The deficits! Your Beltway media is sore afraid of them! But like a family who goes to live in a haunted house only to refuse to move out once the ancient demons that reside in the tool shed reveal themselves and announce their intention to eat their children in allegiance to Satan, they don't do much to account for the grandiose failures in judgment they have made that have sped the way to wrack and ruin.

You don't hear anyone ever talking about "bending the cost curve" of the Afghanistan War. And the idea that the taxpayers, having invested billions propping up a coven of incompetent banks, should receive the same sort of return on investment as a Warren Buffet is treated as if it sprang from the skull of an alien being. In this way, they enable members of Congress, who never take responsibility for the decisions they make that pave the way to potential deficit crises, to go right on making the same sorts of decisions.

And now, via The Hill, comes this:

Senators from both parties on Tuesday put new pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to turn the power to trim entitlement benefits over to an independent commission.

Seven members of the Senate Budget Committee threatened during a Tuesday hearing to withhold their support for critical legislation to raise the debt ceiling if the bill calling for the creation of a bipartisan fiscal reform commission were not attached. Six others had previously made such threats, bringing the total to 13 senators drawing a hard line on the committee legislation.

And here's what the commission would do:

Among its chief responsibilities would be closing the gap between tax revenue coming in and the larger cost of paying for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. The Government Accountability Office recently reported the gap is on pace to reach an "unsustainable" $63 trillion in 2083.

The panel would also have the power to craft legislation that would change the tax code and set limits on government spending.

The legislation would then be subject to an up-or-down vote; it could not be amended.

In other words, a group of senators have ginned up an idea to outsource their responsibility to some wondrous and new deficit-hawk commission in order to steal entitlement money to pay for their own foolish and profligate spending.

By doing so, they limit their exposure to bad or unpopular legislative decisions, preserving their career longevity while vesting enormous power in a body over whom the American people have no oversight. And to get their way, they'll threaten to basically blow up the government.

Oh, and why are "Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits" in this commission's crosshairs? Well, why try to get our money back from Citigroup when the elderly and the poor have so much more they can give?

The supporters of this crapulence are, not surprisingly, serial crapulence supporters: Senators Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), George Voinovich (R-Ohio) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). They've gotten their talking points together, and are happy to repeat them robotically, for reporters:

You rarely do have the leverage to make a fundamental change," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.).

[...]

"There are rare moments in this institution when you can implement fundamental change," Bayh said during Tuesday's hearing. "This is one of them."

So does this make Nancy Pelosi, who has "scoffed" at the idea, some sort of debt-hugging monster who wants to destroy the future, for the children? No. She just understands that there's this thing called the legislative process that shouldn't be thrown in the dustbin for the sake of allowing a group of unelected idiots with blue ribbons pinned to their chests to decide funding priorities without any means of holding them accountable for their decisions.

Back in February, The Nation's William Greider warned about the Coming Of The Deficit Commission:

Governing elites in Washington and Wall Street have devised a fiendishly clever "grand bargain" they want President Obama to embrace in the name of "fiscal responsibility." The government, they argue, having spent billions on bailing out the banks, can recover its costs by looting the Social Security system. They are also targeting Medicare and Medicaid. The pitch sounds preposterous to millions of ordinary working people anxious about their economic security and worried about their retirement years. But an impressive armada is lined up to push the idea--Washington's leading think tanks, the prestige media, tax-exempt foundations, skillful propagandists posing as economic experts and a self-righteous billionaire spending his fortune to save the nation from the elderly.

These players are promoting a tricky way to whack Social Security benefits, but to do it behind closed doors so the public cannot see what's happening or figure out which politicians to blame. The essential transaction would amount to misappropriating the trillions in Social Security taxes that workers have paid to finance their retirement benefits. This swindle is portrayed as "fiscal reform." In fact, it's the political equivalent of bait-and-switch fraud.

It's easy to see why lawmakers would cotton to this idea. They made a bunch of stupid decisions, which ran up the deficit. At some point, they're going to have to do something that's potentially difficult or unpopular to fix their mistakes. This puts their precious seats and the flow of sweet, sweet special interest money at risk. So if someone could provide them with a behind-closed-doors cabal that would solve their problems at the expense of the poor and the old, these senators could simply shrug and say, "Sorry, y'all! This is all beyond my control!" And they'll get what they want by throwing a tantrum, and threatening to do something stupid: forcing the Federal government to default on its debt.

Matt Yglesias rightly calls out these lawmakers for their "egomania, self-righteousness, irresponsibility, and cowardice":

Why not throw it back at this crew? Tell the Irresponsible Threat Caucus that instead of asking for a commission, they should just start calling themselves a "budget commission" and then they can specify their own proposed set of tax hikes and Medicare cuts.

Note that Senators Gregg, Bayh, Voinovich, and Sessions didn't have these concerns about the budget when voting to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the children of multi-millionaires. And I continue to await congressional support for making the war in Afghanistan deficit neutral.

And by the way, this craven crew isn't above putting the health and welfare of the American people at risk, to get their way:

Conrad signaled that he may likewise have run out of patience with the status quo, suggesting that if Democratic leaders refuse to couple a vote on a bipartisan fiscal task force of some kind with the debt limit increase, he would seek to attach a commission proposal to other crucial legislation.

"There are other vehicles," Conrad said Tuesday, "including healthcare."

It gets harder, with each passing day, to continue to pretend that adults are running this country. But you'd never know this from reading about them in the traditional media!

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Thanks to the Columbia Journalism Review, Eat The Press is proud to finally bring you an example of actual press being actually eaten. Oh, frabjous day!

I rather like the example set here in this video, where Chicago Tribune columnist Rick Morrissey, having been the author of an "unflattering assessment of Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah" -- an assessment that ultimately proved to be incorrect -- sits down with the vindicated Noah and proceeds to eat his own words. By which I mean, he takes his story and literally gets his mastication on, while a joyful Noah looks on. Maybe sportswriter Rick Reilly should consider what wine will best wash down his many hysterically wrong predictions about the Denver Broncos!

WATCH:

Naturally, this is all sort of a good-spirited goof, but I rather like Noah's statement, "Finally, a reporter is taking some accountability for what he's doing." Imagine if this was the standard means by which journalistic accountability was enforced. Why, so many so-called Iraq War experts would be presently choking down the reams of paper upon which they got the war wrong, that there wouldn't be anyone available to get the War in Afghanistan wrong! And, naturally, the high fiber intake would make the alimentary canals of many columnists practically frictionless for life.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Here's a reminder of how now-resigned-from-CNN Lou Dobbs used to bellow on and on about his various persecution complexes, and as recently as August 14, blustered to his radio audience that "It's just killing the left... that they can't force CNN to fire me."

DOBBS: You know, it's just killing the left wing in this country that they can't force CNN to fire me. They're coming after me with everything they've got. I'm used to it. They've been doing it since...what would it be? I'm going to say 2000, 2001, 2002, when I started criticizing, in earnest, the Bush administration, and ultimately was blackballed by the Bush administration. The left wing, this time, is just as committed as the right wing used to be, coming after me for talking about free trade policies and they wanted to absolutely destroy me, and the National Association of Manufacturers dedicating entire websites to me because I was criticizing manufacturing policies -- or the lack of a manufacturing policy. This is just crazy stuff.

LISTEN:

Well, it was "just crazy stuff." But ultimately, the lion's share of "crazy stuff" -- the weird leprosy claims, the legitimizing of the "birther" movement, the weird "North American Union" conspiracy mongerings, the overheated anti-immigrant rhetoric -- was authored by Dobbs himself. And that's what brings pressure from quarters where rational thought is held in esteem.

So, while Lou Dobbs had a healthy coterie of detractors, as well as a vivid imagination that permitted him to think that enemies lurked in every shadow, it's important to remember that Dobbs himself is ultimately responsible for his own misfortunes. And CNN? Well, they aren't going to miss Lou Dobbs one little teensy bit.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

If you thought that the filibuster was the only means by which senators could engage themselves in self-indulgent and pointless political warfare, think again! There's also the hold procedure, by which individual senators can obstruct an executive branch appointment just because they feel like it.

The most recent example is the case of Tom Shannon, a former Bush State Department appointee who has been appointed to serve as the Ambassador to Brazil by President Obama. For reasons that defy understanding, Senator George LeMieux (R-Fla.) has decided to place a hold on Shannon, because, as Dave Weigel reports, he needs to "discuss [his] concerns" and "fully vet him." This follows a long hold placed on Shannon by Jom DeMint (R-S.C.), who did so in order to show his displeasure with the administration's approach to Venezuela and Honduras.

Matt Yglesias weighs in:

Neither DeMint nor LeMieux invented the abuse of the hold procedure, but the Republican Party of the 111th congress has taken this to such new heights that it's about time the Senate take some responsibility and start organizing itself like a legislative body of an important country and not like a country club. The ability for one senator to delay confirmation of key executive branch personnel indefinitely for no real reason has never been a good idea. At times, this power has been abused to advance policy goals I believe in. Oftentimes it's used to advance bad policy goals. More recently, it just seems to be being used as a matter of principle--maximum feasible obstruction. It needs to be changed.

