Oddly enough, the only mention whatsoever of the New Black Panthers Party on Fox News in the past few days was the above snippet, one of Bill O'Reilly's "Reality Check" tidbits near the end of his show on Tuesday.

Odd, because there was this significant bit of news involving the NBPP case that has been the subject of so much coverage and discussion at Fox for the past year:

The Obama Justice Department did not improperly let politics or the race of the defendants affect the handling of a high-profile civil voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party, a probe by DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) concluded after an extensive investigation.

Justice Department attorneys "did not commit professional misconduct or exercise poor judgment, but rather acted appropriately, in the exercise of their supervisory duties in connection with the dismissal of the three defendants in the NBPP case," the head of OPR wrote in a letter to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) obtained by TPM.

OPR's investigation began in the summer of 2009. After an extensive investigation which included reviews of the New Black Panther Party file, "thousands of pages of internal Department e-mails, memoranda, and notes" and interviews with 44 current and former Department employees, OPR "found no evidence that the decision to dismiss the case against three of the four defendants was predicated on political considerations," wrote DOJ's Robin Ashton.

This is most odd indeed. Why, we can remember when our Fox morning and afternoon broadcasts were dominated by the breathless coverage of the NBPP scandal, including that nasty catfight on Megyn Kelly's show when Kirtsen Powers tried to point out that there was no there there, and of course video and audio of racially incendiary rants by NBPP leaders. It was always pathetically obvious as race-baiting goes, but then, Fox is nothing if not shameless.

Indeed, as Matt Gertz at Media Matters explains, Fox has been obsessing about the NBPP for the better part of the past couple of years, evidently certain that an Obama-dooming scandal lay therein:

For nearly two years, the right wing has been obsessed with the decision by those senior career attorneys to drop civil charges against three defendants affiliated with the New Black Panther Party who allegedly intimidated voters at a Philadelphia polling place in 2008. This fixation became stronger last year, when two DOJ attorneys on the trial team who are linked the Bush administration's politicization of the DOJ claimed in media appearances and in testimony that the DOJ's actions were part of a pattern of racially-charged corruption at the department, in which lawyers there refused to protect white voters from intimidation by minorities.

These allegations received a ready airing on Fox News, but they simply never added up: There was simply no evidence that this was anything more than a disagreement between career attorneys on how to apply a rarely-used provision of the Voting Rights Act; the Obama DOJ did get obtain an injunction against one of the defendants in the case; it also took action in another case to protect white voters from intimidation by black political leaders; and the Bush administration had failed to take action in a similar case in which Latino voters were allegedly intimidated by whites.

And yet, this week, nary a word about these findings could be found on Fox, particularly not on Megyn Kelly's show, where the coverage was high-pitched, heavy-handed and heavily promoted.

Adam Serwer at the Plum Line observes:

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Break out the smelling salts and fainting couches, the Florida Republicans are getting the vapors!

During a debate over a bill that would prohibit governments from deducting union dues out of a worker's paycheck last week, Florida state Rep. state Rep. Scott Randolph (D) argued that Republicans seem to only be against regulations when it comes to big business.

In his speech on the state House floor, Randolph even suggested that his wife could "incorporate her uterus" if it would stop the GOP from passing more restrictive abortion laws.

Republican leadership scolded the Democratic congressman, telling him that talk about body parts was unwelcome.

I have to say, the line about Republicans only protecting women's rights if they incorporated their uterus is frakin' brilliant. But being a squeamish bunch, a Republican took Randolph aside and actually pulled the "won't someone think of the children?" excuse, telling him that the young pages and interns didn't need to hear that kind of nasty talk.

I'm sure using even clinical terms make Republicans feel uncomfortable down there. It's a damn shame they're not equally as squeamish making laws to put the government right into women's uteri.

House Speaker John Boehner fought back tears Wednesday on the House floor as he advocated for his bill to reinstate the Washington D.C. school voucher program.

D.C. parents and teachers support the program, which was ended in 2009, because "they know what it was like before," he said.

"They remember living just blocks from grade schools but feeling miles away from them. And all they did was ask us to have a chance to have the same kind of education that kids down the street were getting. There's no controversial idea here. It's the American way."

School vouchers are certificates issued by the government that parents can apply towards tuition at a private school. Critics claim that the program weakens the public school system.

