A rightwing extremist "news" outlet, Newsmax.com, was apparently also unable to help labelling disgraced Republican sexual predator Rep. Mark Foley as a Democrat in a report released on their website this morning.

Our buddy Bob Kincaid of Head-On Radio alerted us to this report today from NewsMax's "chief Washington correspondent," Ronald Kessler...

Kincaid asks us via email: "At what point do we stop saying that this is accidental?"

The original appearance of such an "accident" occurred, as we reported it last week, when Fox "News" labelled the Republican Foley as a Democrat in a chyron over a video cutaway. Three of them, in fact. Across two different O'Reilly Factor segments. After our report brought attention to the issue, Fox blanked out that part of the screen during their two subsequent of the program later that night.

The next day, Associated Press did the same thing, but at least had the decency to both correct the problem by changing the "D" to "R" and noting the original "error" at the bottom of the report in a journalistically appropriate way when they did so.

Like phony news organization Fox, who told Editor & Publisher a few days later that they felt no "correction per se" was necessary, phony news organization Newsmax apparently doesn't believe they need to tell anybody of the "error." They changed the "D" in their story to "R" later in the day --- after who knows how many had read the article --- but didn't bother to note the change in the updated article.

So much for Republican journalistic ethics. So much for Republicans taking personal responsibility. For anything.

UPDATE 3:33pm PT: Editor & Publisher picks up this story...

The Clint Curtis campaign for the U.S. House (FL-24) issued a press release late last week asking "What Did Feeney Know About Colleague Mark Foley's Predatory Behavior And When Did He Know It?". (Press release posted in full at the end of this article.)

It was not without reason that we asked the same question of Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) last week at the end of a blog item on the latest misstep in the corrupt Congressman's crazy smear campaign he's running against Curtis. A smear campaign that, we might add, seems to be helping Curtis enormously!

For evidence of that, see this local Florida news report (includes video) blasting Feeney for sending porn mailings to local moms, and this darn-near accurate feature article in Saturday's Orlando Sentinel calling on Feeney to take a lie-detector test!

The question of what Feeney knew about Foley, when he knew about it and what he did about it is an appropriate one. Feeney, as Deputy Whip, is a member of the House GOP leadership who had reportedly been informed long ago of the "Foley Problem." Feeney is also a Florida caucus colleague of the now-disgraced child predator and proudly worked with Foley on bills such as the PROTECT Act of 2003 to punish those who would exploit children.

For background, as briefly as we can give it (regular BRAD BLOG readers may skip this graf) Curtis is running to unseat Feeney this year. Curtis alleged in December of 2004 that Feeney had asked him to create a vote-rigging software prototype to be used for flipping the votes in South Florida when both men worked at Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), an Oviedo, FL, software firm. Curtis was a programmer, and Feeney was their general counsel and registered lobbyist (in addition to his day job as Speaker of the Florida House). As early as 2001, Curtis also alleged that YEI --- where Feeney maintains his campaign headquarters even today --- was harboring communist Chinese spies and overbilling state agencies by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Both of those claims have since been borne out (see this summary of the extraordinary Clint Curtis story); Curtis has also told his story in sworn video-taped testimony before a congressional panel and passed a polygraph test, which Feeney, for his part, still refuses to take.

Despite Feeney's silly and shameless use of doctored photos and doctored facts on his campaign's smear website and smear blog --- which has only just now been updated to disclose that its "Paid for by Tom Feeney" after an FEC complaint was filed --- and despite Feeney's various misfired attempts to tar Curtis with ridiculous and self-disproving claims, we'll avoid such cheap and childish shots at the Congressman. At least for the time being.

We will, however, suggest that Mr. Feeney --- who has been mighty quiet about the Foley scandal since it broke --- may want to go on record, sooner rather than later, about exactly what he knew and what he did, or didn't do, about the Foley issue over the past several years.

While we're at it, was Feeney one of those dozens of folks in Congress who recently received subpeonas on this matter? I'm sure he'll have no trouble telling us whether that answer is either yes or no.

