I disagree with Meghan McCain on many things, but I respect the way she stands up to the insanity within the party she belongs to. Last week she made an appearance on Al Sharpton's show to discuss the discontent within the Republican Party. None of this is really news, after all. It's a given that the GOP has been overtaken by irrational, insane, and very rich human beings who are willing to throw just about everyone under the bus in order to restore America to the state of oligarchy which will benefit them most.

But when Meghan McCain says it, people crawl out from under their online rocks to give her heartburn, and evidently her biggest sin was daring to diss the Great and Mighty Breitbart and Michelle Malkin. In death, Breitbart has been whitewashed into some kind of right-wing hero-icon who Must Not Be Challenged or Criticized Ever. If one dares to do it, they get a barrage of nasty, like McCain got. Here are a few small examples:

@greggutfeld Breitbart had more class in his pinky finger than @McCainBlogette has in her entire 4 foot, 300 lb body.

— Levin Inches™ (@LevinInches) May 25, 2012

@ChrisLoesch, @McCainBlogette is an anit-american extremist who hates her country or origin.

— TipOfTheSpear (@CHOWSTL) May 25, 2012

I know @McCainBlogette is a hate filled extremist who seeks favor with the left so republicans will lose elections.

— Chris Loesch (@ChrisLoesch) May 25, 2012

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I'm sure you saw this piece in the Washington Post by Gerard Alexander titled, "Why are liberals so condescending?"

Jamison Foser busts the WaPo:

Well, this is interesting. Remember that "Why are liberals so condescending" piece by Gerard Alexander the Washington Post published last week? Turns out, the author didn't submit the piece the the Post -- the Post sought him out:

Bethesda, Md.: I thought that "Why are Liberals So Condescending" was the most intelligent article I've read in the Post in some time.

Do you think that this is the result of a decision by your editors to be more fair and balanced?

Also, I would appreciate your comments on the "All serious scientists agree that Global Warming is an enormous problem." school of thought. This matter has been positioned in exactly the same condescending manner.

Gerard Alexander: I can only tell you that the Post editor I dealt with searched me out, and were as encouraging as any editor could conceivably be.

I wonder when we'll find out that a Washington Post staffer is actively seeking out a similarly disparaging column about conservatives? After all, Howard Kurtz keeps telling us how liberal the Post's opinion operation is.

Meanwhile, Alexander spent the bulk of today's Washington Post online Q&A acknowledging that some conservatives are plenty condescending to liberals, but claiming that it just isn't very common. Or something. Alexander, for example, contends that "conservative magazines, elected officials, etc" don't accuse coastal liberals of being out of touch with heartland values -- and that if they did so, they'd be "run out of town."

What planet has Alexander been living on for the past thirty years? Conservatives are always so courteous. Why does the Post think we're so mean and nasty? I certainly don't remember conservatives calling us traitors, terrorist sympathizers, we hate our freedom, the troops and American values, do you?

Please email the Washington Post and tell them I sent you. Maybe they can answer your inquiry even if you are a condescending a-hole.

ombudsman@washpost.com

Or just use the phone and call here:

Phone 202.334.6000 | 800.627.1150

Here's their full contact page for more:

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We didn't have time this past week to say good-bye to the MSNBC program The Verdict, which will be replaced post-RNC by Rachel Maddow. Dan Abrams signs off on his program with one last Bush League Justice on the completely un-Constitutional signing statement.

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You knew it was going to happen. For all his big talk about being happy to talk to the House Judiciary Committee looking into the conviction and incarceration of Don Siegelman, when push came to shove, you had to know that Karl Rove would never, ever freely respond to the HJC subpoena. CQPolitics:

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, cited executive privilege as the reason that the former White House adviser would not appear before the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee on July 10.[..]

"Mr. Rove will respectfully decline to appear before the Subcommittee on July 10 on the grounds that Executive Privilege confers upon him immunity from process to respond to a subpoena directed to this subject," Luskin wrote.

Luskin renewed an offer that would have Rove submit to an off-the-record, untranscribed interview or answer written questions about the Siegelman case, but not the broader issue of the politicization of the Justice Department.

