But because this is a serious blog filled with serious topics, allow me to cast aside such frivolity to write a bit about what Twitter is actually for, at least for a subset of its users: positioning oneself as a morally acceptable, super serial person.

For instance, the Free Beacon recently published what I described as the greatest thing we’ve ever done: a mashup of Game of Thrones and Mike Allen’s Playbook by CJ Ciaramella. If you like Game of Thrones and read Playbook—which approximately 80 percent of D.C.’s political caste do, apparently—you liked this piece. It’s science.

However, a certain subset of Twitter users decided that they couldn’t forthrightly appreciate and publicize something done by the Washington Free Beacon. We are the untouchables; to acknowledge and praise a piece published by us without approbation risks signaling to others that you are a deeply unserious person who dabbles in rabblerousing and hatred. So these people would use a not-insignificant portion of their 140 characters to distance themselves from the Free Beacon while also sharing the humorous piece with their followers. For example:

I genuinely despise @freebeacon, but this… this is just awesome freebeacon.com/westeros-playb…

— Matt Fay (@MattFay1) March 29, 2013

Usually not a fan of @freebeacon, but this @gameofthrones-themed Politico parody is great! freebeacon.com/westeros-playb… h/t @rosiegray

— Peter Sterne (@petersterne) March 29, 2013

in the Washington Free Beacon? Hmmm. RT @kbondelli: Westeros Playbook shar.es/d2sKL

— Gennady Kolker (@GENN4DY) March 29, 2013

Now I’ve seen everything—the Free Beacon did something actually clever and funny: freebeacon.com/westeros-playb…

— Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 29, 2013

You get the idea.

I find it interesting that these people couldn’t just say “Ha, great piece!” and move on. Instead, they had to first distance themselves from the source before praising the work. I feel as if this is largely a center-left-to-left-left phenomenon, one that Freddie DeBoer has touched on quite a bit (though from a far-left, you’re-not-doing-enough perspective).

Sarcastically dubbing those who use Twitter to angrily and vociferously denounce the violators of leftwing decency as the “Twitter Feeds of Justice,” Freddie believes this is a cheap and easy way for those on the left to show that they believe the right things without actually having to do anything to make the world a safer place for liberalism:

Again, the reality is that for many of its loudest proponents, this kind of liberalism is essentially a social affectation. And one of a particular kind: social liberalism, for many, is a class marker. Over time I’ve come to see most of the cultural attachments of the cash-poor but social-capital-rich white artistic striver types as ways to assure the world that their financial similarity to lower class white people is purely coincidental. In that context, social liberalism becomes a particularly outsized way to demonstrate that you are better than the people with whom you share an income quintile.

Twitter (like Facebook) is just another manifestation of the social affectation that Freddie decries. Showing your “righteousness” on Twitter is pretty much the lowest-cost way of demonstrating said righteousness: Even if you’re too lazy to come up with a 140-character missive on the daily outrage or the latest focus of a two minute hate, with the click of a mouse you can retweet someone else’s outrage to identify yourself with said outrage.

It’s all a little sad. And, frankly, part and parcel of living a politicized life. If you cannot wholeheartedly state your appreciation for something without first decrying the unclean company that created it, I feel at least a little sorry for you.

hagel’s making biden look rhetorically sure-footed

— Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) January 31, 2013

this hearing is beginning to remind me of the 1st Obama-Romney debate

— Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) January 31, 2013

This Hagel hearing is a disaster.

— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) January 31, 2013

Certainly seems like it on twitter RT @buzzfeedandrew This Hagel hearing is a disaster.

— AdamSerwer (@AdamSerwer) January 31, 2013

I think Hagel is engaged now in Jewsplaining.

— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) January 31, 2013

Hagel has written chapters on Iraq and on the Middle East. So we’re cool.

— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) January 31, 2013

Did Hagel just call Iran’s government “elected and legitimate”?

— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) January 31, 2013

Hagel is floundering through one policy answer after another. IRGC terrorism, Iraq surge, nukes.

— attackerman (@attackerman) January 31, 2013

“I support the president’s strong position on containment. I think that’s right.” Um, you meant prevention, right #Hagel?

— attackerman (@attackerman) January 31, 2013

#Hagel just stumbled over whether Iran govt is “legitimate” or “elected.” Fodder for oppo

— Ron Kampeas (@kampeas) January 31, 2013

Yikes, now he said he “supports the president’s position on containment.” #Hagel

— Ron Kampeas (@kampeas) January 31, 2013

Watching Hagel stumbling at Senate hearing. Recalling Brennan gaffes after Abbottabad. DoD and CIA not in best of hands, alas.