There's a certain amount of irony involved in LeMieux placing a hold on Shannon, since LeMieux is only in the Senate because Florida Governor Charlie Crist wanted to "place a hold" on that Senate seat.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

It goes without saying that when the available facts accrue and weigh so heavily against a defendant, like the alleged Fort Hood killer Nidal Hasan, one can begin to think of the upcoming trial as something of an afterthought.

Yet, there's this thing called the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution that provides defendants -- even the unlikeable and the ultimately guilty -- with all sorts of inviolable rights, one of which is the right to legal representation. And so, the duty of defending Hasan in open court would have become someone's responsibility. That's just a fact.

And yet, it seems like we're obliged to endure the odd and illogical spectacle of people like CNN's Wolf Blitzer, mounting something of a shame campaign against Colonel John Galligan, who is presently engaged as Hasan's defense attorney.

BLITZER: They asked me, how could a retired U.S. military officer, a full colonel, go ahead and represent someone accused of mass murder? And I want you to explain to our viewers why you're doing this.

GALLIGAN: Wolf, I will tell you what I have told, consistently, anyone who's asked that same question, and that is, as a former military JAG officer, former military judge, former prosecutor, former defense counsel, and now currently actively involved in the civilian practice of criminal defense work, I fully appreciate the importance of ensuring that everybody has a fair trial. I think that's particularly important when it applies to anyone in uniform, officer or enlisted. Their profession is to defend us, we owe it to them as either fellow servicemembers or as U.S. citizens to ensure that they properly defend them. The rights that I'm asking be accorded to Major Hasan are the rights that service members live and die for.

Galligan went on to attest to his experience in the military justice system, and express confidence in the fact that at the end of the trial, observers would have no doubt that a "fair and impartial hearing" would be rendered. All of which should have been sufficient! But then Blitzer felt the need to beat his chest a little bit:

BLITZER: I'm sure he will get a much fairer hearing than those 13 Americans who were brutally gunned down the other day. I'm sure he will get all of the rights that are applied by the military code of justice.

Galligan retorted, "The difficulty that I have, of course, is when people end discussions with me with references like the one that you just made," adding, "We wanna make sure that everybody watching the process unfold feels comfortable and confident that it's going to be fair and just. The minute we try to isolate certain cases in the process and say, well we can make a judgment before the trial, or assumptions before the trial, I think it leads to the wrong result."

What I don't understand is this: Why is Wolf Blitzer trying to steal Nancy Grace's thunder? I thought howling about what monsters defense attorneys are was her schtick.

WATCH, via TPM

Anyway, if you don't like our criminal justice system, maybe move to Iran? KTHXBAI.

RELATED:
Wolf Blitzer Questions How Hasan's Lawyer Can Represent 'Someone Accused Of Mass Murder' [Talking Points Memo]
A Bad Moment Today at CNN [Josh Marshall]

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Attendees of yesterday's Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly meeting in Washington, DC were treated to an angry shouting match between Time Magazine's Joe Klein and The New Republic's Jamie Kirchick, after their disagreements on a panel discussion entitled "The Pro-Israel Lobby and the Media" spilled out into the hallway and devolved into some sort of profanity-laced session of yelling. The Reliable Sourcers have the pyrotechnics:

A heated debate between Time magazine's Joe Klein and the New Republic's Jamie Kirchick spilled off the dais Tuesday into a hallway confrontation where Klein called the younger pundit a "dishonest [expletive]" and a "[expletiving] propagandist."

Klein told us today he's not sure he uttered the "propagandist" bit -- heard by a few witnesses -- but stands by the "dishonest [expletive]" part.

"Absolutely. He's a [expletive]," Klein, 62, told us. "He's 25 years old, and he's one of those people who has opinions but no facts or experience."

Apparently, the two were only slightly more restrained whilst paneling:

People in the room say things heated up on the panel when Klein said he was dismayed that John McCain was swayed, he said, by Jewish neocons to support the war in Iraq, and cited his own experience with soldiers on the front line. Kirchick noted McCain's Vietnam experience -- and Klein said it wasn't the same, since McCain fought from the air. Kirchick lit into Klein, saying Klein was denigrating McCain's service and hard years in a POW camp. Klein argued back, saying he honors McCain's time as a prisoner -- but that the senator's experience doesn't relate to current troop experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Klein apparently attributes the spat to some broader set of circumstances involving the "desperation of a dying [media] industry." The Sourcers wonder if it's an "an old-pundit vs. new pundit thing." I tend to think that this is the sort of thing that happens any time you schedule a panel discussion on "The Pro-Israel Lobby." But maybe there's another explanation! The discussion in question took place at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, DC, where in previous adventures, our own Sam Stein witnessed Hillary Clinton flack Lanny Davis losing his mind completely, and where Stein encountered an angry mini-mob, bent on preventing his enjoyment of a Reuben sandwich. Maybe that hotel is located atop an ancient and angry burial ground, or something?

