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Pat Buchanan unleashed his inner Tea Partier yesterday on Hardball, telling Chris Matthews that he would campaign for Tea Party challenger J.D. Hayworth over John McCain in their Arizona primary race. Hayworth, you may recall, recently voiced support for the Birthers on the same show:

MATTHEWS: Where are you on McCain versus Hayworth?

BUCHANAN: If I‘m out in Arizona, I would vote for J.D. Hayworth, who is a friend of mine and a conservative. And if he lost, I would vote for John McCain.

MATTHEWS: OK, we know where you stand.

Joan Walsh took him to task for it:

WALSH: We absolutely know where you stand. He‘s a birther. He‘s an extremist. Thank you, Pat.

The "Birther" matter is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Hayworth. Back in 2006, en route to losing his congressional seat, Hayworth tried to revive Henry Ford's program of "Americanism," which you may recall was actually a code word for anti-Semitic eliminationism; it was also a favorite program promoted avidly by the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

Hayworth lost that race, in no small part because of voters were repelled by his lame denials about the "Americanization" program.

Of course, none of this would bother the author of State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, would it?

But because he's still our avuncular Uncle Pitchfork, he of course resorted to the standard retort of conservatives when confronted with the realities of the extremists in their midst:

BUCHANAN: This is why you lose—do you know why you lose these people? Because you show contempt for them. You call them birthers. You call them names. I‘m talking about the people, the Tea Party people. All they want, Joan, is respect. And you liberals never give it to them. You call them all names. No wonder they go over to the Republican party.

Walsh then took Buchanan apart:

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Joan Walsh does a good job on Hardball hitting back at the meme that the problem with the health care bill was that Obama bowed down to liberals when just the opposite is true. Of course Matthews and the corporate media are going to keep repeating the lie that Obama needs to move to the middle.

MATTHEWS:Chris and Joan, it seems to me there`s been a comparison between what we had yesterday in Massachusetts, and the one held in Pennsylvania, when Harris Wofford knocked off Richard Thornburgh, in that incredible race in `91. Is this has much of a leader, an indicator, of just where we`re headed -- Joan -- for this November?

WALSH: You know, I`m not sure it is but I do want to say I`ve spent the last week, Chris, saying, Martha Coakley ran a bad campaign, but we really do have to look at what this means for Democrats. And I think that`s the first and foremost thing that it means is that President Obama has simply not led.

He let the Republicans run this health care agenda. People want to blame Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi? He turned it over to the Senate`s Finance Committee, he gave Republicans their marching orders, he gave them rope to hang him and that`s what they did. That`s why we`re still talking about this a year after his inauguration.

MATTHEWS: So he`s been ineffective?

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: He`s been an effective progressive?

WALSH: Oh, please, don`t set me off today, Chris. I know you`re feisty. I`m really feisty. That`s the one thing I will be here to say.

This is garbage that he bowed to his left. This is a corporate bill with corporate giveaways that the left is pissed about. That`s the problem with it. And I`ll finish Howard Dean`s sentence. One more thing. Howard Dean was trying to say -- I don`t agree with him on everything. Martha Coakley lost the progressives because nobody cares that she`s for the public option. That is dead and gone because the President didn`t fight for it.

So the idea that he went too far to this left is simply, factually wrong.

MATTHEWS: No, I`m just asking whether Martha Coakley was the Progressive candidate out there and what she stood for. It sounds like she was addressing the issue the way you might do, had you been a candidate and I just wonder why the defeat of her didn`t signal a lack of favor for the position, is all I`m asking. I`m trying to learn here.

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Looks like good Tweety was back today taking a whack at Dick Cheney's former aide Ron Christie along with Salon's Joan Walsh. True to form Christie defended Cheney's recent stenography session at The Politico. Ron Christie is one of the more annoying pundits out there so this didn't bother me one bit. I'll give him this as annoying as he is though. He's got more stones than his former boss since he's at least willing to come on MSNBC and defend the turd. That's more than you can say for spineless Cheney who hits you in the back with a knife and runs. But that's not anything that should be surprising from someone who got five deferments during Nam.