As we all know, it's not the crime, but the cover-up that gets 'em every time. We're waiting Mr. Feeney. You may wish to make your move before someone else does it for you. Just trying to be helpful here.

Clint Curtis' complete press release follows in full...

You know what Fox "News" did last week. And of course, that they didn't think such an egregious "error" merited either an apology or on-air correction.

Here's what they're doing this week, as according to Sinfonian at dKos...

(Hat-tip to Des.)

We know how atrociously and shamefully Fox "News" has covered the Foley scandal. This superb and detailed article from Jamison Foser at Media Matters demonstrates how CNN's coverage has been just as bad and, arguably, far worse.

The piece underscores the case we've been making here for years. Corporate media no longer report news, They do nothing more than repeat it. And only when they are given direct orders to do so by the politicians they pretend to be covering. (And, by and large, only when those politicians are Republicans.)

"The most trusted name in news?!" What an utter debacle.

Editor & Publisher published a comment today from the Executive Producer of Fox "News'" O'Reilly Factor on their having run a title under video of Rep. Mark Foley --- three different times, in two different segments --- which labeled the now-disgraced, now-former Republican Congressman as a Democrat:

The BRAD BLOG orginally broke the story of Fox's egregious "error" last Tuesday.

We followed up with a report on AP having done a similar thing the next day, though they had the journalistic integrity (unlike Fox "News") to issue a correction statement when the problem was found.

Yesterday ran we ran another follow-up on O'Reilly and Fox's failure to publicly correct or even acknowledge the "error," indisputably closing any further debate on whether Fox is actually a news organization. It isn't. We included links to videos of both The Daily Show's and MSNBC Countdown's coverage of same in that last report.

UPDATE 10/10/06 4:52pm PT: Now NewsMax.com says Foley a "Democrat"!...

UPDATE 2/8/08: Fox now shows presumptive Republican Presidential candidate John McCain also as a Democrat! Screenshot...

Francine Busby and Brian Bilbray will meet again in November's election for the 50th Congressional District in San Diego County, California. Because Bilbray was declared the winner of the Special Election on June 6, he will be running as an incumbent this time. However, there has not yet been a trustworthy count of the votes that reportedly brought him into Congress after the initial disputed election. The court case challenging his victory has yet to be resolved.

San Diego voters Barbara Gail Jacobsen and Lillian Ritt filed an election contest challenging Bilbray's reported victory based on a number of factors including the now-infamous Diebold electronic voting machine sleepovers. Judge Yuri Hofmann dismissed that suit after intervention by Republican Congressional leaders claiming that once Bilbray was sworn in, California courts had no jurisdiction to rule on California's election, even though swearing in took place before the election was certified in California. That dismissal is now being appealed by California attorney Ken Simpkins and election attorney Paul Lehto on behalf of Jacobsen and Ritt.

According to Simpkins, this "was a unique situation because they actually swore Bilbray in before we got certification of this election, before all the votes were counted. Congress is basically saying we're going to swear in whoever we want to swear in, it doesn't matter if the election has been completed or not. That's another treading on the state's constitutional right to determine the time, place and manner of elections," he said.

A campaign mailing received by a hundred thousand Florida voters today would seem to indicate that the corrupt, and apparently desperate U.S. Congressman from Oviedo, Florida, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff), is willing to do everything within his power to lose his congressional race this year against challenger Clint Curtis.

"Don't send smut to my mailbox," the New Smyrna Beach, Florida. mother says in a video report at Florida's WFTV Channel 9, "It's not really something I want my 9-year-old walking out to the mailbox and bringing to me and asking me questions about."

The mailing, of dubious taste, is the latest chapter in Feeney's bizarre smear campaign against his former colleague, vote-rigging whistleblower turned Congressional opponent Clint Curtis.

We highly recommend the article at the WFTV Channel 9 website (which also includes a video of their coverage on tonight's evening news.)

