A few nights ago, Bill O’Reilly declared victory in the War on Christmas, only to gird himself for the War on Easter. He and Laura Ingraham lamented the coming of “spring egg hunts” and the banishing of the Easter Bunny as “a new era of persecution that we have never seen in this country before toward traditional faiths.” This morning, Fox & Friends joined the crusade as Professor (and right-wing extremist) Carol Swain sent out a call for the Fox faithful to “stand up against political correctness.”

“I can tell you that if we remove the name “Easter,” then we might as well call them ‘pagan egg hunts,’" Swain said. Predictably, she also saw this as “part of a larger effort across the country” to attack Christianity.

The host for this segment was none other than O’Reilly’s stalker/ambush producer Jesse Watters. The guest-host spot was his reward, apparently, for harassing people like President Obama’s uncle and liberal blogger/journalist Amanda Terkel on camera.

Watters asked, “What effect do you think this has on children growing up? Are they gonna grow older and realize this was all nonsense? Or do you think this is going to stick with them and they’re gonna pass this kind of stuff on to their kids?”

Swain replied:

It all depends on what the Christians in America do. The last survey that I saw, 78% of Americans profess to be Christians. If they are Christians, they should not be participating in pagan egg hunts. If Easter is removed from the egg hunts, then it’s a meaningless pagan holiday. And they need to sit down and have a heart-to-heart with their children. And they need to begin to speak up. We, the people, need to speak up and fight for our traditions and values. We need to organize, use social media and boycott.

That's right, America. Boycott any and all "spring egg hunts" because it's the Christian thing to do.

I would never have imagined this scenario in a million years, especially if you've watched Watters antics through the years like I have. He's constantly ratf*&king groups, people and politicians that he knows Bill O'Reilly objects to, but this catch has to hurt BIllO at the core.

An FEC filing from News Corp employee Jesse Watters.

One week after the 2012 election, Fox News correspondent Jesse Watters told Bill O'Reilly that Obama voters were "zombies" who supported the president "as long as there was Obamacare, gay marriage and abortion on demand."

Per the FEC filing above, Watters, who resides in Long Island, N.Y., contributed $500 to Obama Victory Fund 2012 in late September. You'll note "News Corp.," which owns Fox News, is listed under "name of employer."

POLITICO reached out to Fox News PR to request an interview with Watters and to ask the network for comment. They did not respond.

There's no reason for this donation -- unless he's a closet Obama supporter. Isn't it sad that he has to hide his real feelings? Reminds me of a certain group of people who lived like that for a very long time.

Look, it's not as though we didn't already know that Fox News ambush specialist Jesse Watters is a major-league wanker. I mean, c'mon: Stalking bloggers on their vacations? Really?

But this takes the cake.

Priscilla at Newshounds digs up a clip from last week's O'Reilly Factor on Fox in which Watters shows off his right-wing brand of humor [hint: Mallard Fillmore is funnier] with clips he brought back from the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, where he obviously was stalking the hallways in search of liberal celebrities to harass.

But his key clip moment in Charlotte came when he decided to harass the mayor of Boston, Thomas Menino, about Menino's opposition to allowing a Chick-fil-A in Boston because of its owners' anti-gay politics -- linking it, a la Tony Perkins, to the attempted shootings at the Family Research Council offices in Washington.

Here's how Watters put it:

“Do you feel bad about the fact that you've created all this controversy that this crazed gunman went up and shot up this conservative outfit.”

Just roll that one around and enjoy the delicious, though bizarre, hypocrisy of it all.

First of all, as Priscilla observes:

Mayor Menino did not engage in incendiary rhetoric which would have, in any way, motivated the shooter. He said that he would block the chicken franchise, Chick fil-A from coming to Boston because he objected to what he felt were intolerant views against gays by the president of Chick fil-A. It does not appear that Menino ever mentioned the Family Research Council.

Nor, might we add, is there even a whiff of evidence that the FRC shooter was inspired to act by anything that Mayor Menino said. Nothing, except the conjecture of right-wing jackasses like Jesse Watters and Bill O'Reilly.

Now let's compare and contrast that to a case in which someone actually was murdered: the assassination of Dr. George Tiller. And in that case, there is a mountain of evidence connecting the incendiary eliminationist rhetoric of Bill O'Reilly, fueled by the grotesquely afactual "reporting" of Jesse Watters, to that killing.

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You all remember how Jesse Watters of Fox News ambushed ThinkProgress's Amanda Terkel while she was on vacation. It was one of the more obscene examples of the routine violations of basic journalistic standards that Fox indulges when it sends out these ambush crews.

Well, a ThinkProgress writer caught up with Jesse while he was in the hallway at a right-wing gathering in D.C., and managed to turn the tables a bit. In the process, Watters just barefacedly lies on camera:

We pointed out to Watters that O’Reilly has said he always contacts people to give them a chance to respond before ambushing them. Watters attempted to stall several times before answering the question, but eventually responded:

WATTERS: We called her office.

Q: She said she got no call.

WATTERS: Yeah, no — I called her office twice.

Q: Who in the office did you call?

WATTERS: I called the main number.

Q: The main number?

WATTERS: Yeah, I called the main number and asked if Amanda Terkel was there.

Watters then began to say that he contacted Amanda Terkel “before we went after –” but stopped himself before finishing the sentence and instead said, “Yeah, before we went there.”

Watters is lying, just like he did when he claimed he contacted Hendrick Hertzberg before accosting him in New York City. No one at the Center for American Progress ever received a call from Jesse Watters or anyone else at Fox News about having Amanda appear on the show.

Watters previously had a little taste of turnabout. He deserves a whole lot more. Because karma is a bitch.

Adam Green from Open Left spotted one of those Fox News ambush crew outside an ACORN gathering yesterday and decided to have a little fun with them on behalf of Amanda Terkel.

