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The meme had been brewing for a few days among some of the Fox News guests -- particularly Michelle Malkin -- brought on to talk about the Fort Hood shootings, but it was Bill Sammon, during the broadcast of the memorial for the slain soldiers, who apparently made it official at Fox: The Fort Hood shootings were a terrorist attack -- comparable to 9/11 and Oklahoma City -- by a radical Islamist engaged in Muslim "jihad."

Now, it's not only the conventional wisdom at Fox News, it's one of their major attack points -- they're claiming that because President Obama and the rest of the media aren't adopting their presumptuous and hysterical meme, they're being "soft" on terrorism.

The meme gained momentum when Glenn picked up Sammon's ball and ran with it the next day, declaring: "If you don't call [Hasan] a terrorist, it clears a path for ... an extremist terrorist plan." That night, Sean Hannity explored the question at length with Michelle Malkin, as you can see from the video atop this post.

For Malkin and Hannity, "political correctness" -- which they blame for the military's failure to stop Hasan -- is actually code for "the refusal to engage in ethnic and religious profiling". Because such profiling, it's clear, is what they think the military (and the government generally) should do to prevent future such shootings.

The worst offender, though, has been Bill O'Reilly, who -- as you can see below -- not only harangued Sally Quinn for her reluctance to declare Nidal Hasan a "terrorist," but then devoted his leadoff Talking Points Memo segment last night to chastising the president and the rest of the media for their reluctance to embrace the meme.

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This exchange with Quinn was especially revealing:

O'Reilly: But you have a hard time saying the words "Muslim terrorist," and so does Obama. He has a hard time saying it. I don't know why you guys aren't saying it. You know, why, why?

Quinn: Well, I think, first of all, there are different kinds of terrorists. As I said, Timothy McVeigh --

O'Reilly: He's a Muslim terrorist! What do you mean, different kinds of terrorist? He killed people under the banner of jihad! That's who he is! What do you -- look, what do you want, him to come to your house with a strap-on bomb? The guy did it for jihadist reasons! "Allah Akbar!" That's the slogan! He mails Al Qaeda! Miss Quinn, you're a brilliant woman, and I'm not saying that facetiously. You are. A third-grader gets this, and you're resisting it! I wanna know why!

Quinn: Bill, you're making a very good case. I mean, he's Muslim, and he may well end up being a terrorist. We don't know for sure --

O'Reilly: I know for sure! Ninety percent of the people watching me know for sure! I don't know why you don't know for sure! What else do you need?

Quinn: I mean, you can call the guy who blew up -- you know, who shot up the Holocaust Museum a terrorist --

O'Reilly: Did he yell "Allah Akbar?" If he yelled "Allah Akbar," and he e-mailed Al Qaeda in Yemen, I'd call him that, Miss Quinn!

Quinn: OK, he's a Muslim terrorist.

O'Reilly: Thank you.

O'Reilly seems to have a peculiar idea of what constitutes "terrorism." His definition of the word seems to be "any act of violence by devout Muslims", or something along those lines.

That, of course, is quite a distance from the the legal definition of terrorism (from U.S. Code Title 22, Ch.38, Para. 2656f(d)):

(2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents;

This term, in fact, perfectly describes Holocaust Museum shooter James Von Brunn, who was, beyond any serious doubt, a classic right-wing "lone wolf" terrorist.

It is in fact still not clear, however, whether the description fits Nidal Hasan's motives in shooting 13 people to death. It is true that all kinds of evidence is emerging showing that Hasan was increasingly becoming politically radicalized.

What that evidence doesn't establish, though, is that he engaged in this horrendous act on behalf of those radical beliefs, or whether those beliefs simply formed part of the context in which he acted. There certainly haven't been any organizational ties established. We probably won't have any idea until Hasan himself starts talking, or at least his attorneys begin preparing his defense.

