Ben Johnson, The White House Watch
Despite a newfound reputation as an unbiased news source, an influx of hundreds of millions of dollars, and the new ownership of a massive media conglomerate, The Huffington Post is apparently incapable of fact-checking the articles that appear on its website. An entry posted late this morning on the website attributes an apparently erroneous quotation to Sen. John McCain.
The line comes in a Huffington Post article written by legal scholar Bruce Fein entitled, “McCain Dethrones the Rule of Law.”
This author reported last month that Fein, who wrote the first article of impeachment against Bill Clinton, has drafted articles of impeachment against Barack Obama over the president’s unwise, unauthorized, and unconstitutional military action against Libya. This author is fully supportive of Fein’s goals and actions on this matter.
Unfortunately, it appears an online prank got past him – and The Huffington Post.
Too-Subtle Satire
Fein quotes McCain as saying, “Any [p]resident, Republican or Democrat, should be able to deploy armed forces whenever and wherever he deems necessary.”
This author has written extensively about the president’s usurpation of the Congress’ war-making power, as well as the collective Congressional abdication led by John McCain. After reading Fein’s article, I started to include the quotation in a short post on the topic. However, I could find no authentication for it anywhere.
It appears to have originated on the website of the Arizona Sunlight, which bills itself as….
