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Senator-elect Scott Brown is using his new found fame to call on Fox's premiere reality TV show to give his daughter one more chance. Ayla Brown was eliminated as a semi-finalist in American Idol's 2005 season. Judge Simon Cowell called Brown's performance "robotic and empty."

"I would love for him to hear her again," said her father told ABC's Barbara Walters Sunday.

"You're asking him to please give her another chance?" asked Walters.

"I would love it," he said. "There is life after 'Idol.' She respects him greatly, about his critiquing. If you listen to what he says, he was right."

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It looks like David Gregory is reading C&L and many other blogs because I've been saying that for the cost of the wars, America would have health care bought and paid for. David Gregory finally asked a Republican the same question. This clip also shows that republicans are living in a land far, far from reality if they actually go on TV and say Americans aren't dying because they have no health care.

David writes: Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) told NBC's David Gregory that the war in Afghanistan is a "necessity" but health care reform is not as important.

"And is it a necessity to tackle the fact that there are more and more Americans who die because they don't have access to health insurance?" asked Gregory.

Kyl disagreed with the premise of the question. "I'm not sure that it's a fact that more and more people die because they don't have health insurance. But because they don't have health insurance, the care is not delivered in the best and most efficient way," said Kyl.

Talking Points Memo notes that it is indeed a fact that Americans die from a lack of health insurance.

I imagine Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) -- of "Republicans want you to die quickly" fame -- might have a field day with this one.

And for the record, a highly-publicized Harvard study released last month said that 45,000 deaths are linked to lack of health insurance coverage each year -- and that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher death risk than their privately-insured counterparts.

It would have been nice if Gregory followed up and asked Kyl to back up why he thinks Americans aren't dying over health care. That's what he does week after week. Show quotes and news reports to back up his questions, but to just let Kyl ignore the premise of the question is ridiculous. Gregory knows thousands are dying every month. It's not a secret or some super duper liberal code word. And the country shouldn't be spending blood and treasure on the two Bush wars like it is and the country knows it too.

But I don't want to focus on Gregory too much because at least he asked the question. Sen. Kyl is either a stone cold liar or really is that ignorant.

(David helped me with this post)

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President Barack Obama told CBS News' Bob Schieffer that "the 24-hour news cycle and cable television and blogs" focus on the most extreme elements which fuels angry protests.

"They can't get enough of conflict. It's cat nip to the media right now. The easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame is to be rude to somebody. In that environment, I think it makes it more difficult for us to solve the problems that the American people want us to solve," said Obama.

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This saddens me. Anyone who has ever blogged knows that there are the occasional commenters who post things that embarrass us. If a blog in question has a commenting policy that forbids racist, abusive, violent, or otherwise inappropriate comments, we at Crooks and Liars don't make an issue of it if, on a blog we disagree with, some commenter slips through their gate with a comment that violates those policies.

We also know that some right-wing blogs, namely Michelle Malkin and her Hot Air brigade, run through our comment threads regularly looking for comments that might embarrass us. That's not the reason for our policy, we simply have standards.

When this Free Republic "spokesman" is given an opportunity to distance himself and the blog from some ridiculous comments that he and the blog were not initially responsible for, he instead uses his fifteen seconds of fame to exclaim that the left wing blogs "have no standards." Really.

And it's not like we can't prove him wrong. Crooks and Liars has a comment policy, and sitemonitors checking the threads regularly, as well as technology in place that specifically bans use of certain highly offensive words.

Daily Kos has policies in place and their readership and front-pagers take responsibility for removing comments that are offensive. I laughed when I saw that the Kos comment policy singles out certain individuals:

The exception to the normal troll rating golden rule of "rate the comment, not who makes it" is for people so disruptive to the community that they need to be quickly autobanned. This is a very difficult threshold to reach, and is reserved almost entirely for freepers or other trolls here only to disrupt.

Heck, sorry to give them a link, but even RedState has a comment policy. And Free Republic posts this disclaimer: "Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management." Okay then. Why not point that out to David Schuster, distance yourself from the racist slurs that appeared (and according to Schuster, re-appeared?) at your site, and take advantage of the free publicity to show your blog is represented by a classy, intelligent, and responsible Net Citizen?

Nevermind.

David N.: Free Republic has had this problem many times in the past, and it has generally been good about taking the most hateful material down promptly. However, according to Raw Story, these comments were kept live on the site for more than a day.

The Freeper spokesman in the video heatedly denied that the comments went back up, but it's worth noting the exchange reported by Chris Parry of the Vancouver Sun, whose reportage on this has been the subject of the ensuing side controversy/red herring about whether he acted as an agent provocateur. Whether true or not, if his reportage on Robinson's initial response is accurate, it's fairly damning:

After attention from other blogs, the thread was suppressed and placed under review, but before long it was returned to the site intact, and attracted a new series of racial slurs when the original complaint email was posted publicly to the site, with the sender's email address intact.

"The writer has a point," wrote site owner Jim Thompson sarcastically. "We should steer clear of Obama's children. They can't help it if their old man is an American-hating Marxist pig."

"I agree Jim," wrote commenter, by the nickname NoobRep. "The kids didn't pick their commie pinko pansy of a father. Nor did they choose to be put into the spotlight. But Obama/Soetoro is fair game and so is his witch of a wife."

"Poor kids. I hope they're not 'punished with a baby'," wrote another. "Hopefully they won't deal cocaine like the Kenyan."

"DIRTBAGS! All of them. Our [White House] is now a joke to the rest of the world. We have no respect and this is not going to turn out well, mark my words. We will be hit, and much worse than last time. We are now seen as weak and vulnerable. Ghetto and Chicago thugs have taken over."

Only after significant negative attention from a host of left wing political blogