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Feb. 8, 2013

Rabbi Berel Wein: Lofty ideals must be followed with grounded applications

Clifford D. May: Letter from the West Bank
Steve Rothaus: Judge OKs plan for gay man, lesbian couple to be on girl's birth certificate
Gloria Goodale: States consider drone bans: Overreaction or crucial for privacy rights?
Environmental Nutrition Editors: Don't buy the aloe vera juice hype
Michael Craig Miller, M.D.: Harvard Experts: Regular exercise pumps up memory, too
Erik Lacitis: Vanity plates: Some take too much license
The Kosher Gourmet by Susie Middleton: Broccoflower, Carrot and Leek Ragout with Thyme, Orange and Tapenade is a delightful and satisfying melange of veggies, herbs and aromatics
Feb. 6, 2013

Nara Schoenberg: The other in-law problem

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. : A see-no-jihadist for the CIA
Kristen Chick: Ahmadinejad visits Cairo: How sect tempers Islamist ties between Egypt, Iran
Roger Simon: Ed Koch's lucky corner
Heron Marquez Estrada: Robot-building sports on a roll
Patrick G. Dean, M.D.: Mayo Clinic Medical Edge: How to restore body's ability to secrete insulin
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: 3 prostate-protecting diet tips
The Kosher Gourmet by Emma Christensen 7 principles for to help you make the best soup ever in a slow cooker
Feb. 4, 2013

Jonathan Tobin: Can Jewish Groups Speak Out on Hagel?

David Wren: Findings of government study, released 3 days before Newtown shooting, at odds with gun-control crusaders
Kristen Chick: Tahrir becomes terrifying, tainted
Curtis Tate and Greg Gordon: US keeps building new highways while letting old ones crumble
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to hear case on arrests, DNA
Harvard Health Letters: Neck and shoulder pain? Know what it means and what to do
Andrea N. Giancoli, M.P.H., R.D.: Eat your way to preventing age-related muscle loss
The Kosher Gourmet by Diane Rossen Worthington Baked Pears in Red Wine and Port Wine Glaze: A festive winter dessert
Feb. 1, 2013

Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb: Redemption

Clifford D. May Home, bloody, home
Christa Case Bryant andNicholas Blanford Why despite Syria's allies warning of retaliation for Israeli airstrikes, the threats are likely hollow
Rick Armon, Ed Meyer and Phil Trexler Ex-police captain cleared by DNA test is freed after nearly 15 years
Harvard Health Letters: Could it by your thyroid?
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: When 'healthy food' isn't
Sue Zeidler: Coke ad racist? Arab-American groups want to yank Super Bowl ad (INCLUDES VIDEO)
The Kosher Gourmet by Nealey Dozier The secret of this soup is the garnish
January 30, 2013

Allan Chernoff: Celebrating 'Back from the Dead Day'

America isn't a religious country? Don't tell Superbowl fans!
Mark Clayton Cybercrime takedown!
Germany remembers Hitler rise to power
Israel salutes U. N. --- with the one finger salute
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: Get cookin' with heart-healthy fats
Ballot riles Guinness World Records
The Kosher Gourmet by Elizabeth Passarella Potato, Squash and Goat Cheese Gratin
January 28, 2013

Nancy Youssef: And Democracy for all? Two years on, Egypt remains in state of chaos

Fred Weir: Putin: West is fomenting jihadi 'blowback'
Meredith Cohn: Implantable pain disk may help those with cancer
Michael Craig Miller, M.D. : Ask the Harvard Experts: Are there drugs to help control binge eating?
David Ovalle Use of controversial 'brain mapping' technology stymied
Jane Stancill: Professor's logic class has 180,000 friends
David Clark Scott Lego Racism?
The Kosher Gourmet by Mario Batali The celebrated chef introduces us to PANZEROTTI PUGLIESI, cheese-stuffed pastry from Italy's south


Jewish World Review July 24, 2012/ 5 Menachem-Av, 5772

Anderson Cooper crosses the line

By Frank J. Gaffney Jr.


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Anderson Cooper closed one of five segments of his weeknight CNN show that he recently devoted to attacking principally Rep. Michele Bachmann with a genuflection toward an iconic newsman, Edward R. Murrow. He deployed against her the gauntlet Murrow threw down to Sen. Joseph McCarthy in March 1954: "The line between investigating and persecuting is a [very] fine one." If anyone has stepped over that line, however, it is Mr. Cooper himself, rather than the Minnesota congresswoman.

