Breitbart Texas runs off the rails

And not in the way we would have thought.  After the pimping Texas Sparkle gave them... well, "nobody" (except Christopher Hooks at the Texas Observer) could have seen this coming.

It’s been a little under a month—how is Breitbart Texas doing so far in bringing its investigative reporting background to clean out the partisan snake-pit of Texas media?

For the most part, Breitbart Texas’ output has been a mishmash of rote news aggregation, announcements that seem like transliterations of press releases in support of favored candidates, and an eclectic assortment of dispatches from the Breitbart contributor network, who receive $100 per post, according to the Daily Caller.

One such contributor, who goes by the twitter handle @OutOfTheBoxMom, wrote an article that consists of a list of participants and contributors to the South by Southwest Education conference. Another wrote an 88-word piece headlined “HOUSTON: SON SETS MOM’S APARTMENT ON FIRE FOR REFUSING TO BUY MARIJUANA.” It has more than a hundred comments. The source of the article—presumably a Houston Chronicle article from the same day—is not mentioned or linked to.

Then there’s the fact that Breitbart routinely runs articles written by Michael Q. Sullivan, like this lengthy jeremiad against House Speaker Joe Straus, without properly identifying Sullivan or his organizations.

That relay is pretty farcical, so it's hard to imagine how it all blew up in their faces.

But that all pales in comparison to the rift that’s recently developed in Breitbart Texas caused by the recent firing of Lee Stranahan, a Breitbart veteran who had quit the organization last fall, before rejoining Breitbart Texas as it launched last month. Stranahan, one of the $100-a-piece contributors, was working under “bureau chief” Brandon Darby, who made his name by running with anarchist and far-left groups and  passing information on them to the FBI. Stranahan’s beat: the “institutional left” and “corruption.”

Stranahan, according to the Daily Caller, was a comparative old-timer at Breitbart, who felt ill at ease with the direction the site has taken in recent years. He was among those who miss the leadership Andrew Breitbart provided for the organization and the movement in general. Stranahan quit the website last fall in part because of qualms about the site’s direction—but he signed up again with the launch of Breitbart Texas. He needed the money.

That all fell apart last week, when a simmering rift between Stranahan and Darby spiraled out of control. Stranahan alleges Darby killed a number of stories that reflected unfavorably on individuals Darby had ties with. One of them had to do with an attorney named Dan Backer, who Stranahan says was funneling money from tea party groups to “establishment” Republicans like Mitch McConnell. When Darby wouldn’t publish that story, Stranahan began tweeting details from the killed piece. That’s when Darby took the remarkable step of attacking his own reporter’s ethics, tweeting that Stranahan had once solicited money for a documentary he was making from Dan Backer.

“Person asks group for $. Group says no. Person then attacks the group without mentioning they tried to get $ before attacking,” wrote Darby in a since-deleted tweet.

Annnnd there's more.

The whole thing might have faded away after that, except for the fact that someone began forwarding emails from the fight to the Daily Caller’s Betsy Rothstein, a Washington, D.C.-based gadfly who trades in media gossip. The exchanges display a remarkable level of dysfunction within the organization, and some embarrassing anecdotes. Stranahan accuses Darby of being a “coward” and “pigheaded” and even alleges that Darby once cooked up a plan, as part of a long-running inter-office rivalry, to accuse one senior conservative journalist of having a attraction to the late Andrew Breitbart’s under-age son:

“Also; please confirm that a bit over a year ago, you told me in no uncertain terms that you had a plan to file false police charges against Jeffery Scott Shapiro, with the knowingly false claim that he had a sexual interest in Sampson Breitbart.”

The whole thing is unbelievably sordid and embarrassing, for all parties. To make matters even worse, Stranahan, who took stories that got killed by Darby and published them on his own website, recently had to append a major correction to one of his stories when a big part of his case against Backer’s PAC—the fact that the group had donated money to a Democratic congressman from North Carolina—turned out to be a financial reporting error.

And at the link, Stranahan has some comments attempting to rebut Wilder, while "Stranaham" rebuts him.  It's like watching the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals play roller derby.

The parts I didn't excerpt included David Dewhurst's laudatory kudos of BBTX on launch, just a month ago.  What a coincidence that they are both flaming out at the same time.

That was schadenfreude so rich and creamy that I had to take extra insulin after reading it.

The Weekly Wrangle

The Texas Progressive Alliance is always springing forward as it brings you this week's roundup.

Off the Kuff points out that the Texas Tribune's pollsters forget or ignore their own past data in analyzing the polls they have done for 2014.

Horwitz at Texpatriate bids farewell to all the dirtbags we won't have to kick around anymore after last Tuesday's primary.

Bernie Sanders might run for president in 2016 -- as a Democrat, or a Green, or an independent. PDiddie at Brains and Eggs really doesn't care which it is; he's all in.

WCNews at Eye on Williamson after last week's primaries gives some initial 2014 primary thoughts.

Neil at All People Have Value said seemingly contradictory things such as ice in Houston while the world is warming are easily true. Neil said we should be flexible and open and not rigid. All People Have Value is part of NeilAquino.com.

CouldBeTrue of South Texas Chisme knows Greg Abbott must be delusional. Not to mention arrogant for saying he'll get more than 49% of the Hispanic vote. Not. Going. To. Happen.

