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CNN Oct. 18, 2009. Don Lemon's softball interview with Alberto Gonzales painting him as a "legal trailblazer". After what Gonzo did to the Department of Justice during his term there, the words "legal" and "trailblazer" are hardly what come to mind for me.

Although Lemon does ask Gonzales about the accusations against him, he allows him to claim that "a lot of what happened towards the end, I would say 98 percent was political" and that he's been cleared of any wrong doing.

Having the DOJ give you cover by not going after the higher ups on torture or some right wing extemist Cheney fixer judge dismissing a civil suit is not the same thing as investigations confirming someone's innocence. Everyone from the Congress to the current AG's office has dropped the ball on following through on investigating Gonzales and now the man is on the television claiming they did and cleared him and Don Lemon allows it. Astounding.

LEMON: So right here on this program we're profiling Latinos who overcame obstacles and shattered stereotypes to make history. It's part of our series "Pioneros: Latino Firsts." Tonight, the first Latino to become a U.S. attorney general. Alberto Gonzales. I met up with him in his new role on the campus of Texas Tech University.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON (voice-over): When last we saw Alberto Gonzales, he was wielding the power and influence that come with the title U.S. attorney general. Today he is in a new role on campus at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. A recruiter for minority and underrepresented students, and a visiting professor, teaching a course called Contemporary Issues in the Executive Branch.

Gonzales knows all about issues. He was pressured to resign after 2 1/2 years as George W. Bush's attorney general. Dogged by accusations he misused the Patriot Act to uncover private information on U.S. citizens, denied rights to prisoners held in U.S.-run detention camps and then lied to Congress about all of it.

(on camera): Is there something that you want people to know about that experience or what happened? Why you resigned?

ALBERTO GONZALES, FIRST LATINO U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think unfortunately because Washington can be political, a lot of what happened towards the end, I would say 98 percent was political. Quite frankly.

LEMON: Explain that. What do you mean?

GONZALES: Listen, you had members of Congress making allegations that I engage in perjury, criminal wrongdoing. And we now have these investigations that has been confirmed that none of that is true. But I think that for some people, it was an opportunity to perhaps embarrass the president by going after someone they perceived as close to the president.

Even to the end, President Bush fully supported you. How much did that help at all?

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The only thing shameful here is CNN pushing another "can't we all just get along" story and lumping Kanye West, Serena Williams and Rep. Joe Wilson into the same basket, as though all of these things are equal. See look everybody. There are some black people who behaved badly this week too. That and giving Lanny Davis a format to push his Civility Project. Isn't that special? It seems Lanny just wants everyone to get along and act nicely to each other. Heaven forbid we can't have any of that "in-civil" truth telling by the likes of Jimmy Carter.

Maybe he should heed some of his own advice. I think I just found where that "great conservative thinker" George Will got his talking point on This Week. Lanny Davis--Liberal McCarthyism: Bigotry and hate aren't just for right-wingers anymore. From back in 2006 when Lanny was telling all of the dirty f#$%ing hippies to leave poor Joe Lie-berman alone.

My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.

This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right wing--in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his tirades against "communists and their fellow travelers." The word "McCarthyism" became a red flag for liberals, signifying the far right's fascistic tactics of labeling anyone a "communist" or "socialist" who favored an active federal government to help the middle class and the poor, and to level the playing field.

I came to believe that we liberals couldn't possibly be so intolerant and hateful, because our ideology was famous for ACLU-type commitments to free speech, dissent and, especially, tolerance for those who differed with us. And in recent years--with the deadly combination of sanctimony and vitriol displayed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage--I held on to the view that the left was inherently more tolerant and less hateful than the right.

Yes... he actually wrote that. Some things never change, including Lanny Davis.

Transcript below the fold.

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David Sirota takes on Florida GOP Chairman and Obama school speech fear monger Jim Greer on Don Lemon's weekend show on CNN. This time the topic is the collective freak out by people at these Tea Bag protests now that the scary black man has been elected.

Sirota asks Greer where the protests were when Bush was trampling all over our constitution and running up the deficit and you've just got to love Greer's response here -- deflect and denial.

First Greer cites Bush's terrible poll numbers and tries to conflate the protests going on now to the people protesting the Iraq War, who as Sirota correctly points out were completely different protesters and not the people taking to the streets now.

After admitting that they are different people Greer tries to paint the Tea Baggers as just every day Americans from all political walks of life, and not the fringe right of the conservative movement.

Then Greer tries to pretend that race isn't part of the problem with these protesters, which Don Lemon calls him out for.

LEMON: David, what's happening here?