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Elyse Siegel contributed to this story

Just over twenty years ago, the cable industry launched the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network -- better known as C-SPAN. Among the network's achievements was its live broadcasts of legislative proceedings, allowing viewers to take a look at the governing process, to see how legislative sausage gets made, check up on their legislators' performances and stay abreast of key debates and votes.

It was a remarkable achievement in terms of transparency. However, there was a dark side to it all. Now, every single Congresscritter had a camera in the room and an unseen audience, beyond the governing chamber, to play to. And naturally, over time, they all basically became a gaggle of preening, self-obsessed jackasses.

This all reached its apotheosis this past weekend when Arizona Representative John Shadegg dragged a live baby into the chamber in order to make a melodramatic point about health care reform. Shadegg's presentation had no substantive impact on the debate, but then, that was never his attention -- he did what he did in order to grab a little attention from the media, who love themselves a good, substance-free, provocative stunt.

But while having a baby at the podium was certainly extreme, the truth is that Congress has been moving in the direction of being a quasi-governmental performance art space for a long time now, where it's becoming more and more normal -- perhaps even obligatory -- for your elected representatives to build props, wear costumes and come armed with idiotic charts to make their point. Which is that they often don't have a point, at all. But the camera eye loves the antics.

With the invaluable assistance of Elyse Siegel, we bring you our favorite examples of Congressional theatrics. Vote for your favorites! And if you've got a favorite of your own, send along an email!

John Shadegg Wields A Baby

In this past weekend's health care debate, Arizona Republican John Shadegg bravely opened a new frontier by using a live baby as a visual aid to complain about health care reform. The infant, Maddie, was introduced as Shadegg's grand-daughter, which Shadegg quickly corrected, saying, "I wish this was my granddaughter." I wish most Congresspersons demonstrated Maddie's level of cognitive development, but no!

comments(0)

Rate This Performance

(Current Rank: loading...)

Appropriate and effective Total bonkers-sauce

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Now Make Your Own Top 5

And Share with Your Friends

Average rating: loading... out of 10

Current Top 5 Most Insane Congressional Theatrics

loading...

Share Your Top 5 Most Insane Congressional Theatrics

 | Become a fan

Picked These as the Top 5 Slides in the Slideshow

Share Your Top 5 Most Insane Congressional Theatrics

Users Who Voted on this Slide

loading...

loading...

HuffPost Community Top 5 Slides:

«»

 | Become a fan

Share Your Top 5 Most Insane Congressional Theatrics

 

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

UPDATE: Justin Elliot has more on the madness going on over at the Washington Times, where one of the Reverend Moon's sons has "gone rogue," and is just playing havoc:

Hyun-jin Preston Moon, the son of Unification Church leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon who controls the Washington Times, acted without his father's blessing in firing the top leadership of the newspaper over the weekend, a Unificationist and former Times staffer who is in contact with high church officials tells TPM.

Preston's reasons for carrying out the shakeup are not clear to the source, but "one thing that is clear is that he acted alone. This is not something the Reverend Moon wanted, ever."

What the Reverend Moon wants apparently includes this:

"The Washington Times has to take responsibility for people going to hell in America," he declared, referring to, among other sins, "homosexuality and lesbianism."

That's from a sermon the Reverend Moon gave that was titled, ""Western People Are Different From Eastern People," and was -- not surprisingly! -- "not entirely coherent." Anyway, read Elliot's piece on how everything's going totally bonkers over there.

----

Things are getting downright weird over at the Washington Times, where an ongoing executive shake-up has seen publisher Tom McDevitt, chief finance officer Keith Cooperrider and chairman Doug Joo leave their jobs, and mounting speculation that executive editor John Solomon -- who was brought on in 2008 to lend a new sheen of credibility to the frantic, scare-quotey newspaper -- is poised to quit as well.

Now, Ben Frumin at Talking Points Memo says armed guards are popping up all over the newsroom, as the paper prepares for the Rapture, or something:

TPM hears from current staffers in the newsroom there has been an increased security presence at the newspaper in recent days. On Sunday, when three executives were fired, armed guards were brought up to the third floor where management works, according to three newsroom sources.

Newsroom sources tell TPM that employees have been told the third floor is "closed."

Employees at first couldn't use the elevators for the three-story building. An additional guard has been spotted in the lobby, standing next to the regular security guard who is there during business hours. Sources aren't sure whether the guard remaining on site today is armed.

