reporters hate getting major national scandal scoops. That’s the only explanation for why Buzzfeed wouldn’t have paid the video archives some additional hundreds of dollars for the Hug Interlude between speaking parts. Don’t even try us with your “it had no news value because it was just a perfunctory hug” pablum, Soviet Buzzfeed.
  • Breitbart’s Bombshell Is A Dud, Ctd - When I saw that video making the rounds yesterday, I didn’t watch it.  Do you know why?  I’d already SEEN it.  It was part of a PBS Frontline documentary that came out in 2008.  It’s available for instant streaming on Netflix.  Dud, indeed.
  • TPM can reveal that not only did President Obama hug a man back in 1990, but he’s still hugging people today. Look. 

5) Rick Santorum To Single Mothers: Government Paternity Tests Or No Welfare - During his first U.S. Senate campaign in 1994, Santorum made unwed mothers and welfare reform regular features of his stump speech. Recently, Mother Jones reported that the candidate had once argued that single mothers were “breeding more criminals” and advocated that they should be denied welfare benefits if they refused to identify the child’s father. [...] The Observer-Reporter newspaper in Washington, Pa., captured Santorum’s focus on mothers during a report from that March. The paper noted that “his bill would encourage states to refuse welfare to unmarried parents, require unmarried minor mothers to live with their parents, and the bill would reduce federal payments to states that do not achieve high rates of paternity establishment.” Santorum also had a theory about working mothers long before his book “It Takes A Family” was published in 2005. He claimed higher taxes were forcing women to join the workforce. At a campaign stop in April 1994 in Latrobe, Pa., he said the Clinton administration was “taxing families out of existence.”

6) The Case for Obama - Paul Glastris at the Washington Monthly: ”In short, when judging Obama’s record so far, conservatives measure him against their fears, liberals against their hopes, and the rest of us against our pocketbooks. But if you measure Obama against other presidents—arguably the more relevant yardstick—a couple of things come to light. Speaking again in terms of sheer tonnage, Obama has gotten more done than any president since LBJ. But the effects of some of those achievements have yet to be felt by most Americans, often by design. Here, too, Obama is in good historical company.” He goes on to explain that a number of cornerstone social programs (Social Security, the GI Bill) were pretty weak (and criticized for being so) when first passed, until subsequent legislation turned them into the programs we see today. We’ve heard this argument before, but Glastris’ piece is the best recitation of the argument I’ve seen…

Monday morning’s 9 barely interesting things

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1) Obama At AIPAC  | Andrew Sullivan - For the worldview of Cheney and Netanyahu to prevail, Obama must be defeated. That is clearly the agenda of the current Israeli government, and what the NYT delicately but accurately calls “Israel’s backers” in the US. My worry is that once the Likudniks begin to realize Obama may not be defeated by the GOP at home, the current Israeli government would launch a war without warning to create a crisis to humiliate the president, rally end-times evangelicals to vote, send oil prices soaring, and force the US president to coopt a war he does not want and does not yet believe is necessary. If that helps the GOP nominee, so much the better. Every GOP candidate is now committed to the most extreme positions of the Likudnik Israeli right – and are to the bellicose right of most Israelis. I hope that the Israeli government is not that reckless or extreme. But ask yourself when thinking about Netanyahu: what would Cheney do? These individuals are radicals. They turned the US into a torturing nation and regarded that decision as a “no-brainer.” A “wag-the-dog” scenario in which Netanyahu creates a war to wound and weaken a US president before an election is, sadly, not unthinkable. And he will have the GOP as his critical back-up.

2) Should We Be More Scared Of Pandemics? - “Worst case for a severe pandemic would certainly be in the millions [of deaths] in the U.S. alone,” says John Barry. He has advised the last two U.S. presidents on the flu virus and wrote The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History. … When the so-called Spanish flu struck in 1918, it resulted in 500 million infections and 50 million to 100 million deaths, in a world with a population of about 1.8 billion people. That’s equivalent to around 385 million deaths—only a little less than the current population of South America—if extrapolated out to today’s population. “Because of the mildness of the 2009 pandemic, I would say most people underestimate the threat,” says Barry.

3) And Breitbart goes out not with a bang but a whimper - Apparently the big expose Breitbart promised before his death has been released at one of the Big Morons sites, and the shocking revelation is… Obama attended a play 14 years ago that was about Saul Alinksy. || And THIS is the “damning information” that caused Breitbart’s “assassination” by Obama, according to conspiracy theorists. lol.

