And note now that the epic hate blogger didn't think it enough to attack Michelle Malkin, who had written a perfectly reasonable and well-documented report, as a "whiney wingnut victim." No, in his insane descent to dangerous incoherence, he's now basically calling virtually everyone who's responded to the Colorado politicization a "liar":
Politicizing the CO Shootings bit.ly/LEojKb A lie every time @ampowerblog repeats it. ABC ran w/ bad TParty link 2b first, not bias.
— J. Casper (@repsac3) July 22, 2012
Actually, it's Repsac3 who's lying. As I've reported throughout, the condemnation has been virtually universal, left and right, attacking Ross's initial report as disgustingly political. Here's IBD's editorial from Friday, for example, "ABC News' Tea Party Apology Isn't Good Enough":
ABC News quickly apologized after one of its reporters tried to tie the Colorado massacre to the Tea Party. When will the network apologize for the blatant media bias that led to this monumental screw-up?Exactly right.
Less than eight hours after the movie theater shooting spree left 13 dead, "Good Morning America" host George Stephanopoulos turned to reporter Brian Ross who, he said, had "found something that might be significant."
Ross' finding? There's a guy named Jim Holmes who joined the Colorado Tea Party last year.
Stop the presses!
Never mind that a simple online search of the Denver area turns up more than a dozen Jim Holmeses, any one of whom was just as likely to be the shooter as the guy Ross found on the Tea Party site. And never mind that Ross had zip, zero, nada information on the Jim Holmes whose name he did find.
Why bother taking such elemental journalistic steps when you can possibly be the first to tag a right-wing group with a mass shooting?
There's also the question of why Ross' first instinct was to go trolling around Tea Party sites. That, as much as Stephanopoulos and Ross' decision to go on the air with the bogus information, reveals the enormity of the media bias at work here.
This is the same bias that was on glaring display after the Gabby Giffords shooting, when reporters tried — falsely and based on no evidence whatsoever — to pin the shooting on heated Tea Party rhetoric.
It's the same bias that pushed the mainstream press to trumpet unfounded claims that Tea Partyers hurled a racial epithet at a black congressman. And that propelled these same reporters to cover up actual crimes — rapes, murders, destruction of property — perpetrated by their "Occupy Wall Street" friends.
Shortly after Ross' report, ABC News apologized "for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted."
Sorry, but that's not good enough. If ABC News was genuinely sorry, it would take a hard look at how such a fantastically biased report could have made it on the air in the first place.
And this is the same basic point that Michelle made in her post on Friday, "Blame Righty impulse blows up in media faces…again." And tea party groups are still indignant that they get blood libeled every time there's a national tragedy. See Jennifer Stefano, the Pennsylvania State Director of AFP, at Fox News, "Media must stop falsely accusing the Tea Party every time tragedy strikes."
And here's John Kass, at far-left Chicago Tribune, "ABC makes a wrong — and biased — snap judgment: Colorado massacre quickly becomes political":
How long does it take for a major American television news network to politicize mass murder and blame conservatives for the blood of innocents?It could have been an honest mistake, perhaps. It might have come across as a mistake if Stephanopoulos had interjected and said, "No, Brian, we don't have enough evidence to make that connection to the tea party." Instead, the former aide to Bill Clinton thanked Ross for his reporting. It's no wonder that virtually the entire political establishment reacted the way it did. ABC News was out there on a limb, as James Taranto reported at the Wall Street Journal --- and for someone to come along and then essentially call all these people "liars" is simply beneath contempt. But that's Walter James Casper for you. He's been working the Internet for years, attempting to undermine and destroy conservatives.
Not long.
It happened on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday morning, as the country woke to the news of the mass murder during the midnight showing of the new Batman movie: A heavily armed man named James Eagan Holmes allegedly killed 12 and injured 58 others in a suburban theater outside Denver.
ABC's George Stephanopoulos, once a top aide to former President Bill Clinton, and ABC reporter Brian Ross teamed up to quickly place the horror at the feet of American conservatives.
Stephanopoulos: I'm going to go to Brian Ross. You've been investigating the background of Jim Holmes here. You found something that might be significant.
Ross: There's a Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado, page on the Colorado tea party site as well, talking about him joining the tea party last year. Now, we don't know if this is the same Jim Holmes. But it's Jim Holmes of Aurora, Colorado. Stephanopoulos: OK, we'll keep looking at that. Brian Ross, thanks very much. And that's all it took, a mention, a name, a possible connection about a Jim Holmes joining the tea party movement that is reviled by establishment Democrats and (though not often reported) establishment Republicans. The connection was made. It was artfully done.
But there was one thing wrong with the ABC report.
It was the wrong Holmes.
The Holmes ABC referred to was a middle-aged man. The one arrested with the guns and the gas bombs and the mask and the booby-trapped apartment is James Eagan Holmes, a 24-year-old graduate student who was in the process of dropping out of school.
After an onslaught by bloggers over the Internet on Friday, ABC news issued a correction.
"An earlier ABC News broadcast report suggested that a Jim Holmes of a Colorado tea party organization might be the suspect, but that report was incorrect," said ABC News in a statement. "ABC News and Brian Ross apologize for the mistake, and for disseminating that information before it was properly vetted."
We all make mistakes. But this one smacks of political bias. And when you add political bias to the rush of breaking news, as seems to have happened here, things get stinky.
I could keep going, because the examples are all over the web. But in fact there's no need to keep going. The facts are out there, but those blinded by ideological bigotry refuse to see them.
Walter James Casper is now back to stalking this blog and sending me unsolicited tweets. He's even kicked back up the old "American Nihilist" hate-site after I reported it to the Irvine Police Department previously. But it's all of a piece, I guess, as a conservative on the web shining truth on progressive evil. The left tries to shut folks down with stalking and intimidation, but you have to shine a light on the hate and defeat them. It takes a lot of time, but Repsac3 is a particularly resistant form of progressive pestilence. He never went away after being reported to the police, despite announcing that I'd "won the Internet." He just shifted gears a bit, and is now back in the hunt for his next political kill.
PREVIOUSLY: "When Even Sick Left-Wing Sites Like 'Wonkette' Want Brian Ross Fired, Despicable Hate-Blogger Repsac3 Attacks Michelle Malkin as 'Whiney Wingnut Victim'."
BACKGROUND: "Intent to Annoy and the Fascist Hate-Blogging Campaign of Walter James Casper III."
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