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#1851: Dolores Krieger

June 18, 2017, 12:51 am
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Therapeutic touch (TT) is a brand of energy woo enjoying quite a bit of popularity, especially among nurses. TT involves a therapist moving his or her hands over the patient’s mythical “energy field”. Yes, it’s really a religious ritual, involving appeals to a postulated spiritual, non-physical “life energy field” extending beyond the body of the patient. In particular, someone’s wellness is apparently dependent on this energy field, which ostensibly can become unbalanced, misaligned, obstructed, or out of tune – all clinical descriptions are metaphorical, of course; no-one has really even attempted to explain what it means for an energy field to be “misaligned” rather than in balance (except by offering more metaphors). According to TT practitioners, though, this field can be manipulated by the right kinds of spell-casting gestures, i.e. making certain movements in the air above the surface of the patient’s body, whereby the healers may transfer some of their own life energy to the patient and thus restore harmony, allowing the body to heal itself (yes, it’s metaphors all the way down).

TT has no foundation in science, evidence or reality, of course (though it is based on familiar pre-scientific medicine), and even practitioners often admit that the energies in question cannot be detected by science – an admission that, of course, regularly forces them appeal to shortcomings of careful investigation and bias-controlled evidence assessment rather than shortcomings with their own convictions, which are not based on investigation and bias-controlled evidence assessment (practitioners cannot detect the purported energy field either; further evidence here). Of course, science usually detects energy by its effects, for instance effects on the health of  patients. Investigations of TT haven’t shown any effects on the health of patients either. Energy works in mysterious ways, apparently.

Despite being unmeasurable, some TT defenders claim it is scientific because it is based on quantum physics, since quantum physics to most New Agers means something roughly equivalent to “shamanic vibrations in the dolphin dimension”. TT is not based on quantum physics. The popularity of the technique among nurses (apparently more than 100,000 people have been trained in TT) has little to do with its purported scientific basis (or effects); presumably one of TT’s central proponents, Rebecca Witmer, accidently reveals much of the reason when she says that “[t]hose who practice Therapeutic Touch often report reaping benefits for themselves. For example, the ability of TT to reduce burnout in health care professionals has been well-documented.” Add to that communal reinforcement, appeals to secret powers that physicians don’t have, regression to the mean and some positive feedback and the popularity becomes quite understandable. (And for patients, there is real evidence that supportive therapy of breast cancer patients improves mood and pain control – but not longevity). A defense of TT by one Cynthia Hutchison is discussed here.

The technique was invented and popularized in the 1970s by nurse, New Thought proponent and a theosophist Dolores Krieger, a faculty member at NYU’s Division of Nursing and student of Dora Kunz, who is convinced that the palms are chakras that channel healing energy. This is false. Krieger is the author of Therapeutic Touch: How to Use Your Hands to Help and to Heal (1979) and several other books. She has no peer-reviewed scientific publications, but has claimed that serious, well-designed studies of TT nevertheless violate basic principles of scientific investigations (no further details as to how) on the simple grounds that they don’t give her the results she wants.

A good and detailed introduction here.

Diagnosis: TT is New Age fluff and nonsense with – demonstrably – no basis in reality; yet it remains rather amazingly popular, and though Krieger seems convinced of her own importance as a contributor to progress and happiness, she is simply a deluded old religious fundamentalist. It’s ultimately rather sad.


Hat-tip: Skepdic.
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#1852: Steve Kroschel

June 20, 2017, 12:25 am
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We’ve covered the Gerson therapy before. The Gerson therapy is a regimen that claims to be able to naturally cure even severe cases of cancer through a special diet, coffee enemas, and various supplements. It does no such thing, of course, but is pure pseudoscience responsible for parting desperate, often terminally ill people (at best with their money; that cancer patients often feel better when taken off the often powerful conventional treatments also allows them to provide positive testimonials for the therapy before they die (researchers interested in studying Charlotte Gerson’s clinic in Mexico quickly discovered that the clinic didn’t follow up or record what happened to patients after they left; an attempt some 30 years ago managed to locate 21 patients over a 5-year period through annual letters or phone calls: at the 5-year mark, only one was still alive, but not cancer-free). It has, however, managed to establish itself as one of the most popular (and dangerous) brands of cancer quackery available. (There’s a good assessment available here, with a FAQ here).

Steve Kroschel is one the most ardent advocates for the therapy, especially through his feature film “The Beautiful Truth”, (reviewed here and here; some more background here; Badger’s Law applies), which essentially claims that Gerson discovered the cure for cancer and several other diseases sixty years ago – a claim that is backed up by judiciously selected anecdotes (none of the testimonials give sufficient detail or evidence to allow any conclusions regarding the therapy to be drawn, of course) – but that the truth has been vigorously attacked and suppressed by the evil medical community and Big Science and Big Pharma, who’ll rather push toxins. The film appears to be modeled on Expelled in terms of layout, ideas and veracity, and mostly features cancer quackery through the explorations of Kroschel’s (then) fifteen-year-old son Garrett, to whom it was made it “abundantly clear that, contrary to the disinformation campaign spear-headed by the multi-billion dollar medical and pharmaceutical industry, a cure for virtually all cancers and chronic diseases does exist – and has existed for over 80 years!” It’s an interesting way of viewing your fellow humans: apparently every doctor must know or suspect that alternative therapies, like the Gerson therapy, will work, but wont reveal it – indeed, their solidarity in evil to the pharmaceutical industry is so strong that they themselves will rather die from cancer rather than let the truth out and become billionaires in the process.

Elsewhere (discussed here) Kroschel veers into anti-fluoridation conspiracies, complete with images of Hitler and his concentration camps, and claims that Hitler wanted use sodium fluoride in the water to supply to sterilize people and force them into submission, which makes no sense whatsoever. Since crankery is magnetic, it is little surprise that he also promotes full-fledged dental amalgam quackery (more here). Kroschel has even bought into some of the more ridiculous brands of food woo, and has been caught arguing that cooked food is “dead”: In one of his videos he shows two pictures, one of cooked and another of uncooked baby carrot, which the narrator analyzes with a Kirlian photography and says that “[t]he uncooked carrot has a startling line of strong energy” that the cooked carrot lacks, hence Pasteurized food is “dead”. It’s hard to argue with that claim. (The lesson is, apparently, that it is better to eat live food because only then will we be able to absorb its life energy, though the mechanisms are left undescribed).

In 2014, Kroschel released the documentary “Heal for Free”. We have not seen it, but feel qualified to dismiss it as conspiratorial nonsense; apparently it features earthing therapy (now, that’s some seriouscrackpottery).


Diagnosis: At least Kroschel seems to be a true believer – the gullibility runs deep with this one, but a conspiracy mindset is fertile ground for such nonsense and woo. His film does seem to have reached a certain audience, and has certainly done nothing good, despite the fact that the idiocy is pretty obvious to anyone with even minimal critical thinking skills.
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#1853: Dennis Kruse

June 22, 2017, 1:43 am
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Dennis Kruse, originally an auctioneer and founder of Kruse International, is currently an Indiana State Senator for the 14thDistrict (State Representative from 1989 to 2004), chairman of the Education & Career Development Committee, and member of the Agriculture & Small Business, Pensions & Labor, and Utilities & Technology Committees. He is most famous for being one of the most ardent creationists in US state legislatures, and has for a long time pushed various bills to force religious fundamentalism to be taught in science classes at the expense of science – it’s unconstitutional, of course, but you know: Jesus.

In 1999, as a Representative, he pledged to introduce a law to remove evolution from the state’s science standards, and submitted bills challenging the teaching of evolution in 2000 and 2001 (both died in committee). In 2012, as a Senator, he introduced Senate Bill 89, which would – as if Edwards v. Aguillard never happened – amend the Indiana Code to provide that “[t]he governing body of a school corporation may require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation.” Actually, Kruse was completely aware of Edwards v. Aguillard, but argued that “[t]his is a different Supreme Court; [t]his Supreme Court could rule differently.”

The bill did, in fact, pass the Senate, since the Indiana Senate is populated with dangerous loons, and went to the House, where its sponsors were Jeff Thompson (R-District 28) and Eric Turner (R-District 32), the house speaker pro tem. There it got shelved. Thompson was also cosponsor, together with blathering creationist Cindy Noe, of House Bill 1140, which would require teachers to discuss “commonly held competing views” on topics “that cannot be verified by scientific empirical evidence,” which, taken literally, would not include evolution and climate change, but you can only guess how the sponsors were thinking about the issues. (Thompson has filed other creationist bills, too). It’s worth pointing out that even the Discovery Institutevoiced objections to Bill 89, since it included overtly religious language (you betcha their heart wasn’t in the objections, but they have a narrative about themselves they desperately need to uphold to the public about intelligent design creationism not being a religious doctrine, which it demonstrably is – besides, even the Discovery Institute probably realized the bill didn’t stand a chance in the courts.)

Kruse, who is nothing if not determined, vowed to try again with an Academic Freedom Bill drafted by the Discovery Institute, which would, according to Kruse, allow “students to challenge teachers on issues, forcing them to provide evidence to back up their lessons.” No one in their right mind would believe that this was the purpose of the bill. In 2013, instead of submitting a new creationist bill, he rather sought, according to himself, to give public schools the option of beginning each day with the Lord’s Prayer. The bill he submitted, though, would – ostensibly in the name of religious freedom – allow school districts to require the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. In 2014 he weighed in on the Ball State brouhaha, demanding answers about the university’s “intelligent design ban”, showing that, once again, he has no real understanding of what’s going on.

In 2015 he submitted yet another creationist bill, this time with Rep. Jeff Raatz, who said he doesn’t have a problem if teachers who don’t see eye to eye with the science curriculum in their classrooms deciding to turn the tables on what he considers any sort of “science with controversy,” including human cloning, climate change and evolution – which kind of misses the point about education. This time, the bill encouraged students to “develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to different conclusions and theories concerning subjects that have produced differing conclusions and theories on some topics; and (2) allow a teacher to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and weaknesses of conclusions and theories being presented in a course being taught by the teacher.” Yup, a standard Discovery Institute Academic Freedom bill. How students in the process of learning the basic concepts in evolution are supposed to develop critical thinking skills in evaluating evidence they haven’t seen or have the background to assess, is not clear. Actually, it is clear: this has nothing to do with critical thinking (not that Kruse or Raatz would recognize critical thinking if their lives depended on it). And of course the “weaknesses” of evolution doesn’t refer to, you know, actual weaknesses from a scientific point of view. The whole point is to make room for introducing creationist denialism and anti-science talking points to students beforethey can properly learn the science. And, of course, fundies have a tendency to spill the beans: “Call it a back-door approach to failed attempts to chip away at state standards on teaching evolution and to bring creationism into the public school classroom, if you want,” said Raatz. That bill died, too.

Kruse isn’t only a creationist, however. He is a full-fledged paranoid, raving conspiracy nutter who thinks thatthe UN is going to take over the country through Agenda 21 (a common trope over at InfoWars) Indeed, Kruse and Rep. Tim Neese have submitted bills to ban the implementation of any initiatives tied to Agenda 21, which encourages (and does nothing more) every nations to make development more environmentally friendly and sustainable. To Kruse that is apparently a communist effort to replace freedom with in the US with Sharia law.


Diagnosis: One sometimes wonders how fundies defend their rank dishonesty (well, one really doesn’t). Kruse, of course, is a science denialist, religious fundamentalist and happy liar-for-Jesus. And the good people of Indiana keep electing both him and others of the same kind. Scary stuff.
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#1854: Dennis Kucinich

June 24, 2017, 12:29 am
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Dennis Kucinich is the former Congressman for Ohio’s 10th District, serving until 2012, and former presidential candidate from 2008 (he didn’t get very far). Famous for being among the progressive members of the House and for opposing the Iraq War from the beginning, he is also remembered for being a hardcore crackpot, New Age fundie and pseudoscience promoter. Part of his platform as a presidential candidate, for instance, was creating a moratorium on GMOs. He is currently a Fox News contributor, and was presumably not hired to make liberals look good.

Back in the 80s Kucinich lived with New Age woo-guru Shirley MacLaine, one of the more ridiculous creatures in the New Age circus (fierce competition notwithstanding). During that time he allegedly had an encounter with a UFO and honed his skills at unintentionally channeling a Chopra quote generator: “In our soul’s Magnificent, we become conscious of the cosmos within us. We hear the music of peace, we hear the music of cooperation, we hear music of love. In our soul’s forgetting, we become unconscious of our cosmic birthright, blighted with disharmony, disunity, torn asunder from the stars in a disaster.” If you think that sounds profound, you are probably stupid. And according to Kucinich “[t]he energy of the stars becomes us. We become the energy of the stars. Stardust and spirit unite and we begin: one with the universe, whole and holy. From one source, endless creative energy, bursting forth, kinetic, elemental; we, the earth, air, water and fire-source of nearly fifteen billion years of cosmic spiraling.” This is not correct.

In 2001, Kucinich introduced bill HR2977 to ban “extraterrestrial weapons” and exotic “radiation, electromagnetic, psychotronic, sonic, laser, or other energies ... for the purpose of information war, mood management, or mind control of such populations”, including “chemtrails” and HAARP. The mention of “chemtrails” in the bill has later been used as evidence for their existence; in reality, it just shows that Kucinich is silly but chemtrail conspiracy theorists tend to struggle with reality. To draft the bill Kucinich apparently relied on the expertise of Alfred Webre. The bill was, in fact, probably written by Webre and Carol Rosin, and one may wonder how carefully Kucinich read it, but he is still responsible for introducing it, and in 2005, when introducing a newer version of the bill (to ban space weapons), he did ask: “what is to happen when the United States takes nuclear fire up to the gates of heaven? ‘Such an offense against humanity could bring the wrath of God upon this nation.’” Since space is close to Heaven, of course.

