More GOP journamalism, local edition

Good ol' Fort Bend Republican flack Burt Levine -- I've mentioned him here before a time or two -- has a piece in Houston Style about Kesha Rogers and her bid to be the Democratic nominee for the US Senate in November.  It's somewhat lacking in reality-based information, not to mention one of the elementary standards of journalism, however.

The article presents Rogers in favorable light, especially considering her demonstrative track record of abject lunacy.  That Burt wants to make a little mischief in the May primary runoff between Rogers and David Alameel is not the biggest problem, though.

The original included a quote from Harris County Democratic Party chair Lane Lewis praising Rogers.  The article you see now at the link I posted above has been been edited for removal of Lewis' name and mention of the HCDP.  Lewis clarified his non-participation in this Facebook status update yesterday.  As it turns out, Levine not only misattributed something said about Rogers to the wrong Harris Dem chairman and the wrong election, he also cut and pasted the bio data used in the story from Rogers' Wiki page.

I'm going to save Burt further embarrassment if he can prove himself himself capable of acknowledging his mistakes later today, but there are a few screenshots I can post, especially if any further edits to the Style piece are made.  You can follow the links I've embedded -- and read the comments at them -- to get the gist of it.

Burt: I hear Breitbart Texas has an opening.  You're qualified.

Update: the article has had another online revision without notification, adding this graf.

The former Chairman of the Harris County Democratic Party has said, "One of the things the Rogers at 37 years old is able to do is to engage young people. If she can turn out young people to vote for Democrats it is all the better."

That is indeed former HCDP chair Gerry Birnberg speaking in 2010, as previously linked.  Except that in 2010, Rogers was 33 years old.  And Birnberg did not reference Rogers' age at all in the Chronicle's account.

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.