I'm shocked -- SHOCKED -- that Breitbart News would run with an echo-chamber created story about a group that doesn't exist at all, never existed, and has nothing to do with anything in the real world. Cenk pointed out five days ago that the mythical 'Friends of Hamas' story appeared to be nothing more than an unsubstantiated rumor started somewhere in the bowels of DC.

It turns out that it started over at the New York Daily News when reporter Dan Friedman asked a Congressional staffer whether or not they had any evidence that Chuck Hagel was fraternizing with shadowy terrorist groups the way Ted Cruz seemed to intimate.

On Feb. 6, I called a Republican aide on Capitol Hill with a question: Did Hagel’s Senate critics know of controversial groups that he had addressed?

Hagel was in hot water for alleged hostility to Israel. So, I asked my source, had Hagel given a speech to, say, the “Junior League of Hezbollah, in France”? And: What about “Friends of Hamas”?

The names were so over-the-top, so linked to terrorism in the Middle East, that it was clear I was talking hypothetically and hyperbolically. No one could take seriously the idea that organizations with those names existed — let alone that a former senator would speak to them.

By now, everyone should know that Republicans have no sense of humor, especially when it comes to terrorists! They're all about killing terrorists, destroying them, or else using them to strike fear in the hearts of every American.

That didn't stop the smartest-guy-in-the-room Breitbot Ben Shapiro from running with the story after he called the White House for confirmation and got the cold shoulder. Dave Weigel:

Following that, I checked with Ben Shapiro, the Breitbart.com editor and reporter who originated the "Friends of Hamas" meme in a short February 7 article titled "SECRET HAGEL DONOR?: WHITE HOUSE SPOX DUCKS QUESTION ON 'FRIENDS OF HAMAS.'" In it, Shapiro reported that "Senate sources told Breitbart News exclusively" of Hagel's "Friends of Hamas" problem.

"Have you found any more proof that this group exists?" I asked Shapiro.

"The original story is the entirety of the information I have," he said.

Shapiro appears to be resting his unwarranted certitude on the butt of his claim that he was merely repeating what he had heard from an anonymous Senate source. That didn't stop the entire right wing online universe from exploding with accusations and inflammatory articles, spreading the meme that Hagel might have received - gasp! - funding from terrorist groups.

Why Breitbart is taken seriously by anyone, I do not know. How many bogus stories do they have to blast out before they're no longer accorded any credibility by anyone, left or right? It seems the key to their success is merely to rest on form over substance, as Shapiro did today.

Shapiro, as you might expect, did not do that thing where he writes a correction/apology for putting up an wild-eyed article about a rumor that most vertebrates would at least treat with some degree of credulity. Instead, he's now accusing Friedman of lying about being the source. Shapiro's new take is as cleverly "caveated" as his last -- he gets to say that the source for his story didn't hear about the story from Friedman, but that doesn't necessarily mean Friedman wasn't on the end of the chain of whispers.

What Shapiro did is simple. He played an extended game of telephone and then did what gossips do: repeated the rumor with very careful language so it appeared to be fact. And then, because Breitbart's target is always the White House or damned libruls who support the guy in the White House, they called the White House with a stupid question which received the response it deserved. Whoever took the call hung up on Shapiro (according to Shapiro, of course), and so he ran with the whole White House doesn't deny Friends of Hamas thing.

See, a failure to deny something that doesn't exist means it exists, right?

I guess as long as stupid Senators like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz actually take whiners like Shapiro seriously in spite of their history, we're going to be writing these posts letting everyone know of the latest Breitbarting. I'm sure Andrew Breitbart is smiling on his young protege for asking himself WWBD* and then running with it, truth be damned.

*WWBD - What would Breitbart do?

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Remember when Fox Newsies loved democracy in the Middle East? That was when George W. Bush needed excuses for his invasion into Iraq. Now that democracy has actually spread there, not so much. Today on Fox & Friends, Laura Ingraham openly expressed a preference for Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak - and met with approval from host Steve Doocy.

