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[Note: I'll be appearing on David Sirota's radio show Tuesday at 8:35 am PST to discuss Beck and his attacks on progressives.]

It's been pretty interesting watching Glenn Beck ratchet up the eliminationist rhetoric in his attacks on progressives in the past couple of months.

The storyline, as you may have gathered, is that the "progressive movement" is the root of all evil in American politics, a "cancer" and a "virus" and a "parasite" that has "infected" both parties. Beck has been doing a lot of fake "history" reporting when it comes to these attacks -- indeed, it tells you everything you need to know that he considers Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as the presidential wellsprings of this Great Evil.

Well, as we observed some time back, there's a great deal of real history that Beck has to omit from his narrative in order to make these claims stick -- particularly the reality that progressive politics created the great American middle class consumer society that he and other right-wingers take for granted now, not to mention the conditions for average Americans before the arrival of progressive politics.

But one of the most interesting omissions from Beck's parade of progressive evils is one of the real achievements of progressive politics in the past half-century -- namely, the advancement of civil rights for minorities, beginning with the civil-rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s. These movements ended Jim Crow and made life better for millions of nonwhites, and created a more just and civil society along the way.

And you know, civil rights was a progressive cause. It still is. The opposition? It has always -- ALWAYS -- been conservatives.

Yet all the time Beck has been bashing progressives, he has simultaneously been hosting shows with audiences of black conservatives wherein they sit around and complain about how mean liberals are to them for being conservative and Beck gets to ask dumb white-guy questions like: "Why not identify yourself as Americans?"

Even more to the point, in both of these shows, Beck has glowingly quoted Martin Luther King -- who was, you know, a leader in the progressive movement.

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So here's our question for Glenn Beck: If the progressive movement, as you claim, has been so relentlessly evil and has consistently taken America down the wrong path, what about civil rights?

Was Martin Luther King secretly evil too?

Should we return to pre-progressive policies -- you know, the "separate but equal" status quo of Jim Crow and segregation?

Indeed, your hatred of the "progressive movement" and its effects on American life raise a whole host of similar questions about your views on civil rights.

And we're just wondering.

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Glenn Beck yesterday had on both of the Republican candidates in the California Senate primary, the winner of which race will be facing Barbara Boxer. And both Chuck DeVore and Carly Fiorina worked hard to curry Beck's favor, though it isn't hard to figure out which one won, judging by Beck's headline: "Is Chuck DeVore the next Scott Brown?"

Both interviews were essentially explorations by the candidates of Glenn Beck's favorite theme, to wit, progressives are the root of all evil in American life. This was especially the case in the interview with DeVore, who actively stoked Beck's fetish about Woodrow Wilson:

DEVORE: Well, Woodrow Wilson and people like Frank Goodnow, about 130 years ago, saw the Constitution as a roadblock to their plans for perfecting government and for basically ushering in a paradise on earth. And instead of what was set up by Madison to be a separation of powers, with the legislative, the executive and the judicial, because the Founders understood that people like power. And that you'll end up with tyranny in your country if you can't separate the powers.

...

BECK: I think the system is full of — it's riddled with a disease called progressive. If you've got cancer, no doctor says, yes start using filter tips cigarettes. They say no more cigarettes.

DEVORE: Right.

BECK: Progressives and the progressive idea are the cigarettes. So you tell me how to fix it.

Ah, nothing like a little eliminationism in the afternoon, is there?

Predictably, DeVore also revealed himself as one of those Patriot "tenthers" frequently promoted by Beck -- right-wing extremists who believe the Tenth Amendment gives states the ability to nullify federal law:

DEVORE: Well, first of all, we have to follow the Constitution. That's the very first thing that any lawmaker does when they get sworn in.

(CROSSTALK)

BECK: This audience won't, but most people say well, where aren't we following the Constitution?

DEVORE: Well, where do we start?

I think a good obvious place is Tenth Amendment. As a state lawmaker, I find my powers as a state lawmaker being short-circuited at the federal level.

