Scarce put up New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's speech defending his nomination of Solahi Mohammed to NJ's Superior Court earlier. And as much as I find to vehemently disagree with Chris Christie--and there are volumes of disagreement-- there's something refreshing in seeing a Republican reject typical xenophobic memes and speak on an intellectually honest level.

The question on Sharia Law seemed to set Christie off, as he said exasperated:

“Sharia Law has nothing to do with this at all, it’s crazy! The guy is an American citizen!” He concluded that the “Sharia Law business is just crap… and I’m tried of dealing with the crazies,” adding with disgust and frustration that “it’s just unnecessary to be accusing this guy of things just because of his religious background.”

Lawrence O'Donnell thought so too, and awarded Christie with the first ever The Last Word standing ovation for refusing to capitulate to the ugliness that is the Republican Party's unabashed islamophobia and rightfully characterize those practitioners as "crazies."

Unfortunately, there's consequences to be paid for such honesty. Certainly, getting applauded by liberals on the derided liberal station MSNBC isn't good for one's conservative cred. Next thing you know, Christie's mug will be up on Pammy Geller's website as a islamo-fascist terrorist lover.

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Republican demagogues like Newt Gingrich are always faced with the dilemma of how to deal with reality, which as Stephen Colbert suggests, has that nasty liberal bias. Their favorite trick in recent years has been simply to invert reality on its head -- turn victimizers and predators into victims, and vice versa, make up into down, wrong into right.

So last night on Greta Van Susteren's Fox show, Gingrich -- confronted with the cold reality that Latino voters are fleeing the GOP in droves, thanks to the Republicans' championing of racist laws the just-passed police-state-inducing SB1070 in Arizona -- decided it was all President Obama's fault:

Gingrich: Well, look, I assume that somewhere after he [Obama] attacked Arizona, engaged in what I think was a racist dialogue to try to frighten Latinos away from the Republican Party, stood next to the president of Mexico and said borders don't matter because we have strong bonds, had the president of Mexico get a standing ovation from Democrats for attacking an American state, and has his own State Department apologize to the Chinese for the Arizona law -- somewhere in that process his pollster came in and said, 'You know, maybe you're positioned a little bad on this issue.'

No doubt Gingrich had a look at the grim numbers:

For the Republican Party, politically, there's good news and bad news in our new NBC/MSNBC/Telemundo poll on the subject of immigration. Let's start with the good news: The Arizona anti-illegal immigration law, passed by a GOP-led legislature and signed by a GOP governor, has been a short-term political winner. The poll shows that 61% of the public supports the law, and a Republican congressional candidate who backs the law beats a Democratic candidate who opposes it, 40%-26%. But here's the bad news: Latinos, once a semi-swing group of voters, now have swung overwhelmingly for President Obama and the Democratic Party, and younger Hispanics are moving to the Democrats in even greater numbers."

*** Latinos aren’t swing voters anymore: For example, 68% of Latinos approve of Obama’s job (compared with 48% of overall respondents and 38% of whites), and they view the Democratic Party favorably by a 54%-21% score (versus 41%-40% among all adults and 34%-48% among whites). And their views of the Republican Party? In the poll, the GOP fav/unfav among Latinos is 22%-44%. What’s more, Latinos think Democrats would do a better job than Republicans in protecting the interests of minorities (by 58%-11%), in representing the opportunity to move up the economic ladder (46%-20%), in dealing with immigration (37%-12%), and in promoting strong moral values (33%-23%). The only advantage they gave Republicans was in enforcing security along the border (31%-20%). And Latinos remain a sleeping -- yet growing -- political giant: 23% of them aren’t registered voters (compared with 12% of whites and 16% of blacks), and

*** Dropping like a rock: It didn't use to be this way. In 2004, George W. Bush, the former governor of Texas, won some 40% of the Latino vote. But in 2006, that percentage for Republicans dropped to 30%, and it was 31% in '08. And check out these party identification averages among Latinos that our Hart (D)/McInturff (R) pollsters put together from our past NBC/WSJ polls; this chart puts together the YEARLY average of all Hispanics surveyed for each year (approximately 900 respondents are included in each yearly sample):

-- In 2004, Dems held a 22-point edge in party identification among Latinos (49%-27%)
-- In 2005, it was 24 points (48%-24%)
-- In 2006, it was 26 points (50%-22%)
-- In 2007, it was 30 points (52%-22%)
-- In 2008, it was 35 points (57%-22%)
-- In 2009, it was 31 points (50%-19%)
-- And so far in 2010, it has been 36 points (58%-22%).

See, Gingrich's problem is a real-world one: Every Latino voter in the country -- which is to, every Latino citizen -- who does not live in Arizona, and particularly anyone with an accent, knows full well that if they travel to Arizona, they'll need to bring their citizenship papers or birth certificate or some other certificate proving their citizenship -- otherwise they risk being caught up in a Kafkaesque law-enforcement and potentially deported.

Gingrich and the other defenders of SB1070 keep pointing to the fig leaf of the law's wording prohibiting racial profiling -- they don't want to cop to the realities of how police go about their work, which inevitably will mean that they will catch up Latino citizens in their snares.

These defenders keep claiming that only non-citizens are affected, because only they are required to carry their papers. But Latino citizens will constantly come under suspicion for being non-citizens, and their papers demanded of them too.

Latinos are perfectly cognizant of this reality. Which is why they're fleeing Gingrich's little up-is-down Bizarro World in droves.

See, in that Bizarro World, it's only "racist" when a Democrat decries racism. Otherwise, actual racism doesn't exist.

I wrote about the lying liar known as Mitt Romney and the mountain of lies he told at CPAC. Ron Fournier then wrote an article headlined: "Untruths have consequences in politics". The Washington Post epitomizes exactly what we mean by the "false equivalency" argument with this stupid article by Fournier.

In these hyper-partisan times, it's rarely good enough to respond to an unfair attack with a factual argument. Fire is fought with more high heat. And so it was this week, when liberal bloggers reacted to the CPAC distortions with false attacks of their own. On the Daily Kos Web site, one blogger noted the standing ovation given to "the self-confessed war criminal Dick Cheney."

Whatever one might think of Cheney's interrogation policies, the former vice president has never been charged with a war crime, much less confessed to one.

No matter. The same blogger criticized anti-liberal protests at CPAC, adding with a rare burst of evenhandedness: "Some of what went on was the same kind of silliness partisans of all stripes engage in."

Is this madness? Somehow a diary on DKos is given equal weight to the lies of Mitt Romney, who is running for president in 2012? This, my friends, is why we call them "The Villagers."

Digby has a great piece up about this heresy.

Ron Fournier wrote in yesterday's WaPo about the lying rightwingers at CPAC and the equally dishonest liberal activists who hate them. His theme is that Real Americans are sick of all this lying by the partisans of both sides and just want the truth.

He then takes an example of each side's lies to illustrate this. The first is Mitt Romney, whom many people consider to be the front runner for the Republican nomination, at CPAC. He points out that Romney lied about the Democrats' policies on taxes, jobs, deficits, tort reform, and the treatment of terrorist suspects in his speech to the faithful. For the Democrats he used as an example an anonymous diarist at DKos who wrote that Dick Cheney was a "self-confessed war criminal," insisting that's a lie because Cheney has not been charged with a war crime, nor has he confessed to one...read on

And as Digby pointed out, Dick Cheney admitted to authorizing waterboarding -- which is, you know, a war crime. Is Fournier that ignorant not to understand this?

Dick Cheney confessed to a war crime and just because our political system is too weak to prosecute him for it doesn't mean it's a lie to point that out.

But hey, by all means, let's pretend that Mitt Romney's lies and this anonymous blogger's truth are both to blame for the fact that the country has no faith in politicians. Luckily we have the village arbiters of reality to help us work our way through it.

(Ron Fournier is the Washington bureau chief for The Associated Press.)

Eric Boehlert makes an incredible point.

If you don't think there's a media double standard that favors Republicans over Democrats, then let's play a game of what-if.

What if, in 2006, at Yearly Kos, the first annual convention of liberal bloggers and their readers, organizers shelled out $100,000 for former Vice President Al Gore to address attendees? And what if the same organizers booked as an opening-night speaker a fringe, radical-left conspiracy theorist who'd spent the previous year pushing the thoroughly debunked claim that some Bush White administration insiders played a role in, and even planned, the 9-11 attacks. What if the speaker (also proudly anti-Semitic) received a standing ovation from the liberal Yearly Kos crowd?

Given that backdrop, and given the fact that the 9-11 Truther nut had for weeks bragged about his chance to share the stage with Gore, do you think the press would have demanded that Gore justify his association with a hateful conference that embraced a 9-11 Truther? Do you think pundits would have universally mocked and ridiculed Gore's judgment while condemning the Yearly Kos convention as being a hothouse of left-wing hate? Do you think Gore's appearance would have become a thing?

I sure do.

Gore and liberal bloggers would have been crucified by the press and the D.C. chattering class if the scenario I described ever unfolded in real life. (FYI, it goes without saying that organizers for Yearly Kos, now known as Netroots Nation, would never dream of mainstreaming an anti-Semitic 9-11 Truther via a prime-time speaking gig.)