SIROTA: Well, again, I think that there's a segment of the population that does not want to accept President Obama as a legitimate president. And I think that you can tell that this is really a partisan lynch mob by understanding that these people were not out making the exact same criticism of President Bush. Where were the people who were worried about the constitution when President Bush trampled the constitution with the Patriot Act? Where were these people talking about government spending when President Bush inflated the deficit to record proportions?

LEMON: Jim, that's a good question.

SIROTA: Where were they?

GREER: Well, I think you saw where they were when the polls showed that unfortunately from a Republican standpoint, President Bush was down in the 20s. I mean, the American public -

SIROTA: Where were the protests?

GREER: Well, you know, there were people protesting President Bush because I saw them quite often as I traveled the country.

SIROTA: Do you think conservative tea partiers are protesting --

LEMON: I do have to say no that people did protest the Iraq war. I saw a lot of that. I covered a lot of it.

GREER: A lot of that.

LEMON: People said they had pictures of President Bush. They hung things of him in effigy. They put it in on fire, lit them on fire. So there were things, but they were protesting a war, and that they were looking for evidence that never turned up. So it's kind of a different thing, but he was protested.

SIROTA: Those are different protesters.

GREER: Where we are today --

Well, they may be different protesters, but you asked me, where were they? And there were people protesting President Bush. Where we are today, Don, David, is that this administration has tried to radically change the role of government in our daily lives and the role of government in major industries that have made this country great. And that is why Americans, not just Republicans, but Americans are frustrated. They can't get answers to their questions. They're concerned about President Obama's views of what America should look like today and what it will look like in the future. And they just reject that. And they're angry. They're frustrated because it's not the America that they brought up to have great respect for, and they're concerned.

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Tim Wise asks when the Republican Party is going to reject the racist rhetoric and dog-whistle politics coming from the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other right wing radio and television hosts. Don Lemon asks him if they are aware that they are doing it or not and as Wise notes, it doesn't matter. They still need to be held accountable for their actions and the predictable outcomes of those actions.

Don Lemon should have known better than to have even asked that question. Of course they are fully aware of what they are doing. It is exactly what they are being paid very highly to do which is to deligitimize our President in the hopes of taking him down because he has a "D" behind his name. They did the same thing to Bill Clinton even though he could have just as well been a Republican with the way he governed, and they're doing it again to Barack Obama. The GOP has been playing the same games with the dog-whistle politics and race baiting for ages now. So to answer Wise's question about when are they going to reject stoking that racism. Never. Never, ever as long as it wins them elections.

LEMON: OK. So we are going to continue our discussion now over the health care rallies and the tone of what's going on in the country. Tim Wise joins us. He's frequent here on the show. The author of "Between Barack and a Hard Place" and among the most prominent anti- racist activist in the country. Thank you, sir. Always good to see you.

TIM WISE, AUTHOR "BETWEEN Barack AND A HARD PLACE": You, too.

LEMON: You heard the chairman from Florida say no, it is not race.

WISE: I did.

LEMON: It does a disservice. You heard David Sirota say it is the elephant in the room.

WISE: Right. Well like I said in the show before, it is the background noise of a lot of the opposition, not all of it but a lot of it. You know, when you have someone like Glen Beck saying as he did about a month ago that the health care debate isn't really about that. It is just reparations for black people, where you have Rush Limbaugh yesterday on the air saying first that community service is the first step towards fascism, which is bizarre even for him.

And then almost immediately after that saying one of the problems with America is too much multi culturalism. You wouldn't say that unless you are trying to stoke white racial resentment. And so when you say those things, I want to know when are Republican leaders going to condemn that kind of rhetoric because that is where race is being interjected. It is interjected by us, it's interested by the leading talk show hosts in this country.

LEMON: I mean, but is it knowingly or is it maybe unwittingly they're doing it and maybe they don't realize they are doing it.

WISE: Well, two things, it may be either or but it doesn't matter. I mean, racism needs to be evaluated based on outcome. If you do something which has a predictable consequence, you have to be accountable for that consequence. So for example, when Glen Beck lied and said that Van Jones was involved in the Los Angeles riots which was not true. That is a very clear, as David said, dog whistle politic moment.

You're saying that because you know that the L.A. riots are viewed as this racialized rebellion and it scares white folks to death. So you say that about this man. It isn't true. Glenn Beck had to know that wasn't true. That is a way to scare white folks. Where race comes in, it is old fashion but it's white racial resentment that they are trying to whip up.

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(video courtesy of Think Progress)

CNN's Don Lemon interviewed two astroturf town hall protesters in Atlanta Monday, and when one of them claimed that no "real Americans" spoke at Obama's town hall meetings, Don shut him down instantly -- and didn't let up:

Lemon:...At least the president is trying to reform health care, so where did the outrage suddenly come from?