— Ed Husain (@Ed_Husain) January 31, 2013

Basically, Hagel does not seem very sharp.

— Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) January 31, 2013

Hagel not particularly swift on his feet. Missed opportunity to push back vs. McCain. “Senator, you want another war in the Middle East?”

— Blake Hounshell (@blakehounshell) January 31, 2013

Hagel is a little awkward here

— Max Fisher (@Max_Fisher) January 31, 2013

Sen. Hagel’s confirmation hearing performance was brilliant. #slatepitches

— Josh Greenman (@joshgreenman) January 31, 2013

Not impressed by Hagel so far. This is one of the toughest jobs in govt. He needs to do better.

— Tom Wright (@thomaswright08) January 31, 2013

Longtime Israel critic M.J. Rosenberg, who was dumped by the liberal Media Matters for America for his use of borderline anti-Semitic language, authored the controversial tweet Wednesday afternoon. It called to mind recently unearthed statements by Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi that referred to Jews as “pigs.”

“OBAMA told the 2 most pig like lobbies, AIPAC & NRA, to drop dead in same month. Next: Chamber of Commerce,” Rosenberg wrote.

The missive was then retweeted by Kristof and a slew of others.

Rosenberg regularly engages in anti-Israel activism on Twitter and has repeatedly used the term “Israel firster,” a phrase with origins in the white supremacist movement that many consider anti-Semitic.

One official with a Jewish organization told the Free Beacon that Kristof’s repetition of such rhetoric is surprising given that it occurred on the same day that the New York Times ran an editorial in its print edition against Morsi’s anti-Semitic remarks.

“It is quite extraordinary that on the same day the Times decries Morsi’s description of Jews as pigs, one of their premier columnists invokes the same language about a Jewish organization,” the activist told the Free Beacon.

The Times on Wednesday referred to Morsi’s contention that Jewish people are the descendants of “apes and pigs” as “repulsive.”

Another pro-Israel activist who asked to remain anonymous said Kristof is helping to promote anti-Semitic slurs.

“Given that Rosenberg regularly deploys rhetoric associated with neo-Nazis and classic Jew hatred, engaging in what has been described by the Simon Wiesenthal Center as ‘toxic anti-Jewish prejudice,’ it is shocking to see a New York Times journalist promoting his ideas,” said the Jewish leader.

“If Father Coughlin were on Twitter, would it be OK for NYT employees to be promoting his sermons, too? Perhaps Mr. Kristof is unaware of what he is doing?” asked the source.

Kristof and a New York Times communications official did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment.

Kristof has faced criticism in the past for his writings and musings about Israel.

He repeatedly has blamed Israel for the impasse in the peace process and maintains that the Jewish state’s security measures are callously aimed at oppressing the Palestinian people.

Nor is this the first time Kristof has taken heat for tweeting about Israel.

Commentary magazine noted last year that Kristof authored several offensive comments about the Jewish state as it celebrated its independence day, which is referred to by Palestinians as Nakba Day, or the day of “catastrophe.”

“Do I have this right? Israeli forces fired today on protesters at 3 different borders—Gaza, Syria and Lebanon?” he tweeted at the time.

“Pres. Assad must be so relieved that Israel shot Syrians at the border, distracting from his own shootings of Syrians,” he tweeted hours later.

A user claiming to be Omar Hammami, an American citizen who joined forces with the al Qaeda-aligned al-Shabaab terror group in 2006, has been tweeting about “martyrdom” and U.S.-led operations against terror cells in Africa via his Twitter account, “abu m.”

The 102 users who follow the virtual Hammami, who is also known as Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, have access to an ongoing stream of unfiltered radical thoughts and possible tips about clandestine U.S. operations taking place in Somalia, where al-Shabaab is based.

Users are also directed to view a YouTube page, which features videos about jihad starring Hammami sitting before al-Shabaab’s black war flag and an automatic weapon.

Hammami’s purported social media presence has raised red flags among terrorism experts who cite both YouTube and Twitter for promoting such radical figures.

“It’s pretty outrageous that someone on the FBI’s most wanted list can communicate on a Twitter page and a YouTube account and no one has removed it,” said Steven Salinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser told the Washington Free Beacon that the organization does not “comment on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons.”

He also cautioned “against reporting an account’s ownership with such certainty unless you’ve independently verified it with the supposed owner themselves or they have a Verified account,” meaning that Twitter has confirmed the user’s identity.

Critics of the social media sites said that even if the account in not operated by Hammami, the sites should proactively take steps to remove users who post terror-related material.

