dave weigel

Dave Weigel (Bloomberg, Slate, Washington Post, Washington Independent, Reason Magazine)

Dave Weigel is a supposed journalist who's lied, misled, just made things up, and shown little journalistic integrity. The phrase question authority is not in his vocabulary; where other reporters might be partisan hacks, Weigel is an establishment hack who always takes the side of those with money and power.

The only people Weigel is willing to discomfort are those with no political power: the Larry Sinclairs of the world, militia yahoo t-shirt sellers at tea parties events, and so on. Going after powerless fringe folks endears him to the Beltway establishment and others whose approval he seeks.

Weigel previously wrote a blog for the Washington Post but was banished to Slate after the WaPo discovered that he wasn't the unbiased reporter that they pretended they thought he was. In September 2014 he left Slate for a new Bloomberg news outlet headed by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann.

Before those two stops, he contributed to Reason Magazine, the Washington Independent, and other sites. The first is funded in part by the Koch family. The parent company of the second received funding from a Rockefeller foundation and from George Soros. For an example of his journalistic failings, he's repeatedly misled about the Obama citizenship issue. For an example of him lying about that issue, see this. In early April 2010 he was hired by the Washington Post to run their "Right Now" blog to cover conservatives. In June 2010 he offered to resign and the WaPo accepted after emails he'd sent to the "Journolist" mailing list came to light. Read about that here.

Part of the reason why he continues to mislead about the Obama certificate issue appears to be because he isn't intelligent enough to understand the difference between evidence and proof; part of it appears to be his strong support for Obama; and part of it appears to be that he knows that if he actually looks into the truth about that issue he'd be ostracized by other low-level members of the Beltway establishment.

For another example of his journalistic failings, in January he wrote a post about me on his personal blog. I attempted to respond by signing up and leaving a comment, but he never approved the comment. Here's what David Weigel doesn't want you to see. It's extremely unethical for journalists not to give the right of reply to someone they write about, but that's what David Wiegle did.

In the past, I repeatedly challenged him to simply pick up the phone, call Hawaii, and try to confirm his assumptions. I even provided the questions to ask and the phone number to call. He continually refused. He points out now that he did call Hawaii, but the point is that he didn't do it at the time, and even when he did call he didn't ask the questions - such as those at the link - designed to put them on the spot. Please ask yourself what sort of journalist would repeatedly refuse to do something as simple as picking up the phone, when simply getting an answer to those questions could put the whole matter to rest?

Last modified Sep 2, 2014
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What Koch defenders aren't telling you (Reddit, Reason, Glenn Reynolds, Powerline, Weigel) - 02/24/11

It used to be that only a small number of people had heard about the billionaire Koch family and the "Kochtopus" (those persons and groups funded by or otherwise linked to them). Now, because of the standoff between Wisconsin governor Scott Walker and public employee unions in that state, that's all changed and the Kochs are fast assuming the role that George W Bush played for the Left (and George Soros plays for the right). Sure as night follows day, various sources are rushing to defend the Kochs. But, oddly enough, all those defenses fail to point out two key items on the Koch's agenda: 1...

Dave Weigel refers to "Paultards"; Drudge has "emotional problems", should "set himself on fire" - 06/24/10

It looks like someone in the Washington DC junior league has it in for Dave Weigel of the Washington Post, because someone on the private "Journolist" email list (started by Ezra Klein) has released some "interesting" emails that Weigel sent to the list. This is all very much disgustingly Inside The Beltway, but then again please take a look at his name's link, and note also that the post at his personal site where David Weigel wrote about me and then refused to print my comment is still on the first page of Google results for "Lonewacko" (this site's former domain name). So, let's stoop low...