In the mailing --- sent by Feeney to more than 100,000 voters in Florida's 24th Congressional district and featuring a poorly-doctored photograph of Curtis dressed as Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner --- Feeney claims he's attempting to "alert" voters that Curtis has been endorsed by Hustler publisher Larry Flynt.

So far, Feeney's bizarre attempts to garner support have included a rudimentary smear website named "Crazy Clint Curtis," featuring doctored photos of Curtis and other dubious claims, and a blogsite repeating those claims citing "evidence" that actually seems to belie the strange assertions. (e.g., See our coverage of on Feeney's odd 9/11 conspiracy theory.) The smear blog, however, has no indication that it's paid for by the Feeney campaign.

The disingenous references to Hustler in the mailing, including a doctored cover from the salacious magazine, are in reference to an article of ours [PDF - WARNING: Includes graphic photos from death scene!] on the mysterious death of Florida Inspector Raymond Lemme, which the magazine ran some months ago.

Lemme, as we originally reported at BRAD BLOG, was found dead in a Valdosta, Georgia hotel room during the course of investigating Curtis' whistleblower claims against Yang Enterprises, Inc. (YEI), an Oviedo, Florida, software firm with top-security state and NASA contracts.

Curtis had worked as a programmer at YEI while Feeney was their general counsel and registered lobbyist.

Feeney was also the Speaker of the Florida House at the time when Curtis claims YEI had employeed illegal Chinese aliens (spying on America), overbilled the state on contracts, and had requested that Curtis create a vote-rigging software prototype at the behest of the Congressman. The charges of Chinese spies and state overbilling have since been confirmed, by both state and federal investigations and reports.

Hustler ran a sidebar with our article written by someone named Mark Johnson. That sidebar, titled "Vote for Clint!" describes Curtis' early plans at the time to run for Congress and urges readers to support the effort at www.ClintCurtis.com.

Feeney's new mailer, however, looks like it may have done little more than succeed in angering Florida families and voters who had never even heard of either Feeney or Curtis before. The mother in the report indicates that it has led her to not vote for Feeney this November.

Adding to the poorly timed association of sex and politics --- in light of the recent revelations of sexual improprieties by Feeney's Florida GOP House colleague Mark Foley --- it looks like another triumphant disaster for Feeney.

From WFTV's report:

The article and video (both of which we couldn't recommend more!) go on to say that Feeney claims our Hustler article about Lemme's death charges that "Feeney was involved in a suspicious death in Georgia."

Since we actually wrote that article, we can tell you that no such allegation was made of involvement by Feeney in the death of Lemme. WFTV should correct that point for the record. (NOTE: We've contacted the WFTV reporter, Josh Einiger, who did an otherwise very good job on the story and he says he'll be attempting to correct the inaccuracy on their website shortly. Apparently, he was just repeating what Feeney, and the mailing, had incorrectly claimed.)

Hey Tom, in the next mailing, why don't you include photos of yourself posing with a bunch of Congressional pages? Voters in the 24th need to know how much you care about our nation's youth!

So Fox "News" labelled an apparent sexual predator as a "Democrat", despite the indisputable fact that the man, disgraced Congressman Mark Foley, is a Republican.

As THE BRAD BLOG originally reported the day before last, Fox did so three different times during Tuesday's O'Reilly Factor and have never admitted this outrageous misreporting. They simply disappeared the issue on the subsequent rebroadcasts of the program after they were caught having done it.

The next day the Associated Press --- who appear to be a real news organization --- did something similar. However, they did the right thing within hours, and admitted the error in subsequent corrected versions of their original article, which had labelled the REPUBLICAN Mark Foley as a Democrat.

Everyone in the world, it seems, has now picked up on the story of Fox's outrageous "error." (Including Comedy Central's The Daily Show and MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann --- both videos now linked below.) Everyone, it seems, except for Fox. To our knowledge, Fox has not taken responsibility or accountability in any way.