Over at Politico, Michael Calderone adds that "Solomon hasn't been in the office for several days, and it's unclear whether he'll return." So, maybe some sort of Manuel Zelaya thing is going on?

All of this weirdness has gone down hard on the heels of a decision made by the paper's owner, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, to hand over control of his Unification Church to his three sons. TPM's Justin Elliot provides the essential speculation:

The Sunday firings of executives at the Washington Times and the possible exit of its top editor are apparently being driven more than previously known by last month's transfer of power of the Unification Church and associated business empire from Rev. Sun Myung Moon to his children.

A newsroom source familiar with church politics tells TPM that the root of the shakeup at the Washington Times is a feud between Hyung-jin Moon, 30, and Hyun-jin Moon, 40, also known as Preston, both U.S.-educated sons of church Father Rev. Sun Myung Moon. The church announced in early October -- in an exclusive given, notably, to the Associated Press not the Washington Times -- that day-to-day operations were being handed over to Preston, Hyung-jin, and a third son.

Wonkette very fittingly compared this transfer of power to William Shakespeare's King Lear, and if you're a fan of the Bard, you'll know that ended very badly for him, what with betrayal and madness and ranty tirades on storm-blasted heaths and whatnot. At any rate, I guess for the time being, Washington Times staffers should keep their heads down and refrain from making any sudden movements!

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Earlier this week, Michigan Representative John Conyers told reporters that he'd like President Obama to start fashioning himself after a different model of politician if he wants to get health care reform passed:

"The president could take a few pages from Lyndon Johnson's book... and start knocking heads together," said Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

Conyers, who spoke to reporters in Detroit, first came to Congress in 1965, the year Medicare and the Voting Rights Act both passed under the strong hand of Johnson, by then the president. Obama was not yet 4 years old.

Huh. You know, I thought that the whole knocking a heads was supposed to be a feature of tough Chicago-style politicians, and that Rahm Emanuel was going to be sending intransigent legislators fish-corpses through the mail! But Conyers is right. When it comes to swinging pipes, the White House basically manages to mewl their displeasure through well-placed, off-the-record quotes. And so you get laughable spectacles like this one, in the wake of Michael Bloomberg's narrow win in the New York City mayoral race:

"Maybe one of those Corzine trips could have been better spent in New York. Who knows?" remarked New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, who weighed his own run for mayor, referring to the White House's devout attention to the New Jersey contest.

"Maybe Anthony Weiner should have manned-up and run against Michael Bloomberg," shot back a White House official, who attributed the night's results across the board to anti-incumbent fervor.

GROW SOME BALLS, says the guy, hiding behind the cloak of anonymity! Viva Chicago!

That said, it bears mentioning that LBJ was, in many ways, a little unhinged:

Johnson lived to dominate, and he used crass behavior to bend people to his will. At 6-ft., 3-in. tall and 210 lbs., he liked to lean over people, spitting, swearing, belching, or laughing in their faces. Once, he even relieved himself on a Secret Serviceman who was shielding him from public view. When the man looked horrified, Johnson simply said, "That's all right, son. It's my prerogative." His favorite power ploy, however, seemed to be dragging people into the bathroom with him -- forcing them to continue their conversations with the president as he used the toilet.

You sort of get the feeling that Johnson would have waged his "War On Fox" in a much more entertaining and scatalogical manner! Still, I think that if you're looking for a Texas politician to model yourself on, a better example would be LBJ's mentor, Sam Rayburn.

RELATED:
Advice for Obama: 'Start knocking heads' on health [Real Clear Politics]

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

On last night's edition of the Rachel Maddow Show, the host dug into the curious case of Representative Pete Hoekstra, who's been courting cameras lately in the wake of the Fort Hood massacre, telling tales out of school. Chief among them are his account of the email habits of alleged Fort Hood murderer Nidal Hasan to a Yemen-based "radical cleric." Maddow asks the obvious question:

MADDOW: Why is it Pete Hoekstra who's taking it upon himself to tell the press that this radical cleric is having his email read by U.S. intelligence agencies? The FBI had not said publicly that this cleric had been emailing Hasan. The CIA, the NSA, the White House... nobody else had reported this cleric was e-mailing Hasan. This is just Pete Hoekstra letting us know -- and letting the radical cleric that is under surveillance know -- that he's under surveillance.

The Rachel Maddow Show attempted to find out why this was happening, and got the run-around from Hoekstra's office, and bad guesswork from the Republican side of the House Intelligence Committee. What they did find out is that Hoekstra "complained all weekend" that he was not being briefed on Fort Hood to his liking, then missed the briefing that was held because he left town of his own accord.