 4) David Frum: HBO’s ‘Game Change’ Charts Sarah Palin’s Revenge - The professionals soon discover their mistake. “I don’t even like to say this, but has it occurred to you guys that she might be mentally unstable?” asks one staffer about the woman the McCain campaign proposed to put next in line to America’s nuclear codes. As they come to know Palin, the campaign professionals begin to feel an awakening of conscience: first qualms, then fears, and finally revulsion—not for the campaign, not for their careers, but for their country. They supported McCain because they saw him, in Schmidt’s words, as a statesman and national hero running against a celebrity with no major life accomplishments. In hopes of reversing adverse poll numbers, they yoked a great man to a running mate who was not merely unworthy, but dangerous. Some of the best acting in the film is in the looks of unspoken dread that flit about the faces of Sarah Paulson’s Wallace and Harrelson’s Schmidt as they react to Palin’s wilder and wilder provocations. What have they done? And if this campaign somehow wins—and Palin is put within reach of the presidency—what might they have done?

If ever there were a scenario in which Godwin’s Law was apropos, Sick Rantorum is it.5) Santorum: Contraception ‘a grievous moral wrong’ - “The Blunt amendment was broader than that. It was a conscience clause exception that existed prior to when President Obama decided that he could impose his values on people of faith, when people of faith believe that this is a grievous moral wrong. [...] I’m reflecting the views of the Church that I believe in. We used to be tolerant of those beliefs. I guess now when you have beliefs that are consistent with the church, you are somehow out of touch with the mainstream. And that to me is a pretty sad situation when you can’t have personally-held beliefs.” || I find it “pretty sad” that, as president, Santorum would like to impose his personal religious beliefs on the entire country.

motherjones:Context: Rick Santorum pledges to repeal 130,000 legally recognized same-sex marriages if elected president.6) Santorum backs nullifying existing gay marriages - There are 18,000 married gay and lesbian couples in California and at least 131,000 nationwide according to the 2010 census, conducted before New York state legalized same-sex marriage in July. Rick Santorum says he’ll try to unmarry all of them if he’s elected president. Once the U.S. Constitution is amended to prohibit same-gender marriages, “their marriage would be invalid,” the former Pennsylvania senator said Dec. 30 in an NBC News interview.

7) 99% of Republicans expect their kids to go to college, according to Pew report. - No matter what political beliefs they hold, nearly all parents—99 percent of Republicans, 96 percent of Democrats, and 93 percent of independents—expect their children to go to college, the survey found. That resounding endorsement makes clear that Santorum is all but alone in his opinion that only snobs encourage all kids to go to college. || And there you have it: 99% of Republicans are snobs.

8) Chris Wallace: Fox News covers contraception for female employees - During a discussion about women’s health issues on Sunday, Fox News host Chris Wallace revealed that the insurance provided by the conservative news network included oral contraceptives. “Before coming on today, I checked with the women here at Fox News and it turns out that Fox News health coverage does cover — there’s a co-pay — but it does cover contraception,” Wallace explained. “When it comes to contraception, you know the idea that — and we’re not talking about religious institutions. According to the Blunt amendment, any — U.S. Steel, as I said, Fox News, any company could simply decide, we are not going to offer that. An insurance company could decide, one that has no ties to any religious organization.” || There’s an FYI for Limbaugh and his zombie hoard — the “sluts” at Fox News have the health insurance benefit that Sandra Fluke was talking about. 

9) You might wonder: how are Limbaugh’s hoards in the wingnut blogosphere handling the advertising exodus from the barren land of El Rushbo? Like this:  SLUTGATE: CONTACT CARBONITE – DROP ED SCHULTZ!!!!! – A 30-year-old poses as a 23-year-old, chooses a Catholic University to attend at $65,000 per year and can not afford ALL the birth control pills she needs… so she wants the US taxpayers to pay for her rampant sexual activity. By all accounts she is banging it five times a day. She sounds more like a prostitute to me. She must have an gyno bill to choke a horse (pun intended). Slut was a softball. Obama calls her and tells Sandra Slut Fluke that her parents should be so proud of her. He’s a pimp. As for Rush calling a spade a spade, or in this case, a slut a slut, advertiser Carbonite is playing selective outrage. Contact Carbonite here and demand that they drop their ads from Ed Schultz’s program. || That’s courtesy of a woman, Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs. Who better to casually throw around such pejoratives about another woman than a true lady like Geller? 

