There have been a number of right wingers who have been accused of plagiarism and lifting other's work in recent years. Most notably, Cindy McCain, Ann Coulter and Ben Domenech and more recently, Sarah Palin was caught lifting passages from Newt Gingrich. Now, an author has accused wingnut Elisabeth Hasselbeck of lifting her content "word for word" in her new book:

BOSTON – The author of a health book has sued Elisabeth Hasselbeck, accusing the co-host of ABC's "The View" of plagiarism.

The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Massachusetts, alleges that Hasselbeck lifted "word for word" content from a book written by Susan Hassett, a self-published author on Cape Cod.

Hassett said in the lawsuit that she sent Hasselbeck a personal note and copy of her "Living With Celiac Disease" book as a courtesy after the television celebrity disclosed she had the illness last year.

Wasn't that nice of Elisabeth? Hassett was kind enough to send her a copy of her book, only to find out that she lifted parts of it to write her own. Not only does she lift passages, Hassett claims that Hasselbeck's book contains bogus and possibly dangerous information:

Hassett said Hasselbeck's book "slavishly reproduces" lists and passages from her own work and includes inaccuracies about celiac disease that can be "misleading and dangerous" for people with the illness. Read on...

May 21, 2009 MSNBC Keith Olbermann

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Sure, like Duncan says, Glenn Beck is a WATB. We knew that the first time he cried on-air for us.

He's also an evasive guy when confronted with his falsehoods. We saw that yesterday on The View. Whoopie Goldberg's epithet for Beck -- A Lying Sack of Dog Mess -- is a name that's going to stick, like something on the bottom of his shoe.

In fact, we now have a new acronym for him: the LSDM. We don't need to use his actual name anymore.

Oh, yeah, besides being a WATB -- check out his website's report in which he claims he was "ambushed" -- he's also seriously FOS. As when he called in sick for his own show that same afternoon, leaving us to the tender mercies of Judge Napolitano and Michelle Malkin.

Then, at the very end, he called in all plugged-up sounding and claimed he had "a case of the 24-hour swine flu". And then proceeded to once again prevaricate about the "ridiculous" interview we had all just watched that morning.

Beck: Apparently I was a liar because I said that -- which is true -- uh, that she -- I, I, Barbara Walters said hello to me, instead, it was I said hello to Barbara Walters. I walked up to her -- I guess that's we need to spend our time on for seven minutes.

In Beck's truncated version of what transpired at The View, the only reason to call him a liar was that he and Walters had different views on who said hello first. But that's BS On A Stick.

Roll the tape: You'll quickly note that the greeting disagreement started things off, but the main reason they called him a liar was that his whole story on the radio was a narrative about how you can't reserve a seat on an Amtrak train, and here these two media elites came and got reserved seats! The audacity!

But as both Walters and Goldberg explained to the LSDM, they hadn't gotten reserved seats at all. They had worked their ways back to that car after finding no seats in the front cars.

The LSDM, as is his wont, was just making stuff up. No wonder he kinda accidentally omitted that from his lamestain excuse -- it would have made it just that much lamer.

In any event, we remain indebted to Whoopie Goldberg for her masterful contribution to the Wingnut Lexicon.

h/t The Political Carnival

Jesse Ventura puts Sean Hannity's little buddy Elisabeth Hasselbeck in her place on the issue of waterboarding on The View. Gotta' love it. She tries pulling out all of the usual right wing boogie men to no avail.

Barbara Walters: Where are the Republicans? Why is he now the leader of the party?

Joy Behar: He said 'I hopes he fails.' That's very unpatriotic as far as I'm concerned.

Sherri Shepherd: If Obama fails, let's say with this whole stimulus package, this is coming off the backs of children. If this fails. America could fail. So, you can't separate Obama from America.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck: There were plenty of people who wanted Bush to fail. Let me redirect it a little bit. What concerns me even more than what Rush Limbaugh said was Obama's reaction. I just hope that when talking to Democrats, let's not solely rely on Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews. Did he give them the same lecture?

Walters: The Democrats are not picking these people to be their leaders. Republicans are, Elisabeth.

The Republicans in a sense are relying on Rush Limbaugh, the Democrats are not relying on ... I think what was more upsetting was when he brought race into it.

The race-baiting by Limbaugh didn't bother Palin's pal. After 9/11 (since they brought it up), America hoped George Bush would succeed. Partisanship was at an all-time low, but poor EH is just clueless. She's dismissing Limbaugh's outrageous comments at a time when America's economy is hanging by a thread, and to make Rush appear to be sane, she plays the conservative game: Blame other people for different behavior on the left.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck thinks that Rush Limbaugh begging for Obama to fail is on the same level as Keith Olbermann calling out all the lies told by the Bush administration.

