Jon Stewart took CNN apart over their insipid fact-checking of a SNL skit about President Obama while never having the time to give us REAL FACTS about health-care reform when their guests come on and lie. CNN and most cable networks allow health-care obstructionists like Sen. Kyl and Orrin Hatch to throw out bogus facts all day long without ever questioning their validity, and it is frustrating.

Stewart nails CNN for always saying "We're out of time," and never getting to the truth. And then we have the FRC's Tony Perkins, who claims there are really only 5-10 million uninsured people in America.

Perkins: ...when you get down to a hard core number, it's about 5-10 million that can't afford health care. Out of a nation of 330 million that's a small percentage.

Stewart: Without an explanation he went from 30 million uninsured down to you know the hard core number. 5 or ten million. Well that's pretty close...it's only double.

And the ultimate slap in the face is when TDS clips together almost every anchor saying: "We'll leave it there."

Stewart: There are 24 hours in a day, how much more time do you need? CNN's new slogan: Nobody Leaves More Things There.

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Even after admitting the involvement of groups like Right Principles and other lobbyists groups, Dobbs and Crowley attempt to paint the movement as grass roots, rather than being funded by the insurance and health care industries. Dobbs and Crowley also ignore that groups like CPR are now taking credit for ginning up the outbursts at the town hall rallies.

DOBBS: Joining me now for more our senior political analyst Candy Crowley -- Candy, what do you make of these protests and we just heard Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, obviously mocking these people and saying fairly straightforwardly that this is organized protests. Is that true?

CROWLEY: Well, listen, there is no doubt there are a lot of conservative groups out there who are using their Web sites to encourage people to go to their town hall meetings. But this is not some subterranean movement that they don't want people to know about. And there are groups that you heard of before, some of them well heeled, Conservatives for Patient's Rights.

They've had a number of ads against a sort of Obama style health care reform. They are now on their Web site trying to reach out to some of these groups -- the tea party people that we saw on tax day. Others are saying, you know, here's where the town hall meetings are and schedules like that. There's another group, Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, I'm sure you're familiar with that...

DOBBS: Sure.

CROWLEY: ... is a conservative social group. If you go on that Web site, you can see indeed where there are town hall meetings. Now, there's also an interesting place called Right Principles and I just talked to the head of that group. Now -- and his name is Robert McDuffie and he wrote a memo that has gone all over the Web about how to rock the town hall meeting. And it's very lengthy and it says, you know, go in there and stand up, you know...

DOBBS: Does it suggest whether that be a Democratic or Republican town hall meeting?

CROWLEY: It does not, but this is a group that's definitely protesting the current form of health care reform, as they see it. And he said -- and I said, so, you're starting this movement. He said you know anybody that thinks that a guy sitting in Connecticut with a Web site can influence someone in Texas to go to a town hall meeting, you know, is crazy.

I wrote this for -- he says he wrote it for grassroots activists in Connecticut. He is indeed connected to those -- was a volunteer for those who put together the tea party on tax day. And he said, but you know -- he sort of tapped into -- he said you know people come to him and say I write my congressman and then I get back a letter that doesn't even respond or I get back a letter like I'm on the other side.

And he said he just feels his frustration, so they all sort of say this is not some big master plan, but it is a loosely knit group of various conservatives who are -- the insurance industry also sending a representative to 30 states trying to urge people sympathetic to them to go to these town hall meetings, so yes there is this -- there are lots of groups out there doing this.

But it doesn't seem to be some master plan of sending people who don't understand what they're talking about. They're trying to urge like-minded people to go to these town hall meetings, which they say is what town hall meetings are about.

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Lou Dobbs brings in the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins and Sojourners' Jim Wallis to debate health care reform as a religious issue in Dobb's Face Off segment. Apparently Perkins isn't satisfied with just doing his best to bash gays and abortion doctors. He's now decided to start toeing the Frank Luntz Republican line on health care reform as well.

DOBBS: Congressional Republicans for their part today proposed a centrist approach to healthcare reform as they call it, a less expensive alternative to the Democratic plan which would cost somewhere around a trillion dollars over the next decade. The role of religion also rising to the surface of the health care debate and that is the topic of tonight's face-off.