Memories of Andrew Breitbart 2009: what he tweeted upon hearing Ted Kennedy had passed away

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source: thinkprogress.org

Early this morning, news broke that Sen. Ted Kennedy had passed away after serving in the U.S. Senate for nearly 50 years. Soon after, conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart began a sustained assault on Kennedy’s memory, tweeting “Rest in Chappaquiddick.”

Over the course of the next three hours, Breitbart unapologetically attacked Kennedy, calling him a “villain,” “a big ass motherf@#$er,” a “duplicitous bastard” and a “prick.” “I’ll shut my mouth for Carter. That’s just politics. Kennedy was a special pile of human excrement,” wrote Breitbart in one tweet.

BREAKING: Andrew Breitbart has died

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Andrew Breitbart, Publisher and Author, Dead

Andrew Breitbart, the noted Internet publisher and author, has died, according to a source at Big Journalism. He was 43. A statement posted on his website said that Breitbart died “unexpectedly from natural causes” this morning. The Los Angeles Coroner’s Office confirmed to ABC News Radio that Breitbart died shortly after midnight at UCLA Medical Center.

Sunday morning’s 9 interesting things

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1) Romney Wins Maine Caucus - Tiny turnout. || From Nate Silver: Mitt Romney’s narrow win in Maine didn’t do much for him in terms of delegates, but it did spare him some bad press. || Note: Romney must be very thankful for the 194 individuals who voted for him over Ron Paul. Maybe Maine wasn’t aware there was a caucus happening? 

2) Poll: Santorum now leads GOP primary race - In a new poll released Saturday from liberal polling firm Public Policy Polling, Santorum’s huge Tuesday night wins has now seen him surge ahead of both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich nationally, leading the race at 38 percent. Romney is now in second place at 23 percent, while Gingrich is fading in third at 17 percent. Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) is in fourth place at 13 percent.

3) Santorum quote:

“I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can’t think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation.” - Rick Santorum on pregnancy resulting from rape

4) Obama quote:

“Whether you’re a teacher, or a small businesswoman, or a nurse, or a janitor, no woman’s health should depend on who she is or where she works or how much money she makes. Every woman should be in control of the decisions that affect her own health. Period. This basic principle is already the law in 28 states across the country.” - President Obama (via: sarahlee310)

5) Things the Catholic Church is and is not concerned about for $100, Alex?

VERY IS: Your lady parts and your pregnancy choices. Catholic bishops reject Obama’s ‘accommodation’ on birth control - Faced with a religious-based outcry over his birth-control mandate, President Obama on Friday unveiled an “accommodation” he said “protects” the religious freedom of churches opposed to contraception. Just hours later, the Catholic Church rejected the plan. Obama’s compromise, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) said Friday, “continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions.”

IS NOT: Sexual abuse of children by priests. 8,000 instances of abuse alleged in Archdiocese bankruptcy hearing - Sealed documents filed in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy identify at least 8,000 instances of child sexual abuse and 100 alleged offenders – 75 of them priests – who have not previously been named by the archdiocese, a victims’ attorney said Thursday. Archdiocese spokeswoman Julie Wolf said she did not have enough information to respond to the assertion, made by attorney Jeffrey Anderson during a pivotal hearing before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley. Anderson represents about 350 of the 570 victim-survivors who have filed claims in the case.

6) About This Religious Liberty Stuff - When did the 1st Amendment change from basically saying that you can practice whatever religion you want and you won’t be burned at the stake as a heretic and we’re not going to form or recognize a national religion like the Church of England? When did it change to “everyone everywhere has to do what a bunch of old catholics in funny hats wants, because otherwise it hurts their feelings?” And why does it only apply to certain religions?  [...] Does no one realize how absurd the Catholic Bishops are behaving? They are attempting, by dictate, to do precisely what the 1st Amendment bans, which is the establishment of a national religion. It’s obscene. And it is completely political. They are no longer functioning as a religious organization, but as a political party.

