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To hear Glenn Beck yesterday on his Fox News show, you'd think he was just a regular frickin' Gandhi:

Beck: Let me make this very clear. You and I have to have a special relationship, because -- we'll show you tomorrow what these people are doing to the media and how they're infiltrated into the media. It's amazing. So you're not going to get the truth about me except here. And that's just not a big enough number in America.

So you and I have to have a straight conversation from time to time. Here's one of them:

There are crazies on both sides of the aisle -- left, right, up, down, doesn't matter -- they're crazy! Crazy people are part of society. But there is one side that has a history of terror and violence -- orchestrated history of terror and violence! And it's about to [e]merge its ugly head again.

No one has preached on TV or radio more than me that violence is not the answer. The reason why I've been doing it so long is because I was telling you about the financial collapse two years before anybody else. When I preach about it, and I say, listen, you've gotta batten down the hatches, you have to be a good person, you have to get right with God, you've got to get back to church, because trouble is coming.

When I say that, the leftists and all their media organs -- they all speculate, 'Why would Glenn Beck have to say that, unless his crazy viewers weren't one push away from a shooting spree?' Well, I say that for the exact same reason that Martin Luther King said that.

Obviously, Glenn's a little sensitive about the violence thing these days because, after all, one of his nutty fans shot two Oakland cops this week en route to a planned terrorist attack on one of Beck's favorite scapegoats, the Tides Foundation. And he obviously thinks that piously declaring his opposition to violence will give him the fig leaf he needs to cover his fat ass.

At one point in the rant, you even think he's going to come clean:

But there is one side that has a history of terror and violence -- orchestrated history of terror and violence! And it's about to [e]merge its ugly head again.

But no. He's actually talking about the radical left -- the radical left of the 1960s, mind you -- and not the radical right of the 1990s and 2000s.

Because there is indeed one side with a very recent and indeed current and ongoing "history of terror and violence" -- and that would be the radical right. Yesterday we pointed out three other recent cases involving right-wing extremists, all inspired to some degree by Fox News: Jim David Adkisson in Knoxville, Scott Roeder in Topeka, and Richard Poplawski in Pittsburgh. But that's just touching the tip of the iceberg, one that goes back to The Order, Timothy McVeigh, and Eric Rudolph. And it includes, just in the past year alone, James Von Brunn, who walked into the Holocaust Museum and opened fire; Joseph Andrew Stack, who flew a plane into an IRS building; John Patrick Bedell, who walked into the Pentagon and opened fire; and Jerry and Joe Kane, two "sovereign citizens" who gunned down two police officers in West Memphis, Arkansas, and wounded two others before being mowed down themselves.

Funny that whenever those cases erupt, Glenn Beck simply writes them off as "crazies" instead of the right-wing political terrorists they clearly are. And then wrings his hands and warns that violence isn't the answer.

And what's really funny is that you'll notice Beck preceded this entire vow of anti-violence with a long rant demonizing and smearing progressives as being part of a faction that is out to destroy America. This is of course classic eliminationist rhetoric -- something that Glenn Beck has come to specialize in the past year, particularly in his attacks on progressives.

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Glenn Beck had another one of those moments yesterday on his Fox News show, talking about the G20 Summit in Toronto:

BECK: Anyway, President Obama was there, and, um, he said something that kind of tripped my Marxism alarms. Here he is.

Mind you, Beck's "Marxism alarm" goes off all the time, with increasing shrillness and volume. It's kind of like the guy who sets his car alarm to such a sensitivity that it shrieks and squonks if you so much as walk within twenty feet of it.

Especially when you see what set it off this time:

Obama: A strong and durable recovery also requires countries not having an undue advantage. I think we all have the same interest -- and that is, the United States can compete with anybody -- as long as we've got an even playing field.

Somehow, to Beck, this sounded vaguely Marxist. But in fact, what Obama was saying was classic American capitalism. Because he was talking about the disadvantage at which currency restrictions force us to play:

"A strong and durable recovery also requires countries not having an undue advantage. So we also discussed the need for currencies that are market-driven," Obama said. "As I told President Hu yesterday, the United States welcomes China's decision to allow its currency to appreciate in response to market forces."

