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Yesterday's media heroine has to be Patricia Murphy of Politics Daily, who yesterday on Fox managed to make Sean Hannity look like buffoon and a tool. Of course, Hannity does this to himself every day, but Murphy gave it a little extra edge.

First, she flatly knocked down Hannity's little right-wing talking point about Elena Kagan purportedly "kicked the military off campus" at Harvard (she of course did did no such thing).

But the most delicious moment was this one:

Murphy: Let's be really, really honest here. There are members of the Tea Party -- it's a tiny, tiny minority -- members of the Tea Party, and I've seen them, who compare President Obama to Hitler. I've been there and seen it, I've been on this show --

Hannity: I've not seen it.

Murphy: He's been compared to the Khmer Rouge, and to Nazism, while I've been here, this is just common cultural --

Hannity: Whom compared him to that?

Murphy: Tucker Carlson! When I was sitting right here, on this show!

Hannity: [red-faced] Did you disagree with him?

Murphy: I did disagree with him.

Of course, if you go back and look at that clip now, it's worth noting that Hannity did not.

Bush fell short on duty at Guard

Records show pledges unmet

By The Globe Spotlight Team | September 8, 2004

In February, when the White House made public hundreds of pages of President Bush's military records,

White House officials repeatedly insisted that the records prove that Bush fulfilled his military commitment in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.

But Bush fell well short of meeting his military obligation, a Globe reexamination of the records shows: Twice during his Guard service -- first when he joined in May 1968, and again before he transferred out of his unit in mid-1973 to attend Harvard Business School -- Bush signed documents pledging to meet training commitments or face a punitive call-up to active duty.

I have a confession to make...

I am insane. I have to be. Yes, I did turn on the live stream of the Texas Board of Education curriculum standards meeting at 9AM Thursday morning and yes, I stayed with it until 6pm, live-tweeting the whole thing until I could stand it no more. Still not content with the assault on my sensibilities, I came back for more at around 8pm, until it finally adjourned at 10pm my time, 1am Texas time.

I did it for you, all for you...

Bless their hearts....

Here's my biggest takeaway, and I mean this with all sincerity and respect: These people should not be doing this. They just shouldn't be. Not because they're evil. They're not. Well, maybe some of them are just a little bit, but more fundamentally they don't have the first clue as to how absolutely screwed up these curriculum standards are getting. Forget the textbooks, no teacher -- not even one with a masters from Harvard or University of Texas or ANYWHERE -- could possibly teach what they've put together.

It's incoherent. It makes no sense. They've created something that I should be able to define without resorting to NSFW terms, especially a compound word that begins with the word "cluster" and ends with an additional four letters, but really, that's what they've made. A colossal one, even.

Some highs (or lows, or you'll wish you were high)

Don't acknowledge truth without a tinge of pettiness

While it was certainly big of them to include a standard acknowledging the 2008 election of the first black President of the United States, it was not without moments. One of the conservative members thought that would be fine as long as he was included as "Barack HUSSEIN Obama". There was a bit of a verbal tussle over this as the more reasonable members suggested that might be just a little bit petty. Ultimately, the Henry Cabot Lodge false equivalency failed, and they agreed to Barack H. Obama. Grudgingly.

What's a little eugenics between friends?

After tonight, there is an extra word nestled in the following standard:

analyze causes and effects of events and social issues such as immigration, Social Darwinism, race relations, nativism, the Red Scare, Prohibition, and the changing role of women; and...

It reads this way now:

analyze causes and effects of events and social issues such as immigration, eugenics, Social Darwinism, race relations, nativism, the Red Scare, Prohibition, and the changing role of women; and

That's right. Our kids in Texas will possibly learn about eugenics. Why do I say possibly? Because there are two ways to word a standard. One is to use the term including, which means everything may be on a standardized test and therefore must be covered. The other is to use the term "such as", which means the teacher must teach the concept but has the option to use some or all of the terms.