No end to drama or news on this day in 1971. Starting with Sentencing of Lt. William Calley for his role in the My Lai Massacre to life without parole at hard labor and a mass outpouring of support for Calley and suggestions he was scapegoat for an even more sinister involvement to the U.S. Military view of the Vietnam war. Aftershocks continued over Southern California with the latest registering between 4.0 and 4.5 after the big earthquake in February. The Senate Sub-committee, looking into the pension funds of 87 corporations found that only 10% of employees who participated in them ever saw any money (surprise). Jimmy Hoffa was denied parole from prison for a second time. Fighting was continuing in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam while the Pentagon came out with the (sort of) good news that the May draft call-up would be only 15,000, which was 2,000 less than the previous month and lowest for the year so far. A Bill introduced in the Senate to abolish the Draft was defeated by 73-11 and the National Association of Broadcasters released the results of a Roper Poll on People's Attitudes Towards TV News with the findings that most people still got their news from TV, with newspapers, radio and magazines following in that order. 49% thought TV news was most believable (?) - almost 50% believed no more government control was needed than was in place in 1971. And (get this . . .) a whopping 69% believed TV news was fair as far as political stances were concerned.

And . . .Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst said the Nixon Administration was against limiting political contributions. Fancy that.

All in a days news - this one via NBC Nightly News for Wednesday March 31, 1971. And the word for today is - "Pucker Power".

It's obvious that Donald Trump's recent bout of Birtherism is primarily about garnering Trump some free pub -- but considering how readily they're airing it at Fox News, it's starting to look like a combination of Swift Boat/Clinton-scandals type of Republican tactics, where just having the smears "out there" helps keep their targets' negatives high.

It's also obvious, after Trump's appearance last night on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show, that he really isn't a serious candidate. Instead, Trump is being a stalking horse who can make the rest of the Republican field look sane and serious by comparison.

Consider this exchange:

O'REILLY: Now, when you were on "The View" and they didn't walk out, which they should have because they walked out on me and they should have stayed. You were way, way worse than I was on "The View." You were hammering the birth certificate.

Now, we very early on did an investigation about Barack Obama's birth certificate. What "The Factor" found out was there were two announcements the week he was born in both Honolulu newspapers saying that he was born, OK. That is impossible -- that is impossible to make happen if he had not been born in the hospital. So therefore, I just put it to bed. I said he was born in Honolulu. The two newspapers documented it. His mother was a hippy. His father was a guy from Kenya who split. There couldn't have been a sophisticated -- what is he, Baby Jesus? -- there was a sophisticated conspiracy to smuggle this baby back into the country? So I just dismissed it. But you made a big deal of it.

TRUMP: Bill, I grew up with Wall Street geniuses. What they do in terms of fraud and how they change documents and I will tell you something. If you notice those dates were three days later. Here is what I ask people. Who puts announcements? Here are two poor people, a man and a woman with no money, they have a baby. There's announcements in the newspaper?

O'REILLY: The grandparents did it.

TRUMP: Excuse me. The grandparents. Nelson Rockefeller doesn't put announcements.

O'REILLY: Sure, there are birth announcements all the time.

TRUMP: I have never seen one.

O'REILLY: Really? They are common.

TRUMP: I've never seen one.

O'REILLY: But why is this important to you?

TRUMP: Because if you are going to be president of the United States you have to be born in this country. And there is a doubt as to whether or not he was born…

O'REILLY: Oh come on. Do you really feel this about him?

TRUMP: You know, I started off by saying -- and I always do and I did on the "The View." I'm a very smart guy. I went to the best college. I had good marks. I was a very smart guy, good student and all that stuff. Because what they do to the birthers, which is a term I hate because a lot of these birthers are just really quality people that just want the truth. What they do to the birthers is unbelievable to a point where people are afraid to talk about this subject. They are afraid to confront you or anybody about this subject.

O'REILLY: Do you think it's an important subject?

TRUMP: Listen, I have a birth certificate. I have my birth certificate. And in fact, they said the one I gave yesterday wasn't good enough. So I actually got the one from the Health Department, which is the perfect one. Because they were saying the one I gave yesterday wasn't good enough, so I got the other. People have birth certificates. He doesn't have a birth certificate. He may have one but there's something on that, maybe religion, maybe it says he is a Muslim. I don't know. Maybe he doesn't want that. Or he may not have one. But I will tell you this. If he wasn't born in this country, it's one of the great scams of all time.

