Judicial Watch/Larry Klayman In The News

Two stories.

In the first, Judicial Watch looses a lawsuit brought against it by (now wait for it) Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman (he's no longer with Judicial Watch).  From the Washington Post:

Last month we reported that legal crusader Larry Klayman’s “record in public interest cases is incalculably terrible,” so we feel bound to pass on that Tuesday Klayman scored a win against the group he founded, Judicial Watch. A federal jury in Florida awarded him $156,000 in compensatory damages and $25,000 in punative damages in a defamation case, according to Klayman.

There’s been bad blood and more than one lawsuit between the two ever since Klayman left Judicial Watch in 2003. A separate set of claims and counterclaims is pending in federal court in Washington.

“I’ve had trials and tribulations with them for 10 years. I feel good,” Klayman said. “It wasn’t the dollars, it’s the principle.”

So what happened?  There's a birther thread in it, doncha know:

The case centered on a false claim by a Judicial Watch employee in 2012 that Klayman had been convicted of not paying child support. Since Klayman is a public figure, he had to prove malice was behind the comment.

And the thread:

The facts are complicated. In 2012, the Judicial Watch employee attended an event in California featuring then U.S. Senate candidate and birther activist Orly Taitz. The employee allegedly told Taitz of Klayman’s supposed conviction for not paying child support. Taitz posted the information on the Internet.

Turns out Klayman was indicted — not convicted — and he maintained that his temporary non-payment was a tactical legal maneuver to give him standing to appeal the child support. He later brought his payments up to date. (He has two teenage children and is divorced from their mother.)

Klayman said the comment hurt his reputation and caused him to be unable to raise money for his own lawsuit challenging the eligibility of President Obama to be on the ballot in Florida. Klayman is convinced that the birth certificate that Obama released is false.

So he's a birther.  Lovely.

Then there's the other story.  This from Rightwingwatch:

Larry Klayman, the right-wing lawyer whose bizarre diatribes, relentless lawsuits and frequent threats to overthrow President Obama are routinely featured here on Right Wing Watch, today “agreed to accept a public censure for violating attorney ethics rules” dealing with a long-running dispute with the group he founded, Judicial Watch.

Ever so modest, he said he acquiesced to the censure agreement so he can back to his fulltime job of trying to “protect the American people.”

Why should this be an issue on this blog?

Because according to the BridgeProject, Judicial Watch has recieved about 94% of its foundational support from foundations controlled by Tribune-Review owner, Richard Mellon Scaife.  In fact, Carthage, Sarah Scaife and Allegheny Foundations are three of the top five donors to Judicial Watch.

So I am curious how they're gonna play this, if at all.

The curious thing.  Klayman left JD in 2003.  The Trib's search engine allows you filter the search hits by year.  If you search for "Larry Klayman" at the Trib there are no hits between 2003 (the year he left the heavily Scaife funded Judicial Watch) and 2013, when The Trib reported on Klayman's lawsuit against the NSA.

10 years of no Trib coverage for Larry Klayman, as far as I can see.  A gap that just happened to begin about the same time he left Judicial Watch, as far as I can see.

Huh.  How're they gonna play the lawsuit?  The censuring?  Or are they gonna ignore it all together?

Only time will tell.

A Visit To Crazie Central

And by that I mean, of course, World Net Daily.

If ever you want to see what teh crazie is thinking, go check out WND. Just make sure you're not drinking any sort of beverage as you read. An involuntary spit take may commence.

I was going to write primarily about this Victoria Jackson column I found over the weekend. She manages to cram a lifetime of crazie into a few hundred words. It's breath taking. First there's the religious bigotry:

Frankly, I'm afraid to say anything about Muslims. Why? Because they kill people.

In fact she, opened with that. Then there's the religious bigotry mixed with just random dishonesty:

Why do liberals embrace Shariah law even though "beheading your wife" seems to go against the feminist movement's mantra? Why do liberals embrace Islam knowing it frowns on homosexuality?

Because they have the same goals. Progressives, communists, liberals, globalists and Muslims want to destroy America.

Pay attention to teh gay. It bubbles up later. After her opening, Jackson wrote out a skit/interview (and I am guessing she thinks it's comedy) with Katie Couric about a new al-Qaeda woman's magazine (and no I did not make that past part up). Jackson concludes:

This new al-Qaida magazine for women has beauty tips and suicide-bomber tips! Gimme a break! That is as ridiculous as two men kissing on the mouth! And I don't care what is politically correct. Everyone knows that two men on a wedding cake is a comedy skit, not an "alternate lifestyle"! There I said it! Ridiculous!

Did you see "Glee" this week? Sickening! And, besides shoving the gay thing down our throats, they made a mockery of Christians – again! I wonder what their agenda is? Hey, producers of "Glee" – what's your agenda? One-way tolerance?

I am always amazed that you tend to see how often that one particular metaphor ("shoving the gay thing down our throats") is used by the anti-gay crusaders in America. I am guessing it signals a particular homophobic fear - usually among men. That fact that a woman strapped it on to a WND rant doesn't make it any less homophobic.

As crazie as Victoria Jackson is, she's outshown by Scaife beneficiary Larry Klayman (he of Judicial Watch) who had this published in WND this weekend. First he spouts out basically every Clinton era conspiracy theory out there and opens with, you guessed it, Vince Foster:

During the so-called "Clinton years," when I took the testimony of nearly everyone in the White House, it became well-known that Hillary Rodham Clinton was in effect the operational chief of the administration and its "hit man" – the evil point person for destroying adversaries – and head of the "War Room," which also comprised James Carville and George Stephanopoulos. Hubbie Bill was the "creative genius," not only with regard to foreign policy, but literally with regard to "domestic affairs." Just ask Monica Lewinsky and the cigar industry. But there is one statement I will always remember: "Hillary rules the school," testified to by Linda Tripp, the former assistant to mysteriously deceased Hillary law-firm partner and Clinton Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster – giving a new meaning to the French expression "femme fatale." As also suggested during the testimony, Vince was the "love slave" who "watered Hillary's office plants" and may have died for being honest and not wanting to go along any longer in helping her execute evil deeds. Over 80 material witnesses and others "died" during the Clinton years, and poor Vince was only one of them.

I guess the fact that Ken Starr's own investigation reaffirmed Foster's suicide only proves that either Hilary threatened Starr himself or that that maybe he's in on the conspiracy.

Maybe Ken Starr's Hilary's love slave, too!

The whole point of Klayman's column is to pose a few more kinks in the kinky Clinton conspiracy:

• Barack Obama named didn't want to name Hilary Clinton as Vice President because he was afraid that if she were Vice President, she'd kill him.
• He also named her Secretary of State because then she'd get the blame for his planned foreign policy of "anti-Americanism, appeasement, weakness, prevarication and hostility toward Israel and nearly all things Jewish and Christian."
• He's doing this to undercut her chances of challenging him in 2012.

On the other hand, she's got her own plan:

In 2011, it may be passé for Hillary to get rid of people by having them disappear. But with Obama there is an easier way that I suspect may, in this age of "civility," be the femme fatale's new modus operandi. I have come to conclude, through sources close to Hillary, that she herself may again be working on the so-called "birther" issue, which she first raised during her 2008 presidential campaign. For if Hillary can finally obtain proof positive that President Obama was born in Kenya, and not in Hawaii as he claims, then she will not have to send him on a day trip to Fort Marcy Park to retire him as president. What could be cleaner?

This is the guy who runs Judicial Watch, beneficiary of $8.74 million in Scaife funds over the last few decades.

Teh Crazie - for all to see.