Godwin’s Law, an Internet adage started by lawyer and writer Mike Godwin in 1990, states, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

The law’s point, Godwin explained in a 1995 article for Wired magazine, was the Internet seems to lead to glib comparisons between various politicians’ behavior and Hitler and Nazis which “invariably … trivialized the horror of the Holocaust and the social pathology of the Nazis”.

Godwin’s Law proved true once again on Friday, when TeaParty.org, a particularly vicious faction of the nebulous right-wing movement, treated subscribers to an E-mail blast titled “Stop America’s Hitler,” featuring a picture of President Obama sporting a Hitler moustache. If that wasn’t enough, the E-mail also included a photograph of two Nazis executing a victim with a pistol. ( continue to full post… )

It seems there’s room for WorldNetDaily (WND) to have one more obsession related to President Obama’s birth certificate, though this time it has little to do with Obama himself.

This week, WND announced its plans to appeal a federal judge’s decision to dismiss its $250 million lawsuit against Esquire magazine. At issue is a satirical piece executive editor Mark Warren wrote that claimed, quite comically, that WND editor-in-chief Joseph Farah was pulping the first print run of Jerome Corsi’s Where’s the Birth Certificate? The case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President. The book, which WND had trumpeted as the definitive work on the question of Obama’s provenance, was about to go on sale when Obama released his long-form birth certificate last year – a fact that, for most, ended the “birther” debate. ( continue to full post… )

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., this week dismissed a lawsuit that WorldNetDaily (WND) Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah filed against Esquire over a satirical article the magazine posted online claiming that Farah had recalled 20,000 copies of Jerome Corsi’s “birther” book.

The article, tagged as “humor,” said that WND was pulping Corsi’s Where’s The Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President. The book was about to go on sale when Obama released his long-form birth certificate, in effect making Farah, WND, Corsi and the title of Corsi’s book look ridiculous. WND’s complaint accused Esquire, reporter Mark Warren and parent company Hearst Communications Inc. of defaming WND and demanded nearly $250 million in damages.

This week, U.S. District Judge Rosemary M. Collyer saw otherwise, ruling that Esquire’s article was protected under the First Amendment as satirical expression related to a matter of public interest. ( continue to full post… )

Orly Taitz is not happy. For the past several years, the California-based swimsuit model-turned-lawyer has poured her heart and soul into an endless series of lawsuits alleging that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen and is therefore ineligible for office. Now, she says, Jerome Corsi – the devoted birther and conspiracy-monger who authored last year’s ill-timed Where’s the Birth Certificate? – is ruining everything.

“JEROME CORSI IS DESTROYING THE CASE ON WHICH I WORKED FOR 4 YEARS 24/7/365,” reads a headline posted Sunday on Taitz’ website. “HE IS GRATUITOUSLY MAKING UP AN AMERICAN FATHER FOR OBAMA.”

Actually, what Corsi is doing is a little lazier than that. Perhaps realizing that the “birther” fad is winding down despite the release, last November, of his e-book Where’s the REAL Birth Certificate, the relentless right-wing attack dog has tentatively embraced someone else’s alternative theory of Obama’s provenance. In a recent article for WorldNetDaily, Corsi suggested that a new documentary makes a “compelling case” that the president’s real father was not Kenyan-born Barack Obama Sr. at all. ( continue to full post… )

Between refining his farcical anti-Obama “birther” conspiracy theory, fear-mongering about a nonexistent planned merger between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, and groundlessly declaring that oil is not derived from living things and is therefore an infinite resource, right-wing attack dog Jerome Corsi is one busy dude.

The weight of these responsibilities seems to have become too much for the poor dear, who has reportedly compromised his normally impeccable ethics with a bit of plagiarism. On Dec. 19, Corsi published in WorldNetDaily (WND) an “exclusive” article titled “Obama’s legacy of broken promises – in Kenya.” Purportedly based on the results of a long-term research project headed by an unnamed former member of the Kenyan parliament, the article details Obama’s failure to come through on financial promises the president allegedly made to the Kenyan government, including the donation of money to improve the village in which his Kenyan relatives live. ( continue to full post… )

Another year, another horror. As we close out another 12 months of mayhem, criminal violence and just plain stupidity on the radical right, it’s time, once again, to compile our annual year-end roster of winners of Hatewatch’s Smackdown Awards. And this year’s been a doozy — from neo-Nazis trying to hide their past to irrepressible birthers and on to all manner of other hypocrites of the extreme right. So, without further ado and with apologies to Keith Olbermann, here are the awards as picked out by Hatewatch’s 5^th Annual Smackdown Awards Committee. ( continue to full post… )

Be careful what you wish for.

Media-hungry Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who just last week complained about a supposed “black out” on news of his investigation into the validity of President Obama’s birth certificate, is finally getting the media coverage he deserves. ( continue to full post… )

Given his reputation as a corrupt master of manipulation, disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff has been given a surprisingly credulous welcome by the media following the Nov. 1 release of his book Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth about Washington Corruption from America’s Most Notorious Lobbyist.

Described by its publisher as “an engrossing, informative work” that will “serve as a corrective” to Abraham’s “wildly misunderstood” story, the book and its author have in the past week been portrayed with relative sympathy by at least two important mainstream outlets, CBS’s “60 Minutes” and The New York Times. Neither lets him off the hook entirely; the Times, for example, notes that his book tour is “classic Abramoff” and “reflects his latest and most personal lobbying effort yet: the one on which he lobbies for himself.” But (ironically, given the subject matter) neither do the two reports look at who is behind this effort to redeem “Casino Jack,” and who stands to benefit from it. ( continue to full post… )

Pat Buchanan and his extremist allies are up in arms over liberal media watchdog groups’ recently launched campaign to get him fired from his news analyst position at MSNBC.

Following Buchanan’s Saturday appearance on James Edwards’ racist radio program “Political Cesspool,” to promote his new book, Suicide of a Superpower, Color of Change and Media Matters for America initiated a call for MSNBC to terminate Buchanan’s position. (Full disclosure: Color of Change was co-founded by James Rucker, a member of the board at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which publishes this blog.) ( continue to full post… )

Nearly eight months after President Obama released his long-form birth certificate, the carnival barkers he hoped to quiet are again clamoring to get back into the center ring.

WorldNetDaily (WND), the right-wing conspiracy website that has led the charge to question the legitimacy of Obama’s citizenship, has reported that the nation’s first law enforcement investigation into the president’s birth certificate is under way. Ostensibly leading the charge is none other than Arizona’s Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who bills himself as “America’s toughest sheriff.” ( continue to full post… )