Mother Jones: Not even Bork was treated like this

Scott Horton: Arrest of 13 CIA agents sought in Spain

pandagon: Sneering Creationists

Booman Tribune: GOP votes against protecting home buyers

They gave us a republic: Nightowl Newswrap

Esquire: Responding to the attack on Roger Ebert

That's right. I truly dislike Caleb Howe. I dislike him so much, I made him one of my very first blocked conservatives on Twitter (I like to call them "BCOT").

Did I mention I love Twitter? I love Twitter so much I'm coming up on 100,000 tweets since March, 2007. I love Twitter and I understand it pretty well. The dynamic of the retweet, the conservative effort on a 24/7 basis to game the conversation rather than engage honestly, all of it. There's an ebb and flow to conversation depending on the time of day similar to a river raft ride through white water and calm streams.

The only time Twitter is ugly is when people toss words like atomic weaponry while claiming hey, it's all snark and mirrors, nothing to see here, move along.

So Caleb Howe slaps up a post over at Mediaite entitled "I don't like Roger Ebert" where he starts with a bogus story about how he loves Twitter but it's not real life and stuff, and what he really likes to do is just get all sorts of attention while wallowing in a bunch of snark and gratuitous nonsense, and well, he laid it down, so I'm going to just pick it up and run with it a bit.

In his defense

You know what? It’s a polarized country we live in. Often rabidly so. I play that game. Most of you reading this, you play it too. We play for ratings, for clicks, for retweets. We play to satisfy bloodlust, vengeance, self-righteous fury. We play because we have contempt. And contempt is the one thing you will see on display more often than any other emotion in political tweeting. Because that’s not a person, it’s a TeePee. Not a man, a target.

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Roger Ebert is getting a little taste of some very nasty tea...from tea partiers IRATE at the nerve of Roger Ebert for an offhand tweet he made in response to the California teens disciplined for wearing American flag t-shirts at a Cinco de Mayo school event.

Ebert tweeted:

Kids who wear American Flag t-shirts on 5 May should have to share a lunchroom table with those who wear a hammer and sickle on 4 July.

Well, you know that co-opting the favorite symbol of the tea party crowd wasn't going to set well, especially when you imply the perhaps there is a lack of empathy going on.

There are a few points of etiquette most of us learn early:

1. Always send thank-you cards.
2. Don't talk with your mouth full.
3. Don't mock those who have battled cancer and won.

Those crazy tea partiers? They forgot lesson number three.

It seems they've worked themselves into a tizzy over Roger Ebert's comments on Twitter in response to the case in California where five kids were sent home early from school for wearing American flag garb on Cinco de Mayo.[..]

CNN.com reported response tweets from the Tea Party Tweeters like: “I mean honestly. How many pieces need to fall off @ebertchicago before he gets the hint to shut the (expletive) up” and “You know, @ebertchicago, I’m not as expert on flag etiquette as you. Tell me, which do I fly when you die of cancer?”

Hoo boy. You stay classy now. Ebert, bless his heart, has battled far more formidable foes than your nasty little tea bagger, so he's been giving as good as he's gotten on Twitter (follow him here: @ebertchicago). He also blogged about it in more than 140 characters on his blog:

The impression is spreading that I have drawn an equation between the American flag and the hammer and the sickle. I'm currently serving for target practice on some right-wing websites, and a group of Tweeters are having jolly fun portraying me as an America hater and worse.[..]

[My post] was tweeted at the height of the discussion over five white California kids who wore matching t-shirts to school on Cinco de Mayo, and were sent home by their school. This inspired predictable outrage in the usual circles.

Tweeted from lonestarag05: Its the USA not Mexico. They are allowed to be proud of their country. I wonder sometimes why you even stay here.

Many others informed me that Americans have the right to be proud of our flag, and wear it on T-shirts. Of course they do. That isn't the question. It's not what my Tweet said. What I suggested, in its 108 letters, is that we could all use a little empathy. I wish I had worded it better.

Let's begin with a fact few Americans know: Celebrating Cinco de Mayo is an American custom. The first such celebration was held in California in 1863, and they have continued without interruption. In Mexico itself it is not observed, except in the state of Puebla--the site of Mexico's underdog victory over the French on May 5, 1862.

Cinco de Mayo's purpose is to celebrate Mexican-American culture in the United States. We are a nation of immigrants, and have many such observances, for example St. Patrick's Day parades, which began in Boston in 1737 and not in Ireland until 1931. Or Pulaski Day, officially established in Illinois in 1977, and not observed in Poland. The first Chinese New Year's parade was held in San Francisco in the 1860s, and such parades began only later in China. In Chicago this August we will have the 81st annual Bud Billiken Parade, one of the largest parades in America, celebrating the African-American heritage.[..]

The question is obviously not whether Americans, or anyone else, has the right to wear our flag on their t-shirts. But empathetic people realize much depends on context. If, on Cinco de Mayo, you turn up at your school with a large Mexican-American student population wearing such shirts, are you (1) joining in the spirit of the holiday, or (2) looking for trouble?

I suggest you intend to insult your fellow students. Not because they do not respect THEIR flag, but because you do not respect their heritage. That there are five of you in matching shirts demonstrates you want to be deliberately provocative.

Give 'em hell, Roger.

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Robert Ebert nails Bill O'Reilly for his off-the-wall and venomous tactics.

It's a long read and worth it. He compares him to Father Coughlin and points out his nativism:

He has been an influence on the most worrying trend in the field of news: The polarization of opinion, the elevation of emotional temperature, the predictability of two of the leading cable news channels. A majority of cable news viewers now get their news slanted one way or the other by angry men. O'Reilly is not the worst offender. That would be Glenn Beck. Keith Olbermann is gaining ground. Rachel Maddow provides an admirable example for the boys of firm, passionate outrage, and is more effective for nogt shouting. Much has been said recently about the possible influence of O'Reilly on the murder of Dr. George Tiller by Scott Roeder. Such a connection is impossible to prove. Yet studies of bullies and their victims suggest a general way such an influence might take place. Bullies like to force others to do their will, while they can stand back and protest their innocence: "I was nowhere near the gymnasium, Sister!" A recent study of school shootings found that two-thirds of all the shooters were victims of bullying, and perceived themselves as members of persecuted minorities.

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Sometimes O'Reilly is compared with Father Coughlin, a popular far-right radio commentator in the 1930s who fanned the flames against Roosevelt and warned about immigration and "foreigners," by which it was understood he meant primarily Jews. O'Reilly objects to such a comparison, and certainly there is no reason to consider him anti-Semitic.

But a team of media researchers at Indiana University studied every editorial broadcast by O'Reilly during a six-month period and found a similar nativist cast. Among the findings of their paper published in the Journal Journalism Studies was this one:...read on

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You Tube [H/t Heather]

I think "Squeaky" is a fitting description.

Roger Ebert on the love fest between Chris Matthews and Ann Coulter (h/t Daniel)

And on a sad note, RIP to Lady Bird Johnson