WND banned from covering Capitol (Paul Sperry)

America's founders, fearing the day would come when Congress would make laws restricting the free press, crafted the First Amendment to the Constitution as a special protection against such abuse.

They understood without a vibrant, independent watchdog, government would become too powerful, exceed its authority and the people would be deliberately kept in the dark about what Washington was doing.

That time has come – despite the founders' clear provisions designed to prevent such abuses.

Last week, in a secret meeting, the Standing Committee of Correspondents, an official institution of Congress funded by tax dollars, banned WorldNetDaily Washington Bureau Chief Paul Sperry from covering the Capitol.

It was the ultimate act of spiteful arrogance that followed 18 months of stalling and excuse-making by the committee, which has searched in vain for any legitimate reason to block WorldNetDaily from the accreditation process that would give the independent newssite unfettered access to the Capitol.

Until last week, the committee had simply refused to grant permanent accreditation to WorldNetDaily, but provided limited access through day passes. Now, even the day passes have been revoked.

According to the committee's chairman, William L. Roberts III, himself a journalist for Bloomberg News Service, there wasn't even a vote by the five-member board. There was no notice of the meeting. No hearing preceded it.

The latest reason for turning away WorldNetDaily from the Capitol? The attorney for the committee says the unprecedented action was meant as punishment for Sperry for allegedly making "factually inaccurate" statements at the appeals hearing last April.

Accusing Sperry of misleading the committee is the latest in a long list of excuses used to deny WND unfettered access to Congress.

First, WND was told the committee had no rules governing Internet-based media. The next objection was WorldNetDaily's association with the nonprofit Western Journalism Center, from which it was spun off three years ago. Then came erroneous charges that WND takes money from businessman Richard Mellon Scaife, whom the Clinton administration alleged directed a vast, right-wing media conspiracy. Then questions arose regarding WorldNetDaily's non-existent connections to Judicial Watch. In the end, the committee settled on an alleged shortage of "original content" on the newssite as a main basis for denying WND accreditation.

Nevertheless, through the entire fishing expedition, Paul Sperry was permitted access to the Capitol through the indignity and inconvenience of day passes. Last week, he was informed that he would no longer be welcome in the Capitol at all.

This is the same Paul Sperry, by the way, who not only was previously accredited to cover the Capitol but who, as the former Washington bureau chief of Investor's Business Daily, actually decided which other reporters from his news organization would be accredited by the committee.

Now, it should be clear to one and all that this committee is discriminating against WorldNetDaily because of its independent, muckraking reputation.

The committee, comprised by William L. Roberts III of Bloomberg Business News, Donna M. Smith of Reuters, Scott Shepard of Cox Newspapers, Jack Torry of the Columbus Dispatch and James Kuhnhenn of Knight Ridder, has managed to insulate itself from criticism and accountability. So it's time to go over their heads and make the Senate Rules Committee accountable for this egregious First Amendment violation.

It's not Sperry who is lying to these self-appointed press police. It's they who are lying to the American people and to themselves about their own inexcusable, un-American actions.

Call, write, or email their boss, the Senate Rules Committee. Let Tommy Daschund and the U.S Senate what you think of a self-appointed press police using YOUR taxpayer dollars to shutdown reporting they don't like. The reason for the Senate Press Gallery's refusal to grant WorldNetDaily accreditation has nothing to do with the various excuses proffered for denial but due to the fact WND isn't playing by the rules of the corporate press and is continuing to root out fraud, waste and abuse of power by our government. In other words what disturbs William Roberts and his four Press goons isn't that WND's Paul Sperry lied to them but that WND is undertaking the basic mission of a press in a free society: to act as a watchdog on those in power. And they want no part of this upstart competition overturning their exclusive little club of arrogance and privilege funded by the American taxpayers.

A Tale Of Two Conflicts (Israel)

Hal Lindsay

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Posted: June 5, 2002 1:00 a.m. Eastern

© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com

Never was the old adage, "politics makes strange bedfellows" more appropriate than when examining Washington's curious love-hate relationship with organized terror.

