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Now that we're all being treated to the sight of Darrell Issa puffing up and bloviating about his work as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, this clip with Ari Melber and Martin Bashir is an excellent reminder of which fox currently chairs the henhouse. Ryan Lizza's 2011 profile of Issa served as the basis for today's discussion.

There is the car theft, for example. Oh, alleged car theft, I should say. After all, the man who made his fortune from a car alarm company was accused of auto theft at one point:

A member of Issa’s Army unit, Jay Bergey, told Williams that his most vivid recollection of the young Issa was that in December, 1971, Issa stole his car, a yellow Dodge Charger. “I confronted Issa,” Bergey said in 1998. “I got in his face and threatened to kill him, and magically my car reappeared the next day, abandoned on the turnpike.”

Ok, maybe that was a prank, but after that, there was this:

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As Martin Bashir points out, what kind of job pays $174,000 a year, gives you nine weeks vacation and doesn’t expect you to do much in return?

President Obama made some digs yesterday asking Congress to lower student loan rates and make it possible for underwater homeowners to refinance their mortgages before “going on vacation” from legislative work, and Bashir took the message and ran with it. Little Luke Russert? Not so much.

Congress is "very upfront in the beginning of the year about what their schedule is," Russert said. He said this was "emblematic of the problems with our system," including gerrymandering and the money in the political system.

Bashir interrupted him: "Our listeners just heard champagne corks popping in the background!", telling the nervously laughing Russert, "this isn't funny!".

Young Luke explained that it was just a belated Queen’s Jubilee celebration.

Bashir retorted, "I thought we had a constitution that did not include monarchs and barons." Hah!

MSNBC's Martin Bashir really went after Eric Cantor and the Republican leadership for Cantor's public statements yesterday. Very refreshing indeed to hear these creeps publicly called out for their lying hypocrisy:

CANTOR: ... I think under the right leadership, we can do better.

BASHIR: But Mr. Cantor is part of the leadership of this country. He's the majority leader in the House. I'm certain the word 'Leader' is on his business card.

But Leader Cantor has done absolutely everything in his powers to be sure that not one of the President's policies on job creation have ever seen the light of day.

Even when an independent analytics firm like Moody's estimates that the American Jobs Act would create about two million new jobs, and raise GDP by a full 2 percentage points, Mr. Cantor prefers his own form of leadership, which is designed to crush job creation.

And Mr. Cantor's approach has been shared by another 'leader' in job crushing -- the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, a man who also made his monthly appearance today.
[...]

Bashir: I can tell you the Speaker ... is also too much of a coward to owe up to his all-important role in ensuring that the economic recovery of America is as fragile as it it today.

So well done, Mr. Cantor and Mr. Boehner, congratulations! You always wanted to undermine the President -- but what you've done is undermine the country.

Of course, we don't punish the executive branch for fabricating reasons to invade a sovereign nation. And we certainly should look the other way about icky things like torture, because complaining about it would be downright un-American. And wiretapping—well, we've all gotten used to that by now, so what's the big deal? Plus, it would be too partisan to actually hold them accountable when we've got all those medical marijuana users to catch:

Former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D-NY) told MSNBC’s Martin Bashir on Thursday that former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney could still be held accountable for violating federal criminal statues.

“As a former prosecutor and a former member of the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate, I spent a lot of time taking a look at the statutes,” she explained. “It’s one thing to abuse power, and it’s one thing not to do the right thing, but it’s another thing to commit a crime.”

Holtzman said Bush and Cheney appear to have “knowingly” violated at least three statues.

She said Bush and Cheney likely committed conspiracy to defraud the United States, for the “deceptions” involved in going to war with Iraq. Secondly, she claimed they violated federal statues regarding the wiretapping of Americans without a court order. Thirdly, Holtzman said Bush and Cheney violated federal laws prohibiting torture.

“What we can’t afford to do is allow a president to say he is above the law,” she remarked.

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It's moments like these that make me love Martin Bashir that much more. In his "Clear the Air" segment at the end of Thursday's show, he absolutely destroys all of the conspiracy theories the right wing is floating about Sandra Fluke and her role in the current Rush Limbaugh meltdown.

He opens by mocking the insane conspiracies being floated around the Internet:

BASHIR: We're now being told that Rush Limbaugh's appalling attacks on a Georgetown student were actually part of a mesmerizing and devilish strategy planned and orchestrated by yes, you guessed it, the White House. (begin clip)

BOLLING: President Obama, on the ropes on the economy and specifically with women voters gets Mrs. Fluke to create a controversy and the liberal mainstream media puppets play along as scripted. (end clip)

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The lesson the Barack Obama presidency should teach Democrats is the Republican Party has only a glancing relationship to the truth and they will continue to lie on camera as often as possible until their lies become conventional wisdom. That's why so many conservatives believe that President Obama has raised taxes, wants to take away their guns (by pretending he doesn't) and initiated the bank bailout.

It works incredibly well. But you have to know your audience.

If you spout off factually untrue slams against Obama on Fox News, no one will argue with you. In fact, it conforms with their agenda of misinforming their audience.