It's important to remember what mass-murder profiler Pat Brown told Fox's Brian Kilmeade:

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Glenn Beck -- who of course has a fetish about "extremist radicals" supposedly infiltrating the White House, while himself promoting far-right extremism on his show on a regular basis -- has been regularly plumping far-right "constitutionalist" theories about the 10th Amendment and states' rights for awhile now, including that hourlong segment complete with 1990s militia figures.

Mostly, though, Beck has been somewhat restrained about just how far down this path he would go, eschewing some of the more radical ideas that are part and parcel of this belief system, or at least declining to mention them to his audiences. But yesterday, filling in for the appendicitis-stricken Beck, Judge Andrew Napolitano opened the constitutionalist Pandora's Box wide and loosed all its ugly demons.

He opened the Beck program with a long rant in which he began (as is typical with "constitutionalists") with utterly false premises -- namely, that not only would the Obama "public option" health-care plan completely take over our health-care system, but the plan could put you in jail for failure to buy insurance. And from there, he sprang into advocating the repeal of the federal income tax and the "nullification" of federal laws by the states:

Napolitano: Last Saturday, at 11 o’clock in the evening, the House of Representatives voted by a five-vote margin to have the federal government manage the health care of every American at a cost of $1 trillion dollars over the next ten years.

For the first time in American history, if this bill becomes law, the Feds will force you to buy insurance you might not want, or may not need, or cannot afford. If you don’t purchase what the government tells you to buy, if you don’t do so when they tell you to do it, and if you don’t buy just what they say is right for you, the government may fine you, prosecute you, and even put you in jail. Freedom of choice and control over your own body will be lost. The privacy of your communications and medical decision making with your physician will be gone. More of your hard earned dollars will be at the disposal of federal bureaucrats.

It was not supposed to be this way. We elect the government. It works for us. How did it get so removed, so unbridled, so arrogant that it can tell us how to live our personal lives? Evil rarely comes upon us all at once, and liberty is rarely lost in one stroke. It happens gradually, over the years and decades and even centuries. A little stretch here, a cave in there, powers are slowly taken from the states and the people and before you know it, we have one big monster government that recognizes no restraint on its ability to tell us how to live. It claims the power to regulate any activity, tax any behavior, and demand conformity to any standard it chooses.

The Founders did not give us a government like the one we have today. The government they gave us was strictly limited in its scope, guaranteed individual liberty, preserved the free market, and on matters that pertain to our private behavior was supposed to leave us alone.

In the Constitution, the Founders built in checks and balances. If the Congress got out of hand, the states would restrain it. If the states stole liberty or property, the Congress would cure it. If the President tried to become a king, the courts would prevent it.

In the next few weeks, I will be giving a public class on Constitutional Law here on the Fox News Channel, on the Fox Business Network, on Foxnews.com, and on Fox Nation. In anticipation of that, many of you have asked: What can we do now about the loss of freedom?

For starters, we can vote the bums out of their cushy federal offices! We can persuade our state governments to defy the Feds in areas like health care -- where the Constitution gives the Feds zero authority. We can petition our state legislatures to threaten to amend the Constitution to abolish the income tax, return the selection of U.S. senators to state legislatures and nullify all the laws the Congress has written that are not based in the Constitution.

One thing we can’t do is just sit back and take it.

I can't tell you how bizarre it is to see arguments I used to hear coming from the mouths of Montana Freemen like LeRoy Schweitzer in the 1990s -- arguments that led to him embarking on an 81-day armed standoff with federal authorities, and resulting in him spending the rest of his natural life in a federal prison -- coming from supposedly mainstream talk-show hosts on Fox News only 13 years later.

Chip Berlet at PublicEye has a decent rundown of the roots of these "constitutionalist" beliefs:

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(Adlai Stevenson - Judging by history, they didn't pay much attention)

Not completely the same as our current situation, but certainly one where the echoes of the shrill are the same. In 1955, the time of this talk given by Adlai Stevenson, we were teetering on the edge of a shooting war over the issue of Quemoy and Matsu, two islands in the straits of Formosa purported to belong to Nationalist China, but claimed to belong to Mainland China - so a territorial dispute erupted and quickly escalated into a series of skirmishes. As always, the U.S. was quickly appealed to from Nationalist China for help and the flood of rhetoric ensued from the extremist wing of our government to get involved in an all-out shooting war with China, all for the sake of two tiny islands that were closer in proximity to Mainland China than Formosa. But which Formosa used as a "first line of defense" if Mainland China decided to invade.

And so Adlai Stevenson offered his two cents, as titular head of the Democratic Party in 1955 and offered his thoughts on the conflict and our potential involvement.

Adlai Stevenson: “At this late date, there may be no wholly satisfactory way of resolving the dilemma. But if we learn something from this experience, if we realize at last that we have been pursuing a dead-end policy in Asia, then perhaps we can turn our present difficulties to good account and devise an approach more in keeping with the realities of Asia and of the Hydrogen Age.”

Stevenson spoke of a "dead-end policy" in Asia, and in retrospect it was and largely still is. Only this time there is no Communist China and no Red Scare, but we're dealing with a region that has historically not adhered to governments as we know them, whose population is made up of such a divergent group of peoples that there is little agreement even among themselves. How we expect, even with a surge of 2-300,000 more troops will any better serve the cause of our brand of democracy is pursuing yet another dead-end policy in Asia. But there is that thing about Pakistan and the bomb to consider.

I wonder what Adlai would have to say about all that today?

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The centerpiece of Glenn Beck's incessant attacks on "White House czars" like Van Jones, as well as his attacks on ACORN, is his claim that this is all about rooting out the deep-seated radicalism within the Obama White House -- and ultimately, the deep-seated radicalism of Obama himself. He's been quite explicit about this.

But what about Glenn Beck himself? Beck has shown a powerful affinity for right-wing radicals dating back at least to his days at CNN's Headline News, when he declared his sympathy for the John Birch Society (in its campaign to stop the non-existent "NAFTA Superhighway") and warned that Al Gore's real purpose behind his "global warming campaign" was to install a global government. (Back then, it was Gore, not Obama, who was just like Hitler.)

It's only intensified since he left CNN for Fox. Given the freedom to let his fetid imagination run amok, has quickly amassed a massive record of mainstreaming ideas and talking points from the genuinely radical right of American politics. (The accompanying video gives you a 17-minute compendium of Beck's extremist rhetoric.)

We noticed this back when it first surfaced amid a raft of other Beck wingnuttia. This week, Alexander Zaitchik in Salon published a devastating rundown of perhaps the foundation of Beck's radicalism: His ardent adoption of the ideology espoused by W. Cleon Skousen, one of the most radical of the old "Church-Birch Connection" gang of LDS elders who spread Bircherirsm throughout Mormon-land. (I remember seeing The Naked Communist on the bookshelf of many of the Mormon homes I grew up around in southern Idaho, including several in my family.) Salty City Sinner noticed the Skousen connection back in March too.

Skousen, as Zaitchik explains, was so far out on the fringe he even made the Birchers nervous:

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Back when I was first blogging in 2003 or so I had a few civilized exchanges with Jon Henke, but we never could agree regarding my ongoing thesis at Orcinus -- namely, that ideas, agendas, talking points, and memes in general regularly migrated from the extremist right in America into mainstream conservatism. (This, as it happens, is also the core thesis of my book The Eliminationists.)

Sometime after I posted about the 380th example of this Henke stopped commenting (in apparent disgust) and I hadn't heard from him since.

But he certainly made some waves last week when -- clearly, and appropriately, disgusted by Jerome Corsi's bizarre piece in WorldNetDaily suggesting that President Obama was preparing concentration camps to round up and imprison his conservative critics -- Henke urged his fellow conservatives to disassociate themselves from WND in every way possible.

Henke continues to contend that the continuum between far-right wingnuts like the WND crowd and mainstream conservatives -- what I have described as "the transmission belt", with WorldNetDaily playing a significant media role for many years -- remains small indeed. That is what he did in his otherwise standup appearance on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC program last night.

That claim, of course, was massively undercut by Terry Krepel's follow-up reporting for Media Matters, which noted that "one of the organizations that has rented WND's mailing list is ... the Republican National Committee." With full screen shots.

Henke called upon the RNC to disassociate itself from WND, but they unsurprisingly have politely declined.

That's because, of course, the transmission belt is now the be-all and end-all of Republicans' current political strategy. The idea, much as it was in the 1990s, is to delegitimize Obama's presidency by whipping up the far right with unhinging conspiracy theories that spread into the mainstream as well. This undermining is then exploited by the "mainstream" Republicans in precisely the way we've just witnessed with the teabaggers' derailing of the health-care debate. It's deeply cynical -- not to mention dangerous -- but hey, it works.

As David Weigel's superb reporting afterwards demonstrated, the WND's pull within the Beltway Republican crowd -- and its ability to insinuate itself within the mainstream media, particularly on Fox -- is substantial indeed. Just ask Van Jones.

Henke obviously doesn't want to face up to the reality that it is his fellow mainstream conservatives -- you know, the people who should be standing up to this wingnuttery as unrepresentative of their movement -- who are actively enabling the most insane elements of the American Right. But then, he never has.

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(Father Charles Coughlin - one of the originators of "you're either for us or against us")

When I first began Newstalgia, I ran an entry called "Father Coughlin - the Grandfather of Hate Radio". At the time, I was only able to run a 10 minute clip from one of his talks. It gave a glimpse, but not a complete idea of just what all the controversy surrounding Father Coughlin was all about.

Charles Coughlin was no doubt the first, at least on a national scale, to use radio as an instrument of extremist ideology. Much of what is going on now in reference to the current state of Hate Radio can be attributed almost directly to the weekly tirades and rants of Father Coughlin over 70 years ago.

But in readying this entry, and playing back this broadcast of August 27, 1939, I noticed Coughlin wasn't alone in his shrillness - he had a warm up act.

Dr. Edward Lodge Curran - or Father Curran often used the first half hour of the one hour broadcast to showcase his particular rants, as is evidenced by this harangue of the Cincinnati School Board.

Father Curran: “Every effort was made by the leftist forces, who claimed the right to Freedom of Speech for themselves, but who deny it to others. Seventy-two hours before the meeting, all the efforts of the splendid Cincinnati committee and sponsors had almost dwindled to idle gestures. A Mr. Von Schlichten, a teacher in one of the Cincinnati schools had accepted the invitation to act as Chairman. Mr. Henry Siegal, editor of The American Israelite, promptly complained to the school board. The school board held a secret meeting. And at that meeting, the pedagogical wisdom of withdrawing as Chairman was impressed quite contritely upon Mr. Von Schlichten. And Mr. Von Schlichten, in free, democratic 20th Century America, was forced to withdraw. This is the same Cincinnati School Board, which has permitted the Communists to make use of Woodward High School. This is the same Cincinnati School Board which has never presumed to reprimand any of its other employees who have participated in the activities of the Communistically mind and Communistically controlled American League For Peace and Democracy.”

Curran, it should be noted, ran somewhat afoul of the America First Committee and appears to have dropped out of the history books of extremism. He does, however pop up as the author of "Great Moments Of Catholic History". The wonders never cease.

As for Coughlin - well, his rants are legendary.

Father Coughlin: “I believe that I am on safe ground in affirming that the World War was fought for commercial domination and not for the preservation of Democracy. I believe that I am on the side of truth when I say that the Peace Treaty of Versailles was nothing more than a document of hatred. Defies in a mad attempt to resolve the evils of International Capitalism. And I believe that, although Communism of Russia was in part a rebellion against the system of International Capitalism. Nevertheless it was an insane rebellion, because it fought not only the persecutors of the poor, but the principles of right-reason and the outraged Christ who loves the poor.”

