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It's interesting to see Fox News host Megyn Kelly get riled up over progressive policies like the Family Medical Leave Act. Of course, that might be because she just wrapped up a few months of maternity leave herself.

After calling radio host Mike Gallagher a "pinhead" for comments he made back in May on the air with Chris Wallace, Kelly sets him straight on the value of maternity leave, the fact that it's not a "racket," that men are also eligible for it, and that this country actually has more restrictive laws than other countries.

Despite the somewhat tongue-in-cheek tone in this clip, Kelly really nails him on the idiocy of his statement about the FMLA being a "racket" and not extending to men. She gave a passionate and clear defense of why the policy exists and even why it's weaker than most other countries' maternity leave policies.

How progressive of her! Seriously, it really is. Now if she could only wrap her head around the fact that the Family Medical Leave Act is only part of a larger picture that includes things like Medicaid, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act and Social Security, she might understand that social safety nets are something that constitute true family values. Still, it was refreshing and even a little shocking to hear such a passionate defense of progressive values from a Fox News commentator.

I wonder if she knows FMLA was passed by a Democratic Congress with a Democratic President. Maybe she's realizing that the real "family values" voters are Democrats. Hmmmm.

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Veteran Anthony Maschek (above, with fiancée Angela O'Neill) was heckled by fellow Columbia students over ROTC.

This story's from the New York Post, so I kind of figured an important piece of the story was missing. (For one thing, there are several videos of the ROTC Town Hall on YouTube, but nothing like the incident that's described. In fact, I found this video of another vet who spoke at the same town hall in favor of ROTC, and nothing unusual happened when he spoke.)

But then I found this audio file of Maschek's comments, and what I heard wasn't anywhere near what I would call "heckling." There's incredulous laughter after he warns the other students there are "bad men out there plotting to kill you," and you can hear someone say "racist" at one point. But the moderator quickly rebuked them and warned them against any more outbreaks.

The students laughed because like many of us, they've grown so skeptical of the justifications for these wars, and the "bad men" remark was treated as just another excuse. Someone did call Maschek a racist, presumably because to them, it sounded like he was lumping all Muslims together as terrorists. (It didn't sound that way to me.)

So no, I don't think anything unusual happened here. Just college kids being smartasses.

The wingnut blogs, of course, are turning this into an full-blown assault on God and the flag, and encouraging readers to apologize to him. I'm not going to apologize -- not because I don't care, but because it sounds like the normal give and take of a college class, and a soldier who took 11 bullets can probably handle it just fine. If he's smart enough to get into Columbia, Sgt. Maschek can also handle a couple of smart alecks.

Of course, the New York Post would rather exaggerate and inflame because it's more useful to portray all anti-war progressives as hating soldiers.

Columbia University students heckled a war hero during a town-hall meeting on whether ROTC should be allowed back on campus.

"Racist!" some students yelled at Anthony Maschek, a Columbia freshman and former Army staff sergeant awarded the Purple Heart after being shot 11 times in a firefight in northern Iraq in February 2008. Others hissed and booed the veteran.

Maschek, 28, had bravely stepped up to the mike Tuesday at the meeting to issue an impassioned challenge to fellow students on their perceptions of the military.

"It doesn't matter how you feel about the war. It doesn't matter how you feel about fighting," said Maschek. "There are bad men out there plotting to kill you."

Several students laughed and jeered the Idaho native, a 10th Mountain Division infantryman who spent two years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington recovering from grievous wounds.

Maschek, who is studying economics, miraculously survived the insurgent attack in Kirkuk. In the hail of gunfire, he broke both legs and suffered wounds to his abdomen, arm and chest.

He enrolled last August at the Ivy League school, where an increasingly ugly battle is unfolding over the 42-year military ban there.

More than half of the students who spoke at the meeting -- the second of three hearings on the subject -- expressed opposition to ROTC's return. Many of the 200 students in the audience held anti-military placards with slogans such as, "1 in 3 female soldiers experiences sexual assault in the military."

The university has created a task force polling 10,000 students on the issue, but would not release the vote tally of the 1,300 who have already responded.

In 2005, when the university last voted to reject ROTC's return, it cited the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

That policy was overturned in December, but resistance remains.

And right on cue, here's Fox's Megyn Kelly and and wingnut talk show host Mike Gallagher piling on.