In fact, American presidents have advocated a "level playing field" within the world's markets for decades. Bush pushed it. So did Ronald Reagan.

What, does Beck think the USA should compete at a disadvantage? Or does this mean he thinks that free-market capitalism operates on an uneven playing field, and that capitalism and fair competition cannot coexist?

Because that, you know, is actually a classic Marxist position.

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Of course, you knew as soon as you heard that open mike tape of Carly Fiorina dissing Sean Hannity, Meg Whitman and Barbara Boxer -- meow! -- that it would be only a matter of time before we'd see Fiorina on Hannity's Fox News show, purring and groveling abjectly and begging for forgiveness.

Sure enough, Fiorina was on Hannity's show last night. She tried to play the whole incident as a "compliment" -- "You're a tough interview, Sean".

Yeh, right. Anyone listening to the tape could tell that she was talking about the need for California Republicans like Whitman to distance themselves from the wingnuts like Hannity in the general election.

But it's always great for high-schadenfreude amusement value to watch these sneering conservatives grovel piteously before their masters in the right-wing media.

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Glenn Beck decided to follow up his brief and lame apology on his website for his wildly unpopular attack on 11-year-old Malia Obama last week on his radio show by giving a heartfelt, sincere mea culpa on his Fox News show yesterday.

Apropos of someone for whom "sincere" is just a schtick, the mea culpa was all about Beck -- a tale of how he was an a-hole to his wife, snapping at her and cursing self-righteously when she asked him what he was thinking, and then realizing he was wrong and begging her forgiveness and now the world's.

Funny thing about Beck and forgiveness: He's always preaching about the power of self-forgiveness -- that's what his whole "Christmas Sweater" schtick is all about -- but I always get the feeling that he never takes the crucial step of obtaining forgiveness from the people who he's actually wronged. I've always wondered whether he ever sought the forgiveness of the wife of his rival DJ in Phoenix who he called up on air and humiliated over her recent miscarriage. I'd wager not.

Nor did he yesterday at any point seem to contemplate that he's horribly wronged a young woman who has done nothing to earn such a vicious and nasty attack. Instead, it was all about Beck realizing he had broken one of his "rules".

What are Beck's "rules"? He put it this way -- when the subject was Sarah Palin:

Beck: There's a difference! Leave my family -- leave people's families alone! I don't think I've -- I mean, I don't think I have ever -- I mean, I made this when it was Bill Clinton -- you don't go after Chelsea Clinton! You don't talk about the Bush kids! Now, the minute they get into politics, that's a different story. You leave the families alone! We've never done anything but protect the families, and question why the White House would bring their children into political debate. Leave the families alone!

Yesterday, he continued on the same note, describing his apology to his wife:

Beck: I said, 'Honey, you are right. And there is absolutely no excuse or reason to ever, ever, EVER -- even come close to the line of dragging somebody's family into the debate! I- I've never done it! I've never done it! Until last Friday. And I hope that's my bottom.

It probably won't be, because Beck's self-delusion is still very much intact insofar as what constitutes "dragging somebody's family into the debate."

Because we still recall vividly what remains the scummiest Beck show ever on Fox News -- the one where Beck smeared President Obama's dead mother:

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You'll recall he tried much of the same kind of denial:

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I guess now we can just call Fox News Channel "the Militia Station."

Glenn Beck has been espousing his belief in "New World Order" conspiracy theories since at least 2007, when he was hosting Birch Society leaders on his CNN Headline News show.

But for the most part he's kept quiet about it since he moved over to Fox News, except for that little outburst last November.

But more recently, he began espousing his paranoiac beliefs back in April on his radio show, warning that "a New World Order" and "global government" are "being cobbled together today". He's intimated this on his Fox show, but never came out and just said it until yesterday.

On Tuesday, he promised us he was going to spend the next day showing us how "they" are building a "New World Order" because, ostensibly, "they're saying it."