The health insurance cartel has shown that it is willing to shell out tens of millions of dollars and fight to the death to stop meaningful health care reform. One giant of the industry, United Health Group, is going so far as to actually encourage their own employees to educate themselves in anti-reform talking points, and attend tea parties held by a religious extremist. From TPM:

Last week, UnitedHealth Group--the second largest health insurance company in the country--sent out a letter to its employees urging them to call UHG's United for Health Reform Advocacy Hotline to speak with an advocacy specialist about health care reform. The advocacy specialist, according to the letter, is there to help UHG employees write personalized messages to elected officials, and to arm them with talking points to use at local events in order to better oppose the public health insurance option.

However, a source who's insured by UHG--and who also obtained the letter--called the hotline on Tuesday and says the company directed him to an events list hosted by the right wing America's Independent Party, and suggested he attend an anti-health care reform tea party sponsored by religious fundamentalist Dave Daubenmire, scheduled for today outside the office of Blue Dog Rep. Zack Space (D-OH). Read on...

United claims to be a partner in health care reform, but as d-day puts it they're in it to win it:

Giant insurers like United Health Group see value in enabling right-wing shriek-fests. They’ll either derail reform, and keep a status quo that earned the CEO $124.8 million in 2005, or get a workable, sham “reform” without a public option that would essentially funnel government subsidies to their company. They have a good racket going, and they want to keep it. Read on...

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August 12, 2009 News Corp

You know, I've been doing this Sunday morning shift for a few years now and I'm feeling a lot of sympathy for Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day. Every morning I wake up, and it's the same ol' participants and the same ol' conversations and the same ol' media bias. Look at this line up: Sen. John "I didn't get elected POTUS, but I'll get the Sunday shows!" McCain on State of the Union; former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan on This Week (not to mention the ever-unbalanced and factually-challenged Michelle Malkin as part of the roundtable); National Economic Council's Larry Summers on both Face the Nation and Meet the Press and Senators Jim DeMint and Mike Pence on Fox News Sunday. Most egregiously, Tweety poses the question whether overt and extremist racism might actually help the Republicans. I can hardly stand it. Balance? A liberal perspective? Some journalistic integrity? Ha!

Doesn't it sound eerily familiar to pretty much every Sunday?

ABC's "This Week" - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner; former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Lawrence Summers, director of the National Economic Council.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Summers; former Reps. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., and J.C. Watts, R-Okla.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Eugene Robinson, Norah O'Donnell, Jennifer Loven, Howard Fineman. Topics: Why is President Obama losing public support for health care reform? Could racist talk from extremists help mainstream Republicans in elections? At the end of 2009, will Obama be viewed as a change agent? YES: 8 NO: 4; Will a handful of Senate Republicans vote for the final health care bill? YES: 11 No: 1.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz; Christina Romer, head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Will a new president help to stop the deadly downward spiral in Afghanistan? Fareed interviews the two candidates with the best shot at unseating President Karzai in this month's Afghan elections. Plus, is the U.S. government interfering in Iran? Spying? Supporting the opposition? Sending in radio and tv messages? All of the above?

"Fox News Sunday" - Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y.; Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C.; Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.

Luckily, I got you babes to let us know what you see this Sunday morning. Leave your tips in the comments.

It's starting to look like it may actually have been a good thing that Pat Buchanan spouted off so nakedly about Sonia Sotmayor this week -- not so much that he did it, but that in doing so, he's finally provoked a serious response to the meaning of his ongoing presence in our national discourse.

People are finally starting to ask the question I asked back in 2006:

How much longer, one has to wonder, will our mainstream press continue to pretend that Pat Buchanan has not gone completely around the bend? That he is no longer the avuncular conservative from old episodes of Crossfire but a full-fledged extremist trying to resurrect the once-discredited ethos of white supremacism?