“If you look at the words, it’s singular voice of ‘I’ when referring to questions and he has a long history of being on these jihadi forums,” Salinsky said. “He definitely communicates and even if it’s not him, it’s pretending to be a terrorist. So are they afraid to remove the page of someone who says they’re a terrorist, who a few months ago was put on the FBI most wanted list?

“It says a lot about a company when they will close a user account for violating some vague notion of political correctness or criticizing the excesses of militant Islamism, but will open their floodgates to calls for genocide and incitement to mass murder,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser who has written extensively on terrorists.

The Twitter user claiming to be Hammami routinely engages with a wide variety of Twitter users who reach out to him for insights or advice about al-Shabaab and its terrorist activities. He was placed on the FBI’s most wanted list in mid-November.

Al-Shabaab also has an official and highly active Twitter account.

As of Friday afternoon Hammami’s supposed account was still active, with his last tweet being sent out on Monday.

MEMRI has reported extensively on Hammami’s sophisticated social media use.

Twitter has long treaded a fine line between free speech and the promotion of terror-related activities.

Critics have accused the social media site of enabling terrorist entities such as Hamas and Hezbollah by providing them a prominent and unfiltered virtual perch from which to disseminate their propaganda and recruit new troops.

Since its creation Twitter has become a fertile grounds for terror-related communications, said Salinsky.

“One thing about Twitter, when we started telling people these jihadi groups were there, it was a problem. But it has proliferated,” he said. “Every day there are new jihadi sheiks and groups opening Twitter accounts. A year ago this wasn’t the case. It’s such a tool for online jihad. They’ve really taken to it.”

Twitter has specific rules governing spam and abuse, but does not specifically refer to terror-related activities. However, users can report an account if they feel it may be violating the site’s terms of use.

YouTube has grappled with similar issues as terror groups increasingly bring their messages to the online world, where the provenance of a communication is more difficult to track.

The account claiming to be Hammami, for instance, has posted at least seven videos since opening under the pseudonym “Somali muhajir warrior” in March.

While recent reports indicate that Hammami and al-Shabaab are on the outs due to certain disagreements, Hammami remains an important propagandist given his American background.

YouTube has adopted a user-regulated policy against terrorism.

Any viewer can flag a video that he or she believes promotes terrorism. YouTube then reviews the clip and makes a final determination.

MEMRI told the Free Beacon that it has repeatedly flagged Hammami’s videos, yet they remain active.

A YouTube spokesperson did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment about Hammami’s account.

Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill have complained that social media sites have not gone far enough in the fight to silence radical extremists.

Other experts told the Free Beacon that Twitter and YouTube continue to bolster terrorists despite their policies.

“Reports have been floating around for years about Jihadists using U.S. servers and recruiting via YouTube and Facebook, or communicating via Twitter,” Rubin said. “Jihadists crave an audience. Terrorism loses its effectiveness when terrorists are cut off from the wider audience.”

Twitter hosts scores of Muslim clerics and organizations, including al Qaeda, designated by the U.S. Department of the Treasury as “terrorists.” The groups use the micro-blogging site to recruit extremists and distribute radical materials, according to the lawmakers, who petitioned FBI Director Robert Mueller to crack down on these illegal virtual activities.

By providing material support to these organizations in the form of a communications platform, Twitter is illegally allowing a once-disjointed community of anti-American religious extremists to coordinate, recruit, and hone their terrorist activities online, potentially posing a risk to the U.S. and its interests abroad, the lawmakers and other experts maintained.

“Twitter maintains that it will take down any account requested by the FBI,” seven Republican members of Congress wrote to the FBI last month. “As of this writing, the FBI has not made a single request to Twitter to take an account down.”

These various extremist accounts have thousands of loyal followers across the globe.

“U.S. designated terrorists continue to use an American company to spread its propaganda to the world, encouraging violence and garnering new recruits to continue the cycle of violence that kills innocent civilians around the world,” states the congressional letter, which was spearheaded by Rep. Ted Poe (R., Texas), a member of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.

Most puzzling to some observers is Twitter’s apparent apathy about the matter.

Since its inception in 2006, Twitter has not shut down a single “jihadi or terrorist organization’s account,” according to the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which tracks, translates, and codifies terrorist groups’ online presence.

“Not one account has been shut down, unlike on YouTube and Facebook,” Poe told the Free Beacon.

“Twitter is not going to take it upon themselves to shut them down,” which is why the FBI needs to take action, Poe said.

MEMRI also has failed to convince Twitter to remove accounts operated by multiple terror groups including al Qaeda, Hamas, the Taliban, and others.

“MEMRI’s attempts to alert Twitter, and in particular its CEO and media department, of this and of the risks it entails have been repeatedly ignored,” the group claimed in a September report on the matter.