In a discussion about cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas, Ingraham said:

The Muslim Brotherhood? Well, we’ll see if they’re gonna be able to be honest brokers in any type of negotiation. I think any type of agreement for a cease fire is going to be probably brokered in Egypt. Mubarak would have been a much clearer and I think far more honest broker than (current president Mohamed) Morsi but we’ll see.

As she said that last sentence, Steve Doocy murmured “Sure” in agreement. He added, “The Arab spring has certainly changed a lot of stuff over there.” It was clear he did not mean it had changed for the better.

Yes, if only Egypt had stuck with a brutal leader the citizens didn’t want – because it would have suited us and Israel better.

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On Sunday, Liz Cheney took a brief hiatus from her preposterous charge that "President Obama is contributing to the isolation of Israel, and sending a clear signal to the Turkish-Syrian-Iranian axis that their methods for ostracizing Israel will succeed." In a rare moment of candor, Cheney temporarily withdrew her fangs to acknowledge her father's boss was largely responsible for Hamas' domination of Gaza. Which is exactly right. After all, before Bush's failed covert action in support of Fatah led to the Hamas takeover of Gaza, his administration never anticipated the terrorist group's earlier victory at the polls, one which Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted, "nobody saw it coming."

Vice President Cheney's daughter and former Bush State Department official admitted as much. In an exchange with Arianna Huffington and Jake Tapper on ABC's This Week, Liz Cheney claimed the January 2006 elections pushed by the Bush administration were a mistake:

HUFFINGTON: The Hamas government is a terrorist organization. Nobody's saying anything contrary to that. The Hamas government is a terrorist organization that won an election, an election that Bush, Cheney and Condi Rice encouraged to happen.

TAPPER: ...[To Cheney] You were at the State Department in 2005 and 2006 when these elections were pushed forward and some people were saying, "don't do it, they're not ready for it." Do you think that was a mistake in retrospect?

CHENEY: I do. I don't think they were ready for it. I don't think we should have pushed it.

That's easy to say now, given the catastrophe that unfolded in the Palestinian territories under her father's watch.

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Israel now admits reprimanding two top army officers for ordering the Jan. 15 attack on the UN compound in Gaza last year that used white phosphorus shells. (Apparently their strategy is, if they admit to one use, we can all pretend they weren't using it everywhere else in Gaza.)

Last year, the official explanation was that the shells were merely meant to provide cover for ground operation:

The admission is contained in the Israeli response to the UN's Goldstone report, which concluded both Israel and Hamas had committed war crimes.

Both officers have retained their ranks, according to reports.

The Israeli army denies breaking the rules of engagement over the use of white phosphorus.

During the 22-day conflict last year, media pictures showed incendiary shells raining down on a UN compound.

The officers were named in Israeli media reports as Gaza Division Commander Brig Gen Eyal Eisenberg and Givati Brigade Commander Col Ilan Malka.

"Several artillery shells were fired in violation of the rules of engagement prohibiting use of such artillery near populated areas," the Israeli response to the Goldstone report says.

The officers were charged with "exceeding their authority" in ordering the use of the weapons in the attack.

An Israeli Defence Force spokesman said that the reprimand would be noted on their records and would be considered if they apply for promotion in future.

Brig Gen Eisenberg is still in command of Israel's Gaza division, and Col Malka has been moved to the West Bank under the same rank, according to the Reuters news agency.

In March 2009, Human Rights Watch released a report calling their use of white phosphorus "indescriminate" and "evidence of war crimes":

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I don't know what to say. The United States not only permits this, we subsidize it - at great personal cost to our country. After all, why were we an Al Qaeda target in the first place?

Yes, we'll tie ourselves in knots to keep a taxpayer dollar from getting anywhere near an abortion, yet we continue to fund the slow starvation of the Palestinians.

