Ever since the murderous rampage in Norway last week, Bill O’Reilly and other American conservatives have sought to insist that the alleged Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik is not a Christian. “Breivik is not a Christian,” O’Reilly said on his Fox News show on Tuesday. “That’s impossible. No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder.” Elsewhere on the channel, Fox contributor Ralph Peters argued that “[Breivik] defines himself as a Christian, but you know, anybody can claim anything.” And conservative Christian activist Jordan Sekulow wrote at the Washington Post that “to label Breivik a ‘Christian’ requires a depraved understanding of what it means to be a Christian.”
I wasn’t planning to write any more about Bill O’Reilly, but it seems I have to do one more round of fact checking about The Factor. After I pointed out that O’Reilly had erroneously said Fox News never told viewers they could be jailed for failure to obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, O’Reilly [...]
A little more than a week ago, Tom Coburn did something fairly courageous by political standards. At a town hall meeting in Oklahoma, the conservative Republican senator referred to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a “nice lady” and criticized Fox News. (He was briefly booed for the Pelosi comment.) After an audience member mentioned “the [...]
