Brooks Jackson/FactCheck spins Obama's Civilian National Security Force

One of the mistakes that Obama opponents kept engaging in during the election was to make exaggerated or not 100% legalistically formulated claims (e.g., "palling around"). The MSM then jumped on the exaggerated part of those statements in order to draw attention away from the parts that were true.

And, Brooks Jackson of FactCheck uses that technique in his discussion of Rep. Paul Broun's remarks about Obama's "civilian national security force": factcheck.org/askfactcheck/is_obama_planning_a_gestapo-like_civilian_national.html

Jackson quotes the Obama speech as I did here, and ends with:

Does that sound like a force that could kick down your door in the middle of the night and haul you off to a Gulag or concentration camp? You decide.

Now, to show that Brooks Jackson is little more than an Obama-supporting hack and "Fact Check" can't be trusted, here are some questions that Jackson doesn't even ask:

1. Where is the statement from the BHO campaign describing specifically what's in the CNSF, whether the CNSF is a coherent organization or just an umbrella term? A spokesman saying it's a "civilian reserve corps that could handle postwar reconstruction efforts" isn't enough. We need a detailed plan.

2. Obama said the CNSF would be "just as well-funded" as the U.S. military, which gets around a half a trillion dollars per year. Doesn't Obama's statement go well beyond "expansive... and exaggerated" as Jackson says?

3. What happens when Obama's CNSF returns home? Are there circumstances under which they could be activated here? Are there circumstances under which they could be used to push Obama's political aims? For instance, to engage in the strong-arm tactics that he's encouraged his supporters to use?

Those questions and more are left unanswered by Jackson, who instead simply serves as a reflexive defender of Barack Obama rather than a fact checker.

Politics · Thu, 11/13/2008 - 10:29 · · Importance: 6