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From Nicole Sandler's Radio or Not, here's our own Nicole Belle's weekly segment called Fools on the Hill. If you try to catch the show live she's moved to a new time, 10am ET. You can listen to the entire podcast here.

Here's more from Nicole Sandler's blog:

And we’ll continue our Monday tradition of getting together with Crooks & Liars‘ Nicole Belle to dissect the Sunday talking head shows, in a segment we call “Fools on the Hill.”

Here’s what she sent me for today’s show, complete with links to all the clips we’ll comment on today so you can play along at home:

I guess since this weekend marked the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, our relationship to the Muslim community was a large theme of the day.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the chairman behind the Cordoba House, was on This Week and called the attacks now on the Park51 center—especially by partisans like Palin—are “disingenuous”:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/imam-rauf-palin-attacks-islamic-center-are-0

Reza Aslan did the imam one better. During a roundtable of Meet the Press, Aslan cut down to the essence what many of us who are trying to make a distinction between terrorism and Muslims in general:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/reza-aslan-if-you-are-painting-15-billion-

The answer is kind of simple, actually: Islam. But let’s call a spade a spade for a moment. If you are painting 1.5 billion people with the same brush of violence and, and, and extremism, you’re a bigot. And I think what’s, what’s disturbing is the way that that’s become part of the, the, the natural discourse now.

To punctuate this point, Dave Neiwert did a post on 9/11 that noted that the Bipartisan Policy Center just recently released a report titled “Assessing the Terrorist Threat”, and did not note a single homegrown terrorist of a radical, right wing or Christian background, like the guy who wanted to shoot up the Tides Foundation, or Dr. Tiller’s assassination, or the shooters at the Holocaust Museum, the Universalist Unitarian Church, or the Hutaree militia.

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/assessing-threat-despite-rise-right-

Then we have the same old lies to the people on taxes. I think that this is being calculated as a the biggest arrow in the Republican quiver. I mean, when you have tea party types saying they’ve been taxed enough already (and they’ve already gotten a tax cut by Obama and would not be included in the expiration of the Bush tax cuts) and yet, we’re still having partisans telling us that repealing Bush tax cuts will affect small businesses:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/peter-morici-repeats-lie-repealing-bush-ta

Chris Wallace tries to do it too, and new chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers Austen Goolsbee sets him straight:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/austan-goolsbee-calls-out-chris-wallace-sm

And then finally, Howard Kurtz calls out Hannity for his “deceptive” editing of Obama’s Labor Day speech, ignoring that this is a standard operating procedure for Fox News:

http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/kurtz-calls-out-hannity-his-deceptiv

It’s an exciting time for me. Thanks for bearing with the changes…. radio or not!

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In case you missed it like I did, here's our own Nicole Belle with Nicole Sandler with their Fools on the Hill Sunday talking heads show roundup from past Monday. Nicole Sandler has more here: Grayson & Tudor – Florida Progressives!

And in hour two, Nicole Belle of Crooks & Liars returns for our weekly Fools on the Hill segment, discussing the Sunday talking head shows. Here’s her take on the Sunday shows:

So I think today’s theme is cluelessness:

Chris Matthews asks his panel if the Tea Party will have veto power over the 2012 GOP nominee. First and foremost, they are using Sarah Palin as some benchmark of influence, which is ludicrous. Her endorsement is by no means a shoo-in for any candidate right now, and there’s nothing that says her influence will strengthen in the intervening years. If anything, if she opts to pursue a national candidacy herself, I suspect that the media scrutiny will result in her having even less credibility.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/39178

It also gives the tea party itself far more credit than they deserve. I think we’ve seen middling electoral success from them in primary races, but they have yet to show themselves successful in full elections and given the polls for Angle, Paul and others, I don’t think they should crow just yet.

Which segues nicely into Howard Dean. He points out to Candy Crowley that although the conventional wisdom is that the party in power suffers electorally in mid-terms, when your alternative is the Party of No, conventional wisdom may be wrong.

http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/howard-dean-name-one-thing-republican

And then we have Dick Armey, the corporate head of the Tea Party, spouting off some truly unbelievable stuff:

http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/dick-armey-medicare-trashes-constitution

He says that Medicare trashes the Constitution. Huh? What does he think those lazy, entitled senior citizens should do? Work to pay for their Alzheimer’s treatment? For proof, he brings up the example of “the” Christian Scientist, whom we apparently should feel bad is being forced to sign up for a doctor to get Social Security. Of course, no one says he has to GO to the doctors, just sign up for Medicare. But again, David Gregory falls down on the job of calling out this crap, and lets Armey filibuster through the segment and not allow Granholm to respond.