For now, we'll presume that's the end of this particular story, which sheds additional light (as if any further was needed) on the absurd claims that the Fox "News" Channel is actually a "news" organization. It is not. It is a Propoganda Ministry beyond the reach of the accountability and responsibility under which any self-respecting and true news organization would normally operate.

We can only imagine the uproar from the "conservative" community, and the heads which would have been forced to roll had the situation been reversed and CNN, or anybody else in the media, labelled a Democratic sexual predator as a Republican. Three times. Without apology or correction.

As mentioned, both Stewart and Olbermann ran with the story yesterday. Here are links to each clip, both courtesy of Crooks & Liars...

Countdown with Keith Olbermann video clip...

Daily Show with John Stewart video clip...

UPDATE 10/6/06 3:49pm PT: O'Reilly Executive Producer now says 'no on-air correction necessary.' Full details...

It looks like AP picked up on Fox's "error" yesterday in labelling Mark Foley as a Democrat!

From Josh Marshall today...

Indeed Josh would appear to be correct. As of a quick Google search moments ago, there were still several articles indexed as showing Foley as a "(D-Florida)":

The stories listed by Google above now seem to have corrected the text in their online versions. No clue how many actually made it into newsprint that way.

Several of the outlets who ran AP's original "Foley is a Dem" version now have this correction notice at the bottom of their articles:

To our knowledge, no such admission has been issued by either O'Reilly or Fox "News", despite having run the most egregious version of this "error" (three times in total) during the initial primetime broadcast of The O'Reilly Factor last night as we originally reported just after it aired. They simply scrubbed the "error" by removing that title card during the later re-broadcasts of the program (the ones with the smaller viewerships).

(Hat-tip Joseph Cannon)

UPDATE: Eagle-eyed BRAD BLOG commenter "Fred T" notes that Hastert is also labelled as a Democrat in the AP story listed in the Google search graphic above!

UPDATE 10/10/06 4:52pm PT: Now NewsMax.com says Foley a "Democrat"!...

Just amazing. Fox's O'Reilly Factor just covered the Mark Foley (R-FL) issue in two different segments, one of them with a page who says he received communications from Foley, and another with Ann Coulter.

Never mind the content of either segment for now. Incredibly, during a total of three different cutaways to video footage of Foley, he was labelled at the bottom of the screen eachtime as "(D-FL)" !

Three different times. In two different segements. Each cutaway about 15 seconds or more. Showing Foley as a DEMOCRAT. Amazing.

Just an accident? We report, you decide.

UPDATE: Here's quick video clips two of the three times that Foley became made an honorary Fox "Dem"...

-- CLIP 1: Windows Media Player version...
-- CLIP 2 (Coulter): Windows Media Player version...

UPDATE 11:30pm PT: Though we didn't see the first evening rerun, several folks have reported that Fox "News" scrubbed the "error" by running the video during the late-night rerun of O'Reilly with no text on the bottom of the screen during those sequences. Also, please note we originally had the date of 6/3/06 on the screenshot above, instead of the correct 10/3/06. Once we noticed, we had so many folks linking up to this item, we couldn't get back in to the site at all to make the correction until now!

UPDATE 10/4/06 2:04am PT: Confirmed! We just watched the second late-night rerun of O'Reilly, and indeed, the evidence goes down the memory hole as Fox removed the mis-labelled chiron entirely from their later broadcasts without explanation! BTW, we watched both full segments this time, including the one with Florida's own alleged Queen of Voter Fraud, Ann Coulter who swears up and down that Hastert just couldn't have known anything about Foley's problem, he just couldn't have!

Screenshot from the rebroadcast, where the "(D-FL)" has been excised from all three video cutaways, is below...

UPDATE 10/4/06 2:13am PT: Heheh...Bob Johnson over at dKos may have the explanation for what happened at Fox today...

UPDATE 10/4/06 1:46pm PT: Now AP also labels Foley a Democrat!...

UPDATE 10/4/06 3:03pm PT: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) asks a fair question about this today...

UPDATE 10/4/06 7:15pm PT: Looks like Olbermann covered the story tonight, natch. (No credit to yours truly, however...go figure...sigh) ... Also, John Stewart this this on The Daily Show as well. Both videos now linked here...

