Butch Otter and the Idaho Republicans associate with a known liar.

A week or two ago I got into a tiff with Wayne Hoffman. Wayne runs the far-right conservative organization, Idaho Freedom Foundation. By proxy, he also runs Idaho Reporter, a function of Idaho Freedom Foundation. I've been critical of Idaho Reporter for quite some time now because it falsely purports to be a non-partisan, non-biased news organization, when it is in fact a right-wing propaganda arm for Idaho Freedom Foundation and the Bill Sali wing of the Idaho GOP.

Anyway, I posted a comment on IR's Facebook page a week or two ago when I learned that a couple of friends had been banned from commenting on that page. The impetus of this event was Hoffman's decision to invite the infamous liar, Andrew Breitbart, to be the keynote speaker for IFF's 2nd annual fundraiser (er, I mean banquet). A couple folks had made comments on the IR Facebook asking why IFF would invite a known liar to their fundraiser. Those comments were deleted, and those commenters were banned from commenting on the IR Facebook page. I thought this was silly, so I went ahead and left a comment of my own (shown left), and took a screencap of it because I had a feeling it would be deleted and I would be banned form commenting. I took the screencap because I wanted to be able to show that Wayne Hoffman was not deleting comments in the name of civility, but because he disagreed with them, and because he was embarrassed by the truth about Breitbart the liar.

Of course, Wayne did delete my comment and I called him out for it. He was completely unable to defend his claim that my comment was uncivil in any way, proving my point and proving that Idaho Reporter is not a legitimate news organization. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. Why would Wayne Hoffman be SO sensitive about comments regarding Breitbart? He had allowed criticisms of IR and IFF before, why would he start banning people now? This question tossed around in the back of my head for a while until today, when I found out that Governor Butch Otter, Lt. Governor Brad Little, and CD1 Representative Raul Labrador were all in attendance last night at IFF's Breitbart Liar Extravaganza--and it hit me. All the comments Wayne deleted made reference to the controversial events surrounding Breitbart's lies. I suspect that Wayne deleted those comments because he didn't want to attract any attention to Breitbart's status as a well-known liar. Such attention could have provided an incentive for Otter, Little, and Labrador to back out of his important fundraiser event.

The event is over now, but I still have questions. Why did the Idaho media completely ignore this? I couldn't find a single news story about IFF's association with Breitbart. Why didn't the media ask why Otter, Little and Labrador are so comfortable associating with a known liar? I, for one, would really like hear what Otter, Little and Labrador think about the Shirley Sherrod incident (you know, the one Breitbart is currently facing a defamation lawsuit over). This was a story that was completely ignored by the Idaho media. Otter, Little and Labrador should be made to answer for their conscious decisions to associate with a known liar. The Idaho media failed us utterly on this one. All I want to know is why? And what do we have to do to get the Idaho media to do it's job?