The Big Lie is a time-honored technique built on repetition. Say something loud enough, often enough, and the credulous will accept it as true. One example might be discredited hack Eric Boehlert, who’s been telling us for months that Glenn Beck’s ratings are down, down, down. They’re sinking. He’s all but finished! Turn out the lights! Of course the latest ratings prove otherwise:

In the afternoons the only program to show growth was 5 p.m.'s "Glenn Beck," which was up +2% in total viewers and +11% in the demo (2.129M/603k).

Funny, Eric hasn’t gotten around to reporting that small detail.

This brings us to Ellen Brodsky of the newshounds, where The Big Lie is treated with the reverence of Holy Writ. She’s been working overtime for the past ten days or so, doing damage control over the New Black Panther Case. Ellen’s been churning out one post after another: a veritable flood of ignorance, fabrications, and codswallop. We are devoting this entire FHWiR to this subject: consider it a “highlight reel” of whippet low points.

It should surprise no one that Brodsky began her maniacal obsession by playing the race card. After all, Ellen has an established pattern of racial attacks, not to mention the ugly racial slurs published by her site. So naturally she whisks out the color card yet again, complaining about Megyn Kelly’s interview with a DoJ lawyer, and also her appearance with Sean Hannity:

Kelly And Hannity Echo Beck: Obama's A Racist With A Racist DOJ

So begins the first of Brodsky’s big lies. Not only did Megyn Kelly never call Obama a “racist”, she never even mentioned President Obama! Not in the interview with Adams, and not in the segment with Hannity. It’s another hound lie, and if it sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because old dogs rarely learn new tricks. Ellen has done this before. And yet, immediately after that HeadLie, Brodsky moves the goalposts:

...instead of offering the views as their own, Hannity and Kelly "outsourced" them through her so-called “explosive” interview with a former DOJ attorney and GOP activist.

Well that didn’t take long. In just the first paragraph, Ellen Brodsky concedes that her headline is a bold-type lie, that Megyn Kelly didn’t “echo Beck” at all! Unfortunately her “outsource” theory is just another baseless smear, because the DoJ attorney never called Obama a racist, and didn’t say the DoJ was racist either. Where did all of that come from? Ellen Brodsky made it up!

In her very next piece on this kerfuffle, Ellen declares that Laura Ingraham called President Obama a racist. You can check it out if you like, but Ingraham said no such thing. No matter, repetition is the key to The Big Lie. Ellen preposterously decides that former DoJ attorney Adams is not to be believed because he’s just making “hearsay accusations”. We won’t try to explain to non-lawyer Brodsky what hearsay is; suffice it to say the first-hand testimony taken under oath cited by Adams ain’t hearsay. It’s sworn testimony. She also restates an assertion first made in her previous post that “every one” of Adams’s allegations is “based on secondhand information”. It was a lie the first time, and it’s still a lie.

After a break for the holiday weekend, another post from Ellen Brodsky! Repeat the lie that Kelly called Obama a racist? Check! And toss in something new:

The DOJ has said that the case against the Black Panthers was shaky and that this one incident didn’t constitute an orchestrated campaign or pattern to deny voting rights, the usual criteria for deploying federal resources in litigation.

But wait...the case had already been won. The judge was ready to enter a default judgment. Whatever federal resources were deployed had already been spent. Dismissing the case doesn’t bring them back! But never mind that. Ellen is pulling another fast one. Her link does not go to a statement from the DoJ, but rather to an opinion piece--one that just happens to parrot her own statements (or is it the other way around?). That opinion piece itself has a link to a DoJ statement, which says nothing whatsoever about orchestrated campaigns, patterns, or criteria for deploying federal resources. Another link on the page includes a response from AAG Ronald Welch--which also says nothing whatsoever about patterns or criteria for deploying federal resources. Who said it then? The guy who wrote the opinion column! Pretty tricky Brodsky, but not tricky enough.

And there’s more:

No voters at all in the Philadelphia precinct have come forward to allege intimidation.