Not even man enough to stand up for his actions. Hear that, Karl? Not even man enough. Dan Abrams brings NYU Law School Professor Michael Waldman and former HJC counsel Julian Epstein to discuss the latest in Bush League (In)Justice:

Abrams: Okay, Michael, let me start with you: it is clear, Karl Rove is not coming. I mean, the House Judiciary Committee can say as much as they want, we're still hoping, we're still encouraging him to come, we're still insisting that he come, he's not coming. So what do they do now?

Waldman: Well, it's really quite remarkable, as you say, you can just say no to a lawful subpoena from Congress. Congress has a bunch of tools they can use. They can, of course, throw him in jail. There's a jail in the basement of the Capitol. That's probably the extreme remedy. There's all kinds of other things. They can cut off funding, they can hold up nominations, they can bring a lawsuit as has been the case in the Miers...the Harriet Miers contempt case. But what Congress has to have when it looks in its toolbox is not any of these tools but some backbone. Congress is a co-equal branch of government and it needs to stand up for its rights in this.

Backbone in Congress? What's that? I'll believe it when I see the perp walk.

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Bill W. already posted about Conyers' statement that he is committed to getting Rove to testify in the Don Siegelman case, even if it means having him arrested. However, this segment from MSNBC's Verdict, where Catherine Crier explains to host Dan Abrams the process and the seriousness of an Inherent Contempt of Congress charge is was too good not to use, so I asked Heather to make the video for me. Besides, it's small and petty of me, but I don't think you can hear "haul Karl Rove to jail" too many times.

Crier: Well here's the way this plays out. If the full House issues the contempt citation then it's supposed to go to the Department of Justice and they're supposed to take it to a Grand Jury. They're supposed to enforce it. Well they've already, the Bush administration says no, uh, there's Executive authority, we're saying privilege. They're not going to enforce it. You might then try the Federal courts. The Federal courts are liable to say it's a political question. But the Constitution gives the Congress the inherent power to issue contempt and then to prosecute on this.

Abrams: On their own.

Crier: They can send the Sergeant at Arms out into the countryside, arrest, haul somebody in and in days gone by used to literally hold them in the basement of Congress in an impromptu jail and then they could have a trial. That is still their power today.

Full transcript (courtesy of Heather) below the fold.

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The problem with pursuing justice with the Bush administration is the utter lack of respect for the rule of law that they exhibit regularly. In the case of the prosecution and incarceration of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman, Karl Rove initially told the House Judiciary Committee that he would only speak to them in private, not under oath and with no transcript. Then he changed his mind and said he'd only respond to their questions in writing.

Well, that's just not good enough for HJC member Rep. Robert Wexler (and frankly, it shouldn't be good enough for anyone. Can you imagine telling a judge that you're not going to come in to testify in a case, but he can ask you questions in writing?) and he told host Dan Abrams and Don Siegelman that no matter what obstacle the White House throws in his way, he'll keep pursuing justice for Siegelman.

We would much prefer Mr. Rove voluntarily agreed to appear before the House Judiciary Committee, as would any other American citizen. But my view is that if he refuses to come voluntarily, we must first subpoena him, and if he refuses to honor the subpoena then the full House of Representatives must hold Mr. Rove in Contempt of Congress. And then we must ask the Attorney General to enforce the Contempt of Congress subpoena or citation. And if the Attorney General refuses to do so, which Mr. Mukasey said previously before the Judiciary Committee that he would, then I believe, reluctantly, we need to literally uphold the checks and balances that this administration has so abused and then we need to go the extraordinary step of issuing an Inherent Contempt of Congress.

The full segment available online at MSNBC.

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If there was truly any justice in this world, Karl Rove would be cooling his heels in some very uncomfortable room in The Hague, Netherlands right now. Instead, he has jumped from the sinking ship of the Bush White House to a cushy job as a pundit on FOXNews. But even as a pundit, on Monday's Verdict, Dan Abrams has noted a peculiar tendency on the part of Bush's Brain to sound exactly like a partisan political propagandist. Case in point: Rove was kind enough to give some "advice" to Barack Obama that read for all the world as a whisper campaign on Obama's perceived weakness.