Transcript via Lexis Nexis.

MATTHEWS: We start, however, with the security blame game. You have to call it that. Ron Christie is a Republican strategist and former aide to Dick Cheney. We`ve got to read a statement here from the former vice president. He got up the other day, or I guess it was early today, and released this statement. And I guess he wants us to read it aloud because it`s something that he obviously put pen to paper so that we all would do just that.

This is the former vice president of the United States, Dick Cheney. Quote, "As I`ve watched the events of the past few days, it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low-key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won`t be at war.

"He seems to think if he gives the terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won`t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and a trial in civilian court, we won`t be at war. He seems to think if we close Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda- trained terrorists still there, we won`t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words `war on terror,` we won`t be at war.

"But we are at war, and when President Obama pretends we aren`t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn`t he want to admit we`re at war? It doesn`t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office and doesn`t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency, social transformation, the restructuring of American society. President Obama`s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war."

Could you, Ron Christie, as someone who has served the vice president and remains totally loyal to him, explain to us why he comes out of wherever he lives, gets to a word processor and puts all those words together to say over and over again what the president seems to think is that we`re not at war with terrorism? What does he mean by that?

RON CHRISTIE, FORMER DICK CHENEY AIDE: Well, good evening, Chris. I think the vice president`s statement speaks for itself. I think if you go back -- and I think it was very wise, the way that you started this segment, of connecting the dots. President Obama, when he was on the campaign trail, was very strong about prosecuting the war on terror. When he came in, immediately the war on terrorism vernacular disappeared from the president and his officials.

You had the secretary of homeland security saying that we`re dealing with overseas man-made contingency operations. You move forward later into the year, you had Guantanamo Bay, which President Bush also wanted to close but recognized that bringing enemy combatants and terrorists onto American soil would convey certain constitutional rights, Miranda rights, habeas corpus petitions, that would transform that from a war footing to a civilian footing.

And then you get this latest incident, Chris, where President Obama was on vacation. There was a Muslim radicalized individual who tried to blow up an American airliner on Christmas Day. The president`s response was muted. And again, he came out and said the "alleged" attempt and "the suspect."

And I think that there are people -- Dick Cheney, a number of politicians, Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon, Maureen Dowd from "The New York Times," Ruth Marcus from "The Washington Post" -- who look at President Obama`s reaction throughout the entire year and say, Is he showing the emotions, is he showing the fight and the vigor to fight a war on terrorism, rather than transform this into a civilian prosecutorial matter? I think that`s where Dick Cheney was coming from with his statement this morning.

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I put together a mash-up of Chris Matthews on Hardball expressing his deep concern for poor old Joe Lieberman being treated so badly by Al Franken on the Senate floor. Tweety's all a flutter over heaven forbid someone in the Senate upsetting the usual decorum they have with each other. I say good for Al. Anything that gets Tweety and Grandpa McCain worked into a frenzy over something as minor as this is alright by me. Give 'em hell Al.

Transcript via Lexis Nexis.

MATTHEWS: Let`s take a look at this fight today. I want you to listen to this. It`s not definitely on your territory, but it`s got to fascinate you.

AXELROD: OK.

MATTHEWS: Here`s Joe Lieberman being told by Al Franken, the senator from Minnesota, to basically shut down and get out of the way, that you don`t have any more time. Let`s watch this. This is how fractious things are getting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN (I), CONNECTICUT: ... will provide an opportunity for broad savings in health care and health insurance for pretty much everybody in our country...

SEN. AL FRANKEN (D), MINNESOTA: Senator? Senator, you`ve spoken for -- I`m sorry -- the senator has spoken for 10 minutes.

LIEBERMAN: I wonder if I could ask unanimous consent for just an additional moment.

FRANK: In my capacity as senator from Minnesota, I object.