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Yesterday on her Fox News show, Megyn Kelly thought it would be revealing in some fashion or another to run footage of protests from angry Latinos in Arizona, and run them side by side with footage from the Tea Party protests in Washington, D.C. in March.

Talk about selective footage: What they showed of the Arizona protests -- which indeed were largely peaceful -- were the moments when the rowdiness got out of hand and people were arrested. And of course, the footage they showed of the Tea Partiers was of moments when their protest was entirely peaceful -- not the ugliness that erupted when Democrats tried to walk through the crowd.

But it left me wondering: Why didn't Kelly and Co. do the same thing back in March when there were in fact immigration marchers in D.C. at the same time as the Tea Party protests on health-care reform?

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As I noted then:

Indeed, this crowd was significantly larger than the much-promoted "9/12 March on Washington" last September, even though that event was endlessly promoted for over a month by Fox News (I know, I know; they like to claim they had 1.2 million people there, but the reality was that it was actually about 70,000).

Yet, strangely enough, there was only ONE Fox News crew on hand to cover the immigration march today. I spoke with the reporter for this crew, and he told me Fox News had several other crews on hand today -- but they were all up covering the Tea Partiers and the health-care vote.

And in case you're wondering, there were exactly ZERO stories on Fox News reporting on this march in advance. ZERO. I couldn't find any at CNN or MSNBC either.

There was exactly ONE report on Fox News covering this rally -- because Fox was so busy covering the Tea Party protesters.

On its website, Fox carried only an AP report (now scrubbed) and a slide show. That was it.

The final estimate for this crowd was 200,000 people -- which dwarfed the Tea Party protests. And it was considerably more peaceful and civilized than the ugliness up at the Capitol.

Wonder why they didn't do a comparison/contrast back then, don't you?

This article just highlights how out of touch the Limbaugh National Committee really are:

Nationally syndicated conservative radio talk show host Mike Gallagher lamented this morning that his failure to sell his own house, that he recently placed on the market, was due to the psychological effects burdening the wealthy resulting from the class warfare propagated by President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats.

Gallagher was attempting to make the case that the economic policies of Democrats in D.C. have driven fear into the rich, which has translated into the wealthy being too scared to spend their money. As a result, wealth is not having the ‘trickle down effect’ on the nation’s working class who rely on the nation's upper class for jobs.

--

"I decided to put my house on the market. Three weeks. And it’s a house – and I’m not bragging – it’s a house with a ‘wow factor.’ You walk into the house and you go, ‘Wow.’ It’s got all the nice little bells and whistles, it’s got the electric shades that go up and down, and the sound system, and the beautiful pool. I’m a lucky guy. Three weeks – not a single phone call."

Dripping with irony, Gallagher, a fierce proponent of ‘individual responsibility,’ recently lambasted home buyers facing foreclosure who had purchased homes they could not afford and were seeking bailout money or to have the federal government intervene and stop foreclosures. Last week, Gallagher highlighted the story of a bus driver who had purchased an $800K home, which is now only worth $600K:

"I dare you to feel sorry for her…how about this, honey? Pay your mortgage!"

In short, Gallagher believes in individual responsibility and the importance of micro-economic behavior when it comes to people who can’t afford their mortgages, but attributes (Democratic) macroeconomic governmental policies for his inability to sell his own house.

Gallagher, by the way, did not mention the listing price of his home on the air.

Maybe people are making responsiblitiy a high priority? Gallagher, not the comedian is complaining becasue his house has been on the market all of three weeks without even telling us what his selling price is. Welcome to the horrors that all of Americans are facing, but at least he isn't in foreclosure.

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On Tuesday's O'Reilly Factor, Mike Gallagher -- sold that home yet, Mike? -- and Lars Larson were on to talk about why right-wingers like Newt Gingrich just can't help talking about Rush Limbaugh and drawing his ire and thus feeding into the evil liberals' devious plan to draw attention away from the serious issue of the economy. It was a hoot.

The wankafoolery started really rolling when Gallagher came up with this gem:

Gallagher: Well, I think Newt doesn't like being part of a phony debate that's been set up by the left as to whether or not Rush Limbaugh is the face of the Republican Party. Newt has always been great at defining what Republicans are about, what Republicans are for, and putting Democrats on the defensive. And I think Newt is probably mildly annoyed that a radio host, even one as prominent as Rush, has created so many headlines over all this. And I think both of these men acknowledge that it's a disingenuous debate. It's just something that's been ginned up by the Left to try to fracture the Republican Party even further, and that's just not what Newt is about.