Twitter spokesman Jim Prosser directed a Free Beacon reporter to the organization’s rules relating to “abusive behavior,” but would not answer a series of questions about radical groups and the various attempts to shut them down.

“There is not one publicly known case of a jihadi or terrorist organization’s account being shut down,” the MEMRI report states.

FBI Special Agent Jason Pack told the Free Beacon, “The FBI received the Congressman’s letter and will respond to it appropriately.”

Terrorist activity on Twitter has grown unimpeded, MEMRI reports.

“While the phenomenon of jihadi and terrorist organizations on Twitter is in its relatively early stages, if it is left to continue unabated, the service will increasingly be used to help build an online community of individuals who support terrorism and are enemies of the U.S.,” the report states.

In addition to notorious terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda and Hamas, a slew of lesser known radical clerics and terror groups regularly promote extremism 140 characters at a time.

They include: al-Shabab, a Somali offshoot of al Qaeda; the Hamas-backed al-Qassam Brigades; Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV, and other organizations affiliated with the Afghan Taliban, to name just a few.

Al-Shabab has roughly 14,000 followers, while Hamas and Hezbollah’s Al-Manar each boast more than 19,000 online devotees.

The U.S. government has designated many of these groups as terrorist entities, leading MEMRI to allege that Twitter is violating the law by allowing the accounts to exist.

It is illegal, for instance, “to provide a designated [Foreign Terrorist Organization] with ‘material support or resources,’ including ‘any property, tangible or intangible, or services,’ among them ‘communication equipment and facilities’,” MEMRI noted in a June report.

Despite these regulations, “there has been little evidence—at least in the public arena—to suggest that the U.S. government will force Twitter to follow U.S. law by closing accounts belonging to U.S.-designated terrorist groups,” MEMRI reported.

These groups and individuals use Twitter to give “religious justification for jihad and terrorist attacks”, to promote “al Qaeda media releases,” and for “training purposes for attacks against American forces,” according to MEMRI’s September report.

There is also evidence that terror-affiliated users have promoted “new terrorist and jihadi groups” that might not otherwise have received exposure to a wider audience.

Muhammad Al-Zawahiri, the brother of al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, opened a Twitter account in August and has proceeded to justify violent jihad, according to MEMRI.

Walid Muhammad, a disciple of Osama bin Laden who served time in the prison at Guantanamo Bay, has also embraced Twitter, where he can be seen criticizing Jews and praising al Qaeda.

Twitter was used to stoke the tensions of the Muslim rioters who attacked the U.S. Consulate in Egypt on the eleventh anniversary of September 11, 2001.

Some reports have indicated that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood’s Twitter account tweeted disparate messages during the embassy siege, intermittently apologizing for the violence in English and then encouraging the protestors in Arabic.

Poe speculated that one reason the Obama administration has not pursued the issue is because terrorists’ Twitter pages are a rich vein for the intelligence community to mine.

Poe, however, said that this is not a good enough reason to give these radical actors free rein on the Internet.

“If that’s [the administration’s] only way of knowing” what terrorists are up to, “we’ve got some serious problems with our intelligence service,” Poe said.

Twitter’s Washington D.C. lobbying team is comprised of several Obama administration confidants and former Democratic Hill staffers.

Adam Sharp, the site’s top government liaison, formerly served as deputy chief of staff for Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.).

Its global public policy official, Colin Crowell, was a senior aide to Rep. Ed Markey (D., Mass.), while Twitter’s head of international strategy, Katie Jacobs Stanton, once worked with the Obama administration on new media strategies.

Since 2011, several individuals who list their employer as Twitter have donated primarily to Democrats, including the Obama campaign and Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.

Congress could hold hearings on the matter if the FBI fails to act, Poe told the Free Beacon.

“I’ll press the issue in the Judiciary Committee,” he said. “That would be the next step.”

CAROL COSTELLO: But other Packers players were not so reticent. Guard T.J. Lang tweeted, “(Expletive) it NFL. Fine me and use the money to pay the regular refs.” And the opinion around much of the league was the same. 49ers running back Frank Gore had an outrageous tweet, “Who’s worse? The dude who directed that anti-Muslim movie or Roger Goodell? I think old Roger!” Wow.

The tweet was written by a parody account, @Frank_Gore. The user name for the account is “Not Frank Gore,” with a bio noting, “SF Running Back (Parody Acct.).” The tweet read on CNN appears to have been since deleted, but retweets can be found from last night:

The parody account ranted last night about the NFL’s referee lockout, garnering a number of retweets. After retweeting tweets from @Frank_Gore, Deadspin editor Timothy Burke and Yahoo Fantasy Football, among others, noted the account was not real. (Gore himself does not appear to have a Twitter account.)