Officially, we deplore terror and terror states - especially the terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks on Washington and New York.

But politics is what determines who qualifies as terrorists and terrorist states and who does not, rather than the body count.

Take, for example the U.S. position on the two conflicts currently threatening to explode into regional - or even nuclear - war.

In the Middle East, we qualify as Israel's ally mostly because we are Israel's least-dangerous enemy. Israel is a textbook example of Western-style democracy's ability to flourish, even in regions where democratic thought is culturally forbidden.

As such, it should enjoy the unqualified support of the other Western democracies.

Israeli democracy has survived despite 50-plus years of constant war, flourishing and achieving unheard of prosperity as the dictatorships around them remain stuck a half-century behind.

However the Arabs have the oil. We want it, and Israel is the asking price. If Israel is betrayed all at once, the price is too high. But Washington's conscience seems to be able to justify betraying Israel in small installments. [The price is too high all at once, but piecemeal, a bit at a time has seemed a fair price to Washington.]

To maintain the oil supply and appease the Islamic world, we've looked the other way - even when Palestinian terrorists have claimed American citizens among their victims.

We've forced Israel to accept an avowed terrorist as a negotiating partner for peace. Even after the Israelis uncovered a hundred times more evidence against Arafat than we have against Osama bin Laden, we continue to insist that Israel negotiate with him.

Would Washington negotiate peace with Osama bin Laden? To the east, another successful Western-style democracy is also engaged in a war against state sponsored terror. The head of that terror state has been a direct sponsor of al-Qaida for a decade or more and was an open supporter of the Taliban. He came to power - not by democratic election, but by a military coup.

Again, it would seem logical that Washington would immediately throw its support behind the democratically governed pro-Western state of India.

But the politics of the war on terror finds Washington supporting the military dictator of the anti-Western Islamic state of Pakistan.

The administration's successes so far have been based entirely on the strength of America's commitment to the principles of democracy and freedom.

The success of the Islamic terror networks is measured entirely against their ability to erode that commitment.

Despite the Bush Doctrine that clearly repudiates negotiations with terrorists, Washington demands that Israel negotiate with Yasser Arafat - the documentary evidence of his sponsorship of terror notwithstanding.

In South Asia, the administration again finds itself at odds with its own doctrine. First by its involvement with Musharraf who has provable past connections with al-Qaida.

And secondly, by demanding that India negotiate with Pakistan - the documentary and anecdotal evidence of Musharraf's sponsorship of terror notwithstanding.

America's war on terror is a war based on principle. That principle is that terrorism can have no safe haven, no voice at the negotiating table, no representation before the councils of civilized men, because terrorism has no legitimacy.

Our principles are either negotiable, or they are not. And if they are, we may well have already lost.

I knew there would be responses like yours when I posted this.

The argument you are making is the same ones the people on the "board" are making - that WND isn't "really" a journalistic organization.

That simply isn't true.

Farrah is a fine writer, and as long as the WND site is still up, its time hasn't passed.

But that isn't really the issue. The issue is the erosion of rights, and freedom of the press is one of them. In 1999, Salon.com was reporting that Free Republic's "time had passed."

Given the current state of Salon.com, we can only laugh at that one.

But what if a tax-funded body of five people were given editorial power over Free Republic? And what if that body decided, for example, that nobody could post anything about members of Congress?

It's not an exact parallel, but it's close enough.

And the real issue is that WND has been making some powerful people very uncomfortable lately with some of its questions.

Like all of our other rights, a free press can evaporate slowly if no one cares or speaks out about it.

And since so many conservatives bash the media --even the conservative media -- it's very possible nobody will care enough until the same thing starts happening with the New York Post (too tabloid)the Washington Times (part of the VRWC) and the Wall St. Journal (too elitist, too expensive, too conservative, too whatever). You've already heard these criticisms.

So please think a moment longer before you toss WND to the wind.

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United States Senate
Committee on Rules and Administration

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United States Senate Committee on Rules and Administration

Members

United States Senate
Committee on Rules and Administration