LIEBERMAN: Really? Oh, OK. Don`t take it personally. I will ask unanimous consent that the remainder of my remarks be included in the record as if read.

FRANK: Without objection.

LIEBERMAN: I thank the chair.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: I`ve never seen that, David. Working on the Hill, following the Hill, I`ve never seen a senator cut short on a -- you know, a casual request for an extra minute to continue speaking in a Senate that`s allowed to speak forever. Let`s face it, we understand you can speak forever in the Senate. Does that show how hot things are getting or what?

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Chris Matthews and his panel of Joan Walsh and Jonathan Alter talk about the Republicans' bad case of A.D.D. where they're already carping that the Democrats had better not use Ted Kennedy's death to push through health care/insurance reform. Heaven forbid what's good for Ronnie Raygun might be good for Ted Kennedy as well.

Matthews: Let me ask you about this attempt at foot steps here on the part of the right to interrupt this in a way, I called them ghouls a few minutes ago..

Walsh: Yeah.

Matthews: ..ah, grave robbers. They're trying to get into this story by saying the Democrats are going to do a "win one for the Gipper"...well do me if Audie Murphy served this country and was fighting for us, we'd say, well let's try to do something as well. Let's try to be equally courageous.

If somebody dies in a battle you say, let's try to carry it on, carry the banner forward. That seems to be very, American. They're turning that on the right as some kind of "well, you'd better not try that".

Alter: We've seen this before. The year was 1964. John F. Kennedy has been assassinated and Lyndon Johnson said let's pass the Civil Rights Act as a memorial to the slain president.

Matthews: Let it continue.

Walsh: Right.

Alter: And the right wing at that time said that it was inproper. The bill was passed and Ted Kennedy told me once that it was one of the top three accomplishments of the United States Senate in you know, all the years that he was there in the Civil Rights Act of '64.

Walsh: Well of course it was and you know passing a great health reform bill would be another signature accomplishment and he deserves it. And no one's dictating what should be in the bill, but to accuse, to say that's playing politics is just ridiculous. That is what the man stood for.

Matthews: Isn't it funny that people have memories that are so slight. The A.D.D. that overcomes them? Not in a clinical or medical sense, but just in a political sense. How many times in our lives in the last twenty or so years have you heard the phrase "win one for the Gipper"?

Walsh: Right.

Matthews: It's hilarious. It's a hoot, and now they're saying "don't do what we do".

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Ron Reagan Jr. and Joan Walsh on Hardball reminding Chris Matthews that reality seems to have a liberal bias. As they both point out, once again, the Villagers were wrong, and the "loony left," as the media likes to dismiss any of us as, were right.

I disagree with both of them on one point, though. There is nothing "honorable" about what Tom Ridge is doing. He didn't quit and speak up when he was first asked to do this. And now that he's got a book to sell, suddenly he's feeding the public some half truths about what went on to gin up some interest in it.

Glenn Greenwald and Marcy Wheeler have had a bit of an interesting exchange with The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder over his reaction to Ridge's latest revelation that are well worth the read on the topic of how the Villagers treat the left.

Greenwald: Fringe leftist losers: wrong even when they're right:

Just as is still commonly said about opponents of the Iraq War (even though they were right, they were still wrong and unSerious because their motives were bad), Ambinder acknowledges that Bush critics were right that the terror alerts were being manipulated for political ends (he has no choice but to acknowledge that now that Ridge admits it), but still says journalists like himself were right to scorn such critics "because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence." As always: even when the dirty leftist hippies are proven right, they're still Shrill, unSerious Losers who every decent person and "journalist" scorns.

Wheeler: Ambinder: Sorry I Was So Stupid, But I Was Right To Be Stupid:

Mark Ambinder takes the opportunity of Ridge's confirmation that the terror alerts were one big political game to claim he was justified in believing that we DFHers were wrong about the alerts--and in doing so, demonstrates what is so wrong with so much of Village journalism.