Very sad:

One year after Israel launched its three-week offensive in Gaza that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and damaged or destroyed over 50,000 homes in a campaign aimed at stopping Hamas rocket fire, the survivors are still living in rubble. And it is not for want of money that thousands of residents of the coastal enclave remain homeless this winter: Moved by the plight of Gaza's 1.5 million Palestinians who were already reeling from a two-and-a-half year economic siege imposed by Israel with help from Egypt and the U.S. even before Israel's air and ground assault had begun, international donors earlier this year pledged over $4.5 billion to repair war damages. But that aid has failed to reach Gaza, according to Palestinians and relief agencies who accuse Israel of imposing Kafkaesque rules that bar entry to vital reconstruction materials and items as bizarre as glass, most schoolbooks, honey and family-sized tubs of margarine.

Says Chris Gunness, spokesman for the United Nations' Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), "Because the Israelis are not allowing in any reconstruction material, that $4.5 billion is just a paper figure." With over 80% of Gazans now surviving on humanitarian handouts from UNRWA, Gunness adds, "Palestinians are becoming more desperate and more extreme."

Relief officials estimate that Gaza needs 40,000 tons of cement and 25,000 tons of iron to start repairing the homes, hospitals, schools and shops destroyed during Israel's offensive. But so far, according to GISHA, an Israeli legal rights group, the Israelis have allowed only 19 trucks carrying construction material into Gaza since the war ended last January. "You could say that Israel has bombed Gaza back into the mud age," says UNRWA's Gunness, "because that's what they're building their houses out of now — mud."

Without parts to replace machinery damaged in the war, 97% of Gaza's factories have shut down, raising unemployment to over 43%. With scarce sources of income, many Gazans would probably starve if not for food handouts from the U.N. and other agencies. Over 40,000 Gazans have no electricity, 10,000 have no running water in their homes, and because Israel bans entry of the spare parts needed to run its sewage treatment plant, every day 87 million liters of sewage is dumped into the Mediterranean (which washes up on Israel's beaches, too.)

Although the international community occasionally protests Gaza's ongoing tragedy, so far no real pressure has been applied on Israel to loosen its stranglehold. One senior official in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing government recently confided to a U.N. colleague that Israel's goal for Gaza was: "No development, no prosperity, no humanitarian crisis." The U.N. official interpreted that to mean that Israel would provide Gaza with an intravenous drip of relief to keep its 1.5 million inhabitants alive, but just barely, in hopes that the people would overthrow the Hamas government they voted into power in the last Palestinian elections. But that hasn't happened yet, nor is it likely to; Hamas smuggles arms, money and supplies into Gaza through tunnels from Egypt, and, increasingly, joining the militants has become the only source of a monthly wage for young males. In the meantime, said John Ging, UNRWA's chief officer in Gaza, the Israeli siege is "facilitating the destruction of a civilized society." Before the siege Palestinians in Gaza prided themselves on the excellence of their schools and industriousness of their workforce, many of whom, in more peaceful times, found jobs across the fence in Israel.

It's all about the company you keep...

The government published a blacklist on Tuesday of people recently banned from the country including a Hamas lawmaker and a Jewish extremist, as well as anti-gay protestors and a far-right US talk show host.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she decided to publish the "name and shame" list -- which identifies 16 people banned since last October -- for the first time to clarify what behaviour Britain will not tolerate.

"I think it's important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here, the fact that it's a privilege to come and the sort of things that mean you won't be welcome in this country," she said.

"If you can't live by the rules that we live by ... we should exclude you from this country and, what's more, now we will make public those people that we have excluded," she told the GMTV broadcaster.

Ouch. That's gotta hurt. Michael Weiner Savage is up there with fellow hatemongers Fred and Shirley Phelps, as well as a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, two Russian skinheads responsible for 20 racially motivated murders and -- I'm sure this is just killing Weiner Savage -- several Muslim clerics accused of whipping up hate and fomenting terrorism within the Muslim community. Full list here.

Weiner Savage had a predictably snide response and is planning on suing...someone. (link goes to WorldNetDaily)

"Darn! And I was just planning a trip to England for their superior dental work and cuisine," he recalled thinking.

