I'll bet you're wondering how many lies Bill Bennett and Sean Hannity can shove into one minute and 41 seconds. I'm about to show you. This little clip is so priceless for so many reasons. Beyond Bill Bennett's reverent repetition of the usual lies and half-truths in the name of Saint Ronnie, it's just a shining example of why Fox News viewers are ignorant and biased. The conversation takes place with reverent clips flowing on the screen in homage to the Great Sainted Ronald Reagan, while Bennett's eyes get just a little misty as he stares past the camera in reverent reverie.

First, we have the tax lie.

HANNITY: You know what's interesting to me, though? Things are so -- I know things change, but they really remain the same. It's the battle between the state and their utopia, if you will. To quote my buddy Levin, statism versus liberty.

BENNETT: Yeah. Ronald Reagan, the way I tell it, and I served with him as you know. I was his Secretary of Education and I had another job too. He wanted to do two things. He wanted to restore America and destroy the Soviet Union. You know, he was just straightforward about it.

Here -- you talk about things being the same. Carter. You remember what the country was like under Jimmy Carter? That's kind of like where we are -- maybe worse. It may be worse. But the country was feeling bad, worried about the future. We know what the misery index was. Ronald Reagan came in, sunny, optimistic, and with a plan. He said we're going to restore America.

You know, a lot of people forget. We talk about lowering taxes. It was not part of Republican doctrine until Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp, my former partner --

HANNITY: Kemp-Roth tax bill

BENNETT: -- made it part of Republican doctrine. And now it is.

Just for the record, Ronald Reagan raised taxes eleven times. That's an interesting way to create doctrine, don't you think? Insert some sort of doctrinal pledge never to raise taxes while raising them? But again, this is Saint Ronnie we're talking about and so he didn't raise taxes, even if he did. Eleven times.

Onward to the "lazy, angry, bitter, clinging to Gods and guns" meme:

BENNETT: And so he told America to get up, lift up, he didn't say we were lazy people --

HANNITY: He didn't say we're lazy or slothful?

BENNETT: No, he didn't...

HANNITY: Wait, he didn't say we were angry, bitter, clinging to guns and bibles and religion?

BENNETT: He actually didn't think we were the problem, you know, he actually thought the problem was elsewhere and then looking abroad, he always held up the banner of freedom, and always held up the banner of America, whether it was Nicaragua, whether it was China, whether it was the Soviet Union and boy was the Soviet Union...

How many stories are there from the Reagan era about how about Shiransky hearing the tap, you know Reagan is President, things are going to change, we knew change was going to come.

Wow.

Under Reagan, the U.S. waged a proxy war in Nicaragua against a lawfully elected President of that country -- Daniel Ortega -- with CIA resources. In fact, CIA director Stansfield Turner characterized our policy in Nicaragua as "state-sponsored terrorism". It isn't an especially proud moment in our history, and with the whole Iran-Contra scandal it's especially odious and ugly. But listen to the amazing rewrite Bill Bennett gives it. He makes it sound like every political prisoner everywhere perked right up when Reagan took office and knew -- KNEW -- that they would be released.

Really?

And of course, Hannity and Bennett have no problem repeating the lie that our current President thinks we're lazy, which is of course not at all what he said.

So how many lies is that? Well, it's as many as they could fit into a very short time, while waving the Saint Ronnie flag in its fully furled glory. And their audience probably wept at the memory of that sainted man who led our country into the financial ruin it is today.

Feministe: Hey, anti-tax conservatives...

Mario Piperni: On Health Care and Motives

Instaputz: Bill Bennett, Liar

Vagabond Scholar: Hot For Teachers

Balkinization: Forced to choose between Tiger Woods and Billy Payne, the chairman of Augusta National Golf Club, my loyalties are with Tiger, who is by far the lesser threat to Americans children and grandchildren than the members of Augusta National Golf Club for whom Mr. Payne so sanctimoniously speaks.

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Media indifference to murder...Rupert Murdoch has lost it...NPR's gender balance...Journo enablers...Pedalling mob violence... Introducing The Broder-o-Matic!...Crackerjack reporting...Cover-up News Network...WaPo hack...Deficit fascination...Unreal American stories... Dear Networks...CNN Fail...Big wheel...Who covers this?

DOWNLOADS: (800)

PLAYS: (1741)

Embed

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:

">

Michael Steele is fighting with more Republicans. This time it's with Mitt Romney:

In an unusual move for the person tasked with being his party's top cheerleader, Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele is shining a light on the political vulnerabilities of one of the GOP's top figures and a likely frontrunner for the 2012 Republican nomination — former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Now Romney's team is hitting back.

Steele, guest-hosting on Bill Bennett's radio show Friday, cast doubt on Romney's conservative bona fides and blamed the Republican base for rejecting Romney last year because "it had issues with Mormonism" and was unsure of Romney's commitment to opposing to abortion rights. Those comments aren't sitting too well with Romney's political team.

"Sometimes when you shoot from the hip, you miss the target," said Romney spokesman Eric Ferhnstrom. "This is one of those times."

Romney's Mormonism was a turn-off to some of the religious right. Remember when Focus on the Family took down an interview with Glenn Beck because he's a Mormon?

Colorado-based Focus on the Family pulled an online interview with conservative television host Glenn Beck after concerns were raised about Beck's Mormon faith.

Gary Schneeberger, vice president of media and public relations for Focus on the Family Action, said that "differences in the Mormon faith and the historical evangelical faith are not inconsequential."

Beck's interview with CitizenLink.org, Focus on the Family Action's Web site, touched on his Christmas memories and his recent best-selling book, "The Christmas Sweater."

On Dec. 22, Underground Apologetics, a Wisconsin-based group dedicated to helping Christians "defend their faith," criticized Focus on the Family for not mentioning Beck's membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in its online interview.

"While Glenn's social views are compatible with many Christian views, his beliefs in Mormonism are not.

Check out the book by Jon Krakauer called Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith if you want to learn a bit about Mormon beliefs. I'm reading it now and it's intense. Many people don't know anything about their beliefs or practices and the fundamentalists that it spawns.

DOWNLOADS: (3953)

PLAYS: (4321)

Embed

[H/t to Gordon Skene at Newstalgia for the archival footage]

Yesterday was one of those anniversaries many of us try to put out of our minds. Conservatives these days seem to be trying especially hard.

But for some of us, those memories still burn:

It was 14 years ago when Doris Battle's parents were killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, just two of the 168 people who died during the nation's worst domestic terrorist attack.

Battle was among 400 people who gathered Sunday to observe the 14th anniversary of the bombing of the nine-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, an attack that also injured hundreds of people. The explosion of a truck loaded with 4,000 pounds (1,800 kilograms) of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil tore the face off the building and caused millions of dollars in damage to other downtown structures.

"I can't go home and see him anymore," Battle said of her father, Calvin Battle, who died with her mother Peola when the Oklahoma City federal building was bombed on April 19, 1995. And Battle said the passage of time has not diminished the loss she still feels.

And yet, erasing the very memory of the worst act of homegrown terrorism ever committed on American soil -- and until 9/11, the worst such act ever -- seems to be what movement conservatives have been doing all week.

Ever since word emerged earlier this week about the Department of Homeland Security's internal-assessment bulletin about domestic terrorism, the mainstream right has been wallowing in paranoia about the possibility the report might have meant them.

Moreover, no amount of rebuttal -- even from the DHS secretary herself -- is good enough for them.

Yet if you read the report, it couldn't be clearer that it is concerned almost exclusively with far-right extremists: neo-Nazis, skinheads, anti-abortion bombers, and their assorted fellow travelers. What the teeth-gnashing from the right suggests is that they recognize themselves, and their influence, all too readily in the thugs and terrorists who take their beliefs and twist them into something violent.