O'REILLY: Absolutely. But I don't think that's the case.

TRUMP: You don't, but I'm starting to think.

O'REILLY: I don't think you believe that either. I think it's provocative, you get a lot of attention raising the question. But I don't think you believe it either.

TRUMP: Two weeks ago I felt like probably he was born in the country. Today it's possibly. I'm telling you it's changed. I have seen too many things.

The business with the newspaper birth announcement really reveals just how deliberately obtuse Trump is being. As we noted already:

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Oh goody:

President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, government officials told Reuters on Wednesday.

Obama signed the order, known as a presidential "finding", within the last two or three weeks, according to four U.S. government sources familiar with the matter.

Such findings are a principal form of presidential directive used to authorize secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA and the White House declined immediate comment.

News that Obama had given the authorization surfaced as the President and other U.S. and allied officials spoke openly about the possibility of sending arms supplies to Gaddafi's opponents, who are fighting better-equipped government forces.

Here's how I predict this will play out:

• We spend a crap-load of money maintaining air strikes and funneling all kinds of weapons to the Libyan rebels. They eventually topple Gaddafi. A great day for freedom!

• John McCain will send out a Tweet telling us he's having dinner with the very interesting rebels at their ranch. The good news: If we give them more arms, they'll embrace freedom!

• It then turns out that the Libyan rebels we armed have ties to terrorist organizations.

• Libya becomes a safe haven where al-Qaeda can plan attacks on the United States.

• We get hit with another terrorist attack and then go re-invade Libya.

• No one in the media will bother to point out that we put these guys in power in the first place. Instead, the Republican or Democrat who's heading the State Department at the time will tell us that "nobody could have predicted" Libya would become a safe haven for terrorism.

• And finally, we'll make the war deficit-neutral by laying off a bunch of teachers.

This sort of thing seems to happen quite frequently. So frequently, in fact, that even some of the dim bulbs in Congress are starting to take notice:

Members of Congress have expressed anxiety about U.S. government activates in Libya. Some have recalled that weapons provided by the U.S. and Saudis to mujahedeen fighting Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s later ended up in the hands of anti-American militants.

There are fears that the same thing could happen in Libya unless the U.S. is sure who it is dealing with. The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Rep. Mike Rogers, said on Wednesday he opposed supplying arms to the Libyan rebels fighting Gaddafi "at this time."

"We need to understand more about the opposition before I would support passing out guns and advanced weapons to them," Rogers said in a statement.

If the past is any guide, Rogers will soon forget all about this and give Obama and the CIA a blank check to do whatever they want.

We aren't a very smart country. It's amazing we've survived as long as we have.

UPDATE: Oh this just gets better and better:

The new leader of Libya's opposition military spent the past two decades in suburban Virginia but felt compelled — even in his late-60s — to return to the battlefield in his homeland, according to people who know him.

Khalifa Hifter was once a top military officer for Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, but after a disastrous military adventure in Chad in the late 1980s, Hifter switched to the anti-Gadhafi opposition. In the early 1990s, he moved to suburban Virginia, where he established a life but maintained ties to anti-Gadhafi groups.

The good news is that "Hifter" sounds an awful lot like "Hitler." It shouldn't be too hard to make him out to be the greatest most evilest ever threat to world peace when we re-invade Libya ten years from now.

This complete video, once on YouTube and then on the Talking Points Memo website, has been yanked from both, simply because of the heat a rookie republican congressman (and former reality tv star) got for daring to mention he's having trouble getting by on "only" $174,000, partly due to higher health care costs because of worse federal coverage than he was used to from Wisconsin as a District Attorney.

Evan McMorris-Santoro at TPM details the farce controversy.

GOPers Demand Sean Duffy Salary Tape Be Pulled From The Internet

First the Republican Party in Polk County, Wisconsin, pulled the tape of Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) fretting about making ends meet on his $174,000 a year salary from its own website. Now they want it gone from the whole Internet.

For a couple hours, the local county GOP was successful. But we've put an excerpt of the video back up.

A day after TPM posted the video we obtained of Duffy talking about his salary at a Polk County town hall meeting earlier this year, the Polk County GOP contacted the video provider we used to host the video, Blip.tv, and demanded the video be taken down.

