I’m used to left-wing bloggers distorting what I write, which is why I rarely respond.
But I was disappointed to read Charles Lemos of MyDD, one of the less crazy of the genre, write the following on Saturday morning:
In fact even before all the facts were established, right wing bloggers like Michelle Malkin and William Jacobsen of Legal Insurrection were doing all they [sic] assign blame on Islam as a whole and engage in willful hateful misinformation.
Michelle Malkin is fully capable of defending herself. As for the attack by Lemos on me, the assertion by Lemos that my linked post (or any of my other posts on the Oslo shooting) “assign blame on Islam as a whole” or contain “misinformation” (whether willful, hateful or otherwise), is flat out untrue.
My post linked by Lemos, written after widespread media reports that an al-Qaeda group had claimed responsibility, quoted a Norwegian blogger and The New York Times on the threats against Norway. In an update to that post I noted that there were reports that al-Qaeda was not responsible and that it might be a “lone wolf style attack and right-wing group targeting the labour party.”
In another post later in the day (and several hours before Lemos wrote his accusation), I reported the arrest of the Norwegian shooter and expressed regret at having not taken the media reports of an al-Qaeda connection with “a grain of salt.” [Added] The information in that latter post addressed pre-existing threats by Islamic radicals, which is a term used by, among others, Barack Obama.
So my challenge to Lemos is to back up your name calling, or issue a retraction of the accusations in your post.
[Note: I have e-mailed this post to Lemos, to make sure he was aware of the challenge. Also, the “added” sentence was corrected to reflect that it was used in my last post on the shootings.]
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY