The person claiming to be “Jennifer George” who called Lee was a hoaxer.

There really was a person who threatened the real Jennifer George, and that person pretended to be Lee Stranahan.

That person hates Lee, and Breitbart.

I have been very busy and probably don’t know all the reasons why this couldn’t possibly be the case. So tell me.

UPDATE: Point #1 could be wrong, and the theory still holds.

UPDATE x2: I’m feeling better about the theory with each passing second.

Hi, Neal!

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Update: Thanks for the Instalink and welcome to Instapundit’s readers.  While you are here, you might also check out my piece at Big Journalism: Fourteen Clear Factual Errors in Richard Stengal’s Essay on the Constitution (And I Am Looking For Your Help).  This is where I am trying to draw attention to a journalistic scandal I have dubbed “Stengelgate,” that is even receiving some attention on Fox News.  And of course check out the many great posts at this site.

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I heard over a week ago that Geert Wilders had been acquitted and I didn’t bring it up, here, because a few other stories were dominating, and because frankly they had falsely reported that he had been acquitted in the past.  But when I saw this editorial by him, helpfully available for free at the Wall Street Journal, I had to post it.

In Defense of ‘Hurtful’ Speech

A Dutch court vindicates a politician’s right to air controversial views on Islam.

By Geert Wilders

Yesterday was a beautiful day for freedom of speech in the Netherlands. An Amsterdam court acquitted me of all charges of hate speech after a legal ordeal that lasted almost two years. The Dutch people learned that political debate has not been stifled in their country, and they learned they are still allowed to speak critically about Islam and that resistance against Islamization is not a crime.

I was brought to trial despite being an elected politician and the leader of the third-largest party in the Dutch parliament. I was not prosecuted for anything I did, but for what I had said. My view on Islam is that it is not so much a religion as a totalitarian political ideology with religious elements. While there are many moderate Muslims, Islam’s political ideology is radical and has global ambitions. I expressed these views in newspaper interviews, op-ed articles and in my 2008 documentary, “Fitna.”

I was dragged to court by leftist and Islamic organizations that were bent not only on silencing me but on stifling public debate. My accusers claimed that I deliberately “insulted” and “incited discrimination and hatred” against Muslims. The Dutch penal code states in its articles 137c and 137d that anyone who either “publicly, verbally or in writing or image, deliberately expresses himself in any way that incites hatred against a group of people” or “in any way that insults a group of people because of their race, their religion or belief, their hetero- or homosexual inclination or their physical, psychological or mental handicap, will be punished.”

Read the whole thing.  He’s earned the right to it.

Update: If you have trouble reading it at the WSJ, try his own site instead.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Every now and then we see the latest academic study telling us that people are conservative and/or republican because they are uninformed racist idiots or something like that.  And every single time they turn out to be based on dubious scientific techniques that attempt to dress up the scientists’  biases as objective science.

So I am not going to take this study, that seems to make Democrats look bad, very seriously.  But I admit I kind of laughed, reading it anyway:

“Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation’s political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party,” said the report from Harvard.

“The political right has been more successful in appropriating American patriotism and its symbols during the 20th century. Survey evidence also confirms that Republicans consider themselves more patriotic than Democrats. According to this interpretation, there is a political congruence between the patriotism promoted on Fourth of July and the values associated with the Republican party. Fourth of July celebrations in Republican dominated counties may thus be more politically biased events that socialize children into Republicans,” write Harvard Kennedy School Assistant Professor David Yanagizawa-Drott and Bocconi University Assistant Professor Andreas Madestam.

Do read the whole thing.  It will make you smile.

But it is most likely wrong.  The 2% swing mentioned is less than impressive.  Further, chances are these sociologists were not following these people around as children, so what they were actually measuring who stated that they remember going to Fourth of July celebrations, which is a different question than whether they actually went to them.  Not to mention the issue of correlation v. causation which I am sure all of you are familiar with.

Still this weekend, join your neighbors in celebrating the birth of this great republic and perhaps introduce some of our children to what makes this country great.  Who knows, you just might be making them into Republicans.

And perhaps if you are at a barbeque, throw something on the fire…

Might not be good for cooking, but it will make you feel good.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Update (II): And MRC TV has posted the video.

(Click on the image to watch the video.)

Gee, does any of that look familiar?  That being said, I’m not actually annoyed so much as proud to get that on the air.

Anyway, let me extend a big thanks to Steven Gutowski of MRC TV.  I asked him to post this, this morning, with the promise of links back in return and he did exactly that.

Update: I was wrong, below.  You can still “like” my comment over at time, so keep it up.

As regular readers know, a few days ago I published a piece outlining 13 errors in Richard Stengel’s essay on the Constitution.  And yesterday, I made my debut at Big Journalism with a modified version of the same piece, entitled Fourteen Clear Factual Errors in Richard Stengel’s Essay on the Constitution (and I am Looking For Your Help.  In both versions I created a short, cut-and-paste-ready list of errors and told people to spam the site with them.

So I wake up this morning to see this mention in my twitter by Liz Buddie:

Pretty sure someone used @AaronWorthing ‘s excellent post on Time’s piece abt Constitution at @Patterico as a cheat sheet for Fox segment.

So quickly I turned on the TV and used my Tivo to check and sure enough, they had a segment on the Time Magazine article.  Steve Doocy had Judge Napolitano on as a guest, and said something close to this “someone has checked and found a number of errors in Time’s article” and up on the screen was three items.  I didn’t have the chance to listen to all of it, but Napolitano was proving each false easily.

To borrow a cliché from Patrick, if that wasn’t my work, I’ll eat my hat.  And leaving out my name is not completely surprising.  Maybe they just saw the list of errors without seeing who created it, since many people have been cutting and pasting the list without a link back.

So we are seeing signs that the media is taking notice of this journalistic scandal.

And here comes the blegging part.  If any of you know where I might find video of that segment or a similar one, please give me a link for that one.  I would love to be able to show you what I saw this morning.

Also, in closely related news, Time has shut down comments on that story.  Now it could be the case of deciding to close it simply because a certain amount of time had passed.  And yet there are items that are older than the Stengel piece, and their comments are open (like here and here).  But I have seen other items written on the same day that also closed their comments, so think of it what you will.  Either way, it is no longer possible to spam their site, or “like” any of the comments [correction: the “like” function still works] (and my comment was liked 413 times).

But you can still write to the editor, here.  Hint, hint.

As I said before, be polite and stick to the facts.  If you denounce his philosophy, they will ignore you, but as they say, facts are stubborn things…

You can see the letter I sent them, here.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

The story seems to have slowed down. I feel like giving the story a kickstart. I may — I said “may”! — have time to post something tonight.

What it will be, I’m not sure. There is the rest of the document dump I promised to publish from JohnReid9. With whom I have not spoken in over two days.

There is the continuing saga of Alicia Pain.

There is the need to follow up on a couple of the random quotes I tossed out during the weekend.

But I repeat myself.

And then there is . . . all the other stuff that’s going on.

A lot of potential topics there. Should be able to find something interesting to post on.