I don't think I've ever watched a more enjoyable hour with Beck in all my years blogging. I have to hand it to a somewhat unbalanced Eric Massa. I was deeply concerned about him, based on the changing stories and what appeared to be angry lashing out at the White House. But Beck saw that and thought, "Jackpot!", betting his entire hour that Massa would give him the ammunition he needed to once more condemn the Maoists/Communists/Fascists/evil-doers (pick your ism) in the White House.

Talk about rolling craps.

While Beck shook his head in disbelief and repeatedly demanded in his best McCarthyite gravitas for Massa to name names, Massa refused to give the payout he was looking for. Massa admitted guilt, took responsibility and repeatedly said that the best thing for people to do was to participate in the electoral process and try to bring around campaign finance reform. Time:

Massa had come on Fox to out-Beck Glenn Beck. Armed with the very same weapons — a deep sense of victimhood, outrage at the powers that be and remarkable personal candor — the Representative delivered a dizzying confessional. [..]

Beck, who is used to controlling the gravitational force of victimhood around him, kept interrupting to point out that he was a bigger target of even greater forces than Massa. "I have two unauthorized biographies coming out against me in the spring," Beck said at one point. Minutes later, Beck went even further. "Do you realize my family is at stake?" he said. "You've got a little scandal with your children in college. I've got one for all time now, because I am not going to resign. I'm not going to back down. I have come to a place where I believe at some point the system will destroy me."

But Beck could not compete with the oddity of the sympathy card Massa kept pulling. He appeared frustrated that Massa wasn't revealing any more sinister plots afoot in the nation's capital, and he got visibly annoyed when Massa tried to take some measure of responsibility for his actions and attempted to walk back some of his more heated rhetoric against White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

And to make things worse, when Massa turned from discussing his own woes to the machinations of Washington, he offered ideas that have no place in Fox News's tightly regulated framework. Massa suggested that Beck and other Americans demand "campaign finance reform" to curb the corruption on Capitol Hill. Beck, who has called such proposals a "huge mistake," put his hand over his mouth, as if he were holding back an upset stomach. Massa, who has opposed Obama's health reform because it is not liberal enough, told Beck that he should stop calling people names like "socialist" and "communist." "You can be a progressive and be a fiscal conservative," Massa then explained, as Beck lost control of his own program.

I can't tell you how tickled I was watching Beck get more and more deflated as the hour went on, finally resulting in apologizing to his audience for wasting their time. And it was laughable when he turned the interview into a chance to promote his own victim hood while never mentioning that Beck made 23 million dollars last year.

Beck: "I believe at some point the system will destroy me."

Looks like the system is being kind to the man who describes himself as a Rodeo clown, wouldn't you say?

The sad part is that Beck DID waste his viewers' time, but not in the way that he thought. He was so blinded by his hatred of the administration, so focused on his witch hunts that he completely missed that he had an exclusive interview with a former congressperson who resigned due to a litany of ever changing reasons and his inability to get past the all-encompassing need to raise money as a politician and his frustration with campaign financing. The rest of the media will focus on the salacious details of his ethics investigation and miss it too.

But Massa is 100% right. The best way to end corruption in DC is campaign finance reform, and that's an area that all of us, from the nuttiest tea-bagger to the dirtiest liberal hippie can support. But Beck didn't want to hear about real problems or real ways to make things better in this country.

I really don't know what's going on with Eric Massa, but I'm concerned about him. In the space of less than two weeks, we hear news that he's will not seek re-election because of a recurrence of cancer, then we hear that he's under the cloud of an ethics investigation for sexual harassment (which he at the time termed for "salty language"). Then he decides to resign altogether from the House, claiming he's being pushed out by his fellow Democrats because of his vote on the health care reform, most notably in a odd (and naked) confrontation with Rahm Emanuel.

I don't really want to get into the prurient details of the ethics investigation or the allegations that came out today. I don't really care about Massa's sexuality one way or the other. He's sponsored no anti-gay legislation; in fact, he's been at the forefront of repealing DADT. So as far as I'm concerned, there's no hypocrisy there, as there is with Roy Ashburn. Howie Klein has written an account on both politicians, putting it into the context of his own experiences, and I don't think I could state it better.

But what I am concerned about is that Massa--clearly reeling and hurting and lashing out--has agreed to appear for the whole hour on Glenn Beck to condemn the Democratic Party.

I'm not sure if Massa is aware of how much disdain Glenn Beck holds him in, comparing him to a terrorist this morning:

And Beck isn't the only one:

Conservatives are already turning on Massa in advance of the Beck interview. Michelle Malkin trashed Beck on his own radio show Tuesday for asking Massa on, while Rush Limbaugh dismissed Massa as a no-name "kook" on his broadcast Tuesday, warning, "Anybody who embraces this guy is going to get caught."

This is kind of strange, isn't it? I mean, he says he's resigning over his language? I know lots of people who work on the Hill and believe me, there are a lot of congress members who are verbally abusive to their staff. We have lots of Republicans guilty of far worse (*cough Mitch McConnell cough*), yet all they have to do is clutch Jesus to their bosoms, smile into the TV cameras and deny, deny, deny. It's a puzzle.

I'll give Massa credit for this: at least he admitted he was guilty. (Unlike almost every Republican Congress member accused of, well, anything.) On the other hand, this means the progressive Eric Massa's "no" vote on the healthcare bill (he was holding out for the public option) not only goes away, it means Nancy Pelosi needs one less vote to pass the admittedly half-assed Senate bill:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- New York Democratic Rep. Eric Massa, facing a harassment complaint by a male staffer, said Friday that he is stepping down from his seat with "a profound sense of failure."

"I am guilty," Massa said in an interview with a Corning, N.Y., newspaper columnist.

Later in the day, Massa released a statement saying that after discovering he had a recurrence of cancer, he learned he was the subject of an ethics complaint by a male staffer who felt "uncomfortable" during an exchange with Massa. The exchange reportedly had sexual overtones.

"I will resign my position," Massa said in the statement.

"There is no doubt in my mind that I did in fact, use language in the privacy of my own home and in my inner office that, after 24 years in the Navy, might make a chief petty officer feel uncomfortable," Massa added. "In fact, there is no doubt that this ethics issue is my fault and mine alone."

Earlier Friday, a visibly upset Massa said he didn't want to put his family through an ethics committee investigation.

"It would tear us apart," Massa said, according to Joe Dunning, a columnist for The Leader newspaper. "It's not that I can fight or beat these allegations, I'm guilty."

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Rep. Eric Massa has been on fire lately. First he took down Dick Cheney with a fabulous moment on MSNBC and now he's going after yet another odious one.

I asked him if he would comment on C&L about the way Jim DeMint has been disgracing the halls of Congress with his outrageous behavior over national security and he stepped up to the plate and made an exclusive video just for us.

Massa: Let me be very clear. When Senator Jim DeMint personally and individually kept the appointed director of the Transportation Security Agency from being able to not only have a fair hearing and actually received that appointment, he placed the traveling American public at increased physical risk to terrorist attacks. And now that he's showing an incredible amount of cowardice by first denying that he ever did it and by nuancing that this is all about collective bargaining. He is demonstrating the kind of partisan destruction of our homeland security policies that is simply not accessible and so I call Jim DeMint out.

I'll debate him anywhere, anytime because I know what's he's doing. For him to insult the American public by saying that somehow collective bargaining will place us at greater risk is literally, is literally to denounce the services of great organizations as the NY Fire Department and the NY City police department who, when the towers were burning didn't think about collective bargaining, but ran in when others were running out.

So shame on you Jim DeMint. You are non deserving of the title that you have been given and you are not deserving the responsibilities that you must exercise for the protection of the American people. And I'm calling you out.