During his career Kucinich managed to sponsor a grand total of three pieces of legislation that actually passed: allowing Ukrainian TV access to an American program, naming a Cleveland post office, and naming a dead man an honorary citizen of the US. As such, Kucinich may possibly be the least effective legislator of all time.


Diagnosis: Mostly a silly and harmless curiosity and at the very least more or less neutralized by now. Still.
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#1855: Jeffrey Kuhner

June 25, 2017, 12:21 am
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Profoundly delusional Intelligent design apologist, science denialist and – yes – conspiracy theorist Joseph A. Kuhn seems to have passed away. His misunderstandings wouldn’t have held a candle to the crazy compressed into paranoid conspiracy theories by Jeffrey Kuhner anyways. Kuhner is a Canadian-American radio host, former editor of Insight on the News, contributor to the Moonie Times, writer for various outlets, including National Review Online, and former president of the Edmund Burke Institute for American Renewal, a dormant think tank devoted to lure minorities to the wingnut movement.

Kuhner on Obama
Though initially praising Obama (when he still thought Clinton would win the 2008 primaries), Kuhner has consistently been one of Obama’s more lunatic and paranoid critics. In a 2012 interview with Janet Mefferd, for instance, he claimed that “Obama is America’s Lenin,” asserting that “like many secular leftists, [Obama] seeks to destroy Judeo-Christian civilization,” that he is “in the pocket of the pro-abortion feminist lobby,” and that “Mr. Obama is our first non-Christian president.” None of the complaints sound chararacteristically Leninist. Mefferd offered that Obama might be more like Stalin. The complaints don’t make Obama sound particularly Stalinist either. We suspect that the point of the analogy was not to be analogous. Later Kuhner said Obama was channeling the spirit of Trotsky.

Kuhner later expanded on the “non-Christian” part, arguing that Obama is a kind of neo-pagan, because he has “embraced radical environmentalism – a form of neo-paganism” (True Christians™ don’t care about the environment) and is “behaving like a quasi-religious zealot” who “has nothing but contempt for traditional Christianity and the family,” as seen in his support for gay and reproductive rights. By disagreeing with Kuhner on politics, “Mr. Obama has declared war on our Judeo-Christian culture,” concluded Kuhner, and “[t]he path is laid for a soft authoritarian nanny state” (also “soft tyranny” and “socialist empire”). Catholicism is apparently a particular target: In relation to the election of Pope Francis, Kuhner accused Obama (again) for being an “enemy of the church” who is “waging a war on Christians and on Catholics in particular,” falsely claiming that “Obamacare encodes the federal funding of abortions” charging that “homosexual ‘marriage’ is a Trojan horse aimed at smashing the family – an invention by cultural Marxists to undermine Christianity’s ancient foundations,” and concluding that Obama’s policies contribute to a “culture of death.”

As for the connection between environmentalism and paganism: “The green movement – exemplified by the hoax of man-made global warming – has degenerated into a pseudo-religion.” You didn’t think Kuhner would accept the scientific evidence for or consensus about global warming, did you? More insights into Kuhner’s deranged delusions can be gleaned from his criticism of John Kerry’s 2013 speech about the United States’ failure to confront the reality of climate change. Yes, the scientific consensus on climate change is really “junk science,” according to Kuhner: “the greatest hoax of our time” and a fabricated “dark prophecy of an eco-apocalypse,” but you might well wonder why scientists would engage in such conspiracies: Ah, yes: “the secular left needed a new cause” following the collapse of communism and “found it in green socialism,” which he says is now central to their goals of “crushing capitalism.”

Oh, and immigrants! Apparently Latinos are teaming up with “Christophobic” Obama to attack Christianity (Catholicism in particular, remember) to cause “cultural Balkanization” and turn US into a “Third World Nation” and the “United States of Mexico”. In 2014, Kuhner again warned us about how housing migrant kids will turn Massachusetts into “Mexichusetts”.

Kuhner is (no shit) in general not above lying and making up his own alternative facts to prove his points. (He is particularly fond of lying about the ACA.) For instance, to demonstrate that political violence in the US is mainly caused by leftists, Kuhner asserted that “[t]he only known act of domestic right-wing terrorism was the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995”. This is … not correct. Not that Kuhner would care; he was post-fact long before it became popular. Here is Kuhner breaking the story about “Obamagate”. Here is Kuhner on “liberalist genocide” (notice, for instance, the symptomatic and ridiculously false complaint about how liberals have long sought to destroy religion for instance through ensuring that “prayer has been banned from school,” which it hasn’t, not remotely). And here is Kuhner accusing the US Census to fake jobs data to help President Obama’s re-election chances in 2012 (actually, Obama himself “deliberately manipulated” the Census data.)

Zeh gays
According to Kuhner “gay gestapo” will make sure anyone who criticizes them will be “burnt at the stake” and have their careers destroyed. Being burnt at the stake tends to do that, of course, but we suspect that cuddled snowflakes like Kuhner just means that being criticized and called out for his bigotry is just like being burned at the stake.

To Kuhner, however, members of the LGBT community “are even worse than the radical Islamists” and more terrifying than a slew of dictators with whom he likes to compare those who disagree with him (including “the Communist Chinese” and “Putin’s regime”), calling them “the most fanatical, hate-filled … and intolerant people I’ve ever met.” Expanding a bit: “You wouldn’t believe the vulgarity, the coarseness, the permissiveness, the promiscuity at the heart of the homosexual lifestyle. And […]the physical damage, and the psychological damage and the emotional damage that comes from living this lifestyle over many years, if the American people would see that with their own eyes I think they would have a very, very different conclusion and very different take. So what we’re getting is, it’s a form of cultural Marxism.” Sure underpins the “most fanatical, hate-filled … and intolerant” part, at least. LGBT people are worse than commies, too. And to risk repetition: gay equality will result in “moral anarchy and social disintegration,” “[t]heir lifestyles and behaviors inevitably lead to a culture of death” since “[h]omosexual behavior – for example, sodomy – is unnatural and immoral.” “I have never seen people as intolerant, as malicious, as so desperate to engage in smear and slander and libel as people and activists in the LGBT community, it is really despicable,” concludes Kuhner (our emphasis). So there.

Those sympathetic with the LGBT community are almost as bad as gay people themselves: “the homosexual lobby” is being advanced by the “modern-day fascists” of the judiciary, who seek to bring about “liberal fascism” (“fascism” means about the same as “communism” or “Lenin” or “Trotsky” to people like Kuhner), and a gay rights victory at the Supreme Court [this was written in 2013] “will be calamitous for democracy and the family” as it would bring about “social intolerance and secular McCarthyism,” such as hate speech laws, and exacerbate society’s “cultural decay and moral decadence.” Yes, hate, hate, hate. See how hateful gay people are, everyone.