The tape caused a stir for Duffy, a first-term conservative best known for his past as a reality TV show star on MTV's The Real World. Democrats flagged the comments about his taxpayer-funded salary (which is nearly three times the median income in Wisconsin) and criticisms began to flow Duffy's way.

In the clip, Duffy is asked whether he'd support cutting his own salary. Duffy says he would, but only as part of a plan where all public employees' salaries would be cut. He then said that the $174,000 in salary (not including benefits) he receives is a squeeze for his family of seven to live on:

I can guarantee you, or most of you, I guarantee that I have more debt than all of you. With 6 kids, I still pay off my student loans. I still pay my mortgage. I drive a used minivan. If you think I'm living high on the hog, I've got one paycheck. So I struggle to meet my bills right now. Would it be easier for me if I get more paychecks? Maybe, but at this point I'm not living high on the hog.

No doubt Crooks and Liars will receive a similarly sternly worded cease-and-desist letter, and the clip will be pulled from here also. But for now, here is the clip the Wisconsin GOP are so scared of being seen. (Can this story get any more pathetic?)

Governor Rick Scott of Florida is not a popular guy in Florida right now and this video is evidence of that fact. It's a meaningless spring training game and for him to be booed there is pretty chilly, indeed.

Gov. Rick Scott received a chilly reception while throwing the first pitch at a spring training game between the New York Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays.

Scott was greeted by boos, mixed with modest applause, at Saturday's game in Tampa. The governor was wearing Yankee's garb when he delivered a straight fastball.

He did not comment after the pitch.

Scott has done a number of stupid things, but attacking collective bargaining rights hasn't been one of them. That might be his only smart move at this point.

His latest move to put the government into people's lives by forcing drug testing is pretty insane. Isn't he supposed to be for limited government?

Joy Ann Reid at the Reid Report.

In Florida, Felonious Monk (A/K/A Rick Scott) is serving up a policy of mandatory, random drug tests for all state employees reporting to the executive branch (as well as anyone receiving public assistance) that will serve the twin purposes of humliating and demonizing the state workers Republicans so despise, while also potentially lining his pockets by pushing tens of thousands of new custormers to the chain of walk-in clinics he has temporarily signed over to his wife. However, Scott’s push could very well be … wait for it … illegal.

Besides the fact that Joy-Ann's post exposes the naked greed and powerlust in Florida, I had to share it just because the name Felonious Monk fits Scott so well. Well, doesn't it?

Sports talk radio is going to play a big role during the 2012 election because many of the hosts are right-wingers in the mold of a Curt Schilling. Just an early heads up.

As Dave pointed out earlier this week, Hannity has gone full-tilt birther alongside Donald Trump. In Wednesday's show, he uses the controversy as a way to make Tim Pawlenty look reasonable while continuing to hammer on it.

If the parents of this quaint picture seem vaguely familiar to you, you probably watched a lot of MTV 15-20 years ago. Sean Duffy and Rachel Campos-Duffy were both participants in different seasons of "The Real World" (Sean in Boston in the sixth season, Rachel in San Francisco in the third). They met during the filming of "Real World Road Rules" in 1998 and married in 1999. Between raising six children, Rachel has done some television work and contributes to parenting websites. Sean was appointed District Attorney in Wisconsin and in 2010, was elected to his first term in the House of Representatives for Wisconsin's 7th District in 2010.

Behind the meet-cute back story, the shining American success story and whatever-you-want-to-call-having-so-damn-many-kids story, there is of course the darker shades of conservative Republicanism.

Duffy has been quite outspoken, supporting his fellow Republicans in the state, calling for public employees to take paycuts to help the state meet their fiscal needs of giving millionaires and corporations more tax cuts. But do you think that he too should show his commitment to fiscal responsibility and take a pay cut himself? Silly liberal expecting consistency:

At a town hall meeting in Polk County, Wisconsin earlier this year, Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) was asked whether he'd vote to cut his $174,000 annual salary. Duffy sort of hedged, and went on to talk about how $174,000 really isn't that much for his family of seven (sic--Duffy has a family of 8) to live on. Then he went on to say he supports cutting compensation for all public employees, along the lines of what Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has proposed for the Badger State.

Cuts for thee, but not for me, unless I really have to? How very Republican.

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