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Sean Hannity still wants his scalp. So he went and got the world's most famous harpy to help out.

He continued his groundless bashing of Kevin Jennings by bringing on Ann Coulter on his show last night. The hapless Kirsten Powers was little help, being a good Faux Democrat by largely agreeing with the venomous duo -- when all she needed to do was point out that the incident involved a young man of legal age.

This largely left Hannity free to find great import in the fact that William Ayers -- another longtime Hannity freakazoid obsession -- actually wrote a blurb for a book for which Jennings wrote the forward. Oooooh. Impressive. Pretty soon he's going to be doing diagrams on chalkboards.

And it left Coulter free to declare Jennings "another Ayers." And natter on about how depraved a person Jennings is.

But of course, they stopped short when reminded that what they were saying sounded a lot like gay-bashing. Heaven forfend the notion.

These people are insane. They really are trying to construct their own alternative reality. Which is fine, I suppose. But do they have to bother us with it -- let alone inflict it upon us?

Ever notice how the wingnuts start a-flapping whenever someone remotely suggests that some far-right nutcase or other ought not to be speaking on the public dime (see particularly Ann Coulter), or when a right-wing hack winds up getting his show cancelled because he hacked up a ratings hairball? Censorship! they cry.

But when it comes to left-wing figures, especially the targets of their fury, well, such scruples vanish like the little bubbles they always were.

So yesterday the University of Nebraska gave in to the wingnutosphere's onslaught against cause celebre William Ayers, who was scheduled to speak there next month.

Mind you, they did so not because they agreed with the claim that Ayers shouldn't speak, but because the frothing has reached the point that officials feared for the safety of Ayers as well as the attending public:

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln rescinded its speaking invitation tonight for 1960s radical-turned-educator William Ayers.

University officials cited "safety reasons" for canceling Ayers' Nov. 15 appearance.

Spokeswoman Kelly Bartling declined to elaborate on what safety concerns would keep Ayers from addressing a College of Education and Human Sciences event.

Earlier today, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman strongly condemned the invitation and called on the NU Board of Regents and President J.B. Milliken to block it.

The earlier version of the story reports:

University officials said in a news release Friday evening that “the university’s threat assessment group monitored e-mails and other information UNL received regarding Ayers’ scheduled Nov. 15 visit and identified safety concerns which resulted in the university canceling the event.”

Of course, leading the torchlight brigade to block Ayers' appearance was our old friend Michelle Malkin, who earlier this week descended even farther into self-parody by complaining that poor Joe the Self-Promoter's Plumber's ordinary rights as a citizen were being trampled upon by the "deranged" liberal bloggers and reporters who decided to look into his background.

So what does she have to say about the reasons for the Ayers cancellation?

“Safety concerns.”

Whose safety?

Gee, I wonder.

Waiting for someone to scream “RAAAAACIST” or something.

How about "fascist"? That oughta work. Not to mention fit.

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Barack Obama sure didn't shy away from the William Ayers/ACORN issue last night. He confronted McCain's smears head on, explaining the ridiculous guilt-by-association "connection" and denouncing them as petty, meaningless distractions.

In fact, Mr. Ayers has become the centerpiece of Sen. McCain's campaign over the last two or three weeks. This has been their primary focus. So let's get the record straight. [...]

Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. If I'm interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden or with Dick Lugar, the Republican ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO.

Those are the people, Democrats and Republicans, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House. And I think the fact that this has become such an important part of your campaign, Sen. McCain, says more about your campaign than it says about me.

Full transcript below the fold:

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Jon Stewart opines on FOX News' fascinating, non-stop, wall-to-wall, 24/7 coverage of William Ayers and Barack Obama.

"FOX News: The world's unfair, and we're becoming mentally unbalanced."

  Wow. After reading at HuffPo yesterday that a right wing smear group produced an ad so atrocious (and potentially illegal) that even FOX News wouldn't touch it, I knew it had to be bad. Boy, was I right. While discussing McCain's "housing problem" on Studio B Friday afternoon, FOX producers "accidentally" aired a William Ayers ad produced by a group called the America Issues Project. Putting the ad aside, notice how loaded (and laughable) the report is to begin with.

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Henneberg: The McCain campaign is more than happy to inject Tony Rezko back into this election cycle, as they did in an new ad this morning. Rekzo, as you may remember, is a guy who was convicted in June on corruption charges, separate from this housing deal with Obama. But Rezko, or his wife, helped buy the empty lot next to Obama's million dollar house in Chicago and then sold part of it back to him, and the McCain campaign put that in a new ad. Take a listen.

[Cue 30 seconds of the wrong ad]

Henneberg: This is not the right ad.

Smith: It's not the right ad, huh?

Henneberg: Well that wasn't exactly the right ad.

Smith: Well, it was an ad. C'mon, give us a break...it's busy back here today.

Henneberg: It was an ad! [Laughter]

HuffPo:

"This negative campaign ad is clearly express advocacy, and under a federal law passed in 2003, the Bi-Partisan Campaign Reform Act (known colloquially as McCain-Feingold), it cannot legally be paid for with corporate money, including those of a non-profit," said Laura MacCleery, deputy director of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice. "The ad indisputably concerns an election, takes a position on the character and fitness for office of a candidate, and raises no legislative issue. Even this highly skeptical Supreme Court would turn up its noses at the foul odor emitted by this clear abuse of federal election law."

If the experts HuffPo spoke to are correct and the ad is indeed illegal, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

I've never worked in television before so excuse me if I'm way off base here....but don't these clips have to be cued up from some sort of storage system? If FOX agreed not to touch it, why would they still have it on file. let alone within reach to "accidentally" air it? Somethings fishy here. Then again, we're talking about FOX News.

I wonder if the other networks are irresponsible enough to pick up on FOX's "mistake" and use it as an excuse to run the ad. I wonder if that was the idea all along.