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Bernard Goldberg was on The O'Reilly Factor last night touting his hot new scoop in the long-running controversy over George W. Bush's military service in the Texas Air National Guard:

Until now, the controversy over the Rather/Mapes story has centered almost entirely on one issue: the legitimacy of the documents – a very important issue, indeed. But it turns out that there was another very important issue, one that goes to the very heart of what the story was about – and one that has gone virtually unnoticed. This is it: Mary Mapes knew before she put the story on the air that George W. Bush, the alleged slacker, had in fact volunteered to go to Vietnam.

Who says? The outside panel CBS brought into to get to the bottom of the so-called “Rathergate” mess says. I recently re-examined the panel’s report after a source, Deep Throat style, told me to “Go to page 130.” When I did, here’s the startling piece of information I found:

Mapes had information prior to the airing of the September 8 [2004] Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG [Texas Air National Guard] did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots. For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush “did want to go to Vietnam but others went first.” Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before September 8, that Lieutenant Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify.

This information, despite the fact that it has been available since the CBS report came out four years ago, has remained a secret to almost everybody both in and out of the media — one lonely fact in a 234- page report loaded with thousands of facts, and overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the documents.

There's only one problem with this: These claims were nothing new. In fact, it had been reported by the Washington Post back in 1999 -- in a story that Goldberg in fact cites in his piece. Here are the relevant grafs:

Four months before enlisting, Bush reported at Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts to take the Air Force Officers Qualification Test. While scoring 25 percent for pilot aptitude – "about as low as you could get and be accepted," according to Martin – and 50 percent for navigator aptitude in his initial testing, he scored 95 percent on questions designed to reflect "officer quality," compared with a current-day average of 88 percent.

Among the questions Bush had to answer on his application forms was whether he wanted to go overseas. Bush checked the box that said: "do not volunteer."

Bush said in an interview that he did not recall checking the box. Two weeks later, his office provided a statement from a former, state-level Air Guard personnel officer, asserting that since Bush "was applying for a specific position with the 147th Fighter Group, it would have been inappropriate for him to have volunteered for an overseas assignment and he probably was so advised by the military personnel clerk assisting him in completing the form."

During a second interview, Bush himself raised the issue.

"Had my unit been called up, I'd have gone . . . to Vietnam," Bush said. "I was prepared to go."

But there was no chance Bush's unit would be ordered overseas. Bush says that toward the end of his training in 1970, he tried to volunteer for overseas duty, asking a commander to put his name on the list for a "Palace Alert" program, which dispatched qualified F-102 pilots in the Guard to the Europe and the Far East, occasionally to Vietnam, on three- to six-month assignments.

He was turned down on the spot. "I did [ask] – and I was told, 'You're not going,' " Bush said.

Only pilots with extensive flying time – at the outset, 1,000 hours were required – were sent overseas under the voluntary program. The Air Force, moreover, was retiring the aging F-102s and had ordered all overseas F-102 units closed down as of June 30, 1970.

In other words, if Bush actually did volunteer for Vietnam duty, he did so secure in the knowledge there was no chance he'd actually be called upon. That is, he was talking big talk, once again, knowing full well he'd never have to back it up.

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Mahablog: Remembering the atomic bomb.

No More Mister Nice Blog: Killing the Obama presidency with "kindness."

Whiskey Fire: The stupidest thing Jonah Goldberg has ever written (for now).

Comrade Kevin's Chrestomathy: Noam Chomsky, more pertinent than ever.

Satirical Political Report: Right-wing 'baggers protest health care reform.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.

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Bernie Goldberg has a theory about why there's been a significant controversy over Lou Dobbs' promotion of the "Birther" conspiracy theory: It's all an evil plot by the Obama White House to string the story along indefinitely so as to make his right-wing opposition look like a nuttier bunch than a PayDay bar.

Goldberg: Well, let's get the easy part out of the way first. CNN should not, repeat, not fire Lou Dobbs for talking about this. Lou Dobbs didn't say Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States, he said just the opposite! He said he was born in the United States. But then he said he should produce his birth certificate.

Now let's think about this for a second. Why wouldn't President Obama release his birth certificate? He was born in Hawaii, Hawaii last I checked is in the United States, and -- why in the world wouldn't he release his birth certificate?

O'Reilly: Can I answer that question?

Goldberg: Well, let me answer it first. OK? Let me just answer my own question first.

O'Reilly: OK, you answer it, and then I'll have the correct answer.

Goldberg: I have a theory. And the theory is this: That the Chicago Mafia inside the White House want to keep this crazy controversy going. Because the longer it goes, the better the chance that they will conflate the crazy right-wing fringe with regular conservatives and regular Republicans.

O'Reilly: That's not a bad theory. But from dealing with the Obama White House, now, for almost, more than a year, I will tell you they are, uh, as every White House I've ever experienced, they're arrogant, they're arrogant. And they're saying to themselves, 'We're not gonna let Lou Dobbs tell us what to do. We're not gonna let these cranks on talk radio tell us what to do. They want the birth certificate released? Tough. We're not going to do it, because we have the power, and we don't like that.' That's what it's all about -- it's a 'Ha ha, we're not gonna do what you say.'

Interesting theories, gentlemen. Unfortunately, they both tend to run aground on a simple fact: Obama actually released his birth certificate in June 2008. It reads, "Certification of Live Birth."