Joining me now Tony Perkins, he's the president of the Family Research Council. Tony good to have you with us and the Reverend Jim Wallis, president and executive director of a Christian social justice organization. It's great to have you both with us. How in the world is god and politics moving to the center of a debate on national health care reform? If I may Reverend start with you?

REV. JIM WALLIS, FOUNDER & PRES., SOUIJOURNERS: The community of faith should never be involved in the weeds, policy weeds, but there's a fundamental moral issue here, 50 million Americans don't have health care coverage. And a lot of those are low income families, middle income families. On the way over here, Lou, I got a voicemail from a friend who said he's only 38. He said my wife this morning got diagnosed with lymphoma cancer. He's terrified yet he has health insurance. Imagine if he didn't have health insurance, he and his wife. So this is an injustice.

So we have to fight, we have to achieve coverage for all those folks who don't have it. That's a moral issue. We won't get involved in all of the details of policy. But the moral issue has to be front and center here.

DOBBS: Tony Perkins?

TONY PERKINS, FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL: Well, Lou, there's no question that we have a health care problem in America. In fact, for many families it's a crisis. But we need a common sense approach that will make sure that those truly in need will be covered and that our health care stays patient-centered and not government-centered. And that's what's at question here. And I think what we're seeing in this debate is -- and I appreciate what Jim says. I agree, now I take issue with the 40 million. It's really 43 million that do not have health insurance, not health coverage. Health insurance because we actually have 80 percent at a CDC report says 80 percent of poor children have public health care now. And my home state of Louisiana, we actually are one of the few states that have kind of a two-track system. We have a public health care system that runs parallel to the private system. And I'll tell you, it is fraught with problems. And I'm fearful of what will happen if we go to a one size government health care program.

WALLIS: But we're not.

DOBBS: I'm sorry?

PERKINS: That's what's being pushed. That's what's being pushed is a government-mandated. No, it is, that's what we're talking about.

WALLIS: We haven't had health care reform for years because before the debate there's a lot of scare tactics going on. This proposal is about people having choices. Keep your own doctor, keep your health care if you want it. If you don't have a health care plan, you can choose another plan. So there's choice here. This is not a government plan, government-control plan. There's a choice here.

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Tony Perkins of Focus on the Family paints a grim picture on Dr. Tiller. He's attacking Kathleen Sebelius' nomination, but as Scarce told me, he painted a target right on Tiller's back.

As many times as BillO and Phil Kline tried to disrupt him, Tiller continued to perform what he considered a necessary service to the protection of the mother. Women are always the target, they have rights but these rights are infringed upon without a second's thought by the leaders of the religious right and men in power.

I wrote the above portion two days ago, but I wasn't going to post it, but then I received a sick e-mail from Citizen's Link, a part of Focus on the Family.

'Killing is never the answer, whether it’s an unintended pregnancy or to stop abortion.'

Nebraska abortionist LeRoy Carhart says George Tiller's abortion clinic in Wichita, Kan., will reopen Monday. Carhart, who was at the center of the U.S. Supreme Court decision on partial-birth abortion, has been helping at Tiller's clinic for more than 10 years.

But the family said it has not made a decision about the long-term plans for the clinic, after Tiller was shot to death Sunday.
"The Tiller family's focus, of course, is to determine what is in the best interests of the employees and the patients," the family said in a statement.

Carrie Gordon Earll, senior bioethics analyst at Focus on the Family Action, said it's clear what is in the best interest of the patients. "Killing is never the answer, whether it’s an unintended pregnancy or to stop abortion," she said. "We’re speaking the truth about the precious lives of these preborn children. And, despite this tragedy, we are not going to stop."

Maybe the clinic might feel it's in the best interests of everybody staying alive since Dr. Tiller was murdered. He hasn't even been buried yet and FOF is attacking the clinic and talking about the best interests of the patients. Not a word about the women who go there. Cretins.

We see how much his murder has affected them. They've created new words like "preborn," so I imagine they've come up with something like protecting the rights of the "thoughtborn" children, although they wouldn't say it in public. That must be the thinking process they have when they refuse to engage in contraception, sex education and the Plan B pill. We have to protect the rights of the thoughtborn because somebody has to.