"Then it sank in," he told WND, "and I said, 'She said this is the kind of behavior we won't tolerate? She's linking me with mass murderers who are in prison for killing Jewish children on buses? For my speech? The country where the Magna Carta was created?'"[..]

Savage said he wants top First Amendment attorneys to represent him "in a major international case."

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Hopefully this will be successful:

Prime Minster Ehud Olmert on Saturday night announced that Israel's government has voted in favor of a unilateral cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, and will halt its fire from 2 A.M.

The announcement comes after three weeks of fighting in the coastal strip, as Israel launched a massive offensive aimed at halting years of daily rocket fire on its southern communities.

A strong hint at the announcement came earlier Saturday, when Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Israel was very close to meeting the objectives of its 22-day-old offensive in Hamas-ruled Gaza. "After three weeks of Operation Cast Lead, we are very close to reaching the goals and securing them through diplomatic agreements," Barak said during a visit to the south of the country, according to a statement from his office.

The cabinet is meeting now and will hold a vote on Saturday evening to decide whether to enact a unilateral cease-fire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

This is an interesting piece on how the Gaza war has actually strengthened Hamas in the Palestinian political hierarchy.

A rather pertinent fact that seems to have been left out of the official story:

WASHINGTON, Jan 9 (IPS) - Contrary to Israel's argument that it was forced to launch its air and ground offensive against Gaza in order to stop the firing of rockets into its territory, Hamas proposed in mid-December to return to the original Hamas-Israel ceasefire arrangement, according to a U.S.-based source who has been briefed on the proposal.

The proposal to renew the ceasefire was presented by a high-level Hamas delegation to Egyptian Minister of Intelligence Omar Suleiman at a meeting in Cairo Dec. 14. The delegation, said to have included Moussa Abu Marzouk, the second-ranking official in the Hamas political bureau in Damascus, told Suleiman that Hamas was prepared to stop all rocket attacks against Israel if the Israelis would open up the Gaza border crossings and pledge not to launch attacks in Gaza.

The Hamas officials insisted that Israel not be allowed to close or reduce commercial traffic through border crossings for political purposes, as it had done during the six-month lull, according to the source. They asked Suleiman, who had served as mediator between Israel and Hamas in negotiating the original six-month Gaza ceasefire last spring, to "put pressure" on Israel to take that the ceasefire proposal seriously.

Suleiman said he could not pressure Israel but could only make the suggestion to Israeli officials. It could not be learned, however, whether Israel explicitly rejected the Hamas proposal or simply refused to respond to Egypt.

The readiness of Hamas to return to the ceasefire conditionally in mid-December was confirmed by Dr. Robert Pastor, a professor at American University and senior adviser to the Carter Centre, who met with Khaled Meshal, chairman of the Hamas political bureau in Damascus on Dec. 14, along with former President Jimmy Carter. Pastor told IPS that Meshal indicated Hamas was willing to go back to the ceasefire that had been in effect up to early November "if there was a sign that Israel would lift the siege on Gaza".

In an interview Thursday with the AP, Vice President Cheney neatly summarized the failed Bush presidency. Comparing the financial meltdown and implosion of the American economy with the 9/11 attacks, Cheney insisted, "I don’t think anybody saw it coming." As it turns out, from 9/11, sectarian conflict in Iraq and the election of Hamas to the Bush recession and the drowning of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, the leading lights of the Bush administration claimed they never saw it coming. Call it the "Nobody Could've Predicted Presidency."

As ThinkProgress detailed, Cheney deflected blame for the calamity on Wall Street and the deepening recession by declaring, "nobody anywhere was smart enough to figure that out" and "I don’t know that anybody did." Then, Cheney magically converted failure into a virtue and ignorance into a shield in explaining away the Bush presidency:

"No, obviously, I wouldn’t have predicted that. On the other hand I wouldn’t have predicted 9/11, the global war on terror, the need to simultaneous run military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq or the near collapse of the financial system on a global basis, not just the U.S."

At every turn, of course, voices both inside and outside the government warned a Bush administration asleep at the switch.

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