But this past weekend in Nashville, at the first National Tea Party Convention, the Beltway press did just the opposite with regard to Sarah Palin's keynote address, which did follow a prime-time speech by "birther" nut Joseph Farah, who over the years has carved out a uniquely hateful and demented corner of the right-wing blogosphere. Because, yes, at the Tea Party convention, Farah, a proud Muslim-hater and gay-hater, did receive a standing ovation from the conservative crowd after he unfurled his thoroughly debunked birther garbage. (i.e. Obama "doesn't have a birth certificate.") And Farah did brag in the weeks leading up to the event about his chance to share the stage with Palin, to associate with Palin. ("Sold out! Palin-Farah ticket rocks tea-party convention," read the headline at Farah's discredited right-wing site, WorldNetDaily.com.)

Worst of all, though, the press played dumb about the whole thing.

Fact: Virtually nobody in the corporate media said boo about Palin helping to legitimize Farah by sharing the same stage with him. She was given a total free ride.

And I mean nobody. According to Nexis, there were more than 150 newspaper articles and columns published in the U.S. last week that mentioned both Palin and the Tea Party. (Combined, The New York Times and The Washington Post published 18 of them.) Yet out of all those articles and columns, exactly two also mentioned Joseph Farah by name. (Congrats to the Philadelphia Daily News and New Hampshire's Concord Monitor.)

When MoveOn held a video contest called Bush in 30 seconds and a Bush-Hitler video showed up and slipped through, the RNC and the media went ballistic.

Six months ago, MoveOn.org held a contest to find the best amateur ad against President Bush. The group invited people to make ads and submit them to its Web site. Some idiot spliced images of Bush together with images of Adolf Hitler, evidently trying to make Bush look like a warmonger. His submissions, which arrived with 1,500 others—too many to be screened quickly—were posted on the contest Web site. As soon as MoveOn.org leaders realized what was in the ad, they removed and denounced it.

We've seen hundreds of signs at Tea Party events that are racist and violent, but there never was an outcry from the media over them like there was over Move On, who didn't even produce it. FOX News and others in the media ripped every Democratic politician who went to Yearly Kos back in 2006. And when many of the Democratic presidential nominees went to the same event in 2007 instead of the DLC convention, the criticism was abundant. Why didn't Kristol rip his Quayle project (Sarah Palin) over making over 100K and speaking at the Tea Party convention? Well, that would never happen because conservatives can do no wrong. Even if she did appear with the likes of a birther like Joseph Farah because he serves a purpose for the GOP.

Digby writes:

I don't think there's any doubt. In fact, the first Yearly Kos got a lot of media attention and it featured some big names like Howard Dean and Harry Reid. But the organizers didn't pay for any of them and there were no extremist cranks invited, so there was nothing to compel the huge hue and cry that would have been raised if they had done so. It was, all in all, a pretty staid affair, with the only controversy surrounding the fact that Mark Warner paid 50k for a party --- which was roundly criticized by the participants as gilding the lily.

Considering what would have been a feeding frenzy if the netroots had done something similar, Boehlert goes on to wonder why the mainstream press didn't bother to report the fact that Sarah Palin, whose speech was broadcast live on television, followed a prime time speech by "birther" fruitcake Joseph Farah.

By the way, here's some of the highlights that Farah came away with at the tea party convention. It's very scary stuff. If the media was actually covering the convention then why did they ignore this garbage?

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The right wingers are pulling out all the rhetorical stops in trying to pretend that global warming is all just a hoax cooked up by Marxist ideologues. Take, for instance, Bill Bennett last night on Sean Hannity's show:

Bennett: It's amazing, you know -- the power of ideology to blind people to reality. You've got this Russian report that you cited -- you know, this thing is falling apart. You had the stuff out of East Anglia University -- I mean, this is reminiscent of the old alchemy, and phrenology stuff.

I mean, this, this -- there's so much junk, so much corruption in the fact that we would fork over a hundred billion dollars. Plus I think the biggest event at Copenhagen was the standing, thunderous standing ovation to Hugo Chavez when he condemned capitalism. That tells you really what that meeting is all about, it seems to me.

Hannity: That's what I want to get to. If we look at the ClimateGate scandal, coupled with what you just pointed out, we've pointed out, about this Russian climate center, what they had to say, there's another agenda. Why would a scientist -- and I have really not gotten a satisfactory answer from anybody -- why would scientists risk their careers and their reputations to lie and manipulate data if there wasn't some agenda? And if they are, and there is an agenda, what is it?

Bennett: Yeah, well, take a look at Soviet psychiatry under Stalin, take a look at various kinds of medical, quote, science under Hitler, and you'll again see the power of ideology to bend men to their, to the ways of the dictator.

You know, I remember reading that biography of Einstein. There's a list of all the scientists who were driven out of Germany by Hitler because of his crazy policies. It's the world's roster of greatest scientists. That's what's happening here. You're getting some of the best people in the world questioning what is going on in this supposedly accepted wisdom, and the thing's falling apart.

