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Bill O'Reilly was helping lead the chorus of whining that erupted on Fox News yesterday in response to Anita Dunn speaking the truth about their right-wing propaganda operation.

He opened with a Talking Points Memo segment attacking Dunn and the White House. He wrapped it up with a series of claims that could only have been uttered by someone who's pathologically delusional:

Finally, Ms. Dunn is seeing the world through the prism of the other media, like NBC News and CNN. By all accounts, those networks favored Barack Obama over John McCain, and NBC actually promoted the president's candidacy and continues to give him excellent coverage.

So by that measure, Fox News is indeed troublesome to the White House. But our hard news coverage is fair and balanced. Again, if somebody doesn't believe that, let's see the evidence because bloviating walks.

Oy. Where to begin. Over the years, there's been a mountain of evidence amassed -- both here at C&L as well as such sites as Media Matters and ThinkProgress -- demonstrating Fox News' extraordinary right-wing bias, and its utter lack of anything approaching fairness or balance. Indeed, Fox's adoption of the phrase "fair and balanced" has transformed it into a popular reference to up-is-down Newspeak.

The fact that O'Reilly blithely dismisses this mountain as the product of a "far left bias" by those groups is itself clear evidence of his own bias: It's clear he a priori dismisses any facts produced by such groups, regardless of their actual validity.

O'Reilly wants evidence of an utter lack of "fairness and balance"? OK, let's try a single sample out of that mountain: Griff Jenkins' reportage from the "Tea Party Express" in which he not only blatantly led the teabaggers in their anti-Obama chants, but where a Fox producer was caught exhorting the crowds to cheer.

Of course, O'Reilly will never accept such evidence simply because it disproves his claim. Yeh, that's the Fox brand of "fair and balanced."

But O'Reilly really severed any tie with reality in the following part of the segment, where he talked over the White House meanies with fellow Foxite Brit Hume. Reaching his apotheosis when the subject of Fox's treatment of George W. Bush came up, O'Reilly claimed:

O'Reilly: And I have to say that when President Bush was in trouble in Iraq, this network and this program, and your program as well, routinely, routinely hammered President Bush. On Iraq.

Hume: Well, we certainly -- we, we were very faithful about covering all the bad news that came out of Iraq for a very long period of time. The criticisms that were made of him were reported and discussed at length on Fox News. Um, now, he had his defenders, the war had its defenders, there was commentary on Fox --

O'Reilly: But there was no cheerleading -- There was no cheerleading of President Bush on this network when his administration ran into trouble. There was no cheerleading, you know -- it was skeptical coverage, Iraq's going south, when the economy started to wobble last September, we were right on that.

OK, done with that long belly laugh? Good. Because we all remember how Fox not only fawned over every move made by the Bush administration, but how it viciously attacked anyone who dared criticize Bush or Dick Cheney or their incompetent gang of cronies.

Recall how it attacked war critics as the situation worsened in Iraq? (It also transformed proponents of the war into "critics" when it became convenient to do so.) How it openly cheerled for Gen. Petraeus?

Remember how O'Reilly routinely attacked anyone who criticized the Bush torture regime?

Then there was the way O'Reilly consistently dismissed the Abu Ghraib scandal as unimportant.

Remember how it routinely attacked Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, and sturdily defended Scooter Libby?

And those are just a few examples of how Fox didn't merely cheerlead for the Bush administration, but also acted as its propaganda arm by viciously attacking its critics. And there's no shortage of evidence of that reality at all.

You know, I usually have sympathy for anyone in this position but I'm having trouble tapping into the empathy for this bunch:

The jobless rate is hanging high -- for many of the roughly 3,000 political appointees who served President George W. Bush. Finding work has proved a far tougher task than those appointees expected.

"This is not a great time for anyone to be job hunting, including numerous former political appointees," said Carlos M. Gutierrez, Mr. Bush's commerce secretary. Previously chief executive of cereal maker Kellogg Co., he hopes to run a company again because "I have a lot of energy."

Only 25% to 30% of ex-Bush officials seeking full-time jobs have succeeded, estimated Eric Vautour, a Washington recruiter at Russell Reynolds Associates Inc. That "is much, much worse" than when Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton left the White House, he said. At least half those presidents' senior staffers landed employment within a month after the administration ended, Mr. Vautour recalled.

A handful of Bush cabinet officers have accepted academic appointments. Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson joined Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies as a fellow. Condoleezza Rice, previously secretary of state, resumed her Stanford University roles as a political-science professor and senior fellow at its Hoover Institution think tank.

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I have never been one of those who saw Barack Obama with blinders on, projecting all my best liberal hopes upon him. However, that said, I will say that just days from his inaugural, it is heartbreaking to my liberal soul to see Obama become so deeply embedded into the Beltway Bubble crowd that he can validate all the logical fallacies that have had so many of us beating our head against the wall for the last eight years.