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From Anderson Cooper 360 April 13, 2008. While discussing Rick Warren's recent statements on Larry King Live, which contradicted what he had previously said about his support for Prop 8, the Rev. Mel White slams Tony Perkins for his bigoted stance on gay marriage. Perkins, like Warren, tries to keep the rhetoric from becoming too heated (unlike the Dobsons and Falwells of the world). But as Rev. White points out, that doesn't make their message any less hateful or harmful to the gay community.

White: It's really important for people to realize that Tony and Dobson and these others have been misleading the public for so many years about sexual orientation and gender identity. It's so important to see through their half truths and their hyperbole. It's really important to realize the damage they're doing by not saying that god created us gay. God loves us gay and we should have all the rights that the American people provide to all of us. So, Tony sounds good like, like Rick but they're really saying things that are horrible and destructive.

Cooper: Tony I'll give you a quick response since it was directed to you.

Perkins: Well, I would just say what we...we..it's not true. Uh..the Bible speaks for itself.

White: The Bible says nothing about homosexuality Tony, and it's really important to quit confusing people..(crosstalk).

Perkins: Hey Mel, nonetheless I love you. Appreciate you as a human being.

White: Don't say that. The things you say about gay people lead to destruction, the breakup of families...

Perkins: No, that's not true, Mel.

White: You continue this..we love you, but we hate you.

Perkins: No, I didn't say that.

White: We love you but we don't want you to have rights.

Perkins: I didn't say that.

White: Tony I've read your material. I've monitored you for ten years. You've got to get off this anti-gay stuff because they are leaving the churches because they've seen through your fundamentalist stuff.

Perkins: Actually, Mel, you're wrong on that point. The surveys, the polling data shows that Christians churches that are preaching the truth are the ones that are gaining members. It's the mainline liberal denominations that are losing membership.

White: That's not true at all either.

So we've got religious organizations tracking polling data like we'd expect from political parties now. Isn't that special? And Rev. White is right: You cannot pretend you love gay people and then do things that inflame hatred towards the gay community or suppress their civil rights.

From AC360 Nov. 12, 2008: Anderson Cooper brings on Dan Savage and Tony Perkins to debate Proposition 8 and the protests against it. Savage makes Perkins look like the hapless James Dobson mouthpiece he is.

I'm sorry. This is all about civil liberties in my book. It's all about freedom, something the right-wingers trumpet to the media whenever it suits them. Why are they so afraid of gay marriage?

DAN SAVAGE: Part of the democratic process is if you're going to throw a punch you're going to have a punch thrown back. You don't get to march in the public square, slime people, malign people and demagogue against people and then jump behind a bush and say, no God we're a church. You can't criticize us. You can't bring it back to our frond doors and say we have a problem with what you've been saying about us in public and doing to us in the public square.

The Mormon Church has politicized itself with this movement and -- in California to ban same-sex marriage. And it wasn't just the Mormon Church encouraged its followers. The first prophet of the Mormon Church had a letter read from every temple, every Mormon temple in the land instructing its members as a religious duty to donate time and money to this campaign. You cannot campaign against the vulnerable minority group in this country in the political arena without expecting some sort of response

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Last night on the "The Report," Stephen Colbert hosted Family Research Council President Tony Perkins to discuss the recent landmark court ruling in California legalizing same sex marriages, and ended up catching the "family values" crusader in some serious contradictions in the way only Colbert can.

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"I think it would really be much better for the anti-gay-marriage side if they obeyed everything in the Bible, not just the anti-gay-marriage part. Don't you?"

Californians apparently agree:  

A majority of registered Californian voters oppose changing the constitution of the most populous U.S. state to bar gays from marrying, according to poll released on Wednesday.

The Field Poll survey found 51 percent against approving a possible November ballot measure to prohibit gay marriage, with 43 percent in favor. A slightly differently worded question on the same issue found 54 percent opposed and 40 percent in favor.

Markos has some of the historical data showing how far Californians have come in just the past 30 years, as well as the age breakdown that bodes very well for the future of ensuring our gay brothers and sisters receive equal treatment under the law:

Approve Disapprove
5/2008 51 42
2006 44 50
2004 44 50
2003 42 50
1997 38 56
1985 30 62
1977 28 59

In other promising news, the AP is reporting that California will start issuing same-sex marriage licenses on June 14. Expect the wingnuts to fight this tooth and nail, but it's good news nonetheless:

Same-sex couples in some California counties will be able to marry as soon as June 14, the president of the California’s county clerks association said.