It was Griff Jenkins, there on behalf of Glenn Beck (who barely used Jenkins' stunt on his show, since it was not exactly a success), complete with a small red carpet he rolled out for ACORN officials. Mind you, it was Jesse Watters, not Jenkins, who perpetrated that outrageous stalking of Terkel, but then, the whole ambush-crew approach is such a journalistic travesty it doesn't matter.

Besides, we've seen Jenkins besiege a hapless history prof with bogus misrepresentations of his work, so it's not like he's an innocent in this. And who can forget Griff getting smacked down by Barney Frank?

Indeed, this whole ambush-journalism thing doesn't seem to be working out too well for Griff. He certainly wasn't prepared to deal with Green. Karmic payback and all that.

That's Gawker's John Cook in front of Jesse Watter's Long Island home. You know Jesse. He's Bill O'Reilly's evil minion/stooge/flunkie who dutifully goes out and stalks,...er, ambushes such evil-doers of BilloWorld™ such as Bill Moyers, Amanda Terkel, Russell Tice, Rep. Robert Wexler, among others. So Gawker decided to give Jesse a little taste of his own medicine. Surprise, surprise! Jesse doesn't seem to appreciate his own tactics being turned on him:

Watters makes a living startling enemies of his boss Bill O with a video camera and coming back with embarrassing footage that O'Reilly pretends is "news." But in an act of pure weeniness Watters refuses to discuss his work with anyone. We thought we had a good chance of finding him leaving his house for the office this morning, but not everyone can be a stalker extraordinaire like Watters. A tipster has passed on info (or misinformation!) from a source inside Fox that says Watters is at his desk, and that his wife—a Gawker fan, according to a different tipster—is quite worked up over the visit. Our team learned some valuable lessons: 1) a stakeout's best done on an empty bladder and 2) be sure to cover all possible exits. (If he's not still at home, we think he either slipped out when John and Richard went to the loo, or walked out a back way to the nearby train station.) Rookie mistakes happen. And, Jesse, your taunts only make us more determined. (Video available at Gawker site)

Aww....poor widdle Jesse. Those meanies at Gawker have him skulking and hiding like a frightened little kitten. How dare they show him what it's like to be ambushed. The nerve! But Jesse, honey, you ain't seen nothing yet. We know you're going to be at Netroots Nation this August, no doubt hoping to find that proof of marching orders from George Soros. There's a whole bunch of us who will be there too--including John Amato--and just know, we're looking for you too.

You have to love Bill O'Reilly. Amanda Carpenter tells him that we posted a video compilation of Jesse Watters ambushing tactics and he says we're all just a tad bit afraid of the big-bad-Jesse Watters. And Amanda knows me, because we debated each other on MSNBC, so she shouldn't try to hide that fact from Bill.

O’Reilly: Now. The far-left websites fear greatly the vicious guy Jesse Watters. Jesse Watters is now the subject of far-left angst because he goes out and talks to the bad guys. Tell us about that.

Carpenter: Well, basically, there’s been a site, Crooks and Liars, that compiled a bunch of videos of Jesse Watters ambushing a number of people for your segments, and they call this harassment, they say it is absolutely harassment – you know, they’re very frightened at the prospect of a Fox News producer coming after them with a camera and asking them to explain what they write on the Internet or in various newspaper columns.

O’Reilly: It's interesting...They didn’t say anything – we’ve been doing this, I guess, for six or seven years, until the far-left websites got involved. Then they got really nervous. This is, of course, a legitimate brand of journalism, it’s been practiced ever since television news was invented in the ‘60s. When the bad guys won’t comment,* when they run and hide, we will find them.

… You know, it’s funny, one of the people that he talked to [showing Amanda Terkel] – ‘Oh, he yelled at me, and he ran –‘ And then you see the tape. And there’s Jesse being as polite as possible. They’re having a conversation anybody could have. But you know, we don’t expect honesty from these people. Their whole game is deceit. That’s what their game is.

By the way, C&L has been covering O'Reilly's ambush producers for years now so the fact that they went after a blogger somehow has us nervous is a lie.

Amanda accurately stated that we posted videos of Watters "ambushing" people -- I'd also call it "sandbagging," but at least she didn't say Watters was just "talking to" or "interviewing" them. And Bill, I'm so nervous of the towering presence of Jesse Watters, I mean, doesn't he remind you of Lawrence Taylor sacking the Joe Theismanns of the NFL? Carpenter knows we're not afraid of his goons too. Yes Bill, I'm so very afraid that The Factor can send Jesse down to my house with his camera in hand any old time he wants -- email me and I'll give you my address and he can practice a little ambushing on moi. Just send a note to crooksandliars-at-gmail.com.

See Bill -- and I know I have to carefully explain this to you, so I'll write this very slo-o-o-o-wly -- Jesse can bring his camera crew anywhere he wants and ask tough questions too, but what's despicable about his tactics is that he shows up on their private property unannounced or (worse yet) on the private weekend getaways, after stalking them. That's uncool and out of line and that's what's objectionable. If Jesse had called Amanda Terkel and asked for an interview and she met him, then there would have been no problem. But you all decided to "get" her. You claim you reserve this treatment for when "the bad guys won't comment," but you never even gave Amanda Terkel that opportunity.

Since Bill O. classifies us as the "bad guys", I'd like to know how many right wing or Republican "bad guys" Jesse Watters has ambushed in all the years he's been doing it. Did he go after any conservative columnists either? I'd also like to know what year he actually started ambushing people for The Factor.

What it boils down to is a matter of ethics: O'Reilly is violating the basic standards of behavior of journalistic professionals. Take a look at the Society of Professional Journalists' Code of Ethics:

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