Bob's Blog

In PJ Media, Tyler O'Neill looks into the accusation that

Amazon Is 'Expressing Public and Open Hostility Toward Conservative and Religious Organizations'

Read the whole thing here.

In PowerLine, John Hinderaker writes in part,

Weaponizing law enforcement against political opponents has become a go-to strategy in the Left’s playbook. The Southern Poverty Law Center is a disgraceful hate organization that eventually, one hopes, will be driven out of business by defamation lawsuits. In the meantime, government officials who use the SPLC’s partisan smears as a basis for unconstitutional actions need to be sued. Kudos to the American Freedom Law Center for taking the fight to the far Left.

Read more here.

Penny Starr and Ezra Dulis report in Breitbart,

Chick-fil-A’s 2017 990 IRS filing shows the fast-food franchise made a $2,500 donation to SPLC, among a laundry list of pro-abortion and pro-LGBT orgs, Townhall reports. The Chick-fil-A Foundation has come under conservative scrutiny since its decision to stop supporting Christian charities such as the Salvation Army, caving to disingenuous pressure campaigns from far-left activists.

Read more here.

The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), has again been in the news this week, labeling more individuals as haters. First, it launched an attack on Franklin Graham, the President of Samaritan's Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and now it is going after Stephen Miller, who has been a top policy advisor and speechwriter for President Trump.
Read more here and here.

Tyler O'Neil recently wrote in PJ Media,

if the SPLC reconsidered its "hate group" smears against mainstream conservative and Christian organizations, it would escape many of the defamation lawsuits it now faces. One such lawsuit cost the organization $3.375 million. Maybe the SPLC likes the controversy.

In this clip he tells us about George Soros' Media Matters and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In PJ Media, Tyler O'Neil reports,

On Tuesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai repeatedly denied that there is any political bias in the way he runs the company. In the same breath, however, he acknowledged that Google's YouTube considers the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a far-Left smear factory, a "trusted flagger." Conservative non-profits and a Ph.D. psychologist who monitors the influence of big tech blasted this hypocrisy.

"Google is a company that oversees 90 percent of the world's search traffic and yet lists the Southern Poverty Law Center as one of its 'trusted flaggers.' Keep in mind that this is the same SPLC that holds half of America in utter contempt," Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William Boykin, executive vice president of the Family Research Council (FRC), told PJ Media.

"If Google wants to avoid the censorship label, then partnering with the SPLC sends the opposite message," Boykin declared.

Read more here.

In The Daily Wire, Paul Bois reports,

Under pressure from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Visa and Mastercard have blocked donations to the conservative think tank David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC) after it was labeled a hate group by the militantly left-leaning watchdog organization.

In an email to supporters on Wednesday under the subject "Transaction Denied," the DHFC announced that at the request of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the two credit card companies will no longer be allowing donations to DHFC.

"We're under attack by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)," the email begins. "For years, the SPLC has labeled the Freedom Center a hate group and tried to get organizations like Amazon, Facebook and Twitter to ban us and silence our message."

"Yesterday, SPLC finally convinced MasterCard and Visa to cut us off. Now we can't process donations from any major credit card companies."

The move comes just shortly after Freedom Center employee Robert Spencer, editor-in-chief of Jihad Watch, had been kicked off the funding platform Patreon under pressure from Mastercard. Spencer has been in the SPLC's crosshairs for years due to his strong criticism of Islamic terror.

"This blow could be the end of the Freedom Center," reads the email. "Decades of work, down the drain because the hateful Left wants to squash free speech and silence an organization that dares to question them."

In a statement to Breitbart News, David Horowitz said the move by Visa and Mastercard is nothing less than an assault on conservative voices from the "Soros funded Media Matters and Southern Poverty Law Center operation."

It’s cynical, calculated and supported by the Democratic Party. The reason Mastercard and Visa gave us for cutting us off and thus sabotaging our online fund-raising operation is that the SPLC told them that we were a hate group.

It is wrong to focus on the Tech heads as the culprits because as businessmen they have a vested interest in keeping their platforms politically neutral. They have been threatened by Senator Mark Warner and other Democrats if they don’t censor conservatives. The fact that Mastercard and Visa are now part of this juggernaut indicates how dangerous this has become.

Both Mastercard and Visa have given no statement on the matter.

Read more here.

Joy Pullmann writes at The Federalist,

The Southern Poverty Law Center is a Hate-mongering scam!

...SPLC’s “extremist” and “hate group” labels are not impartial designations that help citizens, media, and public leaders make better decisions about either local concerns or broader politics. At best, they are self-interested marketing. At worst, they are designed to execute partisan vendettas, to wield financial and political power against legitimate opponents in public discourse.