So, what's up with Hoekstra? The Nation's Christopher Hayes bottom-lined it thusly: "His reputation is of an epic grand-stander."

HAYES: There's been a lot of reporting on this over the years. Various intelligence issues that have come before the committee. This is a guy who, in 2006, called a press conference to great fanfare to announce the weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq. This is the same person who has accused the CIA of lying to him many times and turned around when Nancy Pelosi said the CIA hadn't told the truth about torture and interrogation techniques, said it was obviously absurd the CIA lied would ever lie to Congress. And now, he's turning around and saying the executive was withholding information. So, this is what he does, from his perch on the Intelligence Committee.

If you recall, Hoekstra is also the the guy who breached the security of a Congressional delegation's trip to Iraq by broadcasting its whereabouts and itinerary on Twitter. At the time, Congressional Quarterly remarked, "Nobody expected, though, that a lawmaker with such an extensive national security background would be the first to break the silence. And in such a big way." People should recalibrate their expectations!

WATCH:

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

It's not for nothing that General George Casey warned against an anti-Muslim backlash in the wake of the Fort Hood massacre. But a whole slew of childlike nimrods, spurred to action by Casey vowing that it would be "a shame if our diversity became a casualty," have taken the stage to decry such concerns as "political correctness." Michelle Malkin complained that this was worshiping "the false god of diversity." Pat Robertson demanded that Muslims be treated as "members of some fascist group." So much good sense, being made! And so, naturally, the backlash Casey warned of has now expanded to include Greek Orthodox priests.

Via Think Progress:

Alexios Marakis, a Greek Orthodox priest visiting the U.S., got lost in Tampa and tried to stop and ask directions from Marine reservist Jasen D. Bruce. But instead of offering help, "Bruce struck the priest on the head with a tire iron." The reservist believed Marakis, who spoke limited English, was an Arab terrorist. Bruce chased the priest for three blocks, "and even called 911 to say that an Arabic man tried to rob him."

And that's the wages of hysteria, right there.

MORE:
Marine reservist chases, assaults Greek Orthodox priest who he mistook for an Arab terrorist. [Think Progress]

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

[Editor's note: Playgirl's Daniel Nardicio responds to Jessanne Collins' article. His statement is appended, below.]

----------

If you read one article today from someone who is "tired of having Levi Johnston's penis thrust into my consciousness every time I read the news" -- and even more sick of the revisionist history of Playgirl magazine that Johnston's upcoming spread is causing to widely bloom across the media landscape -- you should read... well, the only one that's on offer: the disputation of former Playgirl managing editor Jessanne Collins, in today's The Awl.

"It's not that I'm bitter," Collins avers, "More power to Playgirl if it can ride the brawn of a small town teen father back into the limelight, and more power to small town teen fathers who can make their mark on the world with their undeniably virile genitalia."

But, here's the rub:

Really, I'd be happy for both of them if I weren't so alarmed at the way history is being rewritten in the midst of the media shitstorm surrounding this moment -- and the fact that no news outlet has accurately reported who's really behind Playgirl's big comeback.

Collins is referring to the strenuous flackery being put forth by recently-installed Playgirl "PR gun" Daniel Nardicio, who's promoting 'an enduring myth that the earliest incarnation of Playgirl was intended to deconstruct -- that women are out of touch with their sexuality and can't even figure out what's hot and what's not." Here's Nardicio in the Daily Beast:

"We're trying to change the face of Playgirl... The reason I wanted to work with them is that I think of it as a classic American brand that got a little lost. The women working on it weren't keeping up with the times. They didn't admit that there were a lot of gay men reading the magazine and gay men don't want to see guys with flowing long locks looking like they came from the cover of a Danielle Steel novel."

And here he is, telling the same story to The Advocate:

"Playgirl was kind of stuck because the women who were working for it were old and they thought that Fabio-looking characters with long-flowing hair and uber-tans, like those red tans, were really hot. So once the magazine folded I got the opportunity to jump in because all those women were fired and I said, "Let me take the website in a whole new direction, and that's Levi."

Lucky thing that Levi Johnston came along, to help restore the Playgirl brand from all those dumb old ladies, right? Wrong, says Collins!

OK, so he has a point about the abundance of Fabio-looking characters. I wasn't big on the long flowing locks myself. (For the record, I also wasn't "old"--at 28, I was the eldest member of the editorial staff.) And we never had a problem admitting that there were gay men reading the magazine--we published letters from them all the time. (We got plenty of colorful correspondence from women too, which is one of the main reasons the magazine never "came out"--our gay readers seemed content with, even titillated by, a magazine with hetero overtones; our female readers were not so easily placated with gayer fare.)