Diagnosis: Yeah, Kuhner was post-fact long before it became popular – facts are anyways just a nuisance when sowing paranoid outrage. Otherwise he is a standard rabid, hateful, angry wingnut snowflake. We don’t really know how big of an audience he actually has – or whether his popularity primarily is a function of him serving so well as an illustrative caricature of delusional wingnut outrage.
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#1856: Heather Kuruvilla

June 27, 2017, 12:26 am
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Cedarville University is one of many fundamentalist creationist institutions in the US purporting to meddle in “education” – it sports many of the exterior trappings of genuine universities, but what goes on inside has little to do with rational inquiry of learning. Heather Kuruvilla is one of Cedarville’s professors of biology, a department that does theology and fundamentalist apologetics but little that could be mistaken for science to anyone who actually looked. Kuruvilla also contributed to the “university’s” publication on Darwin, which unconditionally endorses young earth creationism – the opening sentence is: “Replacing his faith in Creator God with misplaced certainty in the power of science, Darwin subjected himself to a disquiet life and a hopeless death,” and that lets you know in no uncertain terms the standards for rigor and impartial evaluation of the evidence for evolution that are going to be applied in what follows. Kuruvilla herself has what appears to be a real education, however, and also appears to actually have some real publications, though these are of course unrelated to evolution. As befits a lunatic with her credentials, Kuruvilla features prominently on various lists of creation “scientists”, including the Discovery Institute’s petition A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism and CMI’s List of Scientists Alive Today Who Accept the Biblical Account of Creation.


Diagnosis: Rabid fundamentalist. Kuruvilla does not enjoy a particularly prominent public profile, and is not distinctively vociferous in the fundie fight against truth, science and evidence, but she and her school are doing their part and a clear danger to civilization.
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#1857: Raúl Labrador

June 28, 2017, 12:57 am
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Raúl Rafael Labrador is the U.S. Representative for Idaho’s 1st congressional district since 2011 –previously representing District 14B in the Idaho House of Representatives – wingnut, goldbugger and anti-science activist, probably best known for his recent comment that nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.

Politically Labrador is generally known for wanting to withdraw the US from the UN, returning to the Gold Standard, eliminating the Department of Education and repealing the 17th Amendment and end the right of voters to elect their Senators, since that is “the constitutional position to take” and the only way to make sure “that US Senators are actually beholden to the people” (wtf?). He also thinks the ACA is a betrayal of the US, wish to stop the federal government from enforcing gun laws and – the usual stuff – wants make the federal government “provide for the presence of God in the public domain,” and opposes same-sex marriage rights. His mission to rewrite the Consitution has earned him the firm support of the American Family Association, and Bryan Fischer is an avowed fan.

But ok: the official reason for including Labrador in our Encyclopedia, is that he is a firm climate change denier. Says Labrador: “It’s interesting that about a decade ago there was a lot of talk about ‘global warming.’ Thirty years ago we were talking about ‘global cooling’ [This is false]. Now all we hear about is ‘climate change’ [well … ]. There has been evidence throughout history of cycles when the earth gets warmer and cycles when the earth gets colder [which is irrelevant to the issue]. We should always be wise stewards of the earth and all of our natural resources. But as a policymaker, I won’t be guided by the global warming propaganda machine. Al Gore [who got things mostly right] – we need you to return your Nobel Peace Prize!” In 2010 Labrador signed a pledge sponsored by Americans for Prosperity promising to vote against any Global Warming legislation that would raise taxes.


Diagnosis: Liar or idiot. Those are not mutually exclusive. And of course: Labrador is only one of many wingnut climate change denialists in Congress, though that’s hardly an excuse.
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#1858: Thomas Lacovara-Stewart

June 29, 2017, 12:47 am
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The last couple of years Larry Klayman has made himself notable for trying to instigate some kind of “second American revolution” (his words) based on tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories and incoherent delusions, and he’s attracted some interesting followers. Thomas Robert Lacovara-Stewart, for instance, is an Oath Keeper, “a true son of liberty, born into it by my own bloodlines direct,” and keynote at Klayman’s November 2013 rally. In his speech – given against a backdrop of patriotic music – Lacovara-Stewart argued the Department of Homeland Security “blew up Boston” (with reference to the Boston Marathon bombings) and committed murder to hide it. Apparently they did so as part of their strategy to destroy American liberty through multiculturalism. It is a bit hard to get a firm grasp of the means-end relation here, but progressives – “another word for communists” (no, not really) – are sneaky.

Lacovara-Stewart has his own website, Libertyimprovementandcare.org, which also calls itself The Holy Order of the Sons of Liberty, where you can read about a variety of conspiracy theories Lacovara-Stewart buys into. In addition to the Boston bombing being a “false flag” operation, there are of course the usual suspects – Zionism, the Rothschilds, the Federal Reserve – but also some more novel ones. Did you know that Lyme disease is biological warfare being carried out by former Nazis that were allowed entrance into the U.S, for instance? And fluoride conspiracies: “Does it not bother anyone that the German people submitted to Hitler? Well here is why. The Nazis fluoridated the water of the people. And it made them passive and not able to do more than whine and complain but never have the nerve to do anything when faced with hard choices [which doesn’t reallysound much like the Nazis as we know them, but then again, Lacovara-Stewart doesn’t have time for subtleties]. Oh and by the way, they fluoridate ours too.”

In particular, Lacovara-Stewart warns us that “[w]e must realize that these devils exist among us … continuing their one world government Nazi/Soviet Socialist bankers dream!” Yeah, those ruthless Soviet Socialist … bankers. It’s almost as if the expression was a pretty blatantly anti-semitic euphemism for Jewish people.

He has also promoted Sandy Hook trutherism.


Diagnosis: Further evidence that there must be some toxins in those tinfoil hats, perhaps? Not really, though: this is just run-of-the-mill cryptofascist conspiracy mongering. Idiot.
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#1859: James Lafferty

July 1, 2017, 12:14 am
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James Lafferty is the husband of Andrea Lafferty, serious wingnut. and chairman of the Virginia Anti-Sharia Task Force, which not only constantly accused the Obama administration of being infiltrated by radical Islamist but in 2012 even accused the Romney campaign of being infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood, too. The reason being that Romney’s campaign named George Salem, Samah Norquist and David Ramadan “National Co-Chairs of Arab Americans for Romney” and Lafferty had at that point long been opposed to David Ramadan, whom he has accused of of supporting the “Ground Zero” Mosque in New York and having had some ties with lobbying firms for Libya in the United States (like a large number of Republicans, but Lafferty didn’t mention that). Accordingly, Ramadan is an “extremist” who possibly should not even “be allowed to continue to live in the United States,” said Lafferty. He also complained that he and his ilk were getting a “sort of condescending attitude from extremists like Mr. Ramadan”. In 2012 Lafferty received some attention for a speech in which he apparently expressedsupport for vandalism against mosques (Lafferty afterwards released a statement saying that he didn’t condone or encourage vandalism against mosques, even though he sort of did in the earlier speech.)