And then, in light of the protests on the Cordoba House in NYC over the weekend, Fareed Zakaria wants to remind Americans that we are not in a war with Islam and that al Qaeda hates factions of Islam as bad as they hate us.

http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/fareed-zakaria-gps-al-qaeda-vs-islam

By the way, a commenter made this video of the NYC protests when the haters went after a passerby, who happened to be a construction worker at Ground Zero and not a Muslim.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwaNRWMN-F4&feature=player_embedded

George Will thinks that the Mideast peace process is the biggest obstacle to Mideast peace.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/39185

Amazingly, I actually agree with him if only for this story:

http://crooksandliars.com/ian-welsh/israeli-pm-natanyahu-america-easily-move

I think if we really want to see Mideast peace, then the US needs to come to grips with the dichotomy between what Israel officially tells us and what they say behind closed doors.

And then Fox chooses to use Judith Miller of all people to discuss the study that American people have lost faith in broadcast news

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/node/39175

Really, what can you say about them using the person the Bush White House used to feed propaganda about invading Iraq to?

Our own Howie Klein and Rep. Alan Grayson joined the show this week as well. Go over to Nicole's site to listen to the whole show.

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Very sad and tragic news on Michael Hastings passing:

BuzzFeed is saddened to report that Michael Hastings died in a car accident early this morning in Los Angeles. He was 33.

Ben Smith, BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief, said in a statement:
We are shocked and devastated by the news that Michael Hastings is gone. Michael was a great, fearless journalist with an incredible instinct for the story, and a gift for finding ways to make his readers care about anything he covered from wars to politicians. He wrote stories that would otherwise have gone unwritten, and without him there are great stories that will go untold. Michael was also a wonderful, generous colleague, a joy to work with and a lover of corgis — especially his Bobby Sneakers. Our thoughts are with Elise and and the rest of his family and we are going to miss him.

Here's more from Rolling Stone: Michael Hastings, 'Rolling Stone' Contributor, Dead at 33:

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Conservative radio host Glenn Beck told Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) on Tuesday that immigrant activists have the "same ideology" as the Ku Klux Klan but they "are just changing their hood."

Over the weekend, about 300 activists traveled had traveled to Kobach’s home after holding a prayer vigil and and a town hall event to protest his efforts to crackdown on immigrants, including a role in an Arizona law which was eventually overturned by the United States Supreme Court.

"I believe that this is the same exact tactics used by the Klan in the 1960s," Beck declared on Tuesday. "And they're doing it in the name of civil rights. But make no mistake, you are on the right side. You are the new civil rights movement."

"The civil rights movement did produce some laws that would stop you from doing these kinds of things," he observed. "Have you thought about going and using the civil rights laws to stop this kind of harassment and intimidation at your own home?"

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3 NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower: We told you so:

In a roundtable discussion, a trio of former National Security Agency whistle-blowers tell USA TODAY that Edward Snowden succeeded where they failed.

When a National Security Agency contractor revealed top-secret details this month on the government's collection of Americans' phone and Internet records, one select group of intelligence veterans breathed a sigh of relief.

Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe belong to a select fraternity: the NSA officials who paved the way.

For years, the three whistle-blowers had told anyone who would listen that the NSA collects huge swaths of communications data from U.S. citizens. They had spent decades in the top ranks of the agency, designing and managing the very data-collection systems they say have been turned against Americans. When they became convinced that fundamental constitutional rights were being violated, they complained first to their superiors, then to federal investigators, congressional oversight committees and, finally, to the news media.

To the intelligence community, the trio are villains who compromised what the government classifies as some of its most secret, crucial and successful initiatives. They have been investigated as criminals and forced to give up careers, reputations and friendships built over a lifetime.

Today, they feel vindicated.

They say the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former NSA contractor who worked as a systems administrator, proves their claims of sweeping government surveillance of millions of Americans not suspected of any wrongdoing. They say those revelations only hint at the programs' reach.

On Friday, USA TODAY brought Drake, Binney and Wiebe together for the first time since the story broke to discuss the NSA revelations. With their lawyer, Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, they weighed their implications and their repercussions. They disputed the administration's claim of the impact of the disclosures on national security — and President Obama's argument that Congress and the courts are providing effective oversight.

And they have warnings for Snowden on what he should expect next.

Video below the fold (warning, the embed autoplays).

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For anyone that doesn't monitor the kind of B.S. that gets spouted on Fox "News" on a regular basis, I'll just say right off that bat that if I've heard a segment like this one once, I've heard it at least a few dozen times if not more in recent weeks, and I don't spend all that much time watching Fox.

While doing their best to conflate all of the recent "scandals" from the Obama administration, the better part of which are not scandals at all, and that have been discussed at this blog ad nauseum, the panel on Neil Cavuto's show this Monday did their best to muddy the waters and claim that if President Obama just took some responsibility for all of these drummed up "scandals" all of his problems would be solved.

Or more likely, they'd be using it as an excuse to impeach him. Call me a cynic, but I don't think any amount of "owning up" to anything by President Obama is going to stop the scandal mongering at Fox any time soon.