Really? A minor dustup among a handful of e-mails is just like Hitler's persecution of the Jews within the German scientific community? Climate scientists are acting like Nazi medical experimenters? Climate science is just like phrenology? Global warming is about bending us to the will exactly which dictator?

Christ on a crutch, get a grip, people. Or at least some tiny bit of perspective.

Hannity has been out leading the parade in trying to make global warming out to be a hoax. And he's obviously pulling out all the stops.

Bennett is right about one thing, though: This situation does indeed powerfully illustrate "the power of ideology to blind people to reality." Just not the way he thinks it does.

Or as the Pat Bagley cartoon put it:

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Ted Stevens, Congress' longest-serving Republican and recently convicted felon, delivered his farewell speech today on the Senate floor. I understand the camaraderie of the world's greatest deliberative body and Stevens' 40+ years of service, but its pretty surreal to watch the Senate give a standing ovation to someone who was just found guilty by a jury of his peers on a whopping seven felony counts. I gotta admit: Stevens went out gracefully and his embrace of Senator Byrd is some compelling stuff. That said, good riddance and congratulations to Senator-elect Mark Begich.

"I don't have any rear-view mirror, I look only forward. And I still see the day when I can remove the cloud that currently surrounds me. My motto has always been 'to hell with politics, just do what's right for Alaska.' And I've tried every day to live up to those words."

Looks like Ted is suffering from the Palin denial disease, whereby someone who has been found guilty of something simply refuses to acknowledge that they indeed were found guilty. Must be that Alaskan water.

David Vitter will not be investigated.

The Senate Ethics Committee has decided not to investigate Louisiana Senator David Vitter.

The Republican was linked to an elite Washington prostitution ring owned by Deborah Jean Palfrey. Palfrey committed suicide May 1st, two weeks after being convicted of racketeering and money laundering.

The bipartisan ethics panel says it decided against a probe because the conduct occurred before Vitter became a senator. And it says it didn't result in any criminal charges or involve the improper use of his public office or status.

He gets off on a technicality. Wow, another shocker. CREW sums it up nicely:

“The Senate Ethics Committee has once again done what it does best: nothing.

I wonder if the Senate Republicans gave him another standing ovation? That might be something. And poor Mr. Super Tuber just can't get no respect from his buddies.

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) recently delivered a major-league pep-talk to his Republican caucus, which was very well received. GOP lawmakers gave Boehner a standing ovation, and were all smiles as they looked ahead to the rest of the year. They were led to believe that tying Dems in congressional races to Obama and Pelosi would be a recipe for success, and Republicans might even gain seats this year.

This same Republican caucus was feeling far less jovial during their confab yesterday. Boehner’s election strategy has been tested twice now in two months in two reliably Republican districts — first in Illinois’ 14th, then in Louisiana’s 6th. The GOP went 0-for-2. Worse, the NRCC has very little money to make a serious go at actually narrowing the Dems’ majority. None of these guys left the room smiling yesterday.

What might cheer congressional Republicans up? How ’bout a trip to the White House?

House Republicans will hold a rally with President Bush on Wednesday morning, with all 199 members invited to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to show solidarity with the president, according to GOP sources.

Oddly enough, I’m not sure whose spirits this is supposed to boost — Republicans’ or Dems’.

As Tim F. noted, “Blind, deaf Americans living under rocks for very long periods of time have figured out that everything the President touches is a half-assed failure. Any sane person would treat the guy as radioactive. So what gives? I have to assume that this little pep rally will be about as well attended as Alberto ‘abu’ Gonzales’s farewell party at the DoJ.”

Digby:

When you see her in such a context, you realize that she truly represents the heart and soul of contemporary conservative activism, especially among the young. The standing ovation for Romney was nothing like the eruption of enthusiasm that greeted her. . . .

Her endorsement of Romney today - "probably the best candidate" - is a big deal, it seems to me. McCain is a non-starter. He is as loathed as Clinton in these parts. Giuliani is, in her words, "very, very liberal." One of his sins? He opposed the impeachment of Bill Clinton. That's the new standard. She is the new Republicanism. The sooner people recognize this, the better.

This hideous face of the Republican Party has been obvious to those of us who have been paying attention for a long, long time. It is the single most important reason why our politics have devolved into a filthy grudge match...read the whole thing

Pastor Dan at Street Prophets:

Watch it for yourself.

Or, if you're like me and you hate flash, read the boring Miami Herald report:

[Romney] showed poise when a heckler attacked him for being a Mormon: "You, sir, you are a pretender. You do not know the Lord.''

The audience booed the heckler.

''One of the great things about this land is that we have people of different faiths and different religions, but we need to have a person of faith lead the country,'' he said, as the audience gave him a standing ovation.

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