In what passes for professional journalism these days yellow journalist wrote a biased piece of tripe in the 08/31/04 issue of the Wichita Eagle entitled "Atheist Group Behind Tiahrt Fliers" like he was breaking some big news story. On page B4 below an article about a middle school banning "goth" wear (that's the sort of mentality of the area we live in where the color black is a sign of moral demise, kinda like when women would reveal their ankles in public) where Dion Lefler broke the big news story that the Maggot Punks adorned lightpoles on Douglas Street with flyers criticizing Todd Tiahrt (R-Halliburton) and encouraging people to register to vote.

It's not a big surprise that we put up the flyers, we've been doing it for over two years now and we've had our website addressed attached to the flyers. It must have been a day where the Eagle may have had to publish actual, informative news (the lead story in the local section was about kids being walked around the schoolyard, ho hum). Considering one of the flyers was posted right in front of the Eagle it didn't take much effort to find the flyers. We figured since we've been doing this for two years, the Eagle has never presented one negative piece about Tiahrt, we might as well get their attention. Nothing was filtering through the AP wire that day so Lefler found himself a story.

What followed was a small section (about two paragraphs) about the flyers and the rest was just personal attacks which had nothing to do with the flyers or the reasons behind the flyers. We wouldn't want the Eagle to actually become journalistic watchdogs of politicians as it would go against their image of being some Stalinist Pravda. The following is a rebuttal to the extremely biased article. I'd like to keep it short but conservative news has a habit of showing it's audience with lies and distortions.

Contrary to Lefler's claim we did respond to his half-assed efforts to contact us. The reason we use false names is because we criticize domestic terrorists with a history of violence and intimidation. If anyone isn't familiar with the tactics of hate groups like Operation Rescue check out the Rolling Stone article about them.

Now it's expected that the Tiahrt campaign dismisses any grassroots activity. The Tiahrt campaign relies largely on corporate, special interest donations and church donations. As long as Tiahrt focuses a lot of attention bashing gays, liberals and the ACLU he'll get the vote of the Christian right which frees him to quietly ship jobs to China. Did we ever hear the Wichita Eagle reporting that Tiahrt voted to eliminate funding for programs that would combat the use of child labor and slavery overseas (HR 2264)? No, of course not, but we did hear about Tiahrt preaching at Immanuel Baptist but no mention of his violation of campaign laws. No mention of Tiahrt's endorsement to raise the taxes of the poor and middle class by at least 23% (in addition to our local sales tax just imagine everything costing 30% more like a $100,000 house having an additional $30,000 sales tax), no mention of Tiahrt's support of a bill to remove the requirements that contracts for military supplies be built in America (think how many days it'll take Boeing to ship it's plants to Mexico once that bill passes).

Tiahrt has worked overtime to screw the Kansas people. Overtime? Forget about that on your check because Tiahrt voted twice to eliminate overtime pay (HR 2660, HR2888). Now farmers don't get overtime pay but they can make some extra money selling their waste to ethanol plants. Wouldn't it be great if more cars ran on ethanol? Tiahrt doesn't think so, he voted against legislation to encourage production of ethanol automobiles (HR 4 vote 311). And while Tiahrt voted to keep prescription drug costs high (HR 4954) he has no problem with corporate criminals stealing your pensions and 401k plans so you can pay for those higher drug costs (HR 3763). If you love smaller paychecks and higher bills then vote for Tiahrt, but if you want someone to represent your needs as a Kansan vote him out of office. Lefler doesn't mention these facts as to why we oppose Tiahrt, just that we are on some "profanity-laced tirade".

Spouting off the most lies is Karen McBride of the rag the Wichita Chronicle. While Lefler praises this website as an example of good journalism (at least it's on par with Lefler's journalism integrity) the website does nothing more than lift stories from other locations. The article that Lefler praised about an interview with Ralph Reed wasn't written by anyone on the Chronicle staff, nor was it written by anyone in Kansas. The Maggot Punks could certainly just take the hard work of others and claim it as our own but we prefer to present original, insightful stories about events in Wichita. For someone who calls themselves the Wichita Chronicle it would make sense to have the majority of your stories involving Wichita.

Karen decries the Maggot Punks as theives who follow her delivery vans around stealing their papers. Contrary to her fanciful beliefs we all have jobs and don't spend our lives following Karen around. In an alternate reality the Chronicle published an article called "Wichita Chronicle Under Attack" where they accused a Christian of stealing their papers and mocked the victims of 9/11 comparing the stealing of their free papers like a terrorist attack at the WTC. Now the story has changed and it's a group of Atheists who put flyers around Wichita. In November of 2003, Lynn McBride went so far as to harass the Maggot Punks by email. Mcbride sent an email to Mr Zero insisting that Mr Zero had "confessed" to committing several crimes against the Wichita Chronicle in an online discussion forum. When asked to provide the URL, McBride came up short and said simply "trust me, its there". Lynn & Karen, if you have any real evidence to support your claims then present them. Well yeah, we did take wichitachronicle.org but that's a far cry from some Atheistic conspiracy that you dreamed up. For the record we've never heard of any police or attorneys contacting us on the issue, perhaps you should stop wasting taxpayer money with your delusions of grandeur and let the police catch some real criminals, not people reading free newspapers.

Some of you may have been disappointed because the website doesn't have the lace of profanity that Dion Lefler claims it possesses. So I'll take this moment to say Lefler is a fucking lousy journalist who couldn't write fluff fashion pieces for Entertainment Tonight.

Book of the day: What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News by Eric Alterman

If you don't vote, you can't bitch!

Plain and simple. If you like the Maggot Punks or you hate our guts, voting will make a difference! If you don't vote, we don't want to hear a damn thing you have to say. If you won't get off your lazy ass and perform the bare minimum task to participate in our democratic process, then what good are you?

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