The evidence was more than abundantly clear back then, with the publication of his book State of Emergency, which was a vehicle for essentially a regurgitation of warmed-over eugenics theory from the 1920s. Buchanan was all over TV as well, spouting nonstop the fear that white people were losing their majority and with it their political power, swept away by a tide of brown people from Latin America.

Alexander Zaitchik's report for the SPLC hit the nail on the head:

To put it plainly, State of Emergency is a white nationalist tract. The thesis is that America must retain a white majority to survive as a nation. It is rooted in a blood-and-soil nationalism more blood than soil. The echoes of Nazi ideology are clear and chilling. As Buchanan helpfully explained to John King, who was interviewing him in one of his several CNN appearances: "We gotta get into race and ethnic questions."

Indeed, Buchanan has a not-inconsiderable role in the history of white nationalism in America in the past 20 years -- particularly the role he has had in mainstreaming supremacist beliefs, many of which are either fallacious or crudely racist. Leonard Zeskind devotes a sizable chunk of his marvelous history of the movement, Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream, to dealing with Buchanan and his sizable impact.

After all, he's been at this a long time. In a columm he wrote back in 1989 defending David Duke and chiding the GOP for overreacting to him, he counseled movement conservatives thus:

"Take a hard look at Duke's portfolio of winning issues and expropriate those not in conflict with GOP principles, [such as] reverse discrimination against white folks." (syndicated column, 2/25/89)

At the time, Duke had just finished running for president on the Populist Party ticket. His chief platform position in that campaign: stopping immigration before Latin Americans overwhelm the country. A couple of years later, Buchanan tried to claim that Duke was copying him, but it's clear from the chronology that it worked the other way around.

The good thing about the attention Buchanan has brought on himself is that it may finally shine a spotlight on the persistent and malignant influence of white nationalism on our national discourse and our body politic. Looking as we are at pan-racial, multicultural future, our success is going to hinge on our abilities to find ways to break down the old racial barriers that were erected by white supremacists -- whose worldview was dominant in the USA for decades -- a century ago and more. And as Pat Buchanan has been demonstrating, they will only go kicking and screaming.

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We knew that Bill O'Reilly had done a nasty segment on Rick Perlstein -- including running his picture -- tonight on Fox News because Perlstein called me shortly afterward and asked:

"Hey, did Bill O'Reilly or someone on Fox do something with me in it tonight?"

"I dunno. I'm recording but not watching. Why?"

"My inbox just started getting deluged with hate mail a little bit ago."

"What time did it start?"

"About 7:30 [Chicago time]."

"Yep, that would be O'Reilly."

"I think they ran my picture. A lot of the mail is about how ugly I am."

I pulled my recording and yep, sure enough, there was a segment attacking Perlstein for his Newsweek op-ed column this week. He invited on his frequent guest, Bernard Goldberg, to talk about it.

As you can see, what set O'Reilly off was Perlstein's characterization of O'Reilly's audience as working-class whites whose more unstable elements sometimes act out violently:

O'Reilly: The most recent Newsweek contains a nasty piece on Sarah Palin that implies she is an intellectual moron supported by poorly educated conservative idiots.

[Hmmmm. Read the piece for yourself. As you can see, it certainly does not use language like that, and in fact discusses to working-class whites in largely respectful tones -- but points out that they don't get much respect among Republican elites. O'Reilly's caricature of the column is actually rather self-revealing.]

O'Reilly: The article goes on to say that these stupid conservatives are influenced by extremist commentators. Quote:

Now [William F.] Buckley is gone, and the most prominent spokesmen -- the Limbaughs and O'Reillys and Becks—can be heard mouthing attitudes once confined to the violent fringe. ... Fox heavily promoted anti-administration "tea party" events this past Fourth of July -- rallies in praise of secession ...

Well, obviously, that paragraph is pure propaganda.