7) Breitbartocalypse Is Nigh! - Here’s Breitbart bellowing like a ruptured cow at the OWS protesters at CPAC. Jesus God, what a braying ninny. Does he think screeching inanities until his neck veins pulse alarmingly and being led away by security personnel is some sort of rhetorical triumph? What an asshole. || Note: I could only take about 10 seconds of this video. See if you can do better! Breitbart apparently switches from  yowling “behave yourselves” to “stop raping people.” Lol. Yeah. Drunk, obv.

8) REPORT: By A Nearly 2 To 1 Margin, Cable Networks Call On Men Over Women To Comment On Birth Control - Out of a total of 146 guests who discussed contraception, the cables invited 91 men compared to 55 women as commentators. In other words, males comprised 62 percent of the total guests who commented on contraception. Fox was the most gender stratified network – on the Business network, 10 of 11 guests were male; on the News side, male pundits took up 65 percent of the guest lineup (28 men vs. 15 women). Sixty percent of MSNBC’s lineup was male (44 men vs. 31 women). And while CNN was more evenly balanced, it was still slightly tilted in favor of male perspectives (9 men vs. 8 women).

9) Does Watching Violence Lower Violence? - While exposing kids to the latest cadaver on CSI — or to Jack Bauer’s lessons in successful torture on 24 — is probably a bad idea, watching an action movie might in fact reduce violence among adults. A recent study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics suggests that violent crime rates actually dropped when a blood-splattered blockbuster was in the cinema in the United States. The authors Gordon Dahl and Stefano DellaVigna looked at data from 1995 to 2004 and concluded that violent movies deter almost 1,000 assaults on an average weekend in the United States.

We outnumber them and we have the guns.” (Audience laughs) “I’m not kidding.” — Andrew Breitbart

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Explain to me how this isn’t hate speech, how it isn’t inciting domestic terrorism:

Charles Johnson: Videos: Andrew Breitbart Fantasizes About Killing Liberals –

Speaking at a Tea Party gathering in Boston, Andrew Breitbart fantasizes about armed conflict with his fellow Americans… He goes on to elaborate that he imagines the military is going to rise up and start killing union members to protect the country (or something), and reiterates that he’s talking about actual armed conflict and not elections.

Click the LGF link for the videos of Breitbart’s ACTUAL WORDS.

If a liberal commentator / entertainer (whatever Breitbart is supposed to be) had said this sort of thing, Fox “News,” Drudge, Limbaugh, the freshman Teaparty Congress, and every Teaparty GOP 2012 candidate — including the former half-term governor on Facebook (snerk!) — would be clutching their pearls, waving smelling salts everywhere, and hyperventilating on every network news program, 24/7!

It’s amazing what our ‘liberal’ media chooses to ignore.

Andrew Breitbart: paragon of journalistic integrity

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“Opie backed him up: Breitbart didn’t intend to put the photo online. But Breitbart was not showing the photograph to news producers in order to prove its veracity. He passed his fucking phone around to everyone in a satellite radio studio…

So here’s my question: This is at least four people Breitbart showed the photo to who had no pressing journalistic need to see it. How many more are there? How many other people has Andrew Breitbart shown the photo to since Weiner apologized to him? Shouldn’t Andrew give us a specific list of the people he’s shown the picture to, and when he showed it to them? Does he think this behavior is compatible with “trying to do the decent thing”? Has he shown it to Ann Coulter? …”

— Alex Pareene | Salon: How many people has Andrew Breitbart shown the Weiner photo to, exactly?

Desperate to be one of the ‘cool kids’  someday…

Signs of the Apocalypse: Thursday’s links

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Stephen Colbert discusses Breitbart passing around Anthony Weiner’s pic to everyone at the Opie & Anthony Show:

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Andrew Breitbart (recorded): “I went on the Opie & Anthony Show. I’m friends with one of the guys there. And I just decided, before I went to the airport, why not stop in for some highjinx…”

Stephen Colbert: “Yes, highjinx! As a journalist, Andrew Breitbart engages in only the highest of jinx.”

Links after the cut: Continue reading →

VIDEO: Breitbart is ‘mortified’ that the photo he passed around has leaked

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Fox News reported Breitbart claims to be ‘mortified.’ Charles Johnson comments on Breitbart’s phoniness:

Here’s Andrew Breitbart with Opie and Anthony, and actor Vincent D’Onofrio, smirking and laughing as he passes his phone (with the infamous picture of Rep. Anthony Weiner’s penis, that he swore to withhold in order to “spare Rep. Weiner’s family”) around the studio — with a hand-held camera three feet away.