Even O'Reilly seemed skeptical about all this, but all were in eventual agreement that the whole thing was a ridiculous plot by liberals and the Obama administration to distract attention from the economy, which O'Reilly assures us is going to backfire, blah blah blah blah blah.

They're all conveniently forgetting one thing: Limbaugh is precisely relevant to the matter of the economy because he has made himself a major player -- and certainly its most visible one -- in the fight over President Obama's legislative package for getting the economy back on its feet.

Does anyone doubt for a minute that Republicans in both the House and the Senate would have been as significantly lockstep, completely uniformly obstructionist, in voting against the stimulus bill had it not been for Limbaugh, with this troops manning the phone lines to deal rapidly and harshly with any hapless Republicans who might even hint toward straying? Is there any doubt their leverage helped Blue Dogs water the bill down enough to make it potentially short of what's needed?

Trying to pretend Limbaugh is just a sideshow, when in fact he's been a key player in how the economic fix has proceeded -- and particularly in how it's been discussed and shaped -- is a good meme for Republicans. But it also runs aground on the sharp rocks of reality.

Limbaugh has become the most important means of Republicans maintaining their ideological rigidity through hardline party discipline, especially on economic matters. So when liberals go after Limbaugh as the face of the GOP, that's because -- by default -- that's what he is right now. And it's not looking like it will change anytime soon, either; do you see any real potential winners among that crop of Republican politicians right now? (I for one am waiting for them to recruit Glenn Beck to run on the Sarah Palin ticket ...)

So when Obama brought Limbaugh up -- "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done" -- it was precisely in the context of solving the economic mess. And he's right: If Republicans are just listening to Rush and, like him, reflexively rejecting every proposal he offers, and moreover reflexively working for his failure for cold political calculations, then they're not going to be part of getting anything done in the next four years, especially not in terms of getting the economy back up and running.

The public doesn't want the standard old Conservative solutions to these problems -- which is all the GOP has to offer -- and Republicans are going to have to learn to deal with that fact. The only remaining question is whether they're going to be part of the solution, or part of the problem. With Rush, we already have our answer.

Again, the hubris that it takes to unapologetically admit to being a propagandist never ceases to amaze me...Wallace's dad must be so proud.

ThinkProgess grabbed this rather astonishing audio from The Mike Gallagher Show, yet another apologist for The. Worst. Presidency. Ever. And in an oh-so-macho pissing contest over who is more favored by the criminals in the White House, Wallace brags to Gallagher:

WALLACE: Let me ask you this, did the Vice President say to you, “thank you so much for defending the president and yes I’m going to be giving you a special exit interview in a couple of weeks?”

GALLAGHER: Did he say all that to you?

WALLACE: Yes.

Apparently, all this gratitude towards Wallace came as Wallace defended the Bush administration, ironically at the premiere of a movie where a real journalist actually did his job when interviewing a president:

Last Monday, at a screening of Ron Howard’s new film “Frost/Nixon,” Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace vociferously defended President Bush against criticism by Howard that Bush has abused the office of the presidency in a way similar to President Richard Nixon. “Richard Nixon’s crimes were committed purely in the interest of his own political gain,” said Wallace. Wallace claimed that it was a “gross misreading of history” to say that Bush abused his power “for pure political self preservation” like Nixon did.[..]

Later in the interview, Wallace said that “a bunch of people” at Cheney’s party thanked him for his comments. “Cheney was genuinely grateful for what I had done, and Ed Gillespie, the senior counselor to the president, was there and genuinely grateful.” Listen to it here:

As ThinkProgress noted earlier this week, the Bush White House did in fact abuse its power for political gain and to maintain control of the government. Beyond politicizing many federal agencies, the Bush team also outed an undercover CIA agent in order to punish a critic and fired nine U.S. attorneys for political reasons.

I wonder if Wallace thinks he will be viewed as gratefully by the incoming administration or if he'll suddenly remember that his job is not to serve as a public relations flack. Somehow I can't see him being so quick to defend Obama.

Here's Rudy telling everybody what a hero he was on 9/11.

Giuliani: I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers ... I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them," Giuliani told reporters in Cincinnati Thursday. 

He's since backtracked, but when you see him say this...well...Giuliani knew exactly what he was doing. Playing his America's Mayor" character. His response was actually quite disturbing too.