Guilty conscience, much?

Prime example: There was Bill Bennett, that right-wing moral icon, telling John King's "State of the Union" panel yesterday on CNN that DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano's clear explanation wasn't good enough.

It's bad enough that he can't even get his facts straight. What's especially noteworthy is the way he airbrushes out the very real existence of actual domestic right-wing terrorist groups:

DOWNLOADS: (1408)

PLAYS: (2945)

Embed

KING: Bill, she says they have intelligence and active investigations of this possibility. Do you take her at her word?

BENNETT: She wouldn't give you one bit of evidence. You asked her for the names of any groups, any organizations. You pressed her on it -- nothing.

When they put out a report on certain left-wing organizations back in January, there were some specifics. There are no specifics here, except they target veterans. They say look out for veterans being recruited and look out for people who are opposed to abortion and immigration.

Of course, as we explained recently:

Continue reading »

It's bad enough when the Bush administration awards tax dollars to abstinence-only programs that don't work. It's worse when our money goes to far-right abstinence groups based on their political connections.

And it's even worse still when these same abstinence groups get more money than they even asked for.

An organization that promotes sexual abstinence for teens received a federal grant of over a million dollars, twice what it had requested, despite the skepticism Department of Justice staffers had about the group and the fact that it refused to participate in a congressionally mandated study.

So why did the Best Friends Foundation receive the grant from the Justice Department's juvenile justice office even though dozens of competing organizations were rated higher by the office's own reviewers? Current and former staffers say it was because of Best Friends' powerful president and founder, Elayne Bennett.

Not only is Bennett the wife of Bill Bennett, a former Reagan and Bush administration official and conservative political commentator, but she is also personally close to the chief administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), J. Robert Flores.

DOJ staffers were deeply skeptical when Best Friends applied for a grant of around a half-million dollars last summer. For one thing, the organization had backed out of a congressionally mandated study to examine whether or not abstinence programs are effective.

Then there were the DOJ staffers own internal reviews, which placed Best Friends behind dozens of other competing organizations. Out of 104 grants in their category, Best Friends ranked 53rd.

It's quite a controversy; read the whole thing. Our friend Murray Waas, who worked with ABC News on this story, has more.

Oliver Willis noted, "Bush surrounds himself with this echo chamber in order to hear good things about himself, and not hear a single critical word about his failed presidency."

We've seen plenty of examples of this, but yesterday was a stark reminder. From Hugh Hewitt:

President Bush invited ten talk hosts into the Oval Office for an hour of conversation today --Glenn Beck, Bill Bennett, Neal Boortz, Scott Hennon, Laura Ingraham, Lars Larson, Mark Levin, Michael Medved, Janet Parshall and me.

It's quite a motley crew, isn't it?

And Democratic presidential candidates are supposed to avoid YearlyKos? While Bush is inviting these far-right voices into the White House for a chat?

Bill Bennett appeared on CNN this morning to talk about The Path to 9/11

Download | play - WMV Download | play - QT (links now working)

It is interesting to see an ultra-conservative like Bennett come out in opposition to this movie. Bennett takes the position that people should not alter or put words into the mouths of cabinet members. Hopefully more on the right will listen to Bennett, especially with such a recent and tragic memory as 9/11.

Atrios

As our descent into homocidial lunatic-land continues, Bill Bennett, Assrocket, and Hugh Hewitt got to cheerlead the prosecution of the media on the Sunday shows. Greenwald:

There has been substantial media coverage recently about the crazed, fringe radicals who fuel the "liberal blogosphere" (apparently, some use curse words in their posts and like Russ Feingold!). Just for a change of pace, if for no other reason, the Times might want to consider examining the dynamic in the right-wing blogosphere that causes the home addresses of their photographers to be published on the Internet along with calls that their reporters and editors and their children be "hunted down." None of this is aberrational; quite the contrary.

A "Pulitzer Prize for Treason"

Bill Bennett and Powerline...