Be sure to check out the rest of both posts if you haven't already. Reagan and Walsh should read them as well if they haven't. By showing such deference to Ridge they're simply feeding into the narrative they're attempting to beat back here.

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This was another gem from Hardball yesterday besides Matthews' "deather" rant where bad Tweety was rearing his ugly head again. Was it a full moon yesterday or what? Joan Walsh attempted to give Chris Matthews a bit of a history lesson on the divisions in the United States which have been played upon by politicians and corporate interests to keep people voting against their own interests, and Matthews attacks it as being "Marxist".

Joan had something to say about this over at Salon, Is GOP using race to block Obama agenda? Ya think?:

There is one main reason the U.S. doesn't have the social democratic traditions and programs enjoyed by most Western democracies -- we are the only such nation without some kind of universal healthcare -- and that reason is our history of ethnic, racial and class strife. (The bounty of the eternal frontier and American exceptionalism fit in there too, but I'd pick our fractious and well-manipulated heterogeneity as the top reason.)

The history of the 19th century and early 20th century is the history of labor and political coalitions splintered by divisions between Northern Europeans and Southern Europeans, between middle-class Germans and less well off German Jews, between the Irish and everyone else, and, increasingly after blacks won something akin to freedom, between all white ethnic groups and African-Americans. Latinos and Asians came with their own demands and baggage and relations got more complicated still. Barriers of language, culture, class and skin color thwarted many efforts to grow labor unions and build a social-democratic majority.

Meanwhile, the one constant for at least 150 years has been a savvy cadre of political operatives who used those racial and ethnic divisions to advance their pro-business agenda. Go back to Karl Rove's idol Mark Hanna, who made turn-of-the-19th-century Republican politics safe for whites-only organizing in the South, to Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy, to Lee Atwater's Willie Horton strategy to Rove's own neo-Southern, pander-to-the-base strategy that has driven the GOP into its current ditch. Where in other Western nations, those years saw the fairly steady advance of basic conceptions of human rights, labor rights and an expanded social safety net, in the U.S. such social progress -- and especially such programs -- was more sporadic and limited.

Matthews didn't buy my analysis; in fact, he called it "Marxist" -- I challenged him, as it's not that simple, and he changed it to an "economic analysis" -- and he put former Rep. Kweisi Mfume on the hot seat asking if he agreed with me. Mfume started off by saying he's not a conspiracy theorist -- for the record, neither am I -- but then he added with a smile, "I don't believe Humpty Dumpty just fell; I believe he was pushed. And there are people who are pushing buttons to try to hold back the progress we are making in this country as one nation. And when you push those buttons, it causes the progress to slow down ... This is anti-American."

Digby weighed in on the interview as well.

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Chris Matthews asks Joan Walsh about her article at Salon where she weighed in on Liz Cheney's appearance on Larry King Live, and refused to put some distance between herself and the crazy birthers. Joan reiterated some of what she wrote in her post at Salon:

I wasn't planning to blog so I took notes in real-time, and I can't promise Cheney's quote is verbatim. But she said the same thing twice, so I'm confident I caught her drift. After King showed video of the crazy birther who disrupted a meeting with poor GOP Rep. Mike Castle, demanding he acknowledge Obama was born in Kenya (that's one birther claim); and after Carville denounced them as a "poor, pathetic" fringe group, King gave Cheney a chance to distance herself from them. But Cheney demurred, telling King the Birther movement exists because "People are uncomfortable with a president who is reluctant to defend the nation overseas."

The rarely shocked Carville seemed briefly speechless, and even King, not known to be the most combative interviewer, tried a second time to get an honest reaction from Cheney -- which I read as expecting her to separate herself from the crazies. But Cheney repeated her talking point about Obama inadequately defending the nation overseas. Unbelievable. Carville called her on it, accurately: "She refuses to say, 'This is ludicrous,' because she actually wants to encourage these people to believe this."