"The way I said it, I probably could have said it better, but what I was trying to say was, I was there quite a bit, there are people that were there more than me, people that were [there] less than me. There were people there less than me, people on my staff, who already have had serious health consequences and they weren't there as often as I was," Giuliani said, "but I wasn't trying to suggest a competition of any kind, which is the way it come across. And I think I could have said it better. You know, what I was saying was 'I'm there with you.'"

Giuliani reiterated Friday that he, too, may get sick from the time he spent at Ground Zero following the attacks...

He fed Stu Bykofsky's new BFF---conservative host Mike Gallagher this defense.  A friend who I grew up with in NY was a fireman at ground zero---actually working there for a long time. He still has a bad cough even after he retired two years ago.

This post by Austin at Jesus General falls very much in line with my question of the conservative fear of The Other from yesterday.

On January 31st, Amanda Marcotte wrote about how conservative pundit Mike Gallagher actually admitted that terrorism would be a good thing for Republican political ambitions:

Seeing Jane Fonda Saturday was enough to make me wish the unthinkable: it will take another terror attack on American soil in order to render these left-leaning crazies irrelevant again. Remember how quiet they were after 9/11? No one dared take them seriously. It was the United States against the terrorist world, just like it should be.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt said that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - but I think he might have been wrong. I think that we should also perhaps fear, or at least be very wary of, those in our society who would use our fears for their own political agendas. Mike Gallagher's comments are not an isolated instance of political insanity - similar thoughts have been expressed to varying degrees by a number of conservatives and Republicans over the past few years. There are many who look fondly on the 9/11 attacks because they provided an excuse to push through domestic and international policies they had long advocated, but could not successfully impose on others because there wasn't enough fear in American society to help.

I just spoke with Tracy from the Booman Tribune down in Crawford and she gave me a quick overview of what is going on there right now. Tracy drove down and has been there for three days. Here's a profile of Tracy on BT. She was just interviewed for TIME.

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She also talked about Mike Gallagher's " We Don't Care" protest bus tour that was highlighted by this Kos Diary. He showed up for all of thirty minutes.

(Update)-Hunter's Diary has more: "So Gallagher is having a counterprotest in Crawford, TX. against her, tonight. He's calling it the "Pro-America Bus Trip". Since, you know, Cindy Sheehan is presumably "Anti-America"."

Chickenhawks Have An Army, Too: Chickenhawks of the nation, I give you "Gallagher's Army."

Michelle responds to John Cole : "Unhinged critics have gone ballistic over the fact that I linked to this news, which was first broken by another site called Dang If I Know over the weekend. In response, this blogger spewed profanities left and right."

Cole replies: And quit pretending you are just breaking the news of her divorce. You are breaking the news of her divorce as an active attempt to discredit her. Have some decency. Try, just once, to be better than Chris Lehane."

Dc Media Girl has her say: Michelle Malkin has demonstrated, clearly and concisely, what I was trying to point out below: That these wingnuts will say anything and stop at nothing to win, while putting on a great show of taking offense when the shoe is on the other foot...read on.

Mykeru has some advice for her husband: "Dude, one day she's going to snap. Sleep with one eye open."

While Greg at the Talent Show has the pay-per view event of the month going on: Michelle vs. Michelle.

Ezra Klein: Malkin's got one year left. She's got a story to write, a soldier to understand, and a body of statements to defend. Her husband can take care of their kids for awhile, it's time for Michelle to fulfill her responsibility to her country, to the truth, and to those who want a serious counterattack on Cindy Sheehan...read on

For some reason Michelle has to bring Air America in all of this because you can smear two for the price of one. Most 24/7 shows are doing segments on her, but apparently they don't count in MalkinWorld. She complains that Randi Rhodes wants to go to Crawford. Why no mention of another "lower being" Mike Gallagher? He just drove down there to drink a glass of lemonade, chant an imbecilic mantra, have a photo-op, figured thirty minutes was a real protest and drive away before one of the neighbors filled his bus with buckshot.

From the right The Political Teen joins in.

La Shawn Barber writes: Lay Off Cindy Sheehan

This is getting uglier by the minute as Bill O'Reilly pitted the step mother of Dolores Kesterson's son against his own mother. Bill had another "%^^&*(&*^" moment when he asks her who raised him. Newshounds has the wrap up on it.