Lafferty also runs the Coalition for Religious Freedom, which ardently fights for religious freedom for anyone who agrees with Lafferty and against the religious freedom of anyone else, is a member of the Taliban-inspired hate group the Traditional Values Coalition and executive director of the Christian Seniors organization, which reacted with horror when Congressman Peter Stark admitted, in an inquiry from the Secular Coalition for America, to being a Unitarian. Lafferty took the admission to be evidence that the “liberals in Congress want to throttle any school child who bows his or her head in prayer, but they want to establish a right for liberals to bash Christians and berate God around the clock” – since allowing Unitarians to serve in Congress is an attack on Christians and an example of “liberal bullies” using “the power of government to silence prayer and every other religious expression of free speech.” Yes, anyone who admitsto not sharing Lafferty’s religious beliefs is an oppressive bully who should not be eligible for office or – if you are Muslim – American citizenship, because of religious freedom.

Lafferty is, of course, also a committed anti-gay activist.


Diagnosis: Hateful bigot, with the hateful bigot’s characteristic persecution complex and snowflakiness – anyone who disagrees with him is oppressing and offending him. He does apparently wield quite a bit of influence, however.
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#1860: James Laffrey

July 3, 2017, 12:42 am
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James Laffrey is a Michigan-based anti-Semite, and the guy behind the website Whites Will Win, where he calls Adolf Hitler “the greatest leader of the last century” and calls for the murder of Jews. According to Laffrey “our White race invented everything we care about,” (we doubt that Laffrey has contributed much, but apparently he thinks that he should get some credit nonetheless because of the color of his skin), but “[t]he jews stole the White inventor Thomas Edison’s movie-making equipment and fled out to the far coast, to Los Angeles, to put it to use in their new propaganda industry against us.” Apparently, the “jews are the invaders in this White-founded White-built country of ours. Ours,” and hence, by “every right of humanity, the founding race of a country can and should kill invaders …” (no further argument offered).

Continues Laffrey: “now, we need to rise up, kill the enemy jews, and re-take our own country for ourselves and our own people. By controlling the violent force of military and police, the jews have taken control of our country away from us. Only by force will we take it back. They have us out-organized, since they are fully race-conscious and they control the government. But they do not have us out-gunned. We have multi-millions of veterans, hunters, and other gun owners across the country. And the jews do not have us outsmarted. You and I have overcome a lifetime of their propaganda against us!”

In conclusion, then, Laffrey urges us all to “[k]ill jews. jew doctors, jew lawyers, jew teachers, jew insurers, jew porn dealers, jew drug dealers, jew owners of major league sports teams, jew bankers, jew travel agency owners, jew jewelers. Do it carefully. Safely. Proudly. Silently. Again and again.”


Diagnosis: Complete garbage. His constant use of “We” sounds a bit desperate, though – we doubt that many people will want to have enough to do with Laffrey for him to felicitously use the word “we” in any context he might find himself.
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#1861: Terry Lakin

July 3, 2017, 11:46 pm
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The birthers have of course lost their momentum a bit, but it’s still worth mentioning a few of the central characters, insofar as they still tend to pop up now and then in fringe publications ranting more or less incoherently about various pieces of tinfoilhattery.

Terry Lakin is one of the most famous elements of the birther movement. Lakin used to be an Army Lieutenant Colonel, who in 2010 was convicted of – and thrown out of the military – failing to deploy to Afghanistan. Lakin refused the deployment since his orders were “illegal” because as “all orders have their origin with the commander-in-chief” and President Obama had not satisfactorily proven that he was born in the US, those orders could not be followed. Ostensibly, Lakin’s plan was from the very outset to force the prosecution to procure a copy Obama’s birth certificate as part of the ensuing court-martial, which someone should have told him (and apparently did tell him) was an exceptionally bad idea that had already been tried a couple of times in practice (Stefan Cook and Connie Rhodes) to miserable failure. Predictably, the judge found that President Obama’s eligibility (and hence his birth certificate) had no bearing on the case. Lakin had apparently also prior to taking more public actions tried to check Obama’s constitutionally eligibility for the presidency through his chain of command, which of course was doomed to failure since it is pretty clear that he would accept no other result of his investigations than confirmation that what he had already delusionally convinced himself of was correct. There is more information about the case here. Apparently Lakin got cold feet midway through.

Lakin received the support of retired Army Major General Paul E. Vallely, a senior military analyst for Fox News who in an interview said that “I think many in the military – and many out of the military – question the natural-birth status of Barack Obama,” as well as from retired Army Major General Jerry Curry and retired Air Force Lieutenant General (and Fox News analyst) Thomas McInerney. The support from the latter two may, for all we know, be motivated by perceiving of Lakin’s case as disruptive and as a potential fundraising effort for rightwing lunatics rather than genuine belief that Lakin had a case. Vallely is certifiably a raving lunatic, though. The WND supported Lakin, too, to no one’s surprise.

Lakin later co-authored (with WND conspiracy theorist Jack Cashill) a book on his experiences, Officer’s Oath: Why My Vow to Defend the Constitution Demanded that I Sacrifice My Career. His supporters have recently sought a pardon on Lakin’s behalf from the current president.


Diagnosis: Raging lunatic, of course. His days of fame have probably come to an end, and his direct influence become limited, but not for the good sorts of reasons. And his style of thinking and being in the world seems frighteningly common.
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#1862: Nick Lally

July 5, 2017, 12:10 am
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Nick Lally is, according to himself, a “retired science teacher”, creationist, fuming anti-science champion, and internet crank of the kind that floods newspaper and website editors with emails containing crazy, barely coherent rants. Here is one example, of an email sent  to various California newspapers – though addressed to “all clergy…and to the spiritual leaders of our churches and synagogues throughout our country” (one infers that he must have come across some kind of directory of California newspapers; Lally is not based in California) – in 2009 concerning Darwin’s 200th birthday. In the letter, Lally claims that “The National Center for Science Education led by known atheists, are encouraging churches to join the Darwin Day celebrations … I find it interesting that this ‘Trojan Horse’ is aimed directly at churches as well as schools. Evolutionists have already been quoted as saying: ‘A backward collared clergy is worth more then an atheist on a school board any day’ [yeah, it’s a misquote; big surprise] So, before you spiritual leaders consider preaching Darwin’s theory in your churches and synagogues in the name of looking progressive or tolerant to your congregations, its best that you know all the facts first.” Then he proceeds to offer what he considers to be the facts, which are not the facts (except, perhaps, for the first: No. 1. “Evolution is not Biblical,” which is true, in a way insofar as evolution is indeed not described in the Bible.) 

For instance: “Scientifically: 1 [yeah, he’s already given one other “1”; perhaps it’s a tie]. Life can only come from life. It’s called the law of biogenesis proven by Louis Pasture [oh, yeah]. You cannot come from a rock.” There is no law of biogenesis, and Pasteur did not claim that there was; yet this is a common creationist PRATT, which really has nothing to do with evolution in any case. “2. Information in the chemicals of our DNA can not come from matter or energy. It has been proven by Dr. Werner Gitt that information can only come from intelligence which begs the belief that DNA acts like a CD programmed by God.” Werner Gitt did not prove that by a long shot, DNA does not act like a CD programmed by anyone, and creationists demonstrably struggle with the concept of information. “3. The fossil record is an indictment against evolution. We have not found the transitions between single celled animals to complicated invertebrates, nor have we found transitions between invertebrates to vertebrates. All we find in the fossil record is that organisms just show up completely formed with hardly any changes from the ‘biological explosion’ to today. Anthropologists have found 87% of all the living fossils and not one transition.” We have such transitions, both between single-celled and multi-celled animals and between invertebrates and vertebrates. Not that Lally would bother to look. The “87%” is, of course, PIDOOMA. And it’s probably worth noticing that Lally refers to anthropologists for his claim about the fossil record. “4. We even discovered mammals which evolution teaches came millions of years after the reptiles together with dinosaurs in the fossil record!” Mammal-like reptiles precede the dinosaurs, but those are facts that scientistsuse; Lally wouldn’t come near science with a 30-foot pole.