Now, I've debated Cheney, so I know she'll do anything from rudely interrupting to lying to make her point, but even I expected her to take King's opportunity to distinguish her brand of Republicanism from the hooligans who run with the Birthers. But she didn't. Wow. The GOP keeps coughing up younger, supposedly more compelling, "new" leadership, from Sarah Palin to Mark Sanford to, now, Liz Cheney -- and they keep making clear they're not ready for prime time. It's remarkable.

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If you happened to see Bill O'Reilly wanking ever onward Monday night in recapping his confrontation with Joan Walsh on Friday, you probably got the same low mordant chuckle out of his self-serving edit of the interview. After all, it gave him a chance to repeat three more times his leading "When did you stop beating your wife?" question.

But as we noted at the time, Walsh at critical junctures of the exchange handed O'Reilly his lunch -- especially when she zeroed in on his irresponsible, violent and often eliminationist rhetoric directed at the objects of his ire, and his refusal to man up to the predictable (and now manifest) consequences of that.

Indeed, O'Reilly (as usual) edited the video to make him look triumphant against the hapless liberal. But in reality, Walsh seriously called him out at key moments and kicked his butt -- especially at the end.

So we decided to offer our own Crooks and Liars Special Edition Video of the showdown. In which Walsh shines triumphant. It's not quite the whole story, but it's a lot closer to what actually happened than O'Reilly's pathetic whinefest.

Speaking of O'Reilly whinefests, I've also compiled a collage of his recent whining about left-wing meanies who have the audacity to call him out for nastiness -- denouncing in particular the "politics of ridicule" and the "demonization" of the opposition that those hateful far-left liberals employ. This includes some footage of one of his ambush crews attacking a woman at her car -- for having simply criticized O'Reilly.

And then it's capped off by a couple of his nastier "Pinhead" segments. Who's demonizing who?

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How do you know that you've made Bill O'Reilly feel like a chump? When he decides that he's going to re-run his interview with you, without you there to defend yourself, and then selectively edit the footage and ignore large swaths of actual fact-based information (as opposed to the largely non-fact-based "reporting" so prevalent to Fox News). Such is the case with Salon.com's Joan Walsh, who so thoroughly humiliated Billo on Friday that I'm sure he stewed over it all weekend and decided that he had to reassert his lost manhood by bringing on sycophantic Mary Katherine Ham and Juan Williams to reassure him that Billo was still da man.

Note Bill's disingenuous framing of the whole interview: it's all about how the crazed liberals have no regard for the rights of the unborn from being murdered for callous reasons. Never mind that his producers sandbagged Walsh by telling her that she was on to talk about right wing violence. Never mind that the procedure that Dr. Tiller performed was not only legal, but highly regulated, and exceptionally rare. The 60,000 casual late term abortions that Billo cites is pulled from his rather constipated posterior region and doesn't pass even the most basic math logic test (That would mean that Tiller performed 16 late term, casual, abortions every day, 7 days a week, for TEN YEARS). Never mind that Dr. Tiller was acquitted by a Kansas grand jury for not violating the law (after only deliberating for an hour) and that the principal expert cited by O'Reilly, Dr. Paul R. McHugh, has his own controversies that call his agenda to question (McHugh, a former member of Bush43's Council on Bioethics, is a Vatican witness called to dismiss claims of DID in victims of priest molestation and has publicly scorned transsexuals and called for the end of gender reassignment surgery).

Yet for Bill, it's all about the babies. These poor, non-existent, viable fetuses that are being thrown out by their mothers (no doubt liberals) and enabled by the insidious Dr. Tiller. Doesn't Joan Walsh understand how wrong it is to blame Bill O'Reilly for his inflammatory rhetoric over completely fabricated and untrue circumstances that may have resonated so much with someone with only a tenuous grasp on ethics that he may have actually taken an innocent man's life? How dare Walsh be so intolerant?