Actually, let's read the whole passage, and you can judge for yourselves. Again, what O'Reilly omits is telling:

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I never heard of Yiffing before, but I did see it discussed on an episode of CSI: Episode 406 Fur and Loathing

Anyway, I have nothing against two consenting adult Yiffers, but Howie Klein found a rather disturbing Republican Yiffing story.

Jane Orie is a far right extremist, an anti-choice fanatic and the Republican majority whip of the Pennsylvania state Senate. She represents a backward district north of Pittsburgh. And if you'd guess that she's obsessed with sex and is a virulent and hysterical homophobe you'd be correct.

Friday she fired one of her top aides, Alan David Berlin. The report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is almost funny if it weren't so tragically Republican. It starts off like typical GOP fare-- another Republican closet case solicits sex from a young boy (15 years old) online. But then it gets really strange.

In a series of instant messages and online chats, Alan David Berlin, 40, of Carlisle, discussed dressing up in animal costumes and engaging in various sex acts with the boy, the state attorney general's office said yesterday...read on

Isn't it always the same. An anti-gay Republican zealot getting caught up in a bizarre and tragic sex act. Some things never change.

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There are some things that are always constant. It rains a lot in Seattle, their coffee is great and it's north of California. And whenever Bill O'Reilly feels threatened he summons Juan Williams to appear on The Factor to apologize for BillO's actions. Last night Juan did his job well. He plays a good faux liberal when BillO needs one. Just remember, "when O'Reilly's in a jam, who's he gonna call? JuanBusters." Check this out.

Williams: There are people who are going to try and use this now to make others who have critical of a women having the right to choose, make that into a political tool to beat people up and to try and convince people that these are all extremists and the fact is that you're not extremist. There are a lot of people who by a matter of conscience are troubled by abortion, especially late term abortion and I know you O'Reilly, what you did is you said it bothered you personally and there's nothing wrong with that.

----

But let me just say, they're going after you, Bill O'Reilly and I've never heard you say to block a clinic , I've never heard you say to create violence to intimidate women who are legally seeking an abortion. I've never heard you say go after the doctor's, berate them, certainly not kill them. Never. Never! Not true.

No, he just used his ambush producers to stalk him.

Oh, my friend Brian Russell was on that segment.
And of course he doesn't want to be a vigilante but...

And if I could get my hands on Tiller -- well, you know. Can't be vigilantes. Can't do that. It's just a figure of speech.

David Neiwert has an excellent post with with some great video.

Bill O'Reilly has Dr. George Tiller's blood on his well-stained hands
O'Reilly similarly accused anyone who refused to buy into his accusation of coddling killers:

I don’t care what you think. We have incontrovertible evidence that this man is executing babies about to be born because the woman is depressed…if you don’t believe me, I don’t care…You are OK with Dr. Tiller executing babies about to be born because the mother says she’s depressed.

O'Reilly later attacked Kathleen Sebelius for her refusal to prosecute Tiller. And he kept it up. As recently as this spring he again spent a segment excoriating Tiller as a murderer. Priscilla at Newshounds ran through the file in March.

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Bill O'Reilly had Amanda Carpenter on The O'Reilly Factor yesterday (she's now with the Washington Times) to do one his segments called "Policing the Net," which is supposed to highlight the wackiness on the left and right side of the blogosphere. It's an attempt to minimize us, as usual.

The segment dealt with blogger reactions over Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court. O'Reilly singled out Michelle Malkin's Hot Air as a blog that had nutty posts on it regarding the Supreme Court nomination.

What O'Reilly did is typical of what some mainstream media types do to us -- and also is what Michelle Malkin, this proprietor of Hot Air, has a history of doing: He cherry-picked some crazy comments and assigned them to the bloggers as if they wrote it as one of their pieces.