Its two largest expenses are propaganda operations: creating its annual lists of ‘haters’ and ‘extremists,’ and running a big effort that pushes ‘tolerance education’ through more than 400,000 public-school teachers.

Check to see if your child's teachers are using SPLC propaganda.

Last year, a Washington Free Beacon investigation showed SPLC keeps millions in offshore accounts, which charity experts labeled “a huge red flag” and “completely unacceptable.”

...SPLC’s hate list does not include violent leftist organizations such as Antifa.

...Whatever credibility SPLC earned fighting some anti-KKK cases in the 1970s is long gone. It has squandered its moral authority many times over. Its proclamations exploit people to serve its bottom line, and should receive no furtherance from media or organizations like Amazon.

Treating SPLC as a good-faith arbiter of public discourse grants speech police power to an organization whose business model is to make money from poisoning public discourse. Those who care about free speech and justice will grant no such power to folks who, like SPLC, exploit these noble and necessary ideas for their own selfish, cynical, socially destructive ends.

Read more here.

In Breitbart, Ben Kew reports,

Technology giant Amazon has dropped a Christian non-profit, the Alliance for Defending Freedom, from the AmazonSmile charity donation program after the SPLC deemed the organization a “hate group.”

Read more here.

The latest target of the Southern Poverty Law Center is Christina Hoff Summers. Adam Rubenstein reports in The Weekly Standard,

The Southern Poverty Law Center is at it again. In a report on “Male Supremacy,” an ideology that the group says “advocates for the subjugation of women,” it included American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Hoff Sommers, calling her someone “who gives mainstream and respectable face to some [Men’s Rights Activist] concerns.” Sommers told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that she finds her inclusion in this report “quite surprising.”

“I completely reject that," Sommers said. "This is a group I used to admire. They once went after Klan members and Nazis and now… [they go after] people like Ben Carson and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It’s absurd.” She adds that the SPLC has no evidence for the suggestion that she “gives mainstream and respectable face” to “male supremacy”:. “They’re blacklisting in place of engaging with arguments. They blacklist you, rather than try to refute you.”

Read more here.

Kristina Wong reports at Breitbart that the cuckoos at the Southern Poverty Law Center are

tracking the hashtags #Christmas, #MerryChristmas, #Jesus, and #ChristmasEve, as part of “trends in a community of far-right Twitter users.”

According to the SPLC, its “hate tracker” tracks accounts that represent a “range of extremists,” from “conspiratorial fringes of mainstream conservatism to outright white supremacists.”

The hate tracker notes that #Christmas is the second highest trending hashtag it tracked on Christmas Eve, with @whitehouse and @potus being among the four top Twitter handles mentioned with the hashtag.

For #MerryChristmas, the U.S. Marine Corps’ band at @marineband was one of the top mentioned, according to the hate tracker on Christmas Eve. One of the SPLC’s “top image” associated with #MerryChristmas is a photoshopped picture of marines hoisting a Christmas tree, instead of a flag, as depicted in the famous Iwo Jima picture.

Read more here.

A new Prager University video.

In today's Wall Street Journal, Carol Swain writes about the Southern Poverty Law Center.

...When Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin Jr. started the SPLC in 1971, it was needed and it had noble goals. In recent years, however, it has become a tool of the radical left. Domestically, it uses its influence to paint with a broad brush that smears immigration restrictionists, orthodox Christian churches and pro-family organizations as “hate groups.”

...At the time, the law center was spending an inordinate amount of time attacking then-CNN host Lou Dobbs for his relentless focus on illegal immigration. It demanded that CNN fire the anchor. After CNN and Mr. Dobbs parted ways, the SPLC took credit for getting him off the air. I ended my post with a one-liner that raised the ire of the organization and had a devastating effect on my life. I wrote: “Rather than monitoring hate groups, the Southern Poverty Law Center has become one.”

...today I wear the SPLC’s mud as a badge of honor because I know I am in the company of many good men and women who have been similarly vilified for standing for righteousness and truth. Other SPLC targets have included Ben Carson (who eventually received an apology and retraction), Somali refugee Ayaan Hirsi Ali, terrorism expert Steve Emerson, political scientist Guenter Lewy (who successfully sued the SPLC), attorney Robert Muise, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy, and Princeton professor Robert P. George. The SPLC has tagged Mr. George, a devout Catholic intellectual, as “anti-LGBT.”

...Whatever label the SPLC assigns, such smears are harmful and designed to destroy the individual’s credibility and ability to have influence in the public square.