So what is his evidence, finally revealed in all its breathless glory Wednesday? Well, mostly a lot of red-meat speeches for liberals. Nothing about global governance. Quite a bit about global cooperation and international law, that sort of thing.

Mostly you've gotta love Beck's recitation of things he supposedly got "right" -- such as his prediction that taxpayers would wind up "bailing out the unions", which he now claims just came true in the form of Sen. Bob Casey's "Create Jobs and Save Benefits" Act. But even Republicans are calling out this baldfaced lie.

It's like deja vu all over again: I felt like I was watching a militia leader from the 1990s all over again. It was all there: The thin, almost nonexistent evidence. The paranoiac hyper-interpretation of benign government activity. The repeated assurances to the audience that they were being proven right by the day's events. And the overarching belief that a Democratic president was planning to bring "America as we know it" to an end, crushed by a "New World Order" global government. The only thing missing was a reference to the United Nations.

If you want to see for yourselves, I've edited a couple of videos out of my archives for you to make the comparison and contrast all on your own. I think you'll be amazed by the similarity.

First, here's John Trochmann, leader of the Militia of Montana, giving his durable "Enemies: Foreign and Domestic" lecture, complete with Beck-like diagrams and charts, at a gathering in 1995:

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Next, here's Col. James "Bo" Gritz -- at one time, David Duke's running mate on the 1992 Populist Party presidential ticket, and then himself the 1996 Populist Party presidential nominee -- giving a speech on the New World Order at a 1998 "Preparedness Expo" in Puyallup, WA:

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At the time, Gritz, like Beck, was an apocalyptic Mormon convert who had been gradually drawn into far-right extremism. He is now a full-fledged member of a Christian Identity church.

I'm sure you'll see more than just a familial resemblance here.

Which raises the question: How did a supposedly "mainstream" news organization get into the business of militia-movement extremism?

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Bill O'Reilly brought on "immigration expert" Lou Dobbs to talk about the Arizona police-state immigration law last night on his Fox News show. As you might expect, we were treated to the kind of judgment and insight that led to Dobbs' removal from his anchor's seat at CNN.

Both agreed that the new law was "obviously" perfectly constitutional, and Dobbs went so far as to predict that it would easily withstand any court challenge. With that in hand, the conversation went this way:

O'Reilly: If 70 percent of the country supports the Arizona law, according to the latest polls -- 70 percent! If the Obama administration sues Arizona, that's it for them! They're done! To me, it's a bluff!

Dobbs: I personally believe -- whether it's a bluff or whether it's a foreshadowing of their intent -- I truly believe it would be a great thing for America if this administration would sue the state of Arizona.

O'Reilly: You want them to sue.

Dobbs: Absolutely.

O'Reilly: Why?

Dobbs: Because we need clarity in this country. We need -- enough of the rhetoric from the left, the right, any of these factions. Let's talk about the responsibilities of the federal government, the responsibilities of the state government -- the last I looked, they hadn't suspended the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution. Arizona has every right to be taking these steps, particularly where this government is quite consciously, this administration, quite consciously, is refusing to enforce immigration law, either internally or at the border.

In other words, Dobbs too believes it would destroy the Obama administration -- and thus he wants them to do it. Because he's also so certain it would be upheld.

Anyone wanna bet that if and when the courts overturn the law, Dobbs will declare that everything is in chaos as a result?

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Yesterday on her Fox News show, Megyn Kelly thought it would be revealing in some fashion or another to run footage of protests from angry Latinos in Arizona, and run them side by side with footage from the Tea Party protests in Washington, D.C. in March.

Talk about selective footage: What they showed of the Arizona protests -- which indeed were largely peaceful -- were the moments when the rowdiness got out of hand and people were arrested. And of course, the footage they showed of the Tea Partiers was of moments when their protest was entirely peaceful -- not the ugliness that erupted when Democrats tried to walk through the crowd.

But it left me wondering: Why didn't Kelly and Co. do the same thing back in March when there were in fact immigration marchers in D.C. at the same time as the Tea Party protests on health-care reform?