This is of course legally meaningless since there is no requirement that anyone “come forward”. Under the law, just an attempt to intimidate--even if it isn’t successful--is a violation. Still Brodsky’s ignorance sparked a most revealing exchange between several commenters and someone calling themselves “newshounds” (apparently Ellen herself):

• corey barrett - you actually dont have to have anyone come forward who was intimidated, just witnesses who saw the intimidation, and they have those....you're trying real hard to spin this in favor of a racist organizaton.
• newshounds - You have absolutely no proof that the DOJ is a "racist organization." Law enforcement drops cases all the time and you know it.... The point is, nobody has said they were intimidated, the NBPP is nothing like the KKK in terms of membership or clout or even trouble making.... Ellen
• corey barrett - Just because the New Black Panthers arent as big as the Klan doesnt mean they arent a racist organization.... There ARE witnesses, I dont see where you keep getting that there were no witnesses, because there are. They saw and heard what these guys did. Even Bartle Bull, a former civil rights lawyer and publisher of the left-wing Village Voice, calls it "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I've ever seen". You guys are acting as though nothing happened. They have witnesses, there were interviews.
• newshounds - Where are those witnesses? Do you have a credible link to them where we could read about them?
• corey barrett - "There is sworn testimony in front of the Civil Rights Commission that Jackson tried to stop people from going into the polls. Witnesses testified that he tried to block them from entering the polls, yet they dismissed the case against him." Now of course you'll spin that or just flat out not believe it but there were witnesses.
• newshounds - Like I asked before, where is the witnesses statement and the credible link to them? I don't want to read anything from NewsBusters.Crow.

This is extraordinary. Now the mongrels are pretending that witnesses to the alleged intimidation don’t exist! They demand to know: Who are these witnesses? I command you produce a credible link! Prove that the ocean is salty! By what right do you claim the Earth revolves around the Sun?

The first step for Ellen and her houndettes might be to know what the frack they are talking about. Like, maybe, reading the sworn testimony before the Civil Rights commission from eyewitnesses like Michael Mauro and Chris Hill. Apparently that is too much trouble (we know how intimidating the Google Machine can be to the bowsers). Another eyewitness, Bartle Bull, not only testified before the commission but was interviewed on Fox News! How odd that the people who claim to “watch Fox” are so utterly unaware of what aired on Fox. With all the fulminating posts Ellen Brodsky wrote, somehow she wrote no article at all about the Bartle Bull interview. Why? All the better to turn around and say: “Witnesses? What witnesses?” This is the old standby, the lie of omission. If they just hide the truth, then it didn’t happen. It allows Brodsky to claim with a straight face:

Not much intimidation really happened, that no white voters have filed complaints and that there were actual problems with the evidence.

Really? Then why did the Justice department pursue the case against billy-club guy? Why did they get an injunction against him, watered-down but still an injunction? According to Brodsky’s Law “no voters filed complaints” so that must mean there’s no case. Even the DoJ doesn’t agree with Ellen. Don’t try to make sense out of it; it’s Hound Logic.

The insanity continues, as Brodsky asks the musical question:

Why Hasn’t Megyn Kelly Done Any Investigation Into Allegations Of Racism And Voter Fraud Enabling At DOJ?.... Isn’t it the job of a journalist to investigate her own stories?... According to Adams, the DOJ attorney who “supervises the voting section” scheduled a meeting in 2009 “with the entire voting section” and, “what she said was… that there was no interest in enforcing this provision in the law...” Adams didn’t say he was at that meeting – and, curiously, since all his other allegations are based on second-hand information, Kelly didn’t ask...

We’ll try to break this down so even Brodsky can understand it. There was a meeting with the entire voting section. Adams was part of the voting section. Ergo...connect the dots, Einstein. Even stranger: Ellen claims Megyn Kelly hasn’t investigated the story. She’s interviewed the central players, one of the eyewitnesses...what sort of “investigation” does Brodsky suggest? Unfortunately, the rest of the attorneys involved in the filing of these charges are still working for the DoJ. They are under a gag order and have been told not to comply with subpoenas from the Civil Rights Commission. Another little fact that Brodsky conveniently leaves out. Yet she found room to repeat both the falsehood that Megyn (or Adams, or someone) accused the DoJ of being “racist”, along with the “second-hand” lie too.

By the way, Ellen’s sudden dismissal of “second-hand sources” is most curious. Because for Brodsky and her biased beagles “second-hand sources” are coin of the realm. And we’re not talking second-hand sources as in sworn testimony either. We’re talking about sourcing so vague, disreputable, and amorphous that it amounts to little more than malicious rumor-mongering. Brodsky was perfectly willing to allow smears of Gretchen Carlson, Ann Coulter, John Gibson, and Megyn Kelly based on nothing more than unsourced gossip. And of course she continues to insist there was some unhealthy alliance between Sean Hannity and a neo-Nazi white supremacist. Brodsky’s great source for this story? The word of the Nazi himself, Hal Turner. Never mind that his story was riddled with factual errors and impossibilities. His word is good enough for Ellen...which is too bad for the memory of Tim Russert. You see, Turner also says he and Russert were best buds, and communicated secretly right up to Russert’s untimely death. Yeah, Ellen Brodsky only believes in sources when they are as credible, reliable, and honest as Hal Turner.