For example, in a discussion of the War on Terror and what measures must be taken to "keep the country safe," Obama tells host George Stephanopoulos that he appreciates Cheney's advice to not judge the Bush administration's action without the full knowledge of what has taken place, a strange challenge from the most malevolently secretive executive this country has seen, though one not completely ignored by Obama:

"I think that was pretty good advice, which is I should know what’s going on before we make judgments and that we shouldn’t be making judgments on the basis of incomplete information or campaign rhetoric," Obama said. "So, I’ve got no problem with that particular quote. I think if Vice President Cheney were here, he and I would have some significant disagreements on some things that we know happened."

Now, I wish I could be as post-partisan as Obama, because my inclination is to retort back that taking Cheney's advice on how to keep the country safe would be a little like taking Bernie Madoff's advice on my 401k. Maybe that's why public office isn't really my forte. More troubling though is Obama's hedging on items that the country has said definitively they want him to work on--like closing Gitmo.

"It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize," [..].

"We are going to get it done but part of the challenge that you have is that you have a bunch of folks that have been detained, many of whom may be very dangerous, who have not been put on trial or have not gone through some adjudication. And some of the evidence against them may be tainted even though it’s true," Obama said.

"And so how to balance creating a process that adheres to rule of law, habeas corpus, basic principles of Anglo-American legal system, by doing it in a way that doesn’t result in releasing people who are intent on blowing us up. That’s a challenge."

Really? Intent on blowing us up? Let me explain something: if you held me for over five years without charge or basic judicial rights, I'd want to blow you up too. Hell, I'd like it if you stop trying to feed me through my nose. It's not that complicated. If they're dangerous, try them. By holding them without charges or trials, WE'RE ACTUALLY MAKING US LESS SAFE, because we are confirming every bad thing the global community thinks about how the US considers itself above the law.

And finally, Stephanopoulos brings up Bob Fertik's (of Democrats.com and Change.org) campaign to get the Obama administration to commit to investigating the Bush administration for their abuse of office. While not a definitive "no" like Pelosi, et al., Obama is clearly hedging his bets:

We’re still evaluating how we’re going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions, and so forth…And obviously we’re going to be looking at past practices. I don’t believe that anybody is above the law.

I realize there's a danger in saying too much before the inauguration (and while Bush can still issue pardons), but I find it disheartening that the "Change We Can Believe In" does not include accountability. The whole notion that we shouldn't look back is ridiculous, even when Reid and Pelosi used it. Our whole notion of criminal justice is all about looking back. Unless of course, we've developed some sort of "Minority Report"-like ability to charge people with crimes before they commit them.

(h/t Heather)

Not so much fun when the tables are turned, is it Andy?

At the America Small Business Summit 2008, former Bush White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card laments what the potential abuses Democrats might commit if they hold the majority in both houses of Congress and the White House. Funny how that didn't seem to be an issue when the Republicans were in charge.

But I worry, if we have a president that gets elected with significant momentum and his or her party is sharing the possibility of running Congress with overwhelming majorities that there would be a rush to do stupid things in the first hundred days. And the first hundred days could produce a lot of mistakes that would take years and years to undo. So that’s something I think we should be cautious about or thinking about. Not just who the next president is, but what will our government look like when they take the direction that the president has to offer. I actually kind of like having a deliberative process in the House and the Senate that causes people to work really hard to get legislation passed to change some of the things happening in our economy. It’s good and it’s bad. It’s frustrating when it doesn’t happen on the good side fast enough, but sometimes, it’s a blessing when bad things don’t happen because we woke up to recognize the consequence of the action.

Hypocrisy, thy name is Republican.

We can dream, can't we?

TIME:

You could say the same thing lately for Fox News Channel itself. Fox hasn't gone soft, but from watching its coverage lately, I get a sense that the haven for conservative hosts, and viewers alienated by liberal news, needs to figure out its next act. Fox News is not simply a mouthpiece for the Bush White House: it rose with Bush after 2000 and 9/11, was played on TVs in his White House and reflected the same surety and flag-lapel-pin confidence in its tone and star-spangled look. It was not just a hit; it was the network of the moment.

Now, with two Democrats locked in what seems like a general-election campaign and lame-duck Bush fading from the headlines, it has to figure out how not to seem like yesterday's news. At times recently, the network has appeared uncertain about its focus. Its primary-night coverage has felt staid and listless. Sometimes it has gone tabloid with celebrity-news, true-crime and scandal stories (WEBSITES POSTING SEXY PICS LIFTED FROM FACEBOOK). At other times it has retreated into a kind of war-on-terrorism news-talgia, playing up threatening chatter and new missives from al-Qaeda leaders while its rivals are doing the election 24/7; flipping to Fox can feel like time-traveling to 2002.