Now, as FactCheck.org's definitive piece on the certificate issue explains, this is in fact the "short form" of Obama's birth certificate, not its long form, which is filled out by the hospital and kept in its records. So why doesn't Obama release the long form? Because Hawaiian law doesn't give him that option:

The document is a "certification of birth," also known as a short-form birth certificate. The long form is drawn up by the hospital and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents' hometowns. The short form is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department. We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response.

Now, if Goldberg and O'Reilly are so concerned that the public might conclude that mainstream conservatives are prone to far-right conspiracy theories and various other forms of wingnuttery, they might look in the mirror. It's the virtual definition of wingnuttery to even be asking why Obama won't release his birth certificate when he has in fact done so.

There's no Obama conspiracy keeping this garbage alive and tying it around the necks of mainstream conservatives. They're doing a very fine job of that themselves.

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(Paul Hindemith - A composers take on Beethoven)

Some of my favorite records are ones where the composer is performer, not necessarily of his own work, but of others. Many times it's a fascinating experience and a different take on what you're used to hearing. One of those people is Paul Hindemith, certainly a noteworthy composer in his own rite. But he was also a musician of considerable skill as well. In the early part of the 20th century he was a founding member of The Amar String Quartet, whose recordings fetch insane prices on the collectors market. In the early 1930's, he split off to form his own trio, enlisting the violinist Szymon Goldberg and cellist Emanuel Fuermann and making some memorable recordings of which this is one.

Recorded for Columbia in 1934. The Beethoven Serenade op. 8

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Glenn Beck was on Greta Van Susteren's show last night, plumping his new book, Common Sense -- which, like most right-wing titles, is actually a piece of Newspeak that represents roughly the opposite of what it appears to mean -- and repeating his charge that "the progressive movement is the "disease" that is killing this country".

You see, he's been reading Jonah Goldberg, so he's reached this conclusion (with some help from libertarians). And there's no doubt that the basic argument is right: Beginning in the early 1900s, the progressive movement definitely shifted the direction of this nation and shaped it largely into what we see today.

Glenn Beck thinks that's a bad thing. I don't.

Now, I know that Beck reels in money by the barrelful these days. But he hails from a working-class family and often touts his working-class roots.

So I'd like him to meet some Americans before the progressive movement came along:

These are child laborers from the early part of the last century. They were common fixtures on the American landscape. Possibly some of Beck's ancestors were among them. (Here's a gallery of pictures of them.)

I've remarked on this previously, but it bears repeating:

The United States has always been an essentially capitalist economic system. However, we have experienced periods in our history where this system has seriously malfunctioned, and we've made adjustments accordingly that have largely worked well making things better.

One of those dysfunctional periods came at about the turn of the last century, when McKinley was president, corrupt robber barons ran Congress, and the latter-day version of "strict constructionists" ruled the courts. "Laissez faire" capitalism ruled, and America was functionally an oligarchy.

Squeezed out were the working people: the average workweek was 80 hours, there were no weekends, no vacation, only a few holidays, and the barest minimum of pay. Benefits and health care were unheard of. Child labor was the rule.

What happened between then and now? "Progressives" began agitating for better working conditions, and began organizing as labor unions. After a long period of violent repression, these reforms gradually became government policy -- especially in the 1930s under FDR. Americans began getting 40-hour work weeks with weekends off, paid vacations and benefits.

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Sure, like Duncan says, Glenn Beck is a WATB. We knew that the first time he cried on-air for us.

He's also an evasive guy when confronted with his falsehoods. We saw that yesterday on The View. Whoopie Goldberg's epithet for Beck -- A Lying Sack of Dog Mess -- is a name that's going to stick, like something on the bottom of his shoe.

In fact, we now have a new acronym for him: the LSDM. We don't need to use his actual name anymore.

Oh, yeah, besides being a WATB -- check out his website's report in which he claims he was "ambushed" -- he's also seriously FOS. As when he called in sick for his own show that same afternoon, leaving us to the tender mercies of Judge Napolitano and Michelle Malkin.

Then, at the very end, he called in all plugged-up sounding and claimed he had "a case of the 24-hour swine flu". And then proceeded to once again prevaricate about the "ridiculous" interview we had all just watched that morning.

Beck: Apparently I was a liar because I said that -- which is true -- uh, that she -- I, I, Barbara Walters said hello to me, instead, it was I said hello to Barbara Walters. I walked up to her -- I guess that's we need to spend our time on for seven minutes.

In Beck's truncated version of what transpired at The View, the only reason to call him a liar was that he and Walters had different views on who said hello first. But that's BS On A Stick.

Roll the tape: You'll quickly note that the greeting disagreement started things off, but the main reason they called him a liar was that his whole story on the radio was a narrative about how you can't reserve a seat on an Amtrak train, and here these two media elites came and got reserved seats! The audacity!

But as both Walters and Goldberg explained to the LSDM, they hadn't gotten reserved seats at all. They had worked their ways back to that car after finding no seats in the front cars.

The LSDM, as is his wont, was just making stuff up. No wonder he kinda accidentally omitted that from his lamestain excuse -- it would have made it just that much lamer.

In any event, we remain indebted to Whoopie Goldberg for her masterful contribution to the Wingnut Lexicon.