His list continues in the same vein, with the same old creationist PRATTs: Mutations cannot be beneficial, Lucy was “nothing more than a chimp”, and so on. What California newspaper editors were supposed to do with Lally’s crazy rants is a bit unclear. Lally himself reacted to criticisms of his letter in part by trying to move the goalposts, in part by judging the responses unworthy.

In more recent years, Lally has been running the Creation Science Hall of Fame, a hilariously delusional pseudoscience project (Terry Hurlbut is on board), and is ostensibly the co-founder of something called the Sussex County Creation Science Club. He still writes letters to newspapers, though, such as “Catholics might as well toss Bibles”, in response to the Vatican’s stance on evolution, and “Kent Hovind has served his time”, in defense of Kent Hovind.


Diagnosis: Cranky old fundie crackpot. We doubt that he’s able to convert anybody, but his claim to be a “retired science teacher” makes one pretty sad for those who might have “learned science” from this guy – and in the US being in that kind of situation seems to be not entirely uncommon.
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#1863: Joni Lamb

July 6, 2017, 11:41 pm
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Joni Lamb is co-founder, vice-president, and executive producer of the Daystar Television Network, as well as the host of a couple of the network’s program, including “Joni Table Talk” and “Marcus and Joni” (with her husband Marcus). As you’d expect, Lamb is a wingnut fundie, of the kind who claims that the US is a Christian nation (laws that fail to favor Christianity over other religions accordingly amount to persecution of Christians), and that if you don’t understand this “you shouldn’t live here”. She also maintains that God “allowed” 9/11 to take place because the country’s sins “brought a crack into the foundation” and removed America’s “hedge of protection” (it apparently has to do with gays, too; Islamist extremists apparently just did God’s work in this particular instance).

Lamb is, of course, virulently anti-gay, claiming that homosexuality is “ungodly” and “God cannot bless you and you cannot fulfill your destiny while you are operating within the realm of homosexuality;” indeed, homosexuality is a “trap that the Enemy has set”. As you’d expect from someone assuming those positions, Lamb is a champion of reparative therapy, claiming also that the “thousands” of people “who have come out of homosexuality” “may be the most discriminated people in the world today” (it’s simply a corollary of the deeply ingrained – and popular – conviction that Christians are persecuted in the US today).

Diagnosis: Stock rabid fundie – nothing surprising there. But her TV shows do apparently have viewers, and she uses them to help promote the views of deranged conspiracy theorists, dominionists, hate groups and evil. Dangerous.
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#1864: Scott Lamb

July 8, 2017, 12:46 am
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Scott Lamb is President of Reformation Press, and Executive Director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee in Nashville, Tennessee. The Reformation Press generally publishes precisely those books it sounds like they would publish. Lamb also runs the “Jesus in the Public Square” section on the Moonie Times website, a daily feature that was instigated by Taliban-style dominionistDavid Lane; apparently Biblical economics. The main reason for including Lamb, who clearly has dominionist sympathies just like Lane, in our Encyclopedia is his glorious and gloriously revealing description of the “Jesus in the Public Square” project:

 “Jesus in the Public Square at The Washington Times hopes to talk about and dialogue with people to show them that Jesus Christ and his lordship is a universal theme and they should submit to that.”

Methinks Lamb doesn’t really master the concept of “dialogue”.


Diagnosis: Raging dominionist fundie. At least he hasn’t quite mastered the art of Orwellian subversion employed by so many of his ilk.
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#1865: Beth Lambert

July 10, 2017, 2:09 am
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Epidemic Answers is an anti-vaccine organization formed by Beth Lambert, who bills herself as a former healthcare consultant and teacher – she appears to have no formal medical training, and has evidently no understanding of basic medicine. Epidemic Answers is known for their “documentary” Canary Kids: A Film For Our Children, an antivaccine conspiracy flick (discussed in detail here) announced in 2013 (but as far as we know not released yet) that “shows how all children in this country are a part of the autism epidemic.”

Wait, what? Oh, yes – according to the film vaccines are not only to blame for every chronic health problem children experience (including, it seems, those suffered by the non-vaccinated), it will also introduce a new diagnosis, “almost autism,” that encompasses basically everything, allowing any parent viewing the movie to conclude that their kids are “almost autistic” and therefore vaccine damaged. The produsers have been very clear that the movie is about marketing and rebranding: “What is going to make someone come out to see Canary Kids? … For too long, people not directly affected by autism have looked the other way, because they can’t relate to autism. They don’t know what it is, they don’t see how it impacts them. They may not come out to see a film about autism, but they will come out to see a film about their kids. Most people don’t understand that the asthma epidemic is directly related to the autism epidemic or that the obesity epidemic is related to the autism epidemic. They don’t yet see that the same environmental factors (pharmaceuticals, vaccines, toxins, diet, etc.) that cause symptoms of autism in one child are the very same environmental factors that cause symptoms of asthma in another.” Yes. No.

For the documentary, Lambert is apparently going to take seven children with “with a diagnosis of autism, ADHD, asthma, chronic Lyme or some other amalgamation of chronic (environmentally-derived) symptoms” and subject them to a whole range of autism biomed quackery, including “detoxification” and “supplementation” treatment in order to “heal” them. In other words, the movie seems to be more about selling autism quackery to a broader audience than the relatively few parents of autistic kids who are already into quackery, by making an infomercial consisting of a series of judiciously selected testimonials.

Lambert is also the author of the book A Compromised Generation: The Epidemic of Chronic Illness in America’s Children (with one Vicki Kobliner who runs a company, Holcare Nutrition, that touts “gluten-free, dairy free, low allergen, GFCF, SCD, GAPS, FODMAPS, and other appropriate diets” to treat a whole host of conditions that cannot be treated that way, and who is into functional medicine, which is among the most ridiculous types of crazy woo out there.)

Apparently Lambert herself has a child with “almost autism,” who had sensory, skin, allergies, and behavioral issues. Apparently, her pediatrician didn’t agree and said her child was fine and developing on-target, so Lambert took the child to a “Defeat Autism Now!” (DAN!) quack, who unsurprisingly found plenty of things wrong that Lambert could treat with expensive and invasive quackery.