Lee Sherman of Mint cowardly gives in to illegal immigration supporters (Timothy Lee, Megan McArdle, Dave Weigel, Ezra Klein, Max Read) - 06/18/10

Over the past couple of days, the illegal immigration-supporting establishment's junior league flexed their muscles, trying to get the site Mint dot com to delete a post giving statistics about the negative impacts of immigration. And, they won, with Mint editor Lee Sherman (also of Intuit) completely caving with what must be one of the most cowardly apologies ever.

How Crash the Tea Party could be effective (Brendan Steinhauser of Freedomworks knows!) - 04/14/10

As exhaustively detailed at the following link, the tea parties are a massive magnet for massive stupidity. They can't do anything right and the only reason they aren't little more than an embarrassing blip on U.S. political history is because their opponents are only marginally smarter than they are. Instead of trying to intellectually engage the partiers and show how they're wrong, those opponents have engaged in a long series of similarly childish activities, such as calling the partiers names or the like. The latest example is the "Crash the Tea Party" group (crashtheteaparty.org) which...

Experts: how bogus is the Daily Kos/Research 2000 Poll? (oversamples 60+, males, southerners?) - 02/02/10

DailyKos and Research 2000 have a new poll of Republicans out (link) that's (unfortunately) best summarized by the Dave Weigel headline "Poll: Many Republicans Believe Obama is Racist Socialist Who Was Elected by ACORN" (link). The problem with DailyKos' attempt to make the GOP is that they appear to have oversampled those over 60 years of age, males, and southerners, skewing the results. I'm not a polling expert so I might be wrong, but here's the demographics and if anyone can shed some light on this leave a comment: MEN 1125 56% WOMEN 878 44% WHITE 1787 89% OTHER/REF 216 11% 18-29 178 9%...

Dave Weigel not fully honest about tea party, Kochtopus link ("Top Ten Conservatives of 2009") - 12/31/09

Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent offers "The Best and the Rightest/ The Top Ten Conservatives of 2009" (link).

Dave Weigel lies about Lou Dobbs - 11/24/09

At the Washington Independent (parent company funded in part by George Soros and Rockefeller), Dave Weigel offers "Citizen Lou" (washingtonindependent.com/68779/citizen-lou), in which he smears Lou Dobbs and lies about his positions: What reason is there to believe that Dobbs, a bottom-feeding broadcaster who struggled to draw 800,000 nightly viewers, has a ready pool of voters waiting for him? All I see is a 2006 Rasmussen Reports poll suggesting that a third-party candidate who talked about ending immigration, as Dobbs does, would score 30 percent of the vote. A Dobbs boomlet makes more...

Judge David Carter makes false assumption, rules against Orly Taitz ("Birther" suit) - 10/29/09

Yet another Orly Taitz "Birther" lawsuit has failed; Dave Weigel crows about it here. Leaving aside all the many other factors of this story, judge David Carter of the Central District of California in his ruling (link) made a false assumption that shows either bias or inability to understand the fine points of this issue. He says (bolding added): More specifically, Plaintiffs allege that the President has not shown that he is a "natural born citizen" of the United States and assert that he should have to establish his citizenship by "clear-and-convincing evidence". Plaintiffs argue that...

Sources for DHS rightwing extremism report: ADL, SPLC, NYT, LAT, Dave Weigel... - 08/12/09

* A large number of links to the Southern Poverty Law Center, including [1]. That SPLC link is misleading for the reasons outlined here and here. That misleading claim made it into DHS's report.

Dave Weigel lies about Obama certificate issue *again* (Rachel Maddow, "Birthers") - 07/23/09

Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent appeared on the Rachel Maddow show to discuss the "Birther" movement a couple days ago; the video is attached. If you trust Weigel's reporting, keep reading because, in addition to being disingenuous, he uttered two major lies.

Dave Weigel misleads about Obama certificate issue, again (Janice Okubo) - 07/17/09

As part of his long-running campaign to mislead people about the Obama citizenship issue, Dave Weigel of the Washington Independent offers "'Birther' Movement Dogs Republicans" [1]. I just got off the phone with one of his sources for the article, and she refused to verify the impression that Weigel's article is trying to make. Weigel is trying to mislead people into believing that the state of Hawaii has verified that the certification of live birth ("COLB") shown on Barack Obama's site and others. Yet, his quote source (Janice Okubo of the state of Hawaii's Department of Health) repeatedly...