Hardage: Don, this is the second town hall he's done in the last week that I actually saw real Americans get up and ask questions, it wasn't a pre-selected group or a -

Lemon: Hang on, before you do that - Real Americans - that's another term that sets people off. We're ALL real Americans, everybody.

Hardage: Anybody can get in, anybody can ask questions, you've seen a completely different tenor in the town hall he held on Tuesday and today than townhalls we've been seeing so far in this debate. That's what I mean by real Americans.

Lemon: You know what, that whole real Americans thing, can we lose that real Americans? Because everybody in the country who is a citizen is a real American. We're all real Americans and that's part of the issue that really sets people off and divides people, so let's get rid of that "real American." I'm a real American, you're a real American, conservative, liberals, independents, we're all real Americans."

How refreshing to see on a corporate news channel.

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Lynn Sweet apparently doesn't know the difference between a community organizer and these corporate funded astroturf organizations trying to distort the conversation on health care reform. I do agree with her that the White House has done a lousy job of explaining just what they want in this health care bill though. The media isn't helping matters either when you have conversations like this going on.

LEMON: CNN political editor Mark Preston, Lynn Sweet from the "Chicago Sun-Times" and PoliticsDaily.com, both join me to help sort it all out. We're glad that Lynn is back. She's been on vacation.

Good to see you, Lynn.

And you know, the president has been spared the public heckling over this health care reform, everything that we've been seeing at the town halls. But, Mark, you know, the more he holds these town hall meetings himself, which he will do another one on Wednesday, the more he opens himself up to the chances that he's going to see this and hear it personally.

PRESTON: Yes, Don. I mean, look, the protests up to this point really have been organized. We've seen these interest groups have really gotten their supporters riled up and convincing them to go to these town halls.

But you're absolutely right. President Obama, when he starts to do these town halls across the country, is going to face the same thing. He's going to face supporters, of course, who are going to be -- you know, backing him in this health care plan. But he's also going to face those angry voices, those angry faces that we've seen so far.

LEMON: And, Lynn, you know, the White House had tried to play it down, but are they changing their tune now? They had called it -- what I believe it was Astroturf or something like that.

SWEET: Oh, please, give me a break. All of a sudden orchestrating, community organizing, organizing people to come out, orchestrating is a dirty word, Don?

The Democrats are divided even among themselves. You know, there's a difference between having an unruly group of people, that's one thing, and saying that you're turning out people. That's just a ridiculous thing. I hope the White House is able just to explain the many policies and concepts within a complicated bill in simpler ways, so if they have a story to tell, it is upon them and the president to tell it, too.

But on the other hand, I don't think the Democrats are that unhappy because this helps them organize. And it helps them -- helps them show the House members, who, they are afraid, will get nervous and shaky and lose their nerve. They're going to try and bring in their troops during this August recess to show that they can bolster them and keep them.

Look, I just got an e-mail even from Eleanor Holmes -- to go to the office of Eleanor Holmes Norton in the district, and she doesn't even have a vote.

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CNN's Don Lemon talked to David Sirota and Leonard Pitts about the decline of the newspaper industry in the United States. While I think it was a good discussion and agree with the majority of what was said in it, I'd have to take Don Lemon to task for this statement:

LEMON: If you look at blogs and all of the things, most of the stuff is gotten from newspapers anyway. The other things that -- usually the things that don't come from newspapers turn out not to be on the factual side once it's on the Internet.

While it is true there's a lot of junk out there, that's a pretty broad statement from Lemon and simply not based on facts. For instance, TPM is doing original reporting online, including some real investigative journalism, and Bradblog has been investigating voter fraud and doing original reporting and digging into matters the mainstream media won't cover for some time now. That's just two that immediately come to mind. While I agree that we won't see anything on the Internet that can take the place of the local investigative journalism that our newspapers provide, you can't say that everything that's not from a newspaper online isn't factual.

Full transcript below the fold.

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Don Lemon talks to Reid Wilson and Lynn Sweet about the CD distributed by Chip Saltsman which included the Barack the Magic Negro song. The absolute tone deafness out of Saltsman is pretty astounding given that the GOP pretends that they would like to figure out how to improve race relations within their ranks and with voters and become more inclusive. This just set them back a step as noted by Wilson and Sweet. If they want be the party that embraces Rush Limbaugh and his racist "jokes" I look forward to them continuing to shrink those red spots on the electoral map until there's little or nothing left of them.

Over at MSNBC another African American news anchor, Tamron Hall, was not quite as reserved as Don Lemon on CNN with her criticism of the CD and portraying it as a "parody". She let conservative pundit Kate Obershain know just how listening to this garbage made her feel as reported by Think Progress.

Full transcript and video of Hall from Think Progress below the fold.

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