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The right-wing media -- particularly Fox -- are stumbling all over themselves to castigate anyone who dares suggest that the ugly rhetoric that's been unleashed in the wake of the passage of health-care reform is anything but a bipartisan affair. Indeed, this has been the standard talking point on Fox for the better part of the past several days.

It continued Saturday on Fox News Watch, when Jon Scott's assembled panel -- Judith Miller, James Pinkerton, Ellis Henican and Cal Thomas -- chewed over why the librul media are so intent on making the threats out to be a right-wing affair. Miller, to her credit, tried to inject some sanity into the discussion, but she was knocked down by a lying (par for the course) Pinkerton:

Scott: Back to the issue of those threats, though, Judy, the broadcast networks led with the stories of threats against, you know, Democrat supporters of the health-care bill. It seemed like it was very much driven, you know, from the Democratic side of the equation.

Miller: Well, because most of the threats seemed to come the Right. I mean, the bullet through the window, which now turns out to be somehow unrelated to any anger, an accident, that was a --

Pinkerton: Now, Judy, you're a skilled reporter. Just think of the two things you said, that the threat -- the bullet through Eric Cantor, a Republican's window, seems to be unrelated. But most of the threats seem to come against -- to be made by Republicans, neither of which you can prove, and your saying them is helping to feed the narrative, which is that Republicans are the bad guys again.

Bzzzzt!!!! Sorry, Jim, but just like you did when you tried to claim you had nothing to do with the Willie Horton ads, you're lying. Because Miller's claims are both easily proven, and you know it:

A: Local police have declared that the shot that hit Cantor's window was "random gunfire" -- it was, in fact, a spent round falling to earth, which means it could not have been intentionally fired through Cantor's window.

B: Any kind of tally will demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of threat and actual violence are being directed at Democrats by angry right-wingers. Besides the well-reported threats against Bart Stupak and Louise Slaughter, probably the most prominent instance of this involved Alabama ex-militiaman Mike Vanderboegh's call for angry Tea Partiers to smash Democratic Party office windows -- after which there was a spate of such smashings.

But that story, in fact, has never been reported on Fox.

Cal Thomas, however, came up with the most novel attack on Democrats for having let themselves be the subject of such violent rhetoric and behavior -- essentially a variation on Glenn Beck's theory that Obama and the Democrats are intentionally trying to provoke a violent response from the extremist right:

Thomas: Look, when Nancy Pelosi walked through those Tea Partiers, it was like -- what should analogize this to? Ah, the march through Skokie, Illinois, by the Nazis? It was deliberately provocative! They wanted a reaction!

Lessee ... Pelosi and the Democrats were making what was a normal, everyday trek from the floor of the House to their offices, and were confronted by angry Tea Party protesters. Imagine if they had turned back and found another route to their offices; then Cal Thomas would be declaring that they were "running and hiding" from the protesters, wouldn't he?

Instead, they're just like nasty neo-Nazis trying to provoke a crowd.

Sigh. These people simply occupy a Bizarro Universe full-time now.

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Fox's Catherine Herridge has been reporting for a couple of weeks about the White House's change of policy regarding reporters' access to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, which while problematic from a journalist's perspective has all the earmarks of a classic bureaucratic conflict with reporters.

Herridge ran an update yesterday on Fox's Live Desk with Marsha MacCallum, including a clip of a Pentagon spokesman being short with Herridge, evidently, over her persistent questions on the issue. It looks like a tempest in a teapot, but Herridge is a serious reporter and her beef has some legitimacy, especially when it comes to transparency for this White House.

The interesting part of this report, though, came immediately after Herridge's report, when MacCallum hosted our old friend Judith Miller, the woman who helped bring you that six-years-and-running disaster on wheels known as the Iraq War. Miller decided that this Pentagon spokesman was in need of upbraiding:

MacCallum: What did you think of the Pentagon response there to Catherine's question?

Miller: You know, I thought, it's very combative. Excuse me, Mr. Pentagon Spokesman, for Fox doing our job. We're supposed to be there, we're supposed to be reporting on what the Pentagon is doing to and for these prisoners, or detainees, as they prefer to be called. And if he doesn't like our going back and back to look in on those people, well, maybe we should just believe everything they put out.

I found it completely combative, unnecessarily so.

So now we're being lectured on the relationship of reporters to official sources by the woman who was the faithful stenographer of Bush's Pentagon -- particularly Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- in selling the public on the notion that there were indeed weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein. The woman who -- after the utter mendacity of her sources was revealed -- told an interviewer:

"[M]y job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal."

I don't have a problem with Fox reporters pushing for transparency from the Pentagon. I do have a problem with Judith Miller telling us how we should do that.

It sure is heart-warming, after all, to see Miller get concerned about looking into the accuracy of Pentagon claims -- though it does seem rather convenient that this is a concern of hers only now, now that we have a Democratic administration.

If she had demonstrated even an ounce of this concern during the Bush years, the nation might not have been talked into an outrageous, costly, and wholly unnecessary war.

James Moore wrote the ultimate survey of Miller's journalistic miscreancy.

Arthur Silber:...All Propaganda, All the Time

E&P:

Saturday’s New York Times features an article, posted at the top of its Web site late Friday, that suggests very strongly that Iran is supplying the “deadliest weapon aimed at American troops” in Iraq. The author notes, “Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile.”

What is the source of this volatile information? Nothing less than “civilian and military officials from a broad range of government agencies.” Greg Mitchell highlights Michael R. Gordon, the same Times reporter who, on his own, or with Judith Miller, wrote some of the key, and badly misleading or downright inaccurate, articles about Iraqi WMDs in the run-up to the 2003 invasion....read on

Why does this man still have a job at the NY Times? Jonathan Schwarz: Michael Gordon Actually Voice-Activated Tape Recorder

Chalabi squeaks:

So, Ahmad Chalabi, what went wrong in Iraq in the war you helped to sell? “The Americans sold us out,” he tells longtime Baghdad reporter Dexter Filkins in a lengthy cover story in this coming Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, reviewed by E&P.

Chalabi was the Iraqi exile who worked -- via everyone from Paul Wolfowitz to Judith Miller -- to convince America to topple Saddam in 2003 (not that many in the administration needed much convincing).

Now, in an interview in his London home, Chalabi, betraying what Filkins calls “a touch of bitterness,” declares, “The real culprit in all this is Wolfowitz,” the former assistant secretary of defense, whom he still considers a friend. “They chickened out. The Pentagon guys chickened out…The Americans screwed it up.”'...read on

Notice how all these cowards are turning on each other....Let's get Judy Miller's take. Judy---where are you? Oh, she hasn't updated her blog since August.

The Village Voice: From Joe McCarthy to Richard Nixon, he took them all on. Despite all his shortcomings, when it came to his journalism, he was fearless. In the current day, the public has pushed back against insider, access journalism�whether practiced by Bob Woodward, Judith Miller, or Robert Novak. Anderson always understood it was his role to be an outsider, not just in regard to the politicians he covered, but also vis-a-vis the established order of journalism, that established order having always been part of the problem...read on"

He's sorely missed now.

Arthur thinks Iran and Syria are in the air:"Norman Solomon reminds us that in the drumbeat of war leading up to the invasion of Iraq, The New York Times committed many sins in addition to the reporting of one Judith Miller...read on"

Judith Miller and Fitzgerald's Agreement

Jeralyn digs deep into Judy, her release and the following testimony...

Lou Dobbs: Judy's Knight in Shinning Armor

Judy gave an interview to Lou and was he ever angry at Fitzgerald.

Download | play -WMP low res. Bittorrent is down for a while

Download | play -QT is still loading on the servers.

Dobbs: I will not forgive Fitzgerald for what he did to you. I think it is an onerous, disgusting abuse of government power, and that of Judge Hogan, straightforwardly.

Judy on Prison: ...the most soulless place I had ever been....It was demeaning. It was degrading. It was very lonely."

Atrios says: Who knows how lives could've been improved if Judy had spent her time covering prison conditions rather than pushing phantom threats."

Jeralyn wrote a huge review on Judy's spot: Judith Miller Talks to Lou Dobbs

Attytood: Another case of Miller: The oil-for-food years...ex-NYT United Nations bureau chief rips Miller.

A Liberal Dose: The Many Faces of the Modern Repugnican...A retrospective gallery of original Liberal Dose art.

The Bullshit Report: Red Cross: Racism or Good Marketing?

ManselReport: Questions for Judith Miller

The Revealer: The Final Battle
Red Cross: Racism or Good Marketing?

ManselReport: Questions for Judith Miller The Revealer: The Final Battle

Petrelis Files: Bridgeview used car salesman Muhammad Salah recalls being beaten, housed in a "refrigerator cell" and threatened with rape by Israeli soldiers until he admitted to bankrolling overseas terrorists, according to a new filing in U.S. District Court.

In an odd twist, the interrogation was witnessed by embattled New York Times reporter Judith Miller, and defense attorneys suggested Monday the best way for the U.S. government to prove its case -- and prove Salah wasn't abused -- is to call the controversial journalist to the witness stand....read on