What Dave Weigel doesn't want you to see - 01/23/09

On January 8, Dave Weigel - formerly of Reason Magazine and now with the Washington Independent and The Economist - wrote a post at his site (link) mocking my efforts to bring to light the Obama citizenship issue. I replied with a comment showing how he's wrong (printed below), but the comment remains in moderation: Weigel is too afraid to approve it because it points out how much of a hack he is. It's standard journalistic practice to have a "right of reply", allowing those to be or those who have been written about to reply to articles about them. For instance, see this from the BBC. By not...

Senator David Vitter misleads about Obama certificate issue (and Dave Weigel helps) - 01/08/09

Someone wrote senator David Vitter about the Obama citizenship matter, and his office apparently replied as follows: "Thank you for contacting me with concerns about President-elect Barack Obama’s citizenship status... I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue... Hawaii state officials have verified that President-elect Obama was born in Honolulu on August 4, 1961, making him a natural born citizen." Now, please go read the full 10/31/08 statement from those "Hawaii state officials". As pointed out repeatedly, they only confirm that Obama has a valid cert on file. They did not...

Dave Weigel /Slate /Reason Magazine lies about Obama birth certificate issue - 12/04/08

Dave Weigel of Reason Magazine takes to the webpages of Slate to offer "Change They Can Litigate/The fringe movement to keep Barack Obama from becoming president" (link). It contains at least one lie and several misleading statements (I didn't read the whole thing, so there's probably more).

Immigrant assimilation study: low scores for Mexicans; other results mixed (N.C. Aizenman/WaPo, Yglesias, Drezner, Atrios, Weigel) - 05/13/08

N.C. Aizenman of the Washington Post offers "Study Says Foreigners In U.S. Adapt Quickly", an article about a new Manhattan Institute report called "Measuring Immigrant Assimilation", authored by economist Jacob Vigdor of Duke University. He constructed an "assimilation index" based on economic, cultural, and civic assimilation. One of the issues with the index is that it probably doesn't include a question on whether those immigrants subscribe to our laws or whether they think they don't apply to them, and it probably doesn't cover irredentism-related issues. It's also a mixed bag; while the...

Ramos/Compean: who's on the Bush administration's side? - 02/08/07

I have a feeling that it won't be too very long before even more truth comes out about the case of the two Border Patrol agents (Ramos/Compean) who strongly appear to have been railroaded by their own government. So, let's take a look at the short, select list of some of those who've supported the Bush administration's side of things:

The childlike Dave Weigel - 08/22/06

David Weigel of Reason is guest posting at Andrew Sullivan's blog and offers a discussion of Pat Buchanan's latest book that's even dumber than that that Sully would have provided. Can anyone point me to the border towns where democracy has collapsed, supplanted by Latin American-style caudillos? We can come close: "Mexican drug cartels take over U.S. cities", colonias, "Task force targets cross-border violence", "Combating Southwest border violence" (and as pointed out below, Maywood CA) Have Arizona, California, and the rest of the Southwest become less American or less loyal?...

EFE admits Goldwater "concentration camps" smear - 06/28/06

Spanish news agency EFE has apologized for its smear of Arizona gubanatorial candidate Don Goldwater. It said he wanted to hold illegal aliens in "concentration camps". Now they say: EFE Executive Vice President Emillio Sanchez said a freelance writer for the news agency inaccurately described Goldwater's plan. "Upon further reflection, our investigation has determined that your plan to house illegal prisoners in a tent city is consistent with accepted practices for nonviolent American prisoners in your area," Sanchez said in the letter released Tuesday by Goldwater's campaign. The...