By the way, Walsh herself had a little fun on Twitter over Billo's antics:

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God bless Joan Walsh. She finally did what I thought no one in the media was capable of doing: She shoved Bill O'Reilly's vicious words back in his face.

Or more correctly, she smacked him with the evil consequences of his reckless and irresponsible rhetoric, manifested in the case of Jim David Adkisson, the Knoxville shooter. And rather than respond, he simply shut up. If there had been more time, I expect he'd have cut her mike.

It was a thing of beauty.

Here are the lines Walsh, who was nastily attacked by O'Reilly the day before, delivered on-air last night on The O'Reilly Factor, to his face, that most of have wished someone would say someday:

Walsh: And you routinely attack, you routinely attack, people on the left, Janeane Garofalo, Michael Moore, who you think their rhetoric leads potentially to acts of violence. It never has led to one act of violence. But you've already driven that crazy guy in Knoxville last year who read your writings and then went and shot up a church and shot liberals, that's already happened once, and you don't feel any responsibility at all, now that it's happened a second time, Bill? Talk about blood on your hands.

The best O'Reilly could muster:

O'Reilly: Miss Walsh, I appreciate you coming on the program. I think everybody knows exactly where you're coming from.

If you watch the video -- I've included the entirety of his exchange with Walsh -- you can see that what led up to this was nine minutes of vintage O'Reilly: nasty, bullying, demanding quick answers to ridiculously leading questions. It started reaching quite a pitch near the end:

Walsh: And look, Bill, you crusaded against him, he had been shot twice already, his clinic had been exploded, his place had been attacked, bombed, vandalized --

O'Reilly: I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry about that. But my constitutional right says, I can say what I say, you can say what you say, as vile as you say it, you can say it, and I would never condemn you for saying it. You are misguided, you have blood on your hands because you portrayed this man as a hero, when he killed late-term babies for casual reasons.

Now, that's just bizarre: He calls someone's words "vile" and declares they have "blood on their hands" in the same breath in which he declares "I would never condemn you for saying it".

Bill O'Reilly "would never condemn" someone for saying what they think? That's perhaps the most outrageous lie, among a steady stream of them, that O'Reilly has ever uttered. O'Reilly regularly, steadily, and remorselessly condemns people for saying what they think. Garofalo and Moore are only the most frequent examples. Hell, that's what his entire show is predicated upon. The reason his ambush crews are so problematic is that they hunt down and harass private citizens merely for saying things Bill O'Reilly doesn't like.

I've known Joan Walsh for many years, and have always thought well of her, despite some philosophical differences -- including, I've thought, not showing enough toughness at times. But after last night, all I can say is:

God bless Joan Walsh.

BTW, below the fold you can see the clip of Falafel Bill setting up this segment in his "Talking Points Memo". It is almost as nastily delusional as what follows:

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Gee, surprise surprise. Bill O'Reilly took extreme umbrage at Salon's Joan Walsh speaking the truth about his role in inspiring acts of domestic terrorism.

Here's what she said:

WALSH: Exactly. I was watching MSNBC all day today, Chris. And there were a couple of experts on these right wing groups saying, this guy was known to authorities. He went to jail in the ‘80s for an assault on I think the Federal Reserve Bank. This is not a lone wolf who has never come into contact or expressed publicly expressed his hateful views. He published a book.

I think there is a certain amount of surveillance that would have been wise. How somebody like that gets a gun when he used a gun in his prior crime—all these things, I think, should be looked at. I support the Second Amendment, but I think guns are too easy to get. All these things will come into play.

And I will say, you know, I do hope that some conservatives stand up. I don‘t blame them. I don‘t blame mainstream Republicans, by any means, for this. I want to be clear. But they could help in ratcheting down some of the rhetoric. When Bill O‘Reilly goes on TV every night and calls Dr. Tiller a baby killer and a Nazi and a Mengele, and shows where he works, why do we put up with that? Why is that entertainment in our culture? It's demonizing a private citizen for doing a lawful job. Why are people doing that? Why is that acceptable? I would like to see a debate about that.