It sounds like a benign enough compromise until you begin to consider the insidious ways it was used to denigrate in some cases and slide references into the material in others. Like eugenics, for example. Or to downgrade the elevation of our first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor, to a "such as" when the original list without her was an "include". But, they did manage to remove Phyllis Schlafly from that same list, so there's that, anyway.

Speaking of Phyllis Schlafly...

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Juan Williams, filling in for Bill O'Reilly last Friday on The O'Reilly Factor, had on my friend Kyle de Beausset (who blogs as Kyledeb at Citizen Orange) to discuss Kyle's role in Harvard University's decision to rescind a speaking invitation to Minuteman leader Jim Gilchrist. As you can see, Williams was perplexed by what should be an obvious matter: While Harvard is well served by hearing all sides of a debate, it serves neither the university nor the public to legitimize the rantings of a hatemonger whose rhetoric inspires violence.

At least the Harvard Crimson got it straight:

The movement to ban Gilchrist from the conference was largely initiated by Kyle A. de Beausset ’11, who in early October began using different university mailing lists to build support for uninviting Gilchrist due to his involvement in the Minuteman Project, which organizes civilians to patrol the border for illegal immigrants and to report crossings to the Border Patrol.

“It might be an interesting intellectual exercise for Harvard students to hear extremist views,” de Beausset wrote in one of these e-mails, but he added that the “broader implications of legitimizing these extremist views with the Harvard name” were more important.

“Jim Gilchrist’s willingness to spout falsehoods shows that he shouldn’t be given the legitimacy of open and free academic debate...His irresponsible rhetoric has led to violence,” de Beausset told The Crimson in an interview.

In a statement released on the conference Web site, the Undergraduate Legal Committee said that Gilchrist’s presence would detract from the conference because his attitude and views were inconsistent with the conference’s mission of promoting law and public service to foster social justice.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Gilchrist’s participation in the conference on the behalf of the Minuteman Project was not compatible with providing an environment for civil, educational, and productive discourse on immigration, and we cannot host him at this time,” it said.

What may have been the deciding factor, it turns out, may have been Jim Gilchrist's history of bad judgment catching up to him -- namely, his long association with Shawna Forde, the leader of a gang of "tacital" Minutemen who, in a failed effort to finance their activities through robbery, shot and killed a 9-year-old girl and her father late at night in their home in cold blood.

The Boston Globe explained:

Kyle de Beausset, an undergraduate student and migrant advocate, who was one of the original Harvard protesters, said yesterday that Gilchrist’s removal will allow discussions to move toward policy, rather than animosity.

“It’s a victory for people who are trying to get hate out of the immigration debate,’’ he said. “There’s a difference between having views, and hate speech.’’

Beausset said more students have been alerted to the group’s stance since the arrest in June of a woman with ties to the Minuteman Project.

Shawna Ford and two others allegedly shot and killed a father and son, and wounded the mother in a robbery that Beausset said was to “finance her nativist activism.’’

He said the episode showed the extremes to which some members of the movement will go.

“I’m concerned about the broader national implications of legitimizing these extremist views with the Harvard name,’’ he said in a letter to fellow students.

[Note: The Globe story has its facts slightly mangled; the Minuteman gang's young victim was a girl.]

Arizona Star reporter Tim Steller noted the role played by Gilchrist's ties to Forde as well.

Jim Gilchrist posted the following response:

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(audio courtesy of Media Matters)

Rush Limbaugh has never hidden his bigoted beliefs, and on Tuesday he went on a racist rant about a highly disturbing incident on a school bus where a black student attacked a white student while other children cheered on. As Ben Frumin at TPM puts it, Limbaugh acts as though this is all the fault of President Obama:

Rush Limbaugh weighed in today on this video of a 17-year-old white Illinois student beaten up by two black classmates. Shockingly, his analysis doesn't reveal an even-handed understanding of our country's complicated racial history. In fact, not only does Limbaugh imply that this high school scuffle is racially-motivated -- but that somehow, it's the fault of President Obama.