But you don't want to try that on a show like Real Time with Bill Maher, because the audience and sometimes the other panel guests will call you out. Case in point: Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) who chuckles like it's common knowledge that Obama wants to "gut" the military. But fellow guests Kennedy (no liberal, she, although she's clearly not grown out of her annoying MTV schtick), Martin Bashir and host Bill Maher quickly demanded some badly needed fact-checking. Not that it made an impact on Rohrabacher:

Maher, co-panelests Kennedy from Reason TV, MSNBC’s Martin Bashir and even the audience joined in to collectively chastise the California Republican for his blatantly false claim. “That’s absolutely not true,” Kennedy said, later adding, “I love the military. I like my SEALs groomed and ready to go but you have to tell the truth.” “Can I give you the facts?” Maher asked Rohrabacher. “So far every budget Obama has had has increased military spending,” he said. “This year they’re asking a reduction from $531 billion to $525 billion, 1.6 percent. You mean our freedom is in trouble because of that 1.6 percent?” Maher later added, “How paranoid do you have to be to say that this guy is gutting our military?”

Does it surprise you to know that the truth (which is clearly kryptonite to the conservative mind) is that military spending has increased every year of the Obama presidency and all they've done is ask to reduce the rate of growth of spending? And to put not too fine a point on it, but those mandated cuts to defense that allegedly will happen because of the failure of the super committee to put together a deal, which in and of itself was a cowardly avoidance of the larger Congress (of which Rohrabacher is a member) to DO THEIR JOBS.

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Martin Bashir may be the most underrated show host on cable television. His show is consistently smart, loaded with facts and good discussion without the incessant screaming and fireworks of other cable news shows. His interview of Rep. Joe Walsh was masterful and yet, polite. Which is why when Bashir closes his Thursday show with a three-minute comment where he's clearly a bit angry, it gets my attention.

Mr. Bashir is frustrated with the constant drumbeat from Republicans about President Obama allegedly turning the US government into a "European-style government" and so he delivers an excellent argument for why they are wrong, and why the ones who are trying to point the United States in the direction of European-style governance are...Republicans.

Bashir targets the Republican fetish for austerity and spending cuts as evidence that they, not Democrats, are trying to transform the United States. At the end, he offers the results of Republican-style austerity measures in Europe, and what they haven't accomplished.

Well done, Mr. Bashir.

Transcript below the fold.

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Martin Bashir just painted Joe Walsh as the shyster he is in real time on Tuesday's show. After setting up the conversation about tax rates, and getting Walsh to say outright that he doesn't want debt placed on his children, which leads to the key question. Bashir asks him whether or not he has a problem shorting his child support and placing that burden on his children now.

The only defense Walsh mounts is to say he's innocent until proven guilty, and gets Bashir to agree to apologize if the court outcome shows he doesn't owe all that. Of course, these are pretty easy charges to prove. There hasn't been a dispute that he owed support that wasn't paid. Walsh is simply claiming that he doesn't owe as much as they claim.

Here's how Bashir set it up, via a conversation about Mitt Romney's tax returns:

BASHIR: Would you, though, agree with Newt Gingrich, when he says there should be a zero tax rate on capital gains on investments?

WALSH: Absolutely. There should be no --

BASHIR: You support that?

WALSH: Yes. There should be no estate tax either --

BASHIR: Mr. Walsh, if that's the case, would you be happy then, for Mitt Romney, who's revealed that over the last two years he received over forty million dollars of the back of these investments. You'd be happy that he would pay zero tax?

WALSH: Martin, let me be very succinct. Yes. That money has already been taxed....

BASHIR: Wow!

Of course, this is the Republican party line, this idea that because the money is income from investments where the corporations have already paid taxes, dividends should not be taxable to individuals receiving them. Except we all know that the corporations, particularly those paying dividends, are paying very little, if any corporate tax. So it really hasn't been taxed at all.

Bashir did a terrific job in what follows of tying Walsh's tax attitudes into the morality of his child support attitudes. Child support is a pretty quantifiable thing. You take the earnings of each spouse, figure out the time the children spend with each spouse, and apply the formula to arrive at the support amount. In California, that's not negotiable. It is what it is, and isn't negotiated away in settlements or any other way. Today, Walsh seemed to claim he doesn't owe what's been alleged. But last year, he didn't deny he owed support payments. He simply claimed he didn't have the money to pay them, despite his rather hefty Congressional salary.

BASHIR: You've repeatedly said over the last two years in your opposition to the President when he's even suggested raising a surtax of not .5 percent to enable the American Jobs Act to be paid for, that not-.5-percent levied against people earning more than a million dollars, you've opposed that.

And one of the things you've repeatedly said is that you will not place another dollar on the back of your children. Right?

WALSH: Absolutely.

BASHIR: Can I ask you then, because something our viewers are concerned about -- Haven't you already done that by inadequately paying child support that you owe to your wife and children?

WALSH: Hey Martin, that's an awkward segue on TV --

BASHIR: I apologize, but these are questions that viewers have asked me. They'd like to know why you still owe one hundred and seventeen thousand and four hundred and thirty seven dollars in child support.

WALSH: Hey Martin, I don't and I'm fighting this issue as I've gone around my district telling everyone. Legally and privately. I don't and I'm going to fight it but this is not an issue that I'm going to bring up. My kids or even my ex-wife on TV. I will fight it legally and privately.

Something doesn't add up, as CREW notes while awarding him the title of Most Corrupt. But despite Rep. Walsh's vehement denials, the question was valid whether it's one hundred dollars owed or one hundred thousand dollars owed. If Rep. Walsh is such a believer in not placing debt on his children, he should pay his child support and quit posturing about it on television.

As a side note, if he's talking to constituents the way he talked to this one, I'm sure he's not making friends or influencing people in that area.