Diagnosis: Not only an antivaxx fanatic, but one of those who apparently uses antivaxx conspiracies as a platform to promote quackery, woo and snakeoil – the kind that’s not only expensive, but which has the potential to really harm people. A horrible person.
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#1866: Kent Lambert

July 12, 2017, 12:39 am
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Kent Douglas Lambert has been a state senator in Colorado since 2011 (and was a representative before that), currently representing Senate District 9, which encompasses northwest Colorado Springs, the Air Force Academy, Monument and Black Forest. Of course, Gordon Klingenschmitt himself was a Colorado state representative for some time, and in comparison with Klingenschmitt Lambert might come across as almost sane. Lambert is not sane.

Already during the 2007 session, Lambert got some attention when he filed a formal ethics complaint against the Colorado Education Association for sending emails making claims Lambert disagreed with (it was dismissed by the Colorado Legislative Council’s Executive Committee). He also tried to ban adoption by same-sex couples. And of course, promotion of anti-gay gibberish and conspiracy theories have been characteristic of Lambert’s career. In 2013, for instance, he said that Colorado’s law allowing civil unions for gay and lesbian couples was an attempt at “mind control.” In particular, it “completely suppresses basically any ideas; it’s a mind-control experiment by the majority party, the Democrats, here in Colorado to force everybody, including children in schools, everything else, under penalty of law, to believe in homosexual marriage.” He didn’t specify what piece of legislation mentions restrictions on what to believe in. But to drive the point home, Lambert declared that “this is certainly Brave New World, the Aldous Huxley novel that Big Brother is here,” which makes one suspect that he hasn’t actually read either Brave New World or 1984. Oh, and moreover, allowing transgender children to use the proper bathroom is just like “the kind of agendas that the greatest dictators in world history have tried to press in the past” (of course, he neglects to mention that it is his sidewho wants to introduce laws governing restroom choice. Details.) Then there is this one.


Diagnosis: Standard state legislature kook. There are plenty of those, and they’ve got power and zeal. Sad.
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#1867: Jeff Landry

July 13, 2017, 2:39 am
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Jeffrey Martin“Jeff” Landry is the Attorney General of Lousiana, and a former US Representative for Louisiana’s 3rd congressional district, representing the Tea Party. As a representative, Landry made some waves when he accused the Obama administration of“granting special status or waivers to Muslims as they go through TSA screenings,” and then used that claim (madeup out of thin air) to argue that Christians should receive special rights, too, in other contexts, such as freedom to discriminate against gay people.

In 2012, Landry made local headlines when he attacked the proposal to establish a minor field in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, witing that “[a]s our nation continues to struggle with high unemployment, higher education’s primary mission should be ensuring current and future students have the tools necessary to compete in the 21st century economy.” This was not Landry’s actual reason for opposing the proposal. In 2016, Landry announced that his office would intervene to help any school that tries to defy guidelines from the Departments of Education and Justice letter on how Title IX protects transgender students. To support his position he repeated the utterly debunked claim that LGBT nondiscrimination policies have empowered child predators (they have a “tendency” to “create safe harbors for people who want to prey on children”), citing “research” by the tiny tinfoil hat fringe conspiracy group the American College of Pediatricians (no connection to the American Association of Pediatricians).

Then there is this.


Diagnosis: Wingnut conspiracy theorist with a proclivity for pseudoscience and making up things that he subsequently convince himself are true. Dangerous.
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#1868: David Lane

July 14, 2017, 1:21 am
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David Lane is, quite simply, one of the scariest and craziest people alive today. For years, he has been one of the leading and most influential Taliban-style dominionists (“Christian Nation” advocates) in the US, working steadfastly to increase the political power of fundamentalists and their causes. But he is still not particularly famous; as The New York Times put it, Lane is “something of a stealth weapon for the right,” who for the most part works well behind the scenes.

Funded to a large extent by the hate-group the American Family Association, Lane’s main goal is to motivate pastors and fundamentalists to take political action (“What we’re doing is the mobilization of pastors and pews to restore America to her Judeo-Christian heritage [i.e. the parts that fit with the bigotry and wingnuttery Lane happens to favor]. That’s our goal”), and to get crazies elected to public office. Lane has, as part of those efforts, organized huge Taliban rallies and political briefings with appearances by fundamentalist pastors and politicians such as David Barton (Lane served as the executive director of The Texas Restoration Project, funded by Barton), Mike Huckabee (Lane orchestrated Mike Huckabee’s surprise win in Iowa in 2008), Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann. As Lane puts it “What we’re doing with the pastor meetings is spiritual, but the end result is political. ... From my perspective, our country is going to hell because pastors won’t lead from the pulpits.” There is a good portrait of Lane (and how frightening he is) here, and another one (focusing on his extensive influence) here.

Dominionism
In a 2013 essay Lane declared that religious war may be on the horizon, and his influential American Renewal Project has continued to actively prepare for that war, hosting all-expenses paid policy briefings for clergy and their spouses to rally his forces. In addition to those mentioned above, participants have included politicians like Mike Pence, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Donald Trump also addressed one such event in August 2016. As for ARP’s efforts to recruit and train clergy with a dominionist vision to run for office at all levels, at least Lane’s own pastor, Rob McCoy, won a city council seat in Thousand Oaks, California, in 2016 (though the results of the efforts have overall been a bit lackluster). The goal is explicit: “I don’t think there’s any such thing as a separation of church and state,” says Lane: “This was not established as a secular nation, and anybody that says that it is, they’re not reading American history. This was established by Christians for the advancement of the Christian faith. My goal is to return – to restore a biblically based culture and a Judeo-Christian heritage.”

Also in his 2015 essay “To Retake America, We Must Defeat Her False Religion” (for Charisma), the dominionist dog whistles sounded loud and clear. According to Lane, “[w]e just need a Gideon or Rahab the Harlot to stand.” According to the Bible Gideon, as you may recall, led an Israelite army in an ethnic cleansing of the pagan Midianites, and Rahab sheltered two Israelite spies in preparation for the fall of Jericho by Joshua’s army, where everyone but Rahab and her family were massacred. It’s worth thinking about why Lane chose those two examples.

Officially, of course, Lane advocates “religious freedom” (the goal of ARP is “to engage the church in a culture war for religious liberty”), which to him means that the Bible should be the primary textbook for public school students and that refusing to participate in school-led religious services and prayers should be banned – in the near future, predicts Lane, we will “watch Providence call for ‘punishment executed by angels’ to those who oppose His Word.” As a side note, is interesting to note how Lane juxtaposes predictions of victory and predictions of gloom – elsewhere, Lane has suggested that everything is going to hell and that we will soon have car bombs in Los Angeles and Iowa, and that such acts of terrorism will be God showing mercy on us (yes, his screeds often also veer into incoherent babble fuelled by hatred and delirious religious frenzy).

As opposed to religious fundamentalism, secularism is intolerant because secularists call people who want to criminalize homosexuality “bigots”. Secularists are also pawns of Satan. Not that Lane has a very clear understanding of “secularism”, which he thinks is simultaneously a religion and synonymous with liberalism. Ultimately, “secularism” is for Lane really just a catchall to designate anything he doesn’t like. But at least, according to Lane, “American education has collapsed under the weight of Secularism. Moral and academic anarchy now reign. Something curious has happened to those who define themselves as anti-fascist, who in reality are the fascists,” ostensibly because they criticize him and people like him for promoting the use of violence to establish a state in which everyone must bow to Lane’s religious convictions.