O'Reilly dismissed her point by saying: "Private citizen? Sounds like he sells insurance." Because, in O'Reilly's world, a person's occupation makes all the difference in whether or not he should violate basic precepts of journalistic ethics by holding him up for public demonization and suggesting that someone oughta take him out.

But then he and Laura Ingraham decided to embark on attacking Joan Walsh instead -- by bringing up Salon's coverage of the Jeff Gannon fiasco:

Ingraham: Look, Joan Walsh -- I did a little research for you, OK, tonight. Joan Walsh -- this was in 2005, in a Q&A with the Columbia Journalism Review, she justified what Salon had done to that reporter, Jeff Gannon, that White House reporter who Salon published accounts of as outing! Outing his sexuality, I guess, because of who he was or what he was doing, what he wasn't saying to the White House. And she said, look, it was justified because it was, the White House wasn't very forthcoming with information it was giving reporters, and it apparently didn't even know who this Jeff Gannon was, and he was a fraud, blah blah blah.

So let's be clear: The Left uses, quote, hateful rhetoric when the Left thinks it's justified. So the Left on MSNBC will call President Bush a war criminal, a liar, the most hateful comments about people like Karl Rove, et cetera, et cetera. But when these comments are directed by you -- about you, or people like Rush Limbaugh, as this Joan Walsh character did last night, that is -- well, they deserved it.

Um, Joan Walsh didn't accuse Jeff Gannon of being a mass murderer or a baby killer. She didn't suggest someone should do away with him. She and her reporters just pointed out that Jeff Gannon was a fraud of a reporter to whom the Bush White House gave unbelievable access -- which wasn't a controversial matter at all, but rather a simple fact. It certainly didn't constitute hateful speech.

The same, it must be added, can be said about the rest of Ingraham's examples. She's going to have to work hard to come up with an example of any anchor at MSNBC, let alone any guest, actually spewing hateful rhetoric. Calling Bush a war criminal isn't hateful speech; there in fact is a complete legal case to be made that Bush is indeed a war criminal. And whatever might be said about Rove or Limbaugh pales in comparison to their own daily foul emissions.

But when you're backed into a corner and exposed for the hatemongers you are, you grasp for whatever straws you can. Sorry, Laura. That was an Epic Fail.

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Joan Walsh and Liz Cheney in Campbell Brown's "Great Debate" segment. Good on Joan Walsh for not allowing Liz Cheney to talk over for the entire segment. More pundits who go up against her could take a few lessons from Joan. She hit back at Cheney for interrupting her right out of the box and never let up for the rest of the interview.

BROWN: Time for our time for our "Great Debate."

And tonight's premise: Bringing Guantanamo Bay detainees to America is a security risk.

Some Republicans say that is exactly what happened today, when Ahmed Ghailani was brought from Guantanamo to New York to face trial.

And joining us to debate tonight, Liz Cheney, the former vice president's daughter, who also served in President Bush's State Department. She thinks Gitmo prisoners do not belong on American soil. On the other side, Joan Walsh, who is editor in chief of Salon -- Salon.com.

And we want your opinion too. Vote by calling the number on the bottom of your screen.

First, we're going to have opening statements from each, 30 seconds on the clock.

Liz Cheney, the premise is: Bringing Guantanamo detainees to America is a security risk. Make your case.

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So which is it Chris Matthews? Are you for the rule of law or do you think it's okay to torture prisoners and violate our international treaties? You cannot call out a guest on your show one day for embracing Cheney's rhetoric and then turn around and embrace it yourself the next without rightfully being called either a complete hypocrite, or just psychotic. Matthews is a master of giving all of us a reason to never take him seriously when he does things like this. The man just has no filter.

He had on the ACLU's Anthony Romero in the previous segment and if anyone thinks him talking over Walsh in the clip I posted was bad he was worse with Romero. If Matthews just wants to hear himself talk I don't know why he bothers with guests at all.