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As I noted then:

Indeed, this crowd was significantly larger than the much-promoted "9/12 March on Washington" last September, even though that event was endlessly promoted for over a month by Fox News (I know, I know; they like to claim they had 1.2 million people there, but the reality was that it was actually about 70,000).

Yet, strangely enough, there was only ONE Fox News crew on hand to cover the immigration march today. I spoke with the reporter for this crew, and he told me Fox News had several other crews on hand today -- but they were all up covering the Tea Partiers and the health-care vote.

And in case you're wondering, there were exactly ZERO stories on Fox News reporting on this march in advance. ZERO. I couldn't find any at CNN or MSNBC either.

There was exactly ONE report on Fox News covering this rally -- because Fox was so busy covering the Tea Party protesters.

On its website, Fox carried only an AP report (now scrubbed) and a slide show. That was it.

The final estimate for this crowd was 200,000 people -- which dwarfed the Tea Party protests. And it was considerably more peaceful and civilized than the ugliness up at the Capitol.

Wonder why they didn't do a comparison/contrast back then, don't you?

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Evidently, Bill O'Reilly's idea of defending his network's journalistic honor is to lie blatantly -- not just to his national TV audience, but to a U.S. Senator to boot.

Last night on his Fox News show, BillO -- incensed by Sen. Tom Coburn's suggestion that Fox News' coverage of the health-care debate was misleading and biased -- tried to claim that no one on Fox had ever suggested that you'll get thrown in jail if you don't buy health insurance.

O'Reilly claimed it three times in the course of the interview, each time with escalating falsity, culminating with the claim that his staff had carefully researched the question and found that no one at Fox had ever said it.

Oh really? Because as you can see, we have the video that demonstrates clearly otherwise.

Glenn Beck, as a matter of fact, said it on his own Fox News show -- and he said it on Bill O'Reilly's program too, directly to O'Reilly's face. And O'Reilly made a joke about it.

Nor was Beck alone among Fox anchors saying it.

Here's how O'Reilly put it to Coburn:

O'Reilly: OK, but can you tell me one person on Fox News, just one, who has told this audience that they'll go to jail if they don't buy health insurance.

...

O'Reilly: Well, why then was it legitimate to bring in Fox News in the discussion, when, No. 1, you don't know anybody on Fox News -- because there hasn't been anyone -- that said people will go to jail if they don't buy mandatory insurance.

...

O'Reilly: Well, tell me, what -- because it doesn't happen here. And we researched to find out if anybody on Fox News had ever said you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance. Nobody's ever said it.

Of course, none other than O'Reilly's sometime stagemate, Glenn Beck told his audience on Nov. 12, 2009:

Beck: But if you don't play by their new rules on health care, oooh, here's a new little twist. Have you heard this? You're going to be looking at a fun little stint in jail.

... But if you don't play ball with them now, if you don't get into their government health care, there will be jail time. And that of course was fair.

The next day, Nov. 13, in his weekly appearance on The O'Reilly Factor, chatting over his then-recent appendectomy, Beck repeated the line, and O'Reilly responded by asking Beck if he intended to go to jail over health insurance (transcript courtesy Media Matters):

O'REILLY: Couldn't they do [liposuction] at the same time [as your appendectomy]?

BECK: No, they wouldn't. No. I don't have universal health care.

O'REILLY: Well you will soon.

BECK: Or I'll go to jail.

O'REILLY: Are you going to be a conscientious objector to health care?

BECK: You know, this is the first time in history in our country where, just to be a citizen, just to not go to jail, you have to buy something.

That's some crack research squad O'Reilly has there -- they can't even rustle up the times this lie was repeated on O'Reilly's own show.

No wonder the fact that not only did they miss the Beck claims, they missed that Sean Hannity made the same claim (citing Dick Morris), as did Judge Andrew Napolitano. All on the Fox News Channel.

O'Reilly clearly got away with lying to Coburn to his face.

But as for defending Fox's honor, well, let's just say that it worked about as well as it should.