The Cable reported Wednesday that Schwartz, a senior public affairs officer at the embassy, penned the contested release and authorized the tweets, which were later deemed a rogue effort by U.S. officials in Washington.

Officials at the State Department urged Schwartz not to release the statement, yet he did it anyway, according to the report:

Before issuing the press release, Schwartz cleared it with just one person senior to himself, Deputy Chief of Mission Marc Sievers, who was the charge d’affaires at the embassy on Tuesday because Ambassador Anne Patterson was in Washington at the time, the official said.

Schwartz sent the statement to the State Department in Washington before publishing and the State Department directed him not to post it without changes, but Schwartz posted it anyway.

“The statement was not cleared with anyone in Washington. It was sent as ‘This is what we are putting out,’” the official said. “We replied and said this was not a good statement and that it needed major revisions. The next email we received from Embassy Cairo was ‘We just put this out.’”

The official White House Twitter account retweeted a statement that working people were “slaves” to Wall Street.

“RT @deafear: @HildaSolisDOL WE NEED NATIONAL WORKERS UNION! LABOR LAWS 2 FEW 2 WEAK! WORKING PEEPS SLAVES 2 WALL ST! #HappyLaborDay,” the tweet read.

The person in control of the White House account quickly recognized the gaffe and deleted the tweet after six seconds, according to the Sunlight Foundation.

The practice has become so widespread that StatusPeople, a social media management company in London, released a Web tool last month called the Fake Follower Check that it says can ascertain how many fake followers you and your friends have.

The tool examines Twitter relationships, said Rob Waller, a founder of StatusPeople. “Fake accounts tend to follow a lot of people but have few followers,” he said. “We then combine that with a few other metrics to confirm the account is fake.”

If accurate, the number of fake followers out there is surprising. According to the StatusPeople tool, 71 percent of Lady Gaga’s nearly 29 million followers are “fake” or “inactive.” So are 70 percent of President Obama’s nearly 19 million followers.

In addition to being hugely popular among the fake and/or virtual, the president enjoys significant support from unlikely and/or unregistered voters.

“Good move for both @lhfang and @thenation,” Pelosi tweeted yesterday as she promoted a Nation announcement that stated: “We welcome Lee Fang as investigative contributing reporter”.

Nancy Pelosi / Wikimedia Commons

Pelosi’s tweet, deleted moments later, was immediately archived by the Sunlight Foundation’s Politwoops project, which weeds out deleted messages sent via Twitter by lawmakers.

A Pelosi spokesperson would not comment on the record about the deleted tweet.

However, Pelosi’s office may have had seconds thoughts about praising a reporter whose work contains only a dime-bag of facts for every ounce of anti-conservative spin.

Gabriela Schneider, a Sunlight Foundation spokesperson, explained that lawmakers often experience embarrassing gaffes via Twitter.

“Often when we delete things in public, there might be a reason,” Schneider said. “There’s going to be times when errors are made.”

“On the Internet,” she added, “nothing is really deleted.”

Fang was hired last week by the Nation, a far left publication with a history of sympathy for Communist movements, despite his record of puffing up conspiracy theories that have on numerous occasions come back to burn the publications that employ him.

Lee Fang

Questions continue to surround a series of misleading stories that Fang filed during his time as a writer for the Center For American Progress Action Fund’s ThinkProgress blog, and for the Republic Report. While both groups agitate for greater transparency in politics, neither discloses all of their funding sources.

In one instance, Fang published a story that purported to reveal a secret plan by the Telecom industry.

“Representatives from various front groups launched a new coordinated campaign to kill net neutrality,” Fang snorted.

However, the technology website C-Net revealed the following day that Fang’s smoking gun—a PowerPoint presentation that he claimed the Telecom industry had prepared to help kill net neutrality—was actually a class project.

C-Net exposed that Fang’s report was completely false:

It turns out that the PowerPoint document was prepared as a class project for a competition in Florida last month. It cost the six students a grand total of $173.95, including $18 for clip art.

The “No Net Brutality” campaign idea was one of the four finalists created as an assignment for a two-and-a-half week “think tank MBA” program. The other finalists were a project promoting free speech in Venezuela, one supporting education reform in Poland, and one dealing with sales taxes rates in Washington, D.C. (“No Net Brutality” came in third. The Polish reform idea won.)

Not only was the PowerPoint document presentation no secret, but it was posted publicly on the competition’s blog, along with an audio recording of the event in Miami where the student contestants presented their ideas to the judges.

ThinkProgress never corrected the story, but rather distributed two “updates” in defense of the bogus piece.