Elanso

By Debbie Schlussel

**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE - Free Press Editor Stephen Henderson shows his true colors ****

Some of you may have seen "my" Op-Ed column in today's Detroit Free Press. I say "my" in quotation marks because it is NOT MY WORK. I DID NOT WRITE IT. Had I seen the draft of what ran, I'd have said, "DON'T run it." But I did not get that chance.

This whole experience has been very enlightening to me, because it shows me just how much the Freep sees itself as the protector of Islamic terrorists and "former" Islamic terrorist Imad Hamad. It's eye-opening. I also shows me the extent to which Free Press editors will go--they lied and made up allegations about me--to keep my opinion from getting exposure. Sorry, guys (and gals), but the Internet isn't owned by you, and you can't stop me.

I can say, without qualification, that I've never ever submitted a comment to the Free Press website. I don't do that. I comment on THIS website. But many of my Detroit-area readers have posted my work or links to it in the comments section of the Free Press site. I have nothing to do with that, and it's beyond my control. The pan-Islamist Free Press news editors don't like that. You can't have another point of view than the one they express that "Islam is peace," etc. But the reason my many Detroit readers--without my involvement or encouragement--post my work or links to it on the Freep site is that they're sick of the Islam co-opted "news" they get from most Free Press reporters.

I feel bad for Stephen Henderson, because I believe he's a good guy who tried to do the right thing. He does try to put in all points of view on his op-ed page. But the PC forces at his paper over-ruled him and put him between a rock and a hard place in running my work. That's standard practice, apparently at the Free Press, and for the Mainstream Media, and why I've had to have my work on what's going on in Detroit run in other papers, like the far more read/far more prestigious Wall Street Journal and New York Post--both more open to many points of view.

And then, there's the standard practice at the Free Press. In February, for example, Detroit Free Press Reporter Dan Cortez initially reported on the Freep website that Michigan State Police detectives and federal agents said that a giant food stamp fraud ring they foiled was likely tied to Hezbollah and that they were investigating that. Those two paragraphs were removed from the story by Detroit Free Press editors Theresa Mask and Ritu Sehgal to protect to the Detroit Muslim community and hide this from readers. And not a single name, of the 18-21 Muslim food stamp fraud ring members, was mentioned in the story.

When I asked Mask and Sehgal why they did this, both responded, "I don't have to answer that. I'm an editor for the Free Press. I don't have to tell you why we removed it." Both hung up. Complaints to their boss, Detroit Free Press Editor Jeff Taylor, their boss, were dismissed. He said the issue "is far more complicated than you think." Um, not really. Whenever they tell you it's "complicated," that's an elitist exercise in camouflaging something that's actually very simple. They just want the protesting "little people" to forget about it and go away.

Henderson says that Detroit Free Press editors tell him that Hamad says I've been "stalking" him. That's interesting to me, since I've never in my life contacted the guy, yet I have many unanswered, creepy e-mails sent to me from Imad Hamad, in which he begs me to meet with him and/or have a "dialogue" with him. While I never responded, he didn't get the message and kept sending 'em. Someone at the Freep desperately needs to consult a dictionary on the definition of stalking. I've been stalked by Hamad, NOT the other way around. Writing about and exposing an Islamic terrorist, which is not stalking. If reporting the facts is "stalking," the Freep editors can rest assured that they are NOT "stalkers," especially not editors Mask, Sehgal, and Taylor.

Here's the e-mail sent to me by Stephen Henderson, Deputy Editorial Editor of the Free Press explaining the PC-whitewash of Islamic terrorism from my piece:

From: Henderson, Stephen shenderson600@freepress.com

Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 5:19 PM

To: Debbie Schlussel

Subject: edited column.

Hey Debbie, there have been some late changes to your column that I need to explain.

We think that, given your recent rather personal run-ins with Imad Hamad on our forums [DS: Again, this never happened. I DON'T comment on Free Press forums. I comment HERE on MY site. But, now, it's official--the Freep is the official guard for Imad Hamad.], it's probably not a great idea to have you commenting on "Islamic terrorists" in your Fieger piece. Frankly, it will only cause you grief and detract from the excellent point you're making about the frivolity of campaign finance laws. Without those comments, you can't even rationally be accused of being anti-Arab or anti-Muslim; any detractors will have to focus on your arguments alone.

I'm sorry for that, and sorry for the late notice, but it's better, in our judgment, to have you avoid commenting on that issue for us.

So I had to do a little surgery with your piece . . . I think it hardly reads any different..

Um, "a little surgery"? More like a heart transplant. No, make that a mastectomy.

To say I'm PO'd is an understatement. But it is instructive, just how occupied by PC and Pan-Islamism the Detroit Free Press pages and leadership is. I abided by the 650-word limit and sent the piece in, early Monday Morning. Then, at 5:19 p.m. yesterday, I was sent a completely different version, which I never saw or approved. I first read it, along with you, this morning.

Compare what I sent the Free Press, with the completely terrorism-whitewashed BS they ran. Here's what I, in fact, wrote, which was set to run until 5:19 p.m. The deleted parts are in bold:

By Debbie Schlussel

Who is a bigger threat to America--Geoffrey Fieger or Islamic terrorists?

If you listen to the feds downtown, the answer is the former.

While soldiers are dying overseas and crime is at its highest levels in Detroit, we are focusing on the extremely dangerous . . . sub-rosa campaign contributions by Fieger to a failed Democratic Presidential candidate?

When FBI agents raided Fieger's offices and his employees' homes, they outnumbered FBI agents who searched for Osama Bin Laden in the caves of Tora Bora. While the U.S. Attorney's Office has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars prosecuting Fieger, Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse finds that U.S. Attorney Stephen Murphy III--a Bush nominee to the federal Bench--has one of the country's lowest rates of pursuing terrorist cases referred to him by federal law enforcement agencies, and an even more paltry rate of convictions in the few cases pursued.