Some of those vilified by the SPLC have been subjected to even worse treatment. The Family Research Council and House Majority Whip Steve Scalise have been violently attacked by individuals inspired by the propaganda the SPLC regularly dishes out—which is often accepted without criticism and passed on by media, law-enforcement agencies and universities.

The SPLC should not be dignified with invitations to provide congressional testimony about domestic extremism as long as it continues to advance a transparently partisan agenda—one Mr. Potok has publicly acknowledged is designed to “destroy” groups it opposes.

Read more here.

At PJ Media Tyler O'Neile reports,

On Wednesday, 47 leaders of conservative nonprofits sent an open letter to the media warning against using the notorious "hate map" put out by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The leaders denounced any news organization that would cite the SPLC's list of "extremists" and "hate groups" as if it carried moral authority. "The SPLC is an attack dog of the political left" and should be treated as such, the leaders wrote.

"To associate public interest law firms and think tanks with neo-Nazis and the KKK is unconscionable, and represents the height of irresponsible journalism," the leaders declared. "All reputable news organizations should immediately stop using the SPLC's descriptions of individuals and organizations based on its obvious political prejudices."

The letter addressed "Members of the Media" and strongly warned against the SPLC. The leaders characterized the organization as "a discredited, left-wing, political activist organization that seeks to silence its political opponents with a 'hate group' label of its own invention and application that is not only false and defamatory, but that also endangers the lives of those targeted with it."

Ace of Spades points out that the Southern Poverty Law Center has refused to name AntiFa as a hate group. Ace renames them the Southern Fundraising Politics Center. Read the story here.

At The Daily Caller, Jim Treacher has a few choice words to say to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I’ve been skeptical of the Southern Poverty Law Center ever since August 2012, when their “Hate Map” (shown below) inspired a man named Floyd Lee Corkins to try to murder the employees of the Family Research Center in DC and smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their dead faces. (Why Chick-fil-A? Because it’s “hate chicken,” of course.) Corkins specifically pointed to the “Hate Map” as his inspiration. The SPLC told him exactly where to go and exactly why he should hate those people.

Corkins’ attempt at political mass murder was thwarted by a brave security guard named Leo Johnson, which certainly saved the SPLC a lot of embarrassment. Pointing out ideological targets for angry gunmen to attack isn’t a good look for a “civil rights” organization. Fortunately, they have the media on their side, so they get a pass from the same people who blamed Sarah Palin for the Gabby Giffords shooting.

But how does the SPLC afford to keep harassing people who say things they don’t like? How do they pay their bills? As it turns out, they have more money than they know what to do with.

...Well, I’m sure it’s all above-board. I’d ask questions about it, but then somebody might call me a racist or a homophobe or something awful like that. I wouldn’t want to impede the SPLC’s very important work, like… um… going on TV and slandering conservatives? I’m not sure what else they really do.

But hey, they’ve found the solution to southern poverty. Just take the huge stacks of cash you make by fear-mongering and lying about people, and stash it even farther south!

Read more here.

At The Washington Free Beacon, Joe Schoffstall reports,

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a liberal, Alabama-based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization that has gained prominence on the left for its "hate group" designations, pushes millions of dollars to offshore entities as part of its business dealings, records show.

Additionally, the nonprofit pays lucrative six-figure salaries to its top directors and key employees while spending little on legal services despite its stated intent of "fighting hate and bigotry" using litigation, education, and other forms of advocacy.

The SPLC's chief trial counsel Morris Dees / Getty Images

..."I've never known a US-based non-profit dealing in human rights or social services to have any foreign bank accounts," said Amy Sterling Casil, CEO of Pacific Human Capital, a California-based nonprofit consulting firm. "My impression based on prior interactions is that they have a small, modestly paid staff, and were regarded by most in the industry as frugal and reliable. I am stunned to learn of transfers of millions to offshore bank accounts. It is a huge red flag and would have been completely unacceptable to any wealthy, responsible, experienced board member who was committed to a charitable mission who I ever worked with."

"It is unethical for any US-based charity to invest large sums of money overseas," said Casil. "I know of no legitimate reason for any US-based non-profit to put money in overseas, unregulated bank accounts."

"It seems extremely unusual for a ‘501(c)(3)' concentrating on reducing poverty in the American South to have multiple bank accounts in tax haven nations," Charles Ortel, a former Wall Street analyst and financial advisor who helped uncover a 2009 financial scandal at General Electric, told the Free Beacon.

...The SPLC has also been hit with a number of lawsuits over "hate" defamation claims in recent days.

Read more here.

