Obama's attack on 1st Amendment

The White House appears to be expanding its attack on Fox News to include an attack on me personally, as well as my new book, "America For Sale: Fighting the New World Order, Surviving a Global Depression, and Preserving USA Sovereignty," published last week.

In an editorial questioning the wisdom of the White House's political attack on Fox News, New York Times editorialist Eric Etheridge quoted a Newsweek column in which Jacob Weisberg wrote, "For literary coverage, it [Fox News] features the bigot Jerome Corsi's rants about Obama and John Kerry."

This follows an attack NewsHounds.us, a leftist website that typically runs ideological attacks on Fox News, ran against "America for Sale," charging: "What about the promotion of Jerome Corsi's book on Hannity recently? Was it just coincidence that Corsi gave an 'exclusive' interview to Hannity at the same time that Fox News flogged Corsi's new book? Isn't it just as propagandistic to promote a book as part of what's presented as a news interview as it is to talk about service in the plot of a television show?"

The "About Us" section of NewsHounds.us proudly proclaims that the publication arose out of the George-Soros-funded MoveOn.org and exists to "outfox" Fox News.

This appears to be a coordinated effort by the White House and its surrogates in the mainstream media and on the Internet to strike back at me for writing "The Obama Nation: Far Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," my No. 1 New York Times best-seller published during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Even more disturbing, the attack seems to be an effort to scare Fox News from allowing me future appearances, not only on Sean Hannity's evening show, but also on "Fox and Friends" and the many other Fox News shows on which I have appeared over the past five years.

Whatever happened to the First Amendment under the Obama administration?

By attacking my books, the White House and its surrogates appear to be intolerant of investigative journalism that dares examine President Obama's background or policies.

By suggesting I am a "bigot," the White House and its surrogates appear determined to persist in the argument that any American, and especially every investigative reporter, who dares criticize President Obama is by definition a racist.

After I noticed that the sentence criticizing me was not included in the version of Weisberg's column printed in Newsweek, I telephoned Mr. Weisberg.

He acknowledged he did write the sentence, pointing out that the offending sentence was included in the longer version of the article he wrote for Slate.com.

Moreover, Weisberg proceeded to defend the sentence by accusing me directly of being a "racist," pointing to one sentence I wrote in "The Obama Nation" as his proof for that accusation.

On page 43 of "The Obama Nation," I commented on the indisputable fact that President Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, married Indonesian Lolo Soetoro "a second man of color" after she divorced the Kenyan Barack Obama Sr.

Weisberg pointed out that he had previously published this same accusation in a column he wrote during the campaign that Weisberg suggested I could "look up" if I were interested.

There, in an article published in Slate on Aug. 23, 2008, and in Newsweek Sept. 1, 2008, Weisberg editorialized inaccurately that I had "leeringly noted that Obama's white mother always preferred her 'mate' be 'a man of color.'"

By transforming what I wrote as an accurate observation into a characterization that Ann Dunham "always preferred her 'mate' to be 'a man of color,'" the racial innuendo appears to have been added by Weisberg himself.

In "The Obama Nation," I made no observation whatsoever about what Ann Dunham "always preferred" in any category.

Weisberg's accusation appears as ideological as the White House accusation that anyone who makes any comments whatsoever about Obama and race is a racist.

Is it equally racist to applaud President Obama because he is the first U.S. president to be of African descent?

Since the presidential campaign of 2008, the Kenyan newspapers have repeatedly lauded and encouraged Obama's run for the White House, precisely because of his Kenyan heritage.

Is the Kenyan media racist because they applaud Obama's candidacy and his presidency?

Evidently, Newsweek and Slate are unaware of the book I co-authored with Ken Blackwell in 2006, "Rebuilding America: A Prescription for Creating Strong Families, Building the Wealth of Working People and Ending Welfare," when Blackwell was running for governor in Ohio.

Or, do Weisberg, NewsHounds.us, and the White House think that my support of a Republican African-American running a gubernatorial campaign in the state of my birth is further proof of my racism?

Let's face it: the Obama White House is proving itself to be ideologically driven by the political far left, validating a central thesis of "The Obama Nation."

By attacking Fox News for providing me airtime to feature "America For Sale," the White House and its surrogates are proving once again that the Obama administration's definition of journalistic "truth" is perhaps best represented by "Pravda," the Soviet Russian ideological rag that ironically proclaimed "Truth" as its name and banner.

Truly, I would be honored if Mr. Ailes could spare time from managing Fox News to share lunch with me so I could personally thank him and Fox News for the journalistic courage to stand up repeatedly to a White House that seems to believe news coverage should be directed by its communications director.

If Mr. Ailes will accept my invitation for lunch, I believe we could get Joseph Farah, the founder and editor of WorldNetDaily, to join us.

I work as a staff reporter for WorldNetDaily for the same reason I am honored to appear on Fox News.

Joseph Farah, like Rupert Murdoch, has built a career on the principle that journalistic excellence demands not only the determination to publish the truth, but also the resolve to take the criticism from the highest circles in government that results when leaders do not appreciate the truth being told.