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Bill O'Reilly was all worked up last night on his Fox News show, claiming that the "liberal media" are waving the bloody shirt again, using the violence and extremism and racism of a handful of joiners to smear an otherwise entirely innocent movement.

First, his Talking Points Memo segment was devoted to the notion that "the Tea Party as a whole is not responsible for the loons who may lurk among them."

Which is, you know, pretty much true. Unless, of course, the movement seems to attract a high percentage of loons, and especially if the movement itself employs loons as their speakers and representatives.

Which is the case with the Tea Parties.

This is pretty funny, really, coming from the guy -- as Matt Corley at ThinkProgress notes -- who only a couple of years ago was culling off comments at DailyKos to smear the entire liberal blogosphere as the equivalent of Nazis.

O'Reilly brought on Rev. Al Sharpton, who seems to have figured out how not to let O'Reilly make him into a punching bag, because he pretty effectively rebutted most of O'Reilly's points. Nonetheless, Monsieur Falafeloofah managed to assert that the "liberal media smear" of the Tea Parties by blaming them for their kooks is "unfair!"

This was followed by a segment with Mary Katherine Ham and Juan Williams. And Williams set off O'Reilly by pointing out that the Tea Parties are fundamentally a rebirth of the Patriot/militia movement of the 1990s:

WILLIAMS: You know, people who's have a lot of hateful attitudes towards President Bush and then somebody who is extremist on the fringe, yes. And if that was also to be then the case with the Tea Party, yes, that's too much and unfair. But, when you start to see militia groups start to associate with the Tea Party --

O'REILLY: Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me stop you there. I haven't seen militia groups associating with the Tea Party.

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We've known for some time that the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson -- the WorldNetDaily's favorite black columnist -- is a Real Piece of Work. On Sean Hannity's Fox News show last night, he demonstrated it once again with this rant about health-care reform:

Peterson: But to be honest with you, this whole thing is -- I remember, George Washington built America based on truth. Barack Obama is destroying America based on lies.

This thing is about the redistribution of wealth, it's about Black Liberation Theology. Obama lied on the primaries, he's been lying ever since. And the sad thing about it, some Americans -- most Americans are starting to see it, but they don't realize that they've been seduced by this man, and he doesn't care about what is right.

We see what he's doing, bowing down to everybody around the country --

Hannity: Around the world.

Peterson: And around the world. Look what's happening in Israel right now, he's never really supported Israel. This guy is not on our side.

He's -- Obama, in all honesty, is the Congressional Black Caucus, he is Louis Farrakhan, he is Rev. Wright, his minister, he is all of them wrapped up in one -- and he's gonna take -- if we allow this health-care thing to happen, he's gonna turn America into Detroit. And we cannot let this happen.

Gee, this has a familiar ring to it. Maybe because it's just a recycled version of an earlier Peterson rant:

Barack Obama hates white people -- especially white men. Sorry folks, but the truth will set you free!

Why else would Obama falsely accuse Sgt. James Crowley and other Cambridge Police officers of "racial profiling" and claim they "acted stupidly" -- creating a national racial controversy?

For months, I have said that Barack Obama was elected as a result of white fear (guilt) and black racism. Whites voted for him because of guilt and the fear of being called "racist." And the 96 percent of blacks who voted for the "Messiah" did so because of his race and his "spread the wealth" notions.

[...]

Barack Obama is Jeremiah Wright Jr. He is the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus! He embodies the aspirations of every left-wing black group that wants to tear down this country and take power away from the "oppressive" white man. He's not an obvious race hustler like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson; but Obama is a smooth pathological liar -- with a wicked heart.

That was published in WorldNetDaily -- you know, the folks who brought you the Birther Conspiracy Factory. The same magazine that speculated that Obama was the anti-Christ. The same fine rag that published Jerome Corsi's theory that Obama was building concentration camps for rounding up conservatives -- along with a whole menu of similar far-right anti-Obama fever dreams.

The only question is: Why are we getting this far-right extremism broadcast into our living rooms by a supposedly "mainstream" cable-news operation?