At PowerLine, John Hinderaker writes,

APPLE FUNDS LEFT-WING HATE GROUP
I suppose this is a dog-bites-man story, given the crazy politics of Silicon Valley. But the Associated Press reports that Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, a politically ignorant lefty, has pledged $2 million “to help lead the fight against the hate that fueled the violence in Virginia during a white-nationalist rally last weekend.”

So is Apple coming out against Antifa? Just kidding:

Cook also told Apple employees in the memo that he strongly disagrees with President Donald Trump’s attempts to draw comparisons between the actions of the white nationalists and protesters opposing them.

Like so many others, Cook misrepresents what President Trump has said. Maybe he did it intentionally, or maybe he was relying on pundits, including a number of conservatives, who have shamefully misrepresented Trump’s words. Trump said that white nationalists and violent Antifa thugs–not “protesters,” who Trump said were “fine people”–both bore responsibility for violence in Charlottesville. I don’t know how anyone who has seen the videos of those events can dispute the truth of that assertion.

Apple is giving $1 million apiece to Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. It will also match employee donations to those two groups and other human rights organizations on a two-for-one basis.

As has been documented many times, the Southern Poverty Law Center is a left-wing hate group that has blood on its hands. [Update: Much more here and here.] I don’t know whether Cook shares SPLC’s hateful agenda, or whether he is just a naive stooge. Either way, Apple has aligned itself with some very bad actors. And either way, it is time to sell my Apple stock.

Here is a Muslim man from UK who is suing SPLC for defamation.

Jeff Dunetz writes at The Lid,

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is over-the-line liberal loony-toons organization posing as a civil rights charity who exists by the motto “If you are a conservative you are a racist or some other type of bigot. One target of the SPLC has had enough. The Federation for American Immigration Reform, known as FAIR, has filed a formal legal complaint with the IRS claiming that the SPLC was engaging in political activity as opposed to the educational activity allowed per the 501(C)(3) tax exemption rules(complaint embedded below).

“The SPLC went way over the line in this last election. It publicly engaged in deep, deliberate, and unlawful participation during the 2016 presidential election cycle, flagrantly violating its non-profit tax status,” alleges FAIR President Dan Stein. “The IRS should investigate all of these instances, and take appropriate steps to either sanction and fine the SPLC, or remove its tax-exempt status as a public charity. We are alleging – via meticulously detailed documented evidence – that it repeatedly engaged in widespread, illegal electioneering in 2015 and 2016,” he said.

Stein noted the SPLC used its website and homepage to overtly try to directly discredit Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, alleging in instance after instance that Trump was unworthy of voter support. The SPLC used its tried and true formula of opinion-based smears and innuendos – tactics that it claims shield it from liability suits – to engage in blatant political activity masquerading as “teaching tolerance.” The complaint reiterates that “smear[ing] by association” is a “primary technique” of the SPLC and, in this case, one clearly and obviously intended to sway public opinion against candidate Trump and other campaigns.

...These and other communications documented in the complaint clearly lacked any educational and public-interest value and instead were part of an overt, ongoing, orchestrated effort to sway voters in their voting preferences.
“Clearly, the primary goal of the SPLC in 2016 was to ensure that Donald J. Trump was not elected president,” said Stein. “Any honest examination of this record can only lead to the conclusion that the SPLC was engaged in on-going prohibited political activity.”

Read more here.

At Real Clear Politics, Carl Cannon writes about the hate group that incited the Middlebury melee.

...Dees also started a nonprofit, which he named the Southern Poverty Law Center. But he gave up neither the high life nor the direct-mail business. He lives in luxury with his fifth wife and still runs the SPLC, which has used the mail-order model to amass a fortune. Its product line is an unusual one: For the past 47 years, Morris Dees has been selling fear and hate.

...Today, the center boasts a treasury of more than $300 million, the richest civil rights group in the country.

But with the Ku Klux Klan literally out of business, how was the SPLC able to frighten people into still donating? That’s where the AEI’s Charles Murray reenters our story, along with many other mainstream conservative groups. Scaring the bejesus out of people requires new bogeymen, and lots of them.

In recent years, you can find yourself on the SPLC’s “hate map” if you haven’t gotten fully aboard on gay marriage — or the Democratic Party’s immigration views. In other words, the Dees’ group classifies individuals and organizations as purveyors of “hate” for holding the same view on marriage espoused by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton until mid-2012.

...Before Charles Murray’s abortive visit to Vermont, several hundred Middlebury alums signed a letter opposing his visit. They and the numerous professors and students who protested all cited the SPLC as their sole source for various slanders against Murray:

Read more here.