Here's some of the sage advice President Obama got from these talking heads at on Cavuto's show:

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Cornel Rasor, who chairs the Idaho Republican Party's resolutions committee, says that he pushed for a resolution to void all local ordinances banning discrimination against LGBT people because he wants to be able to fire any gay man who "comes into work in a tutu."

The Associated Press reported that a non-binding resolution passed Saturday at the party's Central Committee summer meeting in McCall calls for the state legislature to block anti-discrimination ordinances passed by at least five municipalities throughout the state.

For seven years, the Republican-controlled Legislature has refused to add sexual orientation to the Idaho Human Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on race, religion and disability. So local governments like Coeur d'Alene, Sandpoint, Ketchum, Moscow and Boise have responded by passing their own ordinances protecting LGBT people.

That's a trend that the Idaho Republican Party wants to stop before it spreads to more towns.

"I’d hire a gay guy if I thought he was a good worker," Rasor explained at the party's summer meeting, according to The Spokesman-Review. "But if he comes into work in a tutu … he’s not producing what I want in my office."

"If a guy has a particular predilection and keeps it to himself, that’s fine," he added. “But if he wants to use my business as a platform for his lifestyle, why should I have to subsidize that? And that’s what these anti-discrimination laws do.”

The Spokesman-Review reported that the central committee approved the resolution with "little debate."

The resolution states: "Resolved, that the Idaho Republican State Central Committee recommends that our legislators support Idaho’s current anti-discrimination laws and policies and enact a law that would make unenforceable any municipal ordinances that would seek to expand categories of prohibited discrimination beyond current state anti-discrimination laws and policies."

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The Daily Show's John Oliver was back for his second week filling in as host for Jon Stewart and doing a fantastic job once again. He opened this Monday's show with a revelation following the return of Sarah Palin to Fox "News" and her hawking her upcoming book on their ridiculous "War on Christmas":

John Oliver: Just f*cking ignore Sarah Palin’s turd supermarket of self-contradictory nonsense:

“I just don’t even know where to begin with her,” he said. “I mean — hold on. I think I’ve just realized something. F*ck it, this is exactly what she wants. Just because I walked into a turd supermarket doesn’t mean I have to buy anything.”

Though Oliver could mock Palin in the typical Daily Show-esque fashion by mashing up clips of the conservative commentator contradicting her own “nonsense,” the more prudent move was to “just f*cking ignore her.”

“I promise America it will feel so good,” he remarked. “It will be like we give our brains an enema together.”

Ignoring Palin rather than mocking her would be a difficult task, Oliver acknowledged, but it was the right thing to do.

It makes me wonder if the writers over at The Daily Show read Karoli's post on the same subject. While I understand and share the fatigue completely and the sentiment behind not wanting to feed her obvious trolling, I also think ignoring her completely is dangerous. I would prefer to see the media ignore her for the most part unless she's subjected to the proper level of mockery and derision she received here.

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Fox News host Gregg Jarrett suggested on Monday that George Zimmerman might have been justified in killing Trayvon Martin because the teen "may have been violent" from smoking marijuana.

During a break in jury selection for Zimmerman's trial, Jarrett told viewers of Fox News' live Internet broadcast that the judge had tried to restrict the evidence to facts related to the day of the shooting.

"She's said we're not going to have any of this stuff introduced as evidence about the history of Trayvon Martin, whether he had a history of getting involved in fights, making threats, marijuana use, gun use, being suspended from school and so on and so forth," he observed.

Former federal prosecutor Doug Burns pointed out that the judge may allow evidence that Martin had marijuana in his system at the time of his death.

"If an M.E. -- a medical examiner -- takes the witness stand and says he was high on marijuana based on toxicology, how does that play?" Jarrett wondered.

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Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) announced on Monday that she was writing a book filled with "legalese" about how to fight what some social conservatives call the "War on Christmas."

In her first appearance on Fox News after once again becoming an employee of the network, Palin was asked by Fox News host Megyn Kelly to fill in the audience about how she had been spending her time.

"I'm doing great," the former Alaska governor explained. "I'm very busy of course with my kids -- two beautiful grandkids -- writing a book, a book about Christmas and pushing back on the politically correct who would try to take Christ out of Christmas."

"We talk a lot about that in the book," she continued. "Kind of a legalese how-to push back and protect the heart of Christmas. At the same time, a very festive and happy and jolly book about tradition and recipes and fun things about Christmas."

Kelly wondered with all the time she was spending on her book, was Palin able to keep up with the recent scandals involving Benghazi, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and National Security Agency surveillance?

"It's the whole ball of wax that all leads to this revelation that government lies," Palin opined. "And with Benghazi though, government lied and people died. So, that's very significant. The other issues are government lied and government spied. That's pretty bad too."

"It's a foundational message of the tea party grassroots movement, and that is that government is out of hand, it is oppressive, it is intrusive into every aspect our lives. And it's grown so large that it is unaccountable this point."