Night after night during the week of July 16, the host of "Anderson Cooper 360" failed to meet even the most basic standards of investigative journalism. The irony is that, in his ill-concealed persecution of Mrs. Bachmann, Mr. Cooper has serially engaged in precisely the practices he pillories her and others for using, by his account, to destroy the reputation of a Muslim-American woman named Huma Abedin, the deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Let us count the ways:


  • Mr. Cooper insists that Mrs. Bachmann failed to do her homework. He singles her out for most of his criticism, despite the fact that she was but one of five members of Congress to raise concerns not only about Ms. Abedin's ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, but those of a number of others the Obama administration has enlisted as officials, advisers and liaisons to "the Muslim community." Yet, Mr. Cooper repeatedly showed his ignorance of the extensive evidence cited by the legislators, even as he mentioned the website where some of it resides: the Center for Security Policy's online video course at MuslimBrotherhoodInAmerica.com.

  • As he accused Mrs. Bachmann of playing fast and loose with the facts, Mr. Cooper repeatedly mischaracterized the nature of the legislators' request for five federal inspectors general to conduct investigations. He or his echo chamber of exclusively like-minded guests complained that Ms. Abedin is accused of being a "spy" and engaging in "treason" and that she has been subjected to a groundless, bigoted and McCarthyite witch hunt. Several of the reporters and interested parties who added color commentary (sometimes repeatedly) further demeaned Mrs. Bachmann by asserting that she is simply engaging in partisan politics and fundraising for her re-election campaign.

  • As with the lawmaker and to a lesser extent her colleagues, Mr. Cooper also made a point of going after this columnist. If anyone is guilty of "McCarthyism," though, it is the journalistic poseur who specializes in shooting the messenger and buying into and tendentiously proclaiming that there are "no facts" supporting the unwanted message -- rather than rigorously examining and accurately reporting on the vast amount of evidence that inconveniently does exist.



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  • While portraying Ms. Abedin as an innocent victim of smears, Mr. Cooper engaged in his own smearing -- occasionally through his rants on the subject, often by citing others who have indulged in ad hominem attacks against the legislator and her team. He repeatedly showcased such attacks by individuals in her own party, even though they were clearly unfamiliar with the actual nature of the legislators' concerns and the abundant grounds for raising them.

  • One of the prominent figures in this televised persecution of Mrs. Bachmann was the man who kicked it off -- her colleague, Rep. Keith Ellison, Minnesota Democrat and the first Muslim member of Congress. As it happens, according to the public record (recently brilliantly distilled by counterterrorism expert Patrick Poole at PJ Media), Mr. Ellison has himself been closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood -- a knotty problem Mrs. Bachmann has noted, to Mr. Cooper's horror.

    Accordingly, the "360" host had Mr. Ellison on to help deflect that charge. When the congressman blithely denied that he was a Muslim Brother or, for that matter, that he even knew very much about the Brotherhood, that was good enough for crack investigative journalist Anderson Cooper. Back to the persecution of Mrs. Bachmann, with Mr. Cooper egging on Minnesota's Muslim congressman.

  • Mr. Cooper further discredited his claim to be an independent, let alone exacting, journalist by taking at face value the FBI's assurances that it had not dealt with Muslim Brothers or other "extremists" in the recent purge of its training materials and files. The evidence of that falsehood is readily available. Yet, the FBI statement was presented as gospel by a credulous host whose only skepticism was reserved for why Mrs. Bachmann had been charged by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers with investigating the extent of the Muslim Brotherhood's influence operations inside the bureau.

  • Perhaps most distressing was the service Mr. Cooper has provided to the Islamists by promoting the meme that inquiries about specific Muslims with demonstrable ties to the Muslim Brotherhood amount to attacks on all Muslims. This plays into the victimhood mantra Islamists use to justify their jihadism undertaken ostensibly for the purpose of defending beleaguered co-religionists.


Applying Mr. Cooper's logic, every Muslim is to be given an automatic pass -- even those whose associations with an organization such as the Brotherhood that is sworn to our destruction. Such deference would clearly violate the government's own guidelines for security clearances, to say nothing of the oath of office to support the Constitution and defend it against all enemies foreign and domestic. That may also be the view of the Obama administration, but it is a formula for disaster for the country.

There is a particular irony to Mr. Cooper's campaign against those who oppose the Muslim Brotherhood. For an avowedly homosexual man, Anderson Cooper is rooting for the wrong team. If the Islamists have their way here, he will not simply be on the wrong side of the line. He'll be toast.


Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control Policy in the Reagan Administration, heads the Center for Security Policy. Comments by clicking here.

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