As we've explained, these theories originated in the 1990s with the militia/Patriot movement.

Fiorina, in contrast, was perfectly corporate even as she tried to assure Beck that she really was a populist:

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Mostly she did this by joining Beck in the progressive-bashing:

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I realize that there has to be a little more latitude given to op-eds than to straight news reporting, but it seems to me that there has to be a certain level of fact-checking for even editorials for the sake of the credibility of the paper. But then again, maybe WaPo is so deep into their Obama Derangement that they no longer are able to care about credibility.

People can, and undoubtedly will, argue for some time about whether President Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Meanwhile, though, there's a simpler and more immediate question: Does the Constitution allow him to accept the award?

Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution, the emolument clause, clearly stipulates: "And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State."

The award of the peace prize to a sitting president is not unprecedented. But Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson received the honor for their past actions: Roosevelt's efforts to end the Russo-Japanese War, and Wilson's work in establishing the League of Nations. Obama's award is different. It is intended to affect future action. As a member of the Nobel Committee explained, the prize should encourage Obama to meet his goal of nuclear disarmament. It raises important legal questions for the second time in less than 10 months -- questions not discussed, much less adequately addressed anywhere else.

Like how the authors gloss over that two other sitting Presidents have received the Nobel Peace Prize, pretty much obliterating their theory on the constitutionality of awarding such a prize? Boneheads, they blow their own argument out of the water. Their choice of laureate: Iranian election martyr Neda Agha-Soltan, which of course, violates the Oslo committee's rules on bestowing the award to a living person. But hey, if you're going to employ poor syllogism to explain why Obama doesn't deserve it, why worry about things like rules?

Adam Blickstein points out a problem with their thinking:

One problem: the hero of the first Gulf War, Gen. Normon Schwarzkopf, received an honorary Knighthood from Queen Elizabeth (which technically makes him a "Knight of the British Empire") in May of 1991 while still on active duty. According to Rotunda and Pham's argument, this violated all kinds of constitutional constraints, Emolument Clause notwithstanding. He retired at the end of August 1991, meaning the General was clearly a foreign agent for the British Empire for approximately 3 months, because how can you be a Knight and an American General at the same time? Where would his loyalty really be? Under this Op-Ed's logic, Schwarzkopf's retirement South should have sent him to the Naval Brig at Charleston, not the golf courses of Florida.

Another government luminary who should have fallen victim to the Emolument Clause as the authors of the Op-Ed envision it? Alan Greenspan, who received his Honorary British Knighthood in 2002 while still serving as the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. How could President George Bush sit there idly as the Chairman overseeing America's treasury was more a servant of Britain's Queen Elizabeth than the Commander-in-Chief of the United States? I'm shocked that the entirety of America's money supply didn't end up alongside the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London. But apparently, there was concern in Conservative circles over the legality of Greenspan's ascension in the British Empire. According to Newsmax, the Federal Reserve's General Counsel cleared Greenspan under the Emolument Clause[..].

Even Conservatives acquiesced that a Knighthood was not in violation of the Emolument Clause. I assume the same logic applies to a Nobel Prize.

Is it possible for Conservatives to offer even one well-reasoned argument? Or is it too difficult because, as Colbert says, facts have a liberal bias? Shame on WaPo's editorial board for being so eager to feed their Obama haters. (h/t Ambinder)

Chris Matthews must be hearing it because he was pretty subdued by his standards, (maybe I was wrong) but listening to John "freeper" Meacham's analysis last night was pretty insane. Eugene Robinson then in about half the time- puts the SOTU into perspective.
Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

Meacham: Unusually compassionate -- just as fluid on domestic and foreign issues -- a hawkish Woodrow Wilson figure.

Arthur has a great piece on the Wilson comparisons to Bush and the "Legions of the damned." One of which is to print positive propaganda:

"The paper published nothing but good news about the U.S. war effort. Wilson considered this hybrid creature his invention--which it was in some respects. Creel had initially opposed the idea. The president gleefully told Joe Tumulty that the Official Bulletin was an immense success...read on"