UPDATE 10/6/06 3:49pm PT: O'Reilly Executive Producer now says 'no on-air correction necessary.' Full details...

UPDATE 10/10/06 4:52pm PT: Now NewsMax.com says Foley a "Democrat"!...

UPDATE 2/8/08: Fox now shows presumptive Republican Presidential candidate John McCain also as a Democrat! Screenshot...

This via AmericaBlog from Drudge...And note, if it's correct (Drudge isn't always, as you likely know) this if from the Washington Times, the White House organ! Not the Washington Post!

Holy crap.

UPDATE: We hear that Olbermann is reporting that Michael Reagan is calling for same! That's Michael Reagan, the White House organ! Not Ronny Reagan!

Holy holy crap crap.

LATE UPDATE: The Washington Times editorial --- "Resign, Mr. Speaker" -- is now up in full. Could this be the all-out implosion that seems like it should have come years ago? Should be an interesting coupla days/weeks...

LATER UPDATE: The New York Times weighs in on Republicans eating their own... "Pressure grows for G.O.P. Over Foley Scandal"

Signs (along with the desperate and shameful campaign smear website and smear blog he created) that Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) may be in trouble down in Florida in his race against whistleblower-turned-opponent Clint Curtis in the 24th district congressional race?

This today from from the Orlando Sentinel (who had previously endorsed Curtis' primary opponent, before Clint thumped him 2 to 1 in the recent election):

Also, as it's been reported that the House GOP leadership was informed about Rep. Mark Foley's predatory behavior with minors in the Congressional page program months ago and apparently took no action, it's fair to ask what Feeney, as both a Deputy Whip in the House and a fellow member of the Florida caucus, knew about Foley's behavior and when he knew it.

Feeney's campaign, by the way, has received money from Foley in the past, according to this report from MyDD.

Like his colleague Foley, Feeney has enjoyed trumpeting his own work in the House to create legislation to protect children from predatory behavior. Like Foley, (and those Feeney hangs with from DeLay to Abramoff to Ney to Cunningham to Jeb and George W.), he's never been big on transparency or honesty either. So we expect he'll do whatever he can to dance, dodge and otherwise obfuscate on this matter as usual, unless someone holds his feet to the fire.

We'd love to be proven wrong, but we're not holding our breath.

Oh...and this from The Hill last week, in response to Feeney's "crazy" campaign smear sites:

...

Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) became the latest in a growing line of Republican Congressmen to suddenly resign and/or drop their re-election bid in the face of scandal.

Creepy e-mails had recently been released from Foley to a 16-year old boy. RAW STORY has the series of emails. ABC News has the story of Foley's resignation just moments ago.

UPDATE: ABC News now has text of sexually explicit Instant Message conversations between Foley and a teen boy. We should have pointed out previously, in addition to being a part of the GOP leadership in Congress, Foley was also Chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children! From ABC...

Guess he was just doing research...

The silly, seemingly ineffective, and apparently expensive smear campaign being mounted by Florida's U.S. House Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Abramoff) attempting to attack his congressional opponent, a former colleague-turned-whistleblower, Clint Curtis continues.

Repeating a seemingly unsubstantiated attack on Curtis, initially posted on Feeney's "Crazy Clint Curtis" smear campaign website, a posting on the Congressman's smear blog site makes the same unevidenced claim.

Feeney's "evidence-free" charge is that Curtis has claimed Feeney knew about the 9/11 attacks before they happened.

It's an extraordinary claim now repeated several times in several places by the Congressman who was recently named one once again this year one of the "Most Corrupt Members of Congress" by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a non-partisan ethics watchdog organization in D.C.

While the claims has now been made on both his smear campaign website and blog, the "evidence" offered by Feeney for this claim would seem to disprove their own assertions. Here's Feeney's latest smearblog item in it's entirety (NOTE: We don't believe it's written by fifth graders, it just reads like it)...

