NewsMax's Ponte falsely claimed Obama's "thinking was shaped by childhood in a Muslim madrassah in Islamic Indonesia"

In a January 4 column on the conservative website NewsMax.com, Lowell Ponte, "a NewsMax pundit and Contributing Editor," stated that Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) victory "in lily-white Iowa speaks loudly to the world about America." Ponte elaborated by falsely claiming that "[t]his charismatic young candidate could -- Inshallah [Arabic for "God willing"] -- become the first American president whose thinking was shaped by childhood in a Muslim madrassah in Islamic Indonesia."

In fact, as Media Matters for America has noted numerous times, the claim that Obama was educated in a madrassa -- which the conservative website InsightMag.com first reported, attributing the rumor to "sources close to [a] background check" allegedly "conducted by researchers connected to" Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) -- has been thoroughly debunked by several news organizations.

For example, CNN reported on January 23, 2007: "Allegations that Sen. Barack Obama was educated in a radical Muslim school known as a 'madrassa' are not accurate, according to CNN reporting," citing a report by CNN correspondent John Vause, who visited the school in question. The Associated Press reported on January 24, 2007, that "[i]nterviews by The Associated Press at the elementary school in Jakarta found that it's a public and secular institution that has been open to students of all faiths since before the White House hopeful attended in the late 1960s."

And ABC News reported on January 25, 2007, that the school was a "normal government public school without even a hint of the extremist elements reported by various conservative news outlets" and noted that the purported link to Clinton's campaign is "unproven and unsubstantiated.".......

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