So it's not that we were clueless, but here's a little secret: we were almost totally powerless over the aesthetic content of the magazine.

[...]

This is why Playgirl failed in the first place. The men in the boardroom had no idea how to market or appeal to either women or gay men -- never mind to both at the same time, an unattainable magic act, in my opinion, but one the company insisted on attempting for years. The tragicomedy of Playgirl's particular aesthetic failure starts to make a lot of sense if you consider that it wasn't constructed by anyone who professed actual physical interest in the male physique. If would-be Fabios were standard, that's because "musclebound with a ridiculous mane" is a comfortable caricature of what women find sexually attractive as doodled in the minds of out-of-touch old dudes.

Right about now, I can't help but wonder how Playgirl is supposed to ride a teenager from two election cycles ago who's fifteen minutes of fame are steadily ticking down to zero into renewed longevity, but hey, I'm sure this new crop of Playgirl dudes have their finger on the zeitgeist's G-spot.

UPDATE: Daniel Nardicio writes in with a generous and substantive response:

I'm aware of Jessanne's piece in The Awl and to be frank, I owe her and the women who worked at Playgirl a huge apology. I shot off at the mouth about them and it was childish and they deserved better.

The reason I was angry was that before I asked to be Director of Marketing, I worked at Playgirl as a party planner for over a year throwing parties for them in cities such as Denver, San Fran, Key West...etc. and in all that time, the female staff of the magazine never once asked to meet me to discuss their "vision" of Playgirl, or even asked to know how I was representing them in the outside world at these events. So I got the impression that they were just punching in for a corporate paycheck. And, evidently from Ms. Collins' piece, they did try to update the faded glory of Playgirl and Playgirl.com, although I never got from her article how she tried this.

When they got laid off, I saw this as an opportunity to create a vision for Playgirl and slowly (it is, after all, a corporate structure) make changes. And Levi was the shock to the public system that we needed to let people know that Playgirl was still not only a contender, but the only adult magazine which celebs may consider posing for.

I think I've done a fine job of enforcing that vision, and I may not have gotten Terry Richardson to shoot it, or John Waters (I asked him -- he declined, but my bet is will offer Levi a role in the next four months) to interview Levi for the magazine, but I believe in baby steps. And this whole media circus is one crazy, fun, mind altering baby step in the right direction for Playgirl and frankly, for me.

So I offer my sincerest apology to the women of Playgirl -- and for the record, I think Ms. Collins is a fantastic writer.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

Yesterday afternoon, Newsbusters plugged this story about ABC News's report via Brian Ross "that suspected Fort Hood shooter Nidal Halik Hasan tried to contact people connected to the terrorist group al Qaeda" with some intriguing language: "ABC reports story that many in media wish wasn't true." That raised a rather obvious question: Who out there, in the media or otherwise, was wishing that it was true? Doesn't it seem reasonable to wish that the Hasan shootings had nothing to do with al Qaeda at all?

Well, of course, there were people who were hoping against hope that Hasan was an al Qaeda-endorsed terrorist agent, and in a well-put essay on Gawker, John Cook identifies them: "terrorists and wingnuts."

Fanaticism makes strange bedfellows, and the push to link up Hasan to a wider terrorist plot has united Sen. Joe Lieberman and radical Yemeni cleric Sheikh Anwar Al-Awlaki in common cause. Wingnuts and neocons want Hasan to be a Muslim terrorist because it confirms their worldview that Muslim terrorists lurk in every shadow and helps them scare the shit out people. Muslim terrorists want Hasan to be a Muslim terrorist because it satisfies their desire to claim credit for the murders of Americans and helps them scare the shit out of people. Everybody wins.

Well, not everybody! The major losers in all of this are any adults who want to conduct a serious inquiry into the actions of an isolated, disturbed murderer and the signs that may have been overlooked in advance of his horrific killing spree. Many of these adults, like Secretary of the Army General George Casey, would like to keep these more important concerns from being washed away in a toxic backlash that would unnecessarily sully the names and reputations of the many soldiers of Islamic faith who have and who continue to serve their country with distinction. Nevertheless, the race is on to capitalize on this tragedy for the sake of juvenile political points, and the news hole is already getting clogged with precisely these sorts of kindergarten combatants.