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And here are some posts of interest from other Texas blogs.

Better Texas analyzes the final rules for ACA navigators.

Juanita Jean will not be posting Steve Stockman's mugshot, nosirree.

The Lunch Tray says it's not crazy at all for chicken to be shipped to China for processing.

Offcite tries to balance Houston's prosperity and air quality.

Texas Redistricting tells us what the primary does and doesn't tell us about voter ID.

BOR documents the legislative primary runoffs that will be on some people's ballots in May.

The Queso sets your schedule for SXSW.

And finally, he's not a Texan but The Slacktivist's explanation of how four religious conservative North Texas legislators got scammed by one of their own is well worth your time to read.

Sunday Funnies

Bernie Sanders for President

I'm all in.

In some senses, Sanders is the unlikeliest of prospects: an independent who caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate but has never joined the party, a democratic socialist in a country where many politicians fear the label “liberal,” an outspoken critic of the economic, environmental and social status quo who rips “the ruling class” and calls out the Koch brothers by name. Yet, he has served as the mayor of his state’s largest city, beaten a Republican incumbent for the US House, won and held a historically Republican Senate seat and served longer as an independent member of Congress than anyone else. And he says his political instincts tell him America is ready for a “political revolution.”

In his first extended conversation about presidential politics, Sanders discussed with The Nation the economic and environmental concerns that have led him to consider a 2016 run; the difficult question of whether to run as a Democrat or an independent; his frustration with the narrow messaging of prominent Democrats, including Hillary Clinton; and his sense that political and media elites are missing the signs that America is headed toward a critical juncture where electoral expectations could be exploded.

Keep reading that piece or watch this interview with Bill Moyers.



I don't care which party he runs in -- Dem, Green, or as an indy -- he's got everything I can give him in terms of money, time, shoe leather, and unlimited cell phone minutes. As for where he shows up on the ballot, these tea leaves suggest that, while still undecided, he's leaning blue.

If and when you do start a full-fledged campaign, and if you want to run against conventional politics, how far do you go? Do you go to the point of running as an independent? That’s a great challenge to conventional politics, but it is also one where we have seen some honorable, some capable people stumble.

That’s an excellent question, and I haven’t reached a conclusion on that yet. Clearly, there are things to be said on both sides of that important question. Number one: there is today more and more alienation from the Republican and Democratic parties than we have seen in the modern history of this country. In fact, most people now consider themselves to be “independent,” whatever that may mean. And the number of people who identify as Democrats or Republicans is at a historically low point. In that sense, running outside the two-party system can be a positive politically.

On the other hand, given the nature of the political system, given the nature of media in America, it would be much more difficult to get adequate coverage from the mainstream media running outside of the two-party system. It would certainly be very hard if not impossible to get into debates. It would require building an entire political infrastructure outside of the two-party system: to get on the ballot, to do all the things that would be required for a serious campaign.

The question that you asked is extremely important, it requires a whole lot of discussion. It’s one that I have not answered yet.

Hand to heart, I'd like to see him run as a Green.  That's where he fits best, and he could really help build the GPUS into the kind of player it is in Western Europe (particularly Germany).  A thriving democracy needs more options, but it just won't happen until we get the money out of our system, and there is simply too much entrenched opposition -- from the media, consultants, and even the electeds who profit from it -- for that to happen in my lifetime.  In a craft beer world, it's a shame that Americans only have Bud and Bud Lite from which to choose politically.

But if Sanders ran as a Democrat, he would disrupt the stale conventional wisdom and quake the so-called liberal party to its foundation.  And that also needs to badly happen.

Let's be clear: after yet another long, loud, somewhat divisive Democratic presidential primary season in 2016 -- as in 2008 -- Hillary Clinton would emerge as the nominee.  Not wounded either, but battle-hardened.  And Sanders will have accomplished as much of his task as is possible: pulling the establishment away from the right and back to the left.  And perhaps a few other beneficial things as well.

Good thing, because we're in for a couple of miserable years, as I take reckoning today.  Greg Abbott is more likely than not to be the next governor of the Great State, with Dan Patrick running the state Senate as lieutenant governor.  The Texas Legislature will be 2/3 majority in both houses, which gives the worst conservatives in the country carte blanche to do whatever they like.  The United States Senate stands a better than 50% chance of flipping red after November 2014, leaving Barack Obama without a working phone but with a pen he will have to use to veto every bill he gets from Congress.

We ain't had no gridlock until you see what that looks like, folks.  No SCOTUS justices confirmed (to say nothing of appellate courts and Cabinet nominees), debt ceilings fail to get raised... just your basic governmental apocalypse, that's all.  Thanks, Tea Party!

But in 2016, another Democrat will get elected to the White House and the US Senate will flip back to blue.  Hell, the moderate Republicans may have even iced Ted Cruz by that time, after he loses to Hillary in an electoral landslide.  He returns to being a loud-mouthed backbencher in the upper chamber, though, so not exactly the most fortuitous outcome.  You can't have everything.

Bernie Sanders running for president shakes up the Etch-A-Sketch a little.  Not enough, but it's as close to a revolution as America is capable of.