That's it? Are we missing something here?

Their evidence that "Crazy" Clint Curtis claimed Feeney knew about 9/11 before the attack is that line from his self-published book?!

If we were Feeney, we'd ask for our money back from our campaign consultants. After they came home from school.

See our previous report on the smear site set up recently by Feeney and the kids, including doctored photos of Curtis and many other impressive campaign techniques.

Keep up the bad work, Tom!

For the record, in our two years of interviews and reporting on Clint Curtis' story since we originally broke the story of Curtis' extraordinary allegations [PDF] of Feeney's request to create vote-rigging sofware and much more, we have never heard him make any such claim that somehow Feeney knew about 9/11 before it happened.

On the other hand, while Feeney is spending hundreds of thousands on his less-than-dignified "Crazy Clint Curtis" smear campaign, he has yet to answer to any of Curtis' substantive allegations made in sworn affidavit, sworn video-taped testimony to members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee and found to be truthful in a polygraph test administered by the state of Florida's former lead polygraphist.

What Feeney has refused to speak to includes (but is certainly not limited to) the following wholly unanswered questions...

The campaign of one of Congress' most corrupt members, Tom Feeney (R-FL), has apparently enlisted fifth graders to create a smear website (www.CrazyClintCurtis.com) dedicated to smearing Feeney's congressional opponent Clint Curtis with doctored photos, innuendo and unsubstantiated, disproven claims.

The rudimentary site (okay, it's not created by fifth graders, it just looks, works and acts that way) includes doctored photos and videos of Curtis, and a smear blog to go with it. Though the main "Crazy Clint Curtis" website indicates that it's "Paid for by Tom Feeney," the blog itself that it links to --- accessible via CrazyClintCurtisBlog.blogspot.com --- has no indication of who it's paid for. If that blog site is created and/or run by a paid member of Feeney's campaign staff or uses it's vast resources (Feeney has reportedly spent the better part of $1 million for this brilliant smear campaign,) it would seem that Feeney is in violation of FEC campaign laws which require a "Paid for by Tom Feeney" notation somewhere on the blog.

Curtis' own website also includes a link to a blog, but as far as we know, it is maintained by a private unpaid individual.

Feeney has reportedly spent somewhere near $700k on his admitted smear campaign so far.

The good news is that those with a free blogger.com registration are allowed to post comments to Feeney's smear blog in reply to the Congressman's silliness! At least as of now. So feel free to give them regards from The BRAD BLOG and let them know where individuals concerned about things such as clean elections, clean officials, clean government contracts, congressmen who take trips from foreign-agents and Jack Abramoff, and who work with companies involved with convicted Chinese spies, can get grown-up information on the Clint Curtis/Tom Feeney story if they are interested.

Curtis has made claims concerning Feeney's involvement as registered lobbyist and general counsel for a Florida software firm that has now been shown to have harbored and petioned for an illegal Chinese alien (who later pled guilty to charges related to sending Hellfire anti-tank missile chips to Communist China) and overbilled the state of Florida by hundreds of thousands of dollars. He has also alleged that Feeney asked the company, in a meeting at which Curtis was present, to create vote-rigging software when they both worked for the firm. Curtis' claims have been made to Florida and Federal officials, as well as in a sworn affidavit and video-taped sworn testimony to members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

As well, he has passed a lie-detector test in regard to the claim. So far, Feeney has refused to take such a test, or to debate Curtis face to face despite challenges from the Curtis campaign to do either. Feeney still refuses, as recently as this Tampa Bay Scene cover story published last Thursday, to answer directly to any of the allegations (most of them proven through independent government documents and investigations) that Curtis has made in regard to Feeney.

For his part, Feeney has either refused to discuss the matter, or otherwise claimed he's had nothing to do with the YEI firm since leaving them to go to Congress in 2002. That, even while Feeney's campaign headquarters remains in the YEI building, the owners of the company continue to be amongst his top financial supporters, and even hosted a party for him in 2003 (with undoctored photos)...