Excuse us, Ms. Hasselbeck, Limbaugh went on record saying that he hoped Obama failed. Did Olbermann and Matthews ever go on record and say that they hope President Bush failed? They may be very critical of Bush but did they ever say they wanted him to fail?

NOPE, there is difference, a big difference between being critical of a president and hoping he fails. Given the over the top knee jerk reactions that the wingnuts had whenever anyone was remotely critical of Bush, Limbaugh’s words could be considered treasonous.

Does anybody remember what happened to the Dixie Chicks?

For a right-wing woman to apologize for a man who basically hates women (except when he has his little blue pills) is pretty appalling.

  I wonder if McCain was expecting a soft-ball interview today on "The View" because he sure didn't get one. Joy Behar and Barbara Walter grill McCain on how he could possibly approve of ads that are so riddle with distortions and outright falsehoods.

Download | play   Download | play  

"There are ads running from your campaign... Now we know that those two ads are untrue, they are lies. And yet, you say at the end of it you 'approve these messages.' Do you really approve these?"

Who would have thought the ladies of "The View" could be so hard-hitting?: 

CNN: McCain Gets Grilled on The View. 

Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, appearing Friday on ABC's "The View," was aggressively pressed on Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's qualifications to be vice president as well as his new campaign ads that several independent fact-check groups have called misleading...read on

HuffPo has more clips.

I watched only a few minutes of The View today, but here's an interesting tidbit that TP captured:

On ABC's The View today, host Joy Behar complained to John McCain that "you used to be more of the Maverick, then you sort of turned." "In what way?" McCain asked. "You became much more lockstep, I think, with your party, with George Bush's policies," Behar answered, adding, "I don't see the old John McCain. ... I understand why - you want to get elected." McCain issued this challenge in his defense:

I've been through this litany before, where I say, "ok, what specific area have I quote changed?" Nobody can name it. ... I am the same person and I have the same principles.

Here at C&L we'll take that challenge and it only took a few minutes to prove him wrong.

John Kerry did a good job on McCain

And we have: John McCain’s Evolution on Abortion

John McCain flip flops on Taxes on Social Security

Flip-Flopping On Oil Drilling Proves Lucrative For McCain

Or how about this one: McCain Sets a New Record: 10 Flip-Flops in Two Weeks

Download | play    Download | play   (h/t Heather)

Flying Spaghetti Monster bless Dennis Kucinich.  He's in the middle of an absolutely sisyphean task of trying to make Congress actually do their job -- one that far more Americans support than they did the impeachment of Bill Clinton -- and one that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is frustratingly and blindly ignoring, as evidenced by her stop-me-before-I-throw-something-at-the-screen appearance on The View.  

JOY BEHAR: You’ve ruled against impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney, and now Kucinich is trying to pass that. Why do you insist on not impeaching these people, so that the world and America can really see the crimes that they’ve committed?

REP. NANCY PELOSI: Well, I think that it—I think it was important, when I became Speaker—and it’s, by the way, a very important position—President, Vice President, Speaker of the House—I saw it as my responsibility to try to bring a much divided country together to the extent that we could. I thought that impeachment would be divisive for the country.

In terms of what we wanted—set out to do, we wanted to raise the minimum wage, give the biggest increase in veterans benefits to veterans in the seventy-seven-year history, then pass research for stem cell research, all of that. This week, we’re going to pass equal pay for equal work. It has been a long time in coming—pay equity. We’re going to pass legislations for product safety, for toys that children put in their—there’s an agenda that you have to get done. You have to try to do it in a bipartisan way. The President has to sign it.

If somebody had a crime that the President had committed, that would be a different story.

Have you not been paying fricking attention for the last eight years, Nancy???  What do you mean, IF???? Say it with me now: warrantless wiretapping; waterboarding, lying to Congress and the American people to illegally invade and occupy a sovereign nation that posed no threat to us, firing US Attorneys for not pursuing partisan prosecutions, outing a covert CIA agent.  And those were just ones you knew about and did nothing to stop, Pelosi.  How dare she play stupid on national television and insult all our intelligence and what this country (once) stood for?  How. Dare. She.

So it makes me love the undaunted Kucinich that much more.  He appeared on Democracy Now! and tried to spin this in the best way possible.

(T)he reason why the Judiciary Committee should hold a hearing on the impeachment itself is because there needs to be a public airing of this. So, I have a great deal of respect for Speaker Pelosi, and I think that since she made that statement on The View, there's an opportunity now for us to come forward and to lay all the facts out so that she can reconsider her decision not to permit the Judiciary Committee to proceed with a full impeachment hearing. 

Give 'em hell, Dennis.

full transcript below the fold

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