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Plus... The Web is the poor man's Tivo

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Maggie Gallagher and Wade Horn appeared on the O'Reilly Factor to try and weasel out of a new payola scandal.

Gallager: It never occured to me...

O'Reilly: Innocent mistake you say?

Gallagher: I was completely befuddled...

Wade Horn from HHS says:

Horn: Under the kind of new standard, which is really kind of new...

This is kind of new in journalism Mr. Horn, where the gov't pays journalists to promot their ideas.

Why is it that these pundits who are such experts on many issues, feign ignorance when confronted with payola charges? As is just being reported, Gallagher also testified before the Senate Judicial Committee here to further Bush's agenda. It's interesting to note that Bill O'Reilly acted more outraged(view here) over allegations against Daily Kos and MyDD even though they disclosed their affiliations and were never hired to push an adminstration's agenda.

via Americablog

Arch-conservative pundit Maggie Gallagher was caught in the last day as having taken money from the Bush administration to help them "promote marriage" while she wrote about "promoting marriage" as a private journalist and didn't disclose her cozy relationship with the administration. It now gets even better.

After getting her $40,000 from the administration to help them promote their marriage agenda, Gallagher reportedly testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in favor of President Bush's Gay-Bashing Amendment to make gays second class citizens in the US Constitution.

Now, did those Senators know that when Gallagher was testifying on behalf of the Bush administration's position on marriage issues, as supposedly an independent expert on marriage, that she had in fact recently accepted money, a good deal of it, to help Bush promote his position on marriage issues? Didn't the Senators deserve to decide for themselves whether Gallagher was truly offering her independent vide on Bush's proposal, or whether she was influenced in her views to the tune of $40,000?

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Sylvester Brown jr of the St Louis Post Dispatch got into it with Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Factor last night.

loose transcript:

Brown: I liken you to Jerry Springer and the impact he had on ....reality TV

Brown: You can talk about Brokaw. You can talk about Russert. You can talk about Cronkite, who work for the "liberal media," but you don't see these guys calling people idiots on the air, you don't see them callin them nuts on the air...

O'Reilly tries to back out of his statements with semantics by using umbrealla statements and saying they have looney, or nutty positions. However, viewers of course will attach these labels to the people he associates them to. So if Barbara Boxer takes "nutty positions" isn't she then nutty? It's a sleazy excuse that doesn't pass the smell test. If you go and read his talking Points segments since the election, he has nary a bad word for any republican or their ideology. Where's the fair and balance in that?

Bill: What I do and say is that there are looney left wing people, or this is nuts, but I never say that she's a nut.

Bill got a little testy:

Bill: You can take your Jerry Springer and you know what you can do with it.

Brown: I can look in the mirror, can you?

Media Matters finds O'Reilly lying about the whold Boxer exchange:

O'Reilly labeled Boxer "a nut" on the January 19 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, as Media Matters documented at the time:

O'REILLY: And, she sponsored a bill to have jet airlines be equipped with missile defense systems. [laugh] It didn't pass because -- so look. I mean, this is a nut. All right? This is a nut we got in the Senate.

hat tip(Eddy)

Drudge reports that columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush's push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families.

But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal, reveals Howard Kurtz in Wednesday runs of the WASHINGTON POST.

"The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples" and "educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage," she wrote in National Review Online, for example, adding that this could "carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children." Gallagher explains to Kurtz: "Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it? I don't know. You tell me." She said she would have "been happy to tell anyone who called me" about the contract but that "frankly, it never occurred to me" to disclose it.
National Review Editor Rich Lowry said of the HHS contract: "We would have preferred that she told us, and we would have disclosed it in her bio."

"I don't like impugning anyone's integrity, but I really don't like being lied to," Dayton said in opposing Rice's nomination on the Senate floor. "Repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally."

Video

Senate Democrats said Tuesday that Condoleezza Ricelied to them, misled Americans about the Iraq war or served as an apologist for Bush administration failures in Iraq, but she remained on track for confirmation as secretary of state.

The Oscar nominations are out and predictably "The Passion of the Christ," was not nominated for the Best movie. I figured they would give it a few nods in technical categories in which they did, three to be exact(best make up. I guess the flesh tearing and blood dripping did look real) but of course that won’t be enough for the zealots. They need fodder for their cause. I can tell you that Jennifer Giroux's(video of her) crowd probably prayed awfully hard that "The Passion" didn’t get nominated no matter what they say so that they can have a pulpit to whine and complain about Hollywood’s Christian bias all the way up to Oscar night.

"I cannot find it in my heart or in my mind to vote for a promotion for Dr. Rice. Accountability is important Mr. President. I will vote no, and urge my colleagues to do the same."

William Devane plays James Heller, SOD in "24"

and

Donald Rumsfeld plays SOD in The White House.

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On Hardball today Chris Matthews asked Robert Redford:

Matthews: You were accused of saying that you were going to Ireland if Bush wins.

Redford: Yea, I think that came from O'Reilly. It wasn't true......I'm an American and I love it here and I'm not leaving because of some barking dog on T.V.

On Bill O'Reilly's The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day from 11/4/04

O'Reilly: There is a report in "The National Post" of Canada -- which I cannot verify -- that actor Robert Redford may leave the USA because President Bush was reelected. Redford is thinking about moving to Ireland, according to that newspaper, but I may physically try to stop him from do that. Bob, hey, go to Canada, France, Croatia, not Ireland. Anyway, Redford has been running far-left propaganda on his Sundance channel.

What's disturbing about O'Reilly's observation is that he hates anything Canadian. It was just a cheap shot on Bill's part to use an unverified "Canadian source " against Redford as a smear tactic against anything Hollywood. The kind O'Reilly supposedly loathes. The kind that O'Reilly always says he never partakes in. Verification is his mantra. It's his obligation to the "folks."