Dana Loesch and their cronies lying about Anthony Weiner

Recently, Andrew Breitbart, Dana Loesch, and their cronies over at the Axis Of Evil (Breitbart blogs) are at it again... this time the victim is the well-respected Progressive Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-NY9) for allegedly posted a lewd photo of his penis. Naturally, the spinners on the Right were screaming "the MSM is burying this story on purpose because he's a Democrat" excuse. Breitbart defending Chris Lee doing the same thing that he's accusing Weiner of doing. Projection much?

From Jed Lewison at Daily Kos:

On January 14, former Rep. Chris Lee sent a shirtless photo of himself to woman who had posted a personal ad on Craigslist. Nearly four weeks later, Gawker posted the picture along with reporting on the context in which it was posted and confirmation from the woman who received it that it was in fact legitimate. Less than four hours later, Lee resigned.

On Friday, a link to a photo of a man in tighty whities appeared on Rep. Anthony Weiner's public Twitter stream. The link was addressed to a female college student in Seattle who was one of Weiner's 45,000+ followers. It appears as though the tweet was not genuine. Weiner says the account was hacked, and the addressee says she has never met Weiner, but even before either of them had a chance to respond, Andrew Breitbart's website posted a screenshot of the tweet and the page to which it linked.

Breitbart's Axis of Evil members are treating this non-story as credible.

Congressman Anthony Weiner has recently been the target of an intrusion on his Twitter and Facebook accounts.

The parties involved appear to have spent about six weeks stalking the Congressman online, studying his followers, and when they got in they had a smear ready to go.

Unfortunately (for him) Breitbart was either involved in the planning, or he was the first and only media source to treat the ridiculous stunt as credible, and it blew up in his face.

We took this ‘scandal’, we ripped it to shreds, and then we rammed the jagged fragments right down Andrew Breitbart’s throat. This is what a healthy media would have done to him long ago, but they’re as rotted as any institution in this country. Without us they’d have gone for titillation and serving the long term goals of their corporate masters over honest reporting and the public good.

Here’s another thing the media won’t touch: Indict Breitbart. The crimes against ACORN in Baltimore City’s jurisdiction are crystal clear and the only reason there wasn’t a grand jury investigation long ago is the city’s battered financial condition.

Image: Daily Kos, via PJTV.

The Weinergate's makings may have started on May 11, 2011, via Dan Wolfe (@patriotusa76).

Image: Daily Kos

The massively stupid Big Hackulism Editor-In-Chief Dana Loesch defends the Right-Wing smear of Anthony Weiner, by trotting out the "faking a yfrog account" excuse.

Image: Daily Kos

So I think we can see what happened here.

1) Rep. Weiner's Facebook was hacked, giving the hackers access to post on his Twitter if the accounts were linked.

2) [edit] A link, supposedly to [/edit] The underwear photo was then tweeted out by the hackers, tagging the college girl but visible to all of Twitterville.

3) Meanwhile, the hackers have taken a screencap of another yfrog account with the photo posted to it, and then photo-shopped Rep. Weiner's name in at the top of the page.

4) They send this photo-shopped screencap to Dana Loesch as "proof" that Rep. Weiner indeed posted the photo.

4) Crazy old @patriotusa76 is meanwhile tweeting madly about the whole thing.

6) Breitbart wastes no time in publishing the story.

Two questions remain:

Who is @patriotusa76 and did he participate in the hoax?

and

Was Breitbart in on it, or did he fall for it?

Loesch crony and regular guest of The Dana Show, Dan Riehl falsely accused Weiner's representative of "lying" twice.

I've already wrote about why I think it's very likely that Representative Anthony Weiner's twitter account was hacked (though, obviously, the facts are still coming out). But here's some further evidence backing up the claim that Breitbart's bloggers are, predictably, doing an incredibly sloppy job covering the story and trying to use it to attack Weiner.

On Big Journalism, Dan Riehl claimed that Anthony Weiner's spokesperson "lied" twice to the New York Post. However, this claim of "lying" was based only on Riehl's preconcieved notions of what happened. Here's the first claim that Riehl says is a "lie:"

Again, the claim that it was a "lie" was based on the idea that the reference point was when the photo was posted. Again, an equally plausible reference point was the time that Weiner first saw the photo. In that case, Riehl has no evidence to justify his claim that it was a "lie" that Weiner joked about the tweet 15 minutes after seeing it.

The sloppy schmournalists at Breitbart's sites are always happy to accuse people of "lying" without bothering to look for alternative explanations. If they were actually committed to finding the actual facts, they would not be so sloppy.

Adam Shriver of the St. Louis Activist Hub has this takeaway:

On Friday night, a photo of an erection in shorts was posted on Congressman Anthony Weiner's twitter account, seemingly directed at a woman from Seattle. Weiner posted shortly after telling people that his account was hacked but, unsurprisingly, the goober's from Breitbart's websites are declaring that this is all-but-conclusive proof that Weiner is engaging in scandalous behavior. Unlike a recommended diary at Daily Kos, I don't think that Breitbart photoshopped the photos or that they weren't really posted on Weiner's account. However, I think there are pretty clear reasons to think that the account was hacked.

Basically, the "Weiner is guilty" crowd is arguing for the following idea: Weiner intended to DM (Direct Message) the picture, but accidently sent it publicly. The idea is that it is improbable but not impossible that Weiner would be so sloppy as to send a lewd photo publicly. But the problem with this theory is that EVEN if the message had been sent in a DM, it wouldn't have been private! The photo was posted to RepWeiner's yfrog account. Yfrog is an application that allows you to post photos. It does allow the option of direct messaging: however, any and all of the photos you post on it are publicly available. So even if Weiner sent a DM through his yfrog account, the photo would be available to the public.

Any honest, sane, ethical purveyors of information will wait for the full facts to come out to make declarations of what ultimately happened; which of course is exactly why the Breitbart bloggers are doing the exact opposite.

Gennette Nicole Cordova, the alleged recipient of the photos, issued a statement to the New York Daily News, home to Red Eye regulars and Conservatives S.E. Cupp's and Andrea Tantaros' columns:

Friday evening I logged onto Twitter to find that I had about a dozen new mentions in less than an hour, which is a rare occurrence. When I checked one of the posts that I had been tagged in I saw that it was a picture that had supposedly been tweeted to me by Congressman Anthony Weiner.

The account that these tweets were sent from was familiar to me; this person had harassed me many times after the Congressman followed me on Twitter a month or so ago. Since I had dealt with this person and his cohorts before I assumed that the tweet and the picture were their latest attempts at defaming the Congressman and harassing his supporters.

I am a 21-year-old college student from Seattle. I have never met Congressman Weiner, though I am a fan. I go to school in Bellingham where I spend all of my time; I've never been to New York or to DC. The point I am trying to make is that, contrary to the impression that I apparently gave from my tweet, I am not his girlfriend. Nor am I the wife, girlfriend or mistress of Barack Obama, Ray Allen or Cristiano Ronaldo, despite the fact that I have made similar assertions about them via Twitter.

There have never been any inappropriate exchanges between Anthony Weiner and myself, including the tweet/picture in question, which had apparently been deleted before it reached me. I cannot answer the questions that I do not have the answers to. I am not sure whether or not this letter will alleviate any future harassment. I also do not have a clear understanding as to how or why exactly I am involved in this fiasco. I do know that my life has been seriously impacted by speculation and faulty allegations. My reputation has been called into question by those who lack the character to report the facts.

The point of the story is this: that Breitbart, Loesch, O'Connor, Riehl, Nolte, and their ilk will lie about everything under the sun.