Strengthening Constitutional Self-Government

No Left Turns

Politics

MAJOR CORRECTION AND APOLOGY TIME

Okay, so a few days ago I flagged this spectacular YouYube video of a citizen taking down Republican Congressman Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey for his obvious ignorance of the Constitution, along with the update from Michelle Malkin that the person in the video was supposedly a 9/11 Truther or somesuch nut.  Uncharacteristically for Michelle, who is a good journalist, she did not offer any links behind her claim that this guy is a nutjob, but I passed it along relying on her post. 

Well, this person has a name: Christopher Weber, and he has his own YouTube account, hpprinter12345, where you can see all 16 of his videos, some of them very good.  Nothing about 9/11 Trutherism.  But this guy does know how to speak well and compellingly.  And he did me the kindness of calling me on the phone to ask, essentially, what the hell is going on?  I'm not that guy!

He's right, he isn't, and I owe him an apology as well as this correction.  Unfortunately, there is another Christopher Weber with a Youtube account, thepenrev, and this other Weber has more than 1,300 YouTube videos posted.  Looks like he posts several a day.  And it is THIS OTHER CHRISTOPHER WEBER who has the nutty 9/11 Truther videos and lots of other stuff.  Unquestionably what happened is that Michelle, or someone, saw these other videos--these two Webers look a little bit alike--put 2 and 2 together, and got 22.  And now the original Mr. Weber is being besmirched across the net.

The Christopher Weber who schooled LoBiondo is a retired schoolteacher raising three children with his wife in southern New Jersey, and is attempting to run against LoBiondo as an independent because LoBiondo is untouchable in the GOP primary.  But Mr. Weber is now having trouble getting anywhere because the internet legend has taken hold that he's a nutjob.  He's been done an injustice by us blogging internet rangers.  He hasn't been able to get anything through to Michelle Malkin.  Once something is on the internet it is hard to get it corrected--I know; Greenpeace is still accusing me of attempted bribery, but no one cares about Greenpeace and I'm not running for anything.  But Mr. Weber is, and we owe it to him to try to correct the record.

P.S.  I told him my offer to buy him dinner still stands; it will be pasta and chianti, rather than steak, however.  Good luck to him.

ADDENDUM:  Got hold of Glenn Reynolds, who it turns out didn't link to Michelle's follow up post.  My bad--memory at least. 
Categories > Politics

Discussions - 9 Comments

I am the doo-ragged fellow that Mr. Hayward is speaking about and WOW talk about a blind side attack.I'm happy to see that I was able to even speak to him ( Great man btw ) and also overjoyed he is making the Herculean effort to help me in a major roadblock in my political endeavors - My Thanks to you SIR

Yours in Liberty
Christopher M. Weber -
Candidate for the 2nd Congressional District of New Jersey ––

[email protected]

I'm sorry this happened. Now, I actually thought the questioning almost too trite, as one can actually know quite a bit about the Constitution and still not have the sections memorized by heart--the same way you might not know the act a treasured Shakespeare quotation was in, but you still know your Shakespeare. In other words, for every two or three clueless pols you snag you might also get someone who actually tries to be intimately familiar with the document.

But, overall, this incident would seem to be proof that sometimes the "lifeboat game" is played a little too quickly in the conservative blogosphere when the individual is someone of no great consequence (which should come as no great surprise, being basically human nature. The strong do as they will. The weak suffer as they must.). Perhaps the next time it seems necessary to crush the small because "the cause of the Cause demands it" we could hold off these damage control efforts until *after* doing the fairness and decency checks. One can hope. Perhaps foolishly, but one can nevertheless hope. Good luck, Mr. Weber.

Since you first linked to him it's interesting that he took down his vid "Obama just got his private army" where he spouts a lot of nonsense about the Ready Reserve Corps (which is 60 years old) as though it's a military unit, and then tells viewers it's time for everyone to arm themseves, and proceeds to wave first a sword, then a revolver in front of the camera - just a minute or two after you can hear a very young girl (his daughter) in the same room. Of course he makes some thinly veiled threats and calls Obama totalitarian and like Hitler, etc.

Fortunately, another youtuber has saved and posted it (and those of us who are tech-savvy have downloaded and saved it), and you can see it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qbiXgbwow0

You SERIOUSLY want to associate with this guy?

And Steven, I'm afraid your 15 days late when you say Michelle Malkin "is a good journalist."

Nice post, thanks. Very gracious.

A note.

When you began "[u]ncharacteristically for Michelle, who is a good journalist," I almost did not read the rest of the post.

What is the opposite of an ad hominem attack? That is how I would describe that sentence. Sort of the opposite of "I am not sure I could put 'Malkin,' in a sentence with either 'good' or 'journalist' without it being an oxymoron."

Allan,

I'm not a huge fan of MM, she's far too prone to breathlessly posting about "OMG this!" or "OMG that!" when the subject of her post is worth a "meh" at best, but I think you do her a disservice. I have never seen a post of hers that wasn't exhaustively researched and cited, which makes her a far superior journalist to the yahoos we're stuck with in the MSM.

Dave,

Let's be real here. MM will research the sunset, find that it is orange and claim that the reddish tint is there because God is a Republican (while we all know it is because God is a Longhorn fan).

So,, the research is correct. But the conclusions are ridiculous.

Moreover, there are thousands of people out there who will claim that they were abducted by aliens. If she did her research and just quoted those sources. would it make a report that "aliens are Democrats out to socialize the galaxy" any more reliable?

I do prefer the less sensationalist reporting of the NRO (with the exception, perhaps, of Ed Whelan's hysterics).

Thank you, Mr. Weber, for stepping into the public square and setting yourself up for absurd attacks. Unfortunately, if you stay there, this will probably not be the last. It takes one heck of a nerve to get into politics these days. I thought what you did in that video was great political "theater". I hope it goes all over whatever the means to demonstrate what effect an informed citizen can have in American politics. It was a stimulating conversation (probably for your opponent, too) and I really hope it did you good. I wish I could remember the Constitution like that, but cannot, which is why I carry a pocket version in my purse for consultation.

Facts are to Michelle Malkin as garlic is to a vampire. She is not a good journalist, has too much of the boy who cried wolf syndrome for my taste. And she rarely apologizes for anything she does. In the few times that she has written on stuff that I have personal knowledge of, mainly related to engineering, she has a very poor grasp of the facts. Corrections not wanted.
But then this is not confined to her, as I can think of several other political "reporting" sites where facts are few and far between, at least from my perspective. Two words: Human ______s, and Hot ___ seem to be particularly deficient in hard science/engineering.

The link doesn't work

Leave a Comment

* denotes a required field
 

No TrackBacks
TrackBack URL: https://nlt.ashbrook.org/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/15140


Warning: include(/srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/sd/nlt-blog/_includes/promo-main.php): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/2010/04/major-correction-and-apology-time.php on line 653

Warning: include(): Failed opening '/srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/sd/nlt-blog/_includes/promo-main.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/opt/sp/php7.2/lib/php') in /srv/users/prod-php-nltashbrook/apps/prod-php-nltashbrook/public/2010/04/major-correction-and-apology-time.php on line 653