But inside that Beltway Bubble, Karl Rove finding gainful employment giving his opinion on Democratic candidates hardly raises an eyebrow. In fact, Tucker Carlson loves him some Rovian punditry:

Well, I’ve seen him a couple of times on the tube. I think he’s excellent, actually. He’s better than I thought he would be. He’s got smart and incisive things to say. Look, the thing about Rove is it’s actually a more honest situation than most. I mean, in a lot of cases you’ve got people—most journalists obviously are liberal Democrats—and most sort of try their best to be objective. You kind of have to guess about whether they’re achieving objectivity or not. With Rove, it’s Karl Rove! You know, like you know exactly who he is, you know where he’s coming from. A smart person takes that into account. Even a dumb person takes that into account. And so, everything’s kind of out on the table and you can evaluate what he says and turn on your BS monitor and if some of it sounds like spin, you take that into account. But I’ve been kind of impressed, being in the pundit business myself for a while, by how good the guy is. Watch him, he’s good! Actually.

Uh no, actually. Only Roy Sekoff of the Huffington Post seems to get that someone who is responsible for so much of what is wrong with this country and so many criminal acts does not deserve to continue to get a national platform from which to practice and further his divisive ways. Of course if being "wrong" was the metric to ensure not being on TV, Tucker would have been vanquished off by 1994. Most journalists are liberal Democrats, Tucker? You idiot, Karl Rove is on FOXNews. Are you telling me they're mostly liberal Democrats? That's just stupid and lazy.

Norah McDonnell perpetuates the "Karl Rove is a political genius" meme so intractably popular in Washington DC circles:

I think everybody knows where Karl Rove comes from. And I think the genius of Karl Rove, whether you agree or disagree with him, even the things he’s done inside the Bush administration, is that he is a brilliant political tactician. There’s nobody since I covered the White House who knows the numbers, who knows demographics of congressional districts, who knows the delegate counts better. I mean, really, other than like Chuck Todd, who does the numbers like that, Karl Rove knows this stuff, lives it, breathes it, digs it, and so that’s why he’s a good source in that regard. But there’s no doubt…I mean, he wants the Republican…and he wants McCain to win, even though he tried to destroy McCain in 2000.

Norah, no one knows better than Karl? Can you say 2006 elections? I predicted the outcome more accurately than Rove did. Where's my pundit spot where I can attack the Republicans under the guise of my "political expertise"? And I'm not guilty of orchestrating dirty elections, ramping up a propaganda tsunami to force the country into an illegal war or treasonously outing a CIA covert officer. I think a moral compass would be a refreshing change in the punditry, don't you?

In his "Beat the Press" segment Wednesday night, Dan Abrams awarded all three dishonorable mentions to FOX News, which continues to prove itself as an utter joke.

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"It's not like we tune in to FOX for facts."

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The media-manufactured controversies over Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, aren't going to go away if the media can help it. It's much easier to talk about them than admit to propagandists on your booking lists. Rev. Wright agreed to his first public interview, and will be on Bill Moyer's Journal, which will air this evening on PBS. But advance video has the punditocracy a-twitter with the meme that Wright "throws" Obama under the bus. But the media also has a history of purposefully taking Wright's words out of context.

However, take a closer look at that panel assembled. Joe Watkins (introduced as Rev. Watkins, as he holds a divinity degree), who has worked for the Dan Quayle, Bush 41 and the current president, Kevin Madden, whose last gig was as Mitt Romney's spokesman as well as working on Bush's 2000 campaign and Lawrence O'Donnell, the lone Democrat, who formerly worked for Patrick Moynihan and was the Chief of Staff for the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works before jumping to Hollywood and The West Wing and Big Love. Could the deck be stacked any further against anything Wright says? Watch as Madden and Watkins slam Obama by attributing words that Wright did not say, much to the frustration of O'Donnell.

This is great. He’s not using those words and every pundit on TV talking about this wants to force those words into Rev. Wright’s mouth. He’s not using them so we’re pretending he’s using them.

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Dan Abrams, who has been outstanding about keeping the Don Siegelman story at the forefront of his show, had Siegelman on to speak out about his incarceration and the fight in front of him to get Congress to investigate his prosecution and uncover the corruption and White House tentacles that railroad Democrats but ignore Republicans.

SIEGELMAN: We have got to seek out the truth. And I want to, again, commend you and Bush League Justice for pushing this issue forward. This case and these circumstances will make Watergate look like child`s play if Congress will dig into these things. You brought up something right before the break about two prominent Republicans who were exposed during the course of this investigation but were not pursued.

Remind me again, what was it that Congress forced to do when the details about the Watergate break in started to leak out to the general public?

Transcripts below the fold

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