Editor&Publisher: Finally! The MSM will grudgingly report that St. McCain actively sought and accepted the endorsement of a couple old pals of the Bush White House. This minister is anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, and wants war with Iran now. The sainted solon has dubbed the other radical cleric a "spiritual guide." Neither, however, is a scary black man.

The Largest Minority: Exxon loses Venezuelan asset freeze and ordered to pay compensation.

Shakesville: Women's and children's issues don't count

Danger Room: Counting the dead in Iraq

Voice Your Choice in the Corporate Hall of Shame 2008. This year's nominees made headlines for breaking the law, influencing elected officials, undermining democratic decision-making and outright endangering the environment and public health.

Following up on an item from yesterday, the White House officially made a ridiculous argument about officials' missing emails.

The White House is currently under fire for allegations that it violated the Presidential Records Act by failing to archive official e-mails. Facing a court order, the White House yesterday acknowledged that it recycled its “backup computer tapes of e-mail before October 2003,” raising the possibility that many messages “have been taped over and are gone forever.”

Yet when asked about the missing e-mails in today’s White House press briefing, spokesman Tony Fratto inexplicably tried to claim that the White House has “absolutely no reason to believe that any e-mails are missing.” He argued that these scurrilous charges of missing e-mails “came from outside the White House.”

Fortunately, we have Henry Waxman to set the record straight.

The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary of an internal White House study that was disclosed yesterday by a congressional Democrat.

The 2005 study -- whose credibility the White House attacked this week -- identified 473 separate days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices, said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).

Did Fratto not realize he'd be called on such a blatant falsehood? Or does the Bush White House simply no longer care?

We learned earlier this year that most of the Bush White House’s senior staff, in blatant violation of the Presidential Records Act, sidestepped an internal email system, preferring to use private accounts provided by the Republican National Committee. Those thousands of emails, which included government business, are still missing after having been “accidentally” deleted.

As it turns out, that’s only one of two serious problems the Bush gang has in maintaining their electronic records. In an entirely different set of missing emails, however, we’re seeing quite a bit of movement this week. Dan Froomkin explains:

Why is it taking White House officials so long to restore millions of deleted e-mails from the backup tapes they claim to have?

The e-mails in question date from March 2003 to October 2005 — a crucial period that includes the Iraq invasion, a presidential election and Hurricane Katrina.

White House officials have known for more than two years that the messages were deleted — a clear violation of presidential records-preservation statutes. But the president’s aides won’t explain what happened, what sort of backups they have and what they’re doing about it.

When Congress asked about the 5 million missing emails, a White House lawyer suggested an outside IT contractor was responsible. The response appeared almost humorous, given that no such IT contractor exists.

Yesterday, in response to a lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a federal judge disappointed the Bush gang terribly with a major court order.

Not only has the Bush White House strongly resisted a bipartisan congressional effort to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Plan to include 4 million uninsured American children, now our “compassionate conservative” president is forcing states to limit access for kids, too.

The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families. [...]

After learning of the new policy, some state officials said yesterday that it could cripple their efforts to cover more children and would impose standards that could not be met.

“We are horrified at the new federal policy,” said Ann Clemency Kohler, deputy commissioner of human services in New Jersey. “It will cause havoc with our program and could jeopardize coverage for thousands of children.”

Apparently, that doesn’t matter. For Bush, it doesn’t matter that more U.S. children would go without healthcare; it doesn’t even matter that this latest effort would impose burdensome regulations from the federal government on states (some of which are run by Republican governors) who want to do more on their own to expand healthcare access. What matters is Bush’s philosophical resistance to a popular government program that offers uninsured children a chance.

Apparently, when you’re a failed, lame-duck president with a Nixon-like approval rating, rigid ideology is all you have left.

Call the waahhhbbuulllance! The Douchebag of Liberty isn't part of the cool kids anymore and he doesn't like it.

ThinkProgress:

In a radio interview with Diane Rehm this morning, right-wing columnist Robert Novak tried to assert his conservative credentials by distancing himself from the Bush White House. "I don't support this administration," he said.

"The president's cut me off the list of conservative columnists that are invited there." He added, "They consider me a lot of trouble."

It would be unsurprising if the White House considered Novak "trouble," given his unscrupulous journalistic ethics. But nothing in Novak's previous comments has suggested anything but a close relationship with the White House. Just recently, he said he "never enjoyed such a good source inside the White House" as Karl Rove.

It appears Novak is simply sour over the fact he wasn't given a 110-minute sit-down interview with President Bush like his counterpart at the New York Times, David Brooks.

Audio of the Diane Rehm interview available at TP.