"In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on," Limbaugh said. I wonder if Obama's going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard." Read on...

At some point, the hatred coming from the right and their mouthpieces on the radio will hit critical mass in this country. I'm all for free speech, but entertainers like Rush and Glenn Beck are walking perilously close to "yelling fire in a movie theater."

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There's no shortage of wingnuts out there, so why would George Stephanopoulos invite on someone too crazy for even Bill O'Reilly? Only people with a Malkin brain would believe and push across the notion that Americans would rather collect three hundred dollars a week on unemployment insurance rather than get a job that supplies benefits and pays a salary.

Yea, because there are so many jobs available, people will just wait until the insurance ends and then immediately get hired. I'm sorry, where are all these jobs again? On ABC's THIS WEEK Malkin made this bogus claim. A quick Google search uncovers that when Michelle claims Larry Katz once said that the benefits could discourage people from seeking employment, Katz actually said just the opposite during our current financial mess:

Traditionally, many economists have been leery of prolonged unemployment benefits because they can reduce the incentive to seek work. But that should not be a concern now because jobs remain so scarce, said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard.

For every job that becomes available, about six people are looking, Dr. Katz said. “Unemployment insurance gives income to families who are really suffering and can’t find work even if they are hustling to look,” he said. With the economy still listing, he added, a temporary extension can provide a quick fiscal stimulus. And, Dr. Katz said, when people exhaust unemployment and health insurance, many end up applying for disability benefits, which become a large, unending drain on the Treasury.

It does help to fact check what conservatives say.

Malkin: If you put enough government cheese in front of people they are just going to keep eating it and you're just kicking the can down the road and just to hammer this point about the unemployment benefits extension again it was Larry Katz, who's a chief labor economist under the Clinton labor department who came out with a study and there are a lot of these economists who say this that if you keep extending these "temporary" unemployment benefits you're just going to extend joblessness even more.

Stephanopoulos: I don't know if I follow that though

Malkin: That was a Clinton economist who said it George...

Stephanopoulos: Choosing to take the unemployment benefits when a job is available?

Malkin: Seventy nine weeks already and then they're going to extend it by another thirteen weeks and what happens is according to these economist who have seen it including this Clinton economist is that people will just delay getting a job until the three weeks before the benefits run out.

Tucker: Well, that might be true when there are jobs out there that are available, but there are very few jobs available at the moment so I don't think people are using that unemployment benefit to be lazy instead of going out and searching for jobs...

Malkin: I'm not making a moral judgment, it's an incentive problem.

Tucker: But when businesses advertise the few job openings they have, they'll advertise twenty openings, they have six thousand applicants so I don't think that's the problem...

Hunt: If Starbucks were hiring, suddenly you'll see lines around the block. Anecdotally George, I have a kid who has some friends from college and many of them don't have jobs and boy, they are looking.

Stephanopoulos: And there are other states especially that are hard hit.

I know she probably worked on her government cheese talking point for a while, but it makes no sense except if we've all turned into little mouses now. With unemployment so high, where are the jobs that people are not bothering to take that bears any of this out? There's good money to be made in wingnutland, so she can attack Americans just trying to stay afloat by receiving unemployment compensation. I never realized how wonderful not having a job is.

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Jumpin' Jehoshaphat, this man redefines the term "being confused." He just nicely obliterated the right wing's chances to smear Michelle Obama with that whole "she's proud for the first time" stupidity. Wasn't that nice of him?

The Politico: (h/t Jed Report)

So a man finally got a question into McCain and he had a very different sort of question.

The questioner noted that he had been educated at Princeton and Harvard and made more than $300,000 a year.

"How can I be proud of my country?" he asked.

Get it — he was mocking Michelle Obama and her statement earlier this year that her husband had for the first time in her life made her proud of her country.