DeMint has been playing politics with our air travel security and it's as Eric Massa clearly states---"Shameful." Does Jim DeMint have the guts to stand up to Eric Massa and debate him on any show he wants?

Republicans have targeted Massa and he's up against a multimillionaire self-funder. If you can help this courageous American hero, please contribute to his re-election campaign here.

Howie Klein has some great background information on Jim DeMint:

South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint was born in Greenville in September, 1951. Eight years later, September, 1959, Eric Massa was born in Charleston. Two sons of South Carolina-- but on very different tracks. The son of a career naval officer, Eric Massa's life has been dedicated to serving his country. Long before being elected as the congressman from an Upstate New York district, he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis and then served in the U.S. Navy for 24 years, wrapping up a distinguished military career as aide to NATO Supreme Allied Commander, General Wesley Clark. He ran fro office as a staunch supporter of working families, particularly in regard to universal health coverage and the kind of FAIR trade that encourages domestic job growth, rather than the misnamed "free trade" that has seen millions of good-paying American jobs shipped overseas.

DeMint is the product of a tragic divorce and a hellish religious education. Though a right-wing hawk, he carefully avoided the Vietnam War and military service and, after college and its many deferments, went to work doing marketing research, starting his own firm and always known to be in pursuit of financial advancement. He ran for Congress on a platform extolling greed, selfishness, bigotry and elitism.

Now in the U.S. Senate, DeMint is the leader of the obstructionist bloc that has formed around the idea of doing everything in their power to hinder the normal functioning of government in the hope of sabotaging Obama's presidency.

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Blue America's Rep. Eric Massa went on the House floor and made an impassioned call to end the Afghanistan war.

Massa: Enough is enough. It is time to bring our troops home. More than any other issue that I have studied, sought counsel on and drawn from my own life's experience for my own guidance since becoming a member of the United State's Congress, the expansion of the war in Afghanistan has drawn my late night focus. There in the quiet of the office, I have arrived at the inevitable conclusion that the deployment of additional troops in Afghanistan and the continuation of this conflict is not in the best interests of our nation and is in fact in on a par with the potential error of the size of our initial invasion in Iraq.

Eric Massa writes:

Last night, November 4th, I spoke on the floor of the House of Representatives to mark the 2,950th day of the war in Afghanistan and formalized my call to draw this conflict to a conclusion. As a freshman member of Congress that served in the United States Navy for 24 years, it has been my honor to serve on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee, and because of my background and experience, I think it's my duty to speak out on this issue.

To date, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, the American taxpayer has spent or committed $300,000,000,000 to fund this war. That breaks down to:

• $101,694,915.25 per day for 2,950 days;

• $986.84 per person since our population is roughly 304 million;

• $3,947.36 for each American family of four.

And the greatest cost of this war is of course the 912 American troops killed, and 4,198 wounded. This of course does not include the thousands of internal wounds that our troops must bear for the rest of their lives.

My fellow Americans, the time to bring this war to a conclusion is now and we must stand with a clear voice and demand it. The war in Afghanistan has lasted five times longer than World War I and twice as long as World War II. When 1/3 of Hamid Karzai's ballots were thrown out for voting fraud and Abdullah Abdullah declined the runoff election due to the rampant corruption in the system, the world saw what we already knew - it is simply impossible to impose a democracy on a nation that does not want it.

If you can---please donate a few bucks to Blue America's "No Means No!" act blue page where you will find Eric Massa's name added to the list of those that are standing up to end the occupation in Afghanistan.

We're proposing that netroots donors consider rewarding this good behavior by donating to the re-election campaigns of these members who have already done something very politically difficult by breaking with their own president on a national security issue.

If terrorist threats to our Nation reemerge from Afghanistan, we will strike, but we are not an occupying force

.

If America wasn't bogged down in the two misguided George Bush wars, all the money that we've spent there could easily pay for health insurance reform for all Americans each year. Afghanistan is a country that has never had a central government, and to try and force one down their throats is never going to work.