The whole thing deserves to be read in full. Pay particular attention to the fact that the reporter behind the original report, Brian Ross, is a serial offender of narrative unreliability who's put on offer a report that "is a grab-bag of red flags." Cook blows that out further in a related post today, that thoroughly discusses the Problem That Is Brian Ross:

Ross' stock response to these complaints is that he only reports what his sources tell him. "We reported what we knew, when we knew it," he says. "I'm comfortable with the story." His problem, as we've said before, is that he has shitty sources. And he just repeats what they tell him. Which is how you get from "Hasan sent e-mails to his former imam, who now preaches in support of Al Qaeda. We don't know what the e-mails were about, but they didn't raise alarms at the FBI" to "Hasan tried to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda" to the headline's blunt, and thoroughly unsupported, reference to "Hasan's Contacts with al Qaeda." It would have been a good story if Ross had stuck to the first, accurate, formulation.

RELATED:
How the Ft. Hood Shooter Brings Radical Clerics and Right-Wing Nuts Together [Gawker]
How ABC News' Brian Ross Cooked His 'Hasan Contacted Al Qaeda' Scoop [Gawker]

It's been a while since we've checked in on how that whole White House "War on Fox News" was playing out in the trenches, between Fox News's news-gatherers and the administration's news-dispensers. Apparently, things are a bit chippy! At least that's the state of play between two guys you've never heard of: Fox's Pentagon producer Justin Fishel and Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.

Over at The Line Of Departure, Jamie McIntyre has documented the blow-by-blow, which goes a little something like this:

Fishel ran afoul of Pentagon flacks after he ran this story about the decision to give Gitmo inmates the H1N1 vaccine, which "seemed to put the Pentagon at odds with the White House" on the matter. Bryan Whitman, a spokesman who was quoted for the story, wasn't happy about the way it played, and made a special point to put Fishel on blast within earshot of the other Pentagon correspondents.

The following day, this mini-skirmish of the thin-skinned was re-enjoined, as Fishel found himself in a spat with Morrell:

The next day, November 4th, Fishel was clearly feeling the chill from Morrell, who when Fishel attempted to ask a question, curtly rebuked him for interrupting, "Excuse -- Justin, I'm addressing this question. You raised your hand. I'm happy to call on you in some point in this engagement," Morrell remonstrated Fishel.

As Fishel patiently held up his hand up, Morrell ignored him, only acknowledged Fishel at the very end of the briefing, after another producer from a competing network, Luis Martinez of ABC, was called on and "deferred" his question to Fishel.

Fishel said, "Thank you. I've had my hand up the whole time," to which Morrell replied, "I didn't see you. I'm sorry. "

"I don't believe that for a second," Fishel retorted before asking and getting an answer to his question.

Here's a video of these ostensible grown-ups litigating their dumb personal grievances with one another in front of the assembled press, a sight that is sure to make you long for the days when people just settled these matters by dueling, with guns.

WATCH:

RELATED:
Is it cold in here? Or is it Fox? [The Line Of Departure]

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]

The Public Option! Like the sliced bread and soft ice cream of yore, it's something that's been crazy popular with the public. But for months and months, the naturally poll-obsessed media found many contorted ways to simply ignore the consistent and widespread favor that citizens of our fair Republic have showered on this idea. Until recently, anyway! That's when the House and the Senate, in separate bills, successfully preserved in each some manner of "public option-like material," and in that new dawn, suddenly the public option had "momentum."

Of course, that read of the situation is utterly false, and speaks solely to the fact that the media simply could no longer ignore its popularity. Still, now that the "public option momentum" meme has taken hold, we're treated to such spectacles as Fox News' Brit Hume -- who never misses a chance to despair at how awful health care reform will be on Fox News Sunday -- begrudgingly "correcting" Bill O'Reilly's contention that "the folks" -- THE FOLKS! -- "don't want [the public option.]"

[WATCH]

O'REILLY: They call it, you know, the public sector. What is the -

HUME: Public option, you mean?

O'REILLY: Public option, whatever. The folks don't want it. ... But it looks to me like they have maybe 55 votes to pass it. And that means they could be filibustered and never come up for a vote.

HUME: That's what it looks like right now. The public option, actually some polls show that the public option standing by itself is not at all unpopular, but it is kind of popular. But that depends on how the poll question is raised. ... We don't need to go into all that right now.

O'Reilly could use all the clarity he can get on the matter! Not too long ago, O'Reilly seemed to come out in support of the public option, saying, "I want, not for personally for me, but for working Americans, to have a option, that if they don't like their health insurance, if it's too expensive, they can't afford it, if the government can cobble together a cheaper insurance policy that gives the same benefits, I see that as a plus for the folks." THE FOLKS! Who now don't want it, I guess? SO FOLKING CONFUSED.

MORE:
Hume Corrects O'Reilly's False Claim That 'Folks Don't Want' The Public Option: It's Actually 'Kind Of Popular' [ThinkProgress]

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]