Hot Air rightly has a legitimate gripe, because they didn't write the crazy comments that O'Reilly uses to attack them with, but it was from one of their pre-screened commenters instead:

O'Reilly: Alright, I'm going to read a couple of comments, these are from bloggers. Free Republic is probably the roughest right wing website....
This comes from Hot Air.com, "Unqualified, militant and socialist. NEXT please. The GOP has to block any of Hussein's (That's the president) extremist picks".
You know when you read something like that nobody's going to block the pick. Do you ever think who's writing this? Does that person live in the US, it's just not going to happen. The numbers are overwhelmingly democratic and they're going to vote for her.
And the guy who writes this, I guess isn't living here. Let's got to the liberal side.

Amanda Carpenter, once a loyal rightie, didn't even bother to offer up a defense for them (or for Kos). I guess getting a gig with the Moonies has affected her judgment.

I want to ask Allahpundit a question: How does it feel? Your boss has set this very standard up on her own blog by going into liberal blogger comment sections (she does that to C&L quite often) and then cherry-picking our comments to prove her own silly talking points of the moment. It doesn't feel good, does it?

Yeah, you defended Kos one time, but since Malkin set the standard a long time ago, your defense is hollow. Go read her book "Unhinged," and see where it goes.

In response, I know I've highlighted their commenters repeatedly to try and show the MSM what goes on there too. Of course, it's very difficult to post on most right-wing blogs. On the left, we've always kept it pretty open, but once wingers came here and left lynching pictures on my site back in 2005, so I had to change my policies.

The MSM, which was afraid of the right-wingers, used our comments sections to try and paint liberal bloggers as crazy, anti-American traitors who are mean-spirited and vile people. The media always wanted to never give a face to the liberal blogs, but depicted us as this formless, nasty comment entity blob that oozes around the Internet so that it would scare away readers from our work. That didn't work out very well, because readers understood it was a bogus claim. You see, they read what we write and how we present it to our readers. And now the liberal blogosphere is an industry standard that the traditional media are imitating in their quest to catch up with us.

I do agree with Hot Air that O'Reilly smeared them, but I have no sympathy for them, because Michelle Malkin is the queen of using this tactic. Malkin then went on Fox and complained, and righties are asking for a retraction from BillO. Good luck with that, and too bad. You set this up, and now you get to taste what you cooked.

Everyone knows that comments on blogs do not equal what I or any other blogger means when they post. I never even curse in my posts (who would have guessed, since I'm a dirty f*&king hippie). And if Malkin wants an apology she should start by apologizing to all of us first.

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Remember that DHS bulletin on right-wing extremism that got all the righties' shorts in a bunch? Let's quickly recall the bottom line of its assessment:

DHS/I&A assesses that lone wolves and small terrorist cells embracing violent rightwing extremist ideology are the most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States.

It's not talking about ordinary conservatives here, despite their evident wish to martyr themselves in defense of their right-wing brethren. It's talking about people like Stephen P. Morgan:

MIDDLETOWN, Conn. - A man suspected in the fatal shooting of a Wesleyan University student wrote in his journal that it's "okay to kill Jews and go on a killing spree," according to an arrest warrant released Friday.

... Police found Morgan's journal inside the bookstore, according to the warrant. Morgan's father identified his son as the man seen in bookstore surveillance photos and told investigators his son was a loner who kept a journal and was known to make anti-Semitic comments, according to the warrant.

The journal had an entry saying "I think it okay to kill Jews and go on a killing spree" and "Kill Johanna. She must Die," according to the arrest warrant.

And it's talking about people like Keith Luke. You remember him, don't you?

A man accused of a horrific rape and killing spree told investigators that he was "fighting extinction" of the white race and had stockpiled 200 rounds of ammunition to "kill 'nonwhite people' such as African Americans, Hispanics and Jewish people," according to a police report filed today in court.

After forcing his way into a home and raping a 22-year-old woman, the alleged assailant, Keith Luke, shot and killed the woman's younger sister, who tried to help her. Luke, 22, then allegedly turned his fury back on the rape victim, firing his gun through a white teddy bear that she clutched in terror, police said.

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Well, when he appeared in court earlier this week, he had carved a swastika into his forehead and defiantly smirked at the family and friends of his victims:

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