{"id":9954,"date":"2007-02-16T13:15:15","date_gmt":"2007-02-16T18:15:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9954.html"},"modified":"2007-02-16T13:15:15","modified_gmt":"2007-02-16T18:15:15","slug":"unrepentant-fabrications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/unrepentant-fabrications\/","title":{"rendered":"Unrepentant fabrications"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suspect it was quite embarrassing. The Washington Times’ Frank Gaffney<\/a> repeated a bogus quote<\/a> from Abraham Lincoln as the lede in his column this week. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) saw the column, and used the fabricated quote<\/a> as part of his argument in support of the president’s Iraq policy. Oops.<\/p>\n

Of course, accidents happen. People get sloppy, they find a quote that’s too good to check, and they end up with egg on their face. It’s good for a few laughs, but it’s no big deal — the Times will run a correction, Young will correct the record, and the whole thing will probably be forgotten fairly quickly.<\/p>\n

Except that’s not quite what’s happening. The unabashedly conservative Washington Times has declined to run a correction<\/a>. Worse, confronted with an obvious error, Young and his office will not back down<\/a> from a quote they know to be false.<\/p>\n

During yesterday’s House debate on Iraq, Rep. Don Young (R-AK) made the case for escalation by citing a fabricated quote falsely attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.”<\/p>\n

This morning, Young’s spokeswoman Meredith Kenney told ThinkProgress repeatedly that Young does not plan to take any action to correct the record or clarify his House statement. <\/p>\n

Kenney said that Young had learned of the quote from Tuesday’s Washington Times op-ed by Frank Gaffney, and noted that the Times has not yet issued a correction or retraction. Kenney said she “couldn’t confirm or deny” that Young would correct his statement even if the Times published a correction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While Dems seem anxious to apologize for verbal gaffes, here’s a conservative Republican who repeated a discredited quote on the House floor during a key congressional debate. Confronted with reality, Young is undeterred. Asked to correct the record, Young effectively says, “Nope, I’ll wait and see what my local right-wing newspaper does first.”<\/p>\n

I almost admire the chutzpah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suspect it was quite embarrassing. The Washington Times’ Frank Gaffney repeated a bogus quote from Abraham Lincoln as the lede in his column this week. Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) saw the column, and used the fabricated quote as part of his argument in support of the president’s Iraq policy. Oops. Of course, accidents happen. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}