But we digress. Back to the NBPP case. Perturbed that Adams is “not the person to ask” (apparently for no other reason than Brodsky doesn’t like his answers), Ellen wants to know:

Why not ask someone not involved in the story?

So let’s get this straight. The way Brodsky thinks a story should be investigated is to talk to people who have no involvement or first-hand knowledge? Hey Ellen, doesn’t that make them “second-hand sources”? Man, you can’t make this stuff up. Of course it turns out Brodsky is being mendacious yet again. Megyn Kelly did in fact ask someone “not involved in the story”--Tamara Holder-- and she did so on the very program Brodsky is writing about! So why is Ellen trying to pretend she didn’t?

Ellen revives the lie about accusations based on hearsay and repeats it here, And then comes this where Ellen, 24 hours after claiming that Kelly hadn’t interviewed anyone not involved in the story, admits that Kelly had interviewed someone not involved in the story. But to insure the propaganda isn’t diluted, there is no reference to her earlier falsehood, which still stands uncorrected. It appears Brodsky knew about this interview all along, and her drivel about Megyn not asking “someone not involved in the story” was just Another Hound Lie.

And then there’s this. Ellen Brodsky complains that Megyn Kelly misstated the legal “consensus” (a word Kelly didn’t use, of course) as to why the DoJ dropped the Panther charges:

Kelly misleadingly told Bill O’Reilly that “virtually every attorney” who’s examined the case “doesn’t believe” the Department of Justice’s explanation for why it dropped its case against the New Black Panther Party, further lending her support to Adams’ hearsay claims.

Bonus Big Lie points to Brodsky for yet another repetition of “hearsay”.

But, in fact, a prominent attorney charged with reviewing the case recently wrote an article in National Review supporting the DOJ’s explanation....conservative attorney Angela Thernstrom who just happens to be the vice chair of the Commission on Civil Rights.

So there’s Ellen’s proof that most attorneys don’t doubt the DoJ explanation: one example. But what does citing one attorney prove? Not much. And what if that one attorney isn’t what Ellen purports her to be? Uh-oh, not another Brodsky blunder? Well either that, or Another Hound Lie. Angela Thernstrom is not a conservative attorney. Mainly because she’s not an attorney at all! How do we know? She says so:

I am the only non-lawyer on the Commission. I hold a Ph.D. from the Department of Government at Harvard University.

So here’s Ellen Brodsky (not an attorney) trying to second-guess the legal analysis of Megyn Kelly (attorney, Juris Doctor, editor of Law Review), and offering as her only contrary example an “attorney” who is no more a lawyer than Brodsky’s pet cat.

The latest gusher in Ellen’s staggering Niagara of misinformation and falsehoods came late last night. She finally tumbled to the fact that this “phony controversy” with no merit is also being covered on CNN. Oh noes! If there’s one thing Brodsky will not abide, it’s anyone reporting news that she dislikes--especially if it’s been on FNC too. What set Ellen off? It appears that CNN dared to interview Mr Adams and a member of the Civil Rights Commission. So Brodsky got on her high horse to demand that CNN suppress the news. Sign a petition! Stop that horrible CNN from interviewing people who appeared on Fox! Maybe they could do more Lindsay Lohan instead. Yeah, that’s the ticket. More Lohan!

Sorry Brodsky, but that horse has already left the stable. CNN’s been on this story since last year, More recently they interviewed one of the original Black Panthers and asked him if he saw the NBBP incident as voter intimidation:

BOBBY SEALE: Yes, to some degree it was. What happens is, they misunderstood. They are supposed to have a candidate on the ballot or somebody they support that relates to their arguments for change they want rather than having a club or something like that.

Oh, that Bobby Seale! He must be a Fox News racist. Ellen says CNN should “stop echoing Fox and do real reporting on this case”. If we go by the newshound notion of “real reporting”, that would mean cherry-picking data, ignoring sworn testimony, talking instead to people who have no involvement with the case, and putting someone forward as an “attorney” who’s never been to law school. That’s “real reporting”, Ellen Brodsky style.

Spot something you’d like to see in the next Fox Haters Week in Review? Send us an email!

Tags: newshounds, boehlert