(Continuing the discussion by CSPANJunkie and Susie Madrak)

Candy Crowley at CNN has to be called out for a special mark of shame as she suggests that one "could argue one way or the other" as to whether the House of Representative's debate on the US government's need to remain in Afghanistan is as important a story to cover as the Eric Massa scandal. This comment came about because Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) criticized the lack of media coverage during a recent debate in the House regarding a resolution to pull out of Afghanistan. The resolution failed, but that's not the point. It's beyond shameful that a CNN reporter of Crowley's stature would even think that chasing a political sex scandal (which happens now, what, every other month?) is anywhere near the level of importance compared to Congress actually debating the future role of US forces in the Middle East.

I liked Kennedy's impassioned speech (at the first link):

And make no mistake about it, this isn't about national security. Because if it's about national security, it's about whether we put our treasure and our lives on the line in Afghanistan, or whether we put it in Kuwait, or whether we put it in the Sudan, or whether we put it in some other place in the world.

All of which is where we need it. Where do we need it the most? That should be the question. Because we don't have the resources to put it everywhere. So don't come and tell me "our national security requires [us to be] in Afghanistan." Because that's not the only place we need it. The question is, where our priorities should be. And you take it from one place, you got to put it somewhere else.

I've heard Andrew Bacevich make a similar speech, and it's right on target. Okay, so Kennedy got a little excited during his speech. He's a young guy, he'll get better 16-year veteran of the House and leaving soon. But this gives me the excuse to link to this great InkSpot post about a debate between Paul Pillar and John Nagl about the future of US forces in Afghanistan, in particular to address the issue of counterterrorism. Says Pillar:

It would be fruitless to search the contours of current international terrorism for a compelling explanation of why the United States is escalating a military campaign in Afghanistan. Clearly there is a disconnect between where war is being waged and where terrorism is rearing its ugly head. The appropriate response is not to run off, guns blazing, to find new battlefields, be they in Yemen or anywhere else. The U.S. military, pressing the limits of sustainability and winding up one war while slowly winding down another, does not have the resources to open a new front in every territory that may become associated with terrorism. There is no shortage of such places.

Regardless of the available resources, it is a mistake to think of counterterrorism primarily, as Americans have become wont to do, as the application of military force to particular pieces of real estate. This pattern of thinking is rooted in a history in which the vanquishing of threats to U.S. security has consisted chiefly of armed expeditions to conquer or liberate foreign territory. The pattern has been exacerbated by the unfortunate “war on terror” terminology, which confuses and conflates the seriousness of, the nature of and the means used to counter the threat.

The strength of a terrorist adversary, al-Qaeda or any other, does not correlate with control of a piece of territory in Afghanistan or elsewhere. If a terrorist group has a physical safe haven available, it will use it. But of all the assets that make a group a threat—including ideological appeal and a supply of already-radicalized recruits—occupation of acreage is one of the least important. Past terrorist attacks, including 9/11 (most of the preparations for which took place in scattered locations in the West), demonstrate this.

That last paragraph, in particular, is important. Military operations aimed at nation-building, no matter how successful, are not going to stop continued operations by transnational terrorists because they have no state. In this day and age of global economics, global information flow, global transportation, it's beyond stupid to stubbornly stick to the notion that "if we fail in Afghanistan, al Qaeda will flourish." They're already flourishing, adapting, moving around. They don't need Afghanistan as a base of operations, it's actually their training ground.

It's great to hear that there are people in Congress willing to have this debate, because (in theory at least) Congress is supposed to oversee the responsible funding of defense issues. Rep. Kennedy and Paul Pillar represent the views that I wanted President Obama to share, but of course, there are too many chickenshit Democrats out there who are afraid to make the right decisions out of fear that the Republicans will call them out as "weak on security." But to come full circle, I have even less respect for the national media - and CNN in particular - for their ambulance-chasing, sex-scandal stories having priority over issues of national importance.