| Here are today's news items from Media Matters for America, click on the title or 'read more' to read the entirety of each story. The Washington Times' history of anti-gay rhetoricThe Washington Times' anti-gay onslaught against Department of Education official Kevin Jennings -- which has featured anti-gay rhetoric, falsehoods, and distortions -- is only the most recent offense in the newspaper's long history of publishing anti-gay rhetoric and smears. Media Matters for America has compiled an extensive -- though by no means all-inclusive -- list of such rhetoric since the late 1980s, including the paper's warnings against the "gay agenda," attacks on the possibility of gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military, minimizing of the AIDS epidemic, and attacks on gay relationships and gay rights. Read More Fox News' Emanuel advances Lieberman's dubious claim about public option increasing debtOn Fox & Friends, correspondent Mike Emanuel advanced the falsehood that a public option will increase the national debt by adopting Sen. Joe Lieberman's claim that it "could rack up major debt, sending the country into a recession worse than the one we're currently in." In fact, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that health care bills with a public option reduce or have no major impact on the deficit; moreover, every proposed bill with a public option thus far has required enrollees to cover its costs through premiums, rather than have the plans be paid for through federal revenues. Read More In WSJ op-ed, Lomborg issues faulty claim about global warming's impact on rainfallIn arguing against the pursuit of global warming policies, Bjorn Lomborg wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that "[c]utting carbon emissions will likely increase water scarcity, because global warming is expected to increase average rainfall levels around the world." In fact, Lomborg's argument ignores that while scientists predict that climate change may increase precipitation globally, they believe some areas will experience more flooding because of the rainfall, whereas others will be disproportionately affected by drought. Read More In Newsweek, Will employs falsehood to attack Newsweek article on warmingIn a November 7 Newsweek column, George Will claimed that global warming "has not increased" for 11 years and suggested that the world may be cooling in order to attack an October 31 Newsweek profile of former Vice President Al Gore. Scientists and statisticians reject Will's claim that recent temperatures are evidence that there is no global warming as they have rejected many of Will's previous claims about global warming. Read More Hannity concocts smear that Obama at fault for Ft. Hood shootingSean Hannity speculated that "there is a chance our government knew all about" alleged Fort Hood shooter Malik Nadal Hasan "and did nothing because nobody wanted to be called an Islamophobe," and asked, "What does it say about Barack Obama and our government?" But there is no evidence that Obama was aware of the emails between Hasan and an imam with alleged ties to Al Qaeda; moreover, Hannity did not address what the incident says about President Bush, who was in office when the authorities reportedly first intercepted the emails. Read More | 
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