Yet, confidential informants and furtively taped conversations at the Fieger law offices surpass the energies in any local federal terrorism case pursued to date. Fieger was pursued with far more vigor and faces far more time in prison than Nada Nadim Prouty, a Hezbollah spy in both the FBI and CIA.

As a conservative, I could not disagree more with Fieger's politics and career achievements--representing Dr. Death and expanding America's litigation explosion. But I appreciate the trial going on at the federal court building as a waste of federal firepower--a politically--motivated burn of resources that won't achieve much for the citizens of the Eastern District of Michigan, regardless of outcome.

Fieger and law partner Ven Johnson are accused of violating federal campaign finance laws and the $2,300 limits they impose on donations per Presidential candidate per cycle. The Justice Department claims that Fieger illegally reimbursed employees for donations to John Edwards to get around the limits.

It's not the first time U.S. Attorney Murphy squandered federal tax dollars on this kind of prosecution. Amongst the accusations leveled at Carl Marlinga--who was ultimately acquitted--were allegations that Marlinga induced some contributors to launder campaign contributions through family members to get around federal limits for his Congressional run.

But these laws are inconsistently applied and anachronistic. That's why Fieger's donations aren't a hot-button issue. Talk radio is not exploding with callers angry about what Fieger and Johnson allegedly did. Wealthy Americans routinely skirt campaign finance limits by legally donating thousands more through their under-aged children. Also legal are the myriad independent expenditure campaigns, which spend millions for and against candidates, whose donors' identities are often murky and unknown until after the election. The same goes for millions of dollars in free campaign publicity Oprah Winfrey gave Barack Obama on the campaign trail, in her magazine, and on her daytime talk show--worth well over the $2,300 limit.

No-one's indicting Winfrey. So, why is the government going after Fieger? Wouldn't it be better if we did away with campaign finance limits? Not that I will ever be able to give anything approaching $2,300 to a candidate. But campaign finance limits drive wealthy donors underground, encouraging them to hide donations through third parties. Where there's a will, there's a way.

Now, more than a decade into the internet age, with instant candidate campaign finance reporting, it's time to do away with Byzantine, anachronistic campaign finance limits and equally backward prosecutions. If Geoffrey Fieger wants to donate over $100,000 to a candidate, let him. So long as there's full reporting, campaign opponents can always use that information against the willing recipient.

Campaign finance rules began after insurance executive W. Clement Stone donated $2 million to Richard Nixon's re-election effort in 1972. Jealous politicians and the loyal opposition balked. And now here we are.

I'm not sure it's so bad if a candidate is "bought," so long as there's full disclosure of who's doing the buying.

Prosecuting Fieger is just "bad priorities." It's the litigation equivalent of digging for Jimmy Hoffa.

That this version didn't run is absurd. But, sadly, I couldn't avoid the PC-police at the Detroit Free Press. And, as I noted, it's not the first time the Detroit Free Press has whitewashed Islamic terrorism out of what you read.

The Detroit Free Press' slogan is "On Guard for [100-odd] Years." Needs to be changed to:

On Guard for Islamic Terrorists and Imad Hamad.

**** UPDATE: Earlier today, above, I wrote that Detroit Free Press Stephen Henderson was a good guy, but based on his responses to some of my readers, I've re-evaluated that assessment. While he was nice to me and told me he wanted to write the piece as is, it appears that he was either not telling me the truth or has changed his story as a stuck response to readers. Either way, instead of defending his paper's absurd PC, pan-Islamist editorial censorship policies, he's attacking me.

Here's an exchange between Henderson and a righteously disappointed reader:

Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 2:06 PM

To: Henderson, Stephen shenderson600@freepress.com

Subject: Gutting D. Schlussel op/ed

I didn't think papers changed writers op/ed's anymore.
It's why your industry is a slowly dying one. Too bad, papers used to be about getting information out without bias.
Not anymore!
Good day!

***

From: "Henderson, Stephen" shenderson600@freepress.com

Date: Fri, 2 May 2008 14:12:13

Subject: RE: Gutting D. Schlussel op/ed

Are you joking? You obviously know nothing about the newspaper business.

EVERY op/ed is subject to editing. Every one. Debbie's was changed less so than any I've touched in the past three weeks.

She is whining about three grafs that were excised, essentially to protect HER from charges that she has some wanton anti-Arab bias that infects everything she writes.

That's what editors DO, my friend, always have, and always will.

Nice elitist, patronizing response. Very defensive, too. Interesting way of elevating a profession that ain't rocket science and telling my readers they "just don't understand."

Um, no, Stephen, editors EDIT. They don't editorialize, unless they, themselves, are writing an editorial or commentary. What Henderson and his editors above did was change the point of view I wrote. That's NOT editing. That's writing in my name something I didn't say, because they don't want people to read what I really wrote.

Hey, Stephen, whatever happened to those "Sunshine Week" editorials you wrote about the public's right to know everything? As we now know, they were total BS and complete hypocrisy.

One other thing, my writing is NOT anti-Arab. I've praised many Arabs on this site. I write about Islamists, which Henderson would know if he had even the slightest interest in accuracy, which he apparently does not.

Hilarious that a guy who is the deputy editorial page editor of a major newspaper in the heart of Islamic America, still--6.5 years after 9/11--doesn't know that there is a difference between Arabs and Muslims. Hello . . . ?

Still, good to know that he and the Freep see themselves as the guardians of all things Arab. See anything they "report" in that vein, ie., propaganda and advocacy, NOT journalism.