And he claims he didn’t have any idea it would leak. He’s outraged. He’s “mortified.”

It’s pretty weird that Breitbart carries that x-rated pic on his cell phone.

See also: Fact Checking Breitbart’s Statement on the Leaked Photo

Anthony’s Weiner: Moving On

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It’s a big disappointment. A grown, U.S. Representative ‘sexting’ for amusement. Here’s what I think:

At least he didn’t drag his wife into the press conference with him, making her do the usual Tammy Wynette ‘good wife‘ routine like so many other politicians.

He apologized for lying. He apologized to everyone, including *choke* Breitbart. Doesn’t mean I still won’t doubt the next “big” thing Andy B. puts before our hungry, broken media though. A broken clock is only right twice a day. And while we’re on the subject: does anyone recall Breitbart’s public apology to Shirley Sherrod? Right. No. Because unlike Weiner, Breitbart didn’t apologize when he was wrong.

As Ezra Klein said, Weiner was a good congressman last month and he still is this month. Weiner said his regrets go primarily to his wife. He said they aren’t getting a divorce — and “we will weather this.” He indicated they still love each other, and now it becomes a private matter between them and their families. This ridiculous situation he put himself into has nothing to do with his job.

We can certainly reminisce about Vitter’s “thing” for prostitutes and diapers or Craig tapping for action in the men’s restrooms at airports.  Vitter was one of those ‘Christian family values’ politicians –  you know the kind: holier than thou. Craig was anti-gay rights publicly just not so much in private. It’s that kind of hypocrisy that makes people scream — Republicans who want to control everyone else’s private lives with their religion and “morals,” whose own private lives include shit like wearing diapers, prostitutes and same-sex blow jobs in airport restrooms.

Bob Cesca pointed out that if Weiner had been introducing bills against online flirting, then this situation would be almost as bad as a Republican sex scandal. And he’s right. Almost but not quite.

Finally: Yes, Weiner lied. That’s the worst thing for us, looking in from the outside. But he manned-up and publicly apologized for lying and took credit for the dumb things he did.

Just for a second, compare Weiner’s lie to the lies that the Bush Administration fed the media and the American public for months about WMDs in Iraq. Those lies started a war, those lies have caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocents and the lives and sanity of thousands of our troops, and those lies helped put our country over the edge economically. In a way, their lies have touched all of us personally in one way or another.

Did Bush or Cheney ever offer an apology to the people they lied to  — will they ever? Better yet, would their base ever ask for an apology from them?

The answer to all those questions is no. That’s why I can’t get too worked up about Weiner’s situation. It was all so dumb and he’s making his amends. Moving on.

Cool story, Bro: Andrew Breitbart will probably be blaming this person for “Weinergate”

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I get that Breitbart reports things that are untrue or distorted most of the time — that’s his thing. What I don’t get is how quickly the mainstream media jump on board his Crazytrain, even after they’ve seen the results of his ‘big’ stories like ACORN or Shirley Sherrod. America’s Fourth Estate is broken — it should be called the Hurr Durr Estate.

From The Smoking Gun:

http://i.cdn.turner.com/dr/teg/tsg/release/sites/default/files/assets/danwolfetwittericon.jpg

For months, Wolfe and several Twitter sidekicks have excoriated Weiner, 46, in the harshest terms. They have criticized his looks, claimed his marriage is a sham, and accused his wife of having ties to al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. On May 5, Wolfe floated a rumor that compromising photos of a “big time” congressman were in the hands of a “top 5 Right Wing blogger.” He tweeted, “@RepWeiner are you this Congressman?” He reprised this photo rumor in a May 11 tweet.

As the Weiner story began to spread over the weekend–and detractors started accusing him of somehow hacking Weiner’s accounts–Wolfe balked when Breitbart sought to arrange a conference call to discuss how to further exploit and advance “Weinergate.”

In e-mails sent from his Yahoo account, Wolfe asked, “Why does he need to speak with me for this?” and “I’m just not sure why he needs to talk to me. Why is talking necessary?” He also noted that, “I am having major personal problems right now getting worse by the minute.”

The Wolfe At Anthony Weiner’s Front Door

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