Unfortunately, however, God is at present “holding up His deliverance from pagan secularism in America” because of “flagrant sin” (indeed, “Barack Hussein Obama just might be the agent of the judgment of God on a nation that abandoned its Biblical-based culture”). Here is Lane claiming that the only alternative to Christian theocracy is Nazism. Here is Lane claiming that America is the great Satan.

Lane on American history
The main element in his case against the separation of church and state is that the Mayflower pilgrims were religious extremists and explicitly tried to create a theocratic British colony. That the US later decided to split with the British and write a Constitution not based on the Mayflower document is less relevant (and Lane tends to handwave and lie a bit about that part). In particular, he argues that the pilgrims, who believed that their undertaking was “for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith,” created a covenant with God that America must currently renew in order to survive, and that “the Founders established America legally as a Christian nation at the state level, rather than the Federal” – “Founders” here of course meaning those who established the colonies before the Constitution (Lane explicitly calls the 1607 Jamestown British colony charter “America’s foundation” and no, he really doesn’t seem to know the difference between a British colony charter and the Constitution) – and approvingly cites state constitutions at the time that required officeholders to be Protestant Christians (Catholicism is of course as bad as secularism – i.e. catholics are pagans; Lane doesn’t distinguish between non-Christians and Christians who don’t advocate religious theocracy – and other “dead religion[s]”). Some of Lane’s lies about history are briefly discussed here.

And Lane probably knows that he is lying when he claims that currently “The Pledge of Allegiance is forbidden” and that “Christmas carols are banned”, but the lies serves their intended purpose, which is to scare those delusional enough to listen to him to begin with.

The gays
Lane has a long career of vigorous opposition to gay rights; “homosexual fascism” will destroy America, says Lane, apparently not caring too much about what “fascism” could possibly mean beyond the fact that he imagines his audience associates something bad with it. And back in the days he achieved some substantial victories. In the 1990s, Lane helped (with the California Restoration Project) place Proposition 22 on the ballot in California 2000 to restrict California marriages to heterosexual ones, which  passed. And together with Laurence White he later helped pass opposite-sex-only marriage amendments to the state constitutions of Ohio (2004), Texas (2005), and Florida (2006). Moreover, in November 2010, voters in Iowa removed three Iowa Supreme Court justices over their constitutional stance in a 2009 decision allowing same-sex couples to marry; The New York Times reported that Lane was the “unheralded mastermind” of the campaign against the justices, directing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Gingrich and the American Family Association. To motivate people into action against marriage equality Lane has of course realized that lying is a good strategy, and he has claimed for instance that ministers will be forced to “give approval” to “the homosexual lifestyle” or go to jail.

In 2013 Lane called on the “moral majority” to “wage war” against the “pagan onslaught imposing homosexual marriage,” apparently (or pretending to be) oblivious to the fact that the majority of Americans supported same-sex marriage. According to Lane, “those who embrace homosexual marriage and homosexual Scouting,” along with “pagan public schools, pagan higher learning and pagan media,” are ushering in America’s collapse with their “multicultural false gods.” “America’s survival is at stake,” said Lane, adding that “this is not tall talk or exaggeration,” apparently dimly suspecting that some might think otherwise. He also called on Christians to “risk martyrdom” to stop same sex marriage – apparently “American Christianity has not done a good job of producing martyrs” (oh, the Taliban envy) – and concluded that America has to choose between wholesale slaughter of Christians and adopting a theocracy (and rejecting “the fabricated whopper of the ‘Separation of Church and State’”).

Hereis Lane calling for a boycott of Frito-Lay over their Rainbow Doritos, claiming that Frito-Lay has proclaimed “solidarity with sexual anarchy” and is fueling America’s “rebellion against God” by spreading “Carcinogenic Secularism”. (The Rainbow Doritos were introduced to benefit anti-bullying projects).

Other political views
For the 2017 election, Lane supported Trump because Trump, according to Lane, would bring “moral, principled leadership”.

As for education, Lane has helpfully explained the purpose of public education (picture a Taliban-sympathetic imam saying this, if it helps): “Once we return to God, He will then attend to the honor of His name. Public education and universities will again focus on the principal component of education: incorporating the character of the Father into our children, thus creating an exceptional and virtuous people. Test scores in education will soar for, ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.’” (More here)

There is a good David Lane resource here.


Diagnosis: Delusional madman and hysteric fundamentalist theocrat, Lane is also among the most powerful people in the US. Quite simply one of the scariest loons we have covered thus far.
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#1869: Janis Lane

July 16, 2017, 1:18 am
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Janis Lane is – or at least used to be – the president of the Central Mississippi Tea Party. In 2012 she got some attention even outside of Central Mississippi, though, when she argued that women shouldn’t vote: “Probably the biggest turn we ever made was when the women got the right to vote,” said Lane: “Our country might have been better off if it was still just men voting. There is nothing worse than a bunch of mean, hateful women. They are diabolical in how than can skewer a person. I do not see that in men. The whole time I worked, I’d much rather have a male boss than a female boss. Double-minded, you never can trust them. Because women have the right to vote, I am active, because I want to make sure there is some sanity for women in the political world. It is up to the Christian rednecks and patriots to stand up for our country.” The sentiment was later echoed by by a Toronto website that calls itself the “newsmagazine of the Islamic movement,” in a critique of American culture. Then there was this, for which we would like to know the context.


Diagnosis: One cannot quite shake the suspicion that Lane is involved in a grand scheme to make the Tea Party look bad … but no: she’s just a delusional extremist.
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#1870: Angela Lanfranchi

July 17, 2017, 1:17 am
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Angela Lanfranchi is an anti-abortion activist and cofounder of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute. She is currently one of the most vocal defenders on the utterly discredited idea, based on ridiculous junk science, that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer – a central tenet of her institute – and probably the most important defender of that particularly who actually should have some formal competence in the field and who actually takes care of breast cancer patients for a living (she is not a scientist, though). Lanfranchi has herself published arguments in favor of such a link in the pseudojournal JPANDS, the house journal of the deranged conspiracy theory group The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which should relieve her of all assumptions of minimal credibility with regard to the issue. She is nevertheless somewhat influential, insofar as many of those unable or unwilling to look at the science are attracted to her conclusions for political reasons.

According to Lanfranchi, “[i]t amounts to child abuse to take a teenager in a crisis pregnancy for an abortion. At best, it will give her a 30% risk of breast cancer in her lifetime. At worst, if she also has a family history of breast cancer, it will nearly guarantee this.” The numbers are effectively PIDOOMA (discussed in detail here). Then she appeals to the Semmelweis gambit and asserts that doctors don’t dare tell you this because they’re afraid of their reputations, which they honestly should be if they said this since the claim has been completely debunked.


Conclusion: Crank who shamelessly pushes pseudoscience for ideological reasons. As such, she also has a certain influence among those who, for non-evidence-based reasons, agree with her conclusions. Sad.
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