Well, McCain either missed the joke or decided to ignore it and answer the question literally. I think it was the former because the individual asking the question had a thick accent that sounded to be either Indian or Pakistani, perhaps suggesting to McCain a recent immigrant grappling with America's image abroad.

"I'll admit to you that it's tough, it's tough in some respects," McCain said, seeming to lend credence to Michelle Obama's observation.

McCain said America needed to be "more humble, more inclusive."

He observed that one of the ways to be proud of the country was to look at our history — and the sacrifices U.S. troops have made abroad.

McCain let his questioner follow up and the individual repeated, but didn't clarify, his line.

In closing, McCain said he was proud of America in part "because of you and what you've been able to achieve and accomplish."

Gosh, I can't recall if anyone could have predicted this...

NYTimes (reg. req'd.)

Alberto R. Gonzales, like many others recently unemployed, has discovered how difficult it can be to find a new job. Mr. Gonzales, the former attorney general, who was forced to resign last year, has been unable to interest law firms in adding his name to their roster, Washington lawyers and his associates said in recent interviews.

He has, through friends, put out inquiries, they said, and has not found any takers. What makes Mr. Gonzales's case extraordinary is that former attorneys general, the government's chief lawyer, are typically highly sought.

A longtime loyalist to George W. Bush dating to their years together in Texas, Mr. Gonzales was once widely viewed as a strong candidate to be the first Hispanic-American nominated one day to the Supreme Court. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he carried an impressive personal story as the child of poor Mexican immigrants.

Despite those credentials, he left office last August with a frayed reputation over his role in the dismissal of several federal prosecutors and the truthfulness of his testimony about a secret eavesdropping program. He has had no full-time job since his resignation, and his principal income has come from giving a handful of talks at colleges and before private business groups.

"Maybe the passage of time will provide some opportunity for him," said one Washington lawyer who was aware of an inquiry to his firm from a Gonzales associate. "I wouldn't say 'rebuffed,' " said the lawyer, who asked his name not be used because the situation being described was uncomfortable for Mr. Gonzales. "I would say 'not taken up.'"

Well, unless he is collecting unemployment, I don't think he needs to worry about skewing his buddy's unemployment figures...

Nice to see karma biting him on the ass, though, isn't it?

Comment is free: Rather than taking advantage of this extraordinary opportunity to reduce inequality and educate the public about how the economy really works, progressive voices have been unusually quiet.

Tom Tomorrow: Pick a side Sparky!

PERRspectives Blog: A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health shows amazing disparities between how Democrats and Republicans perceive the American health care system.

DownWithTyranny! Some Europeans are worried about the prospect of a McCain presidency

The Nation: The NYT's newest columnist, Bill Kristol, just keeps embarrassing himself.

Pharyngula: Watch this appalling video of homeschoolers misusing the Denver museum to promote creationism.

We posted a clip of NBC's Law & Order SVU last week that dealt with the issue of physician-assisted torture in Iraq and I came across this article by Health Day. According to them, an alarming number of U.S. physicians are given inadequate training (as little as one hour total) on medical ethics as they relate to war and the Geneva Conventions:

Too few American medical students receive adequate instruction about military medical ethics and a physician's ethical duties under the Geneva Conventions, say Harvard Medical School researchers.

"The abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have galvanized much of the world against the U.S. Those abuses, in part abetted by physicians, will likely go down as one of our country's most egregious ethical lapses," lead author Dr. J. Wesley Boyd said in a prepared statement.

• Only 37 percent of medical students could correctly identify that the Geneva Conventions apply irrespective of whether war had formally been declared.
• 33.8 percent didn't know that the Geneva Conventions state that physicians should "treat the sickest first, regardless of nationality."
• 37 percent didn't know that the Geneva Conventions prohibit ever threatening or demeaning prisoners, or depriving them of food or water for any length of time.
• 33.9 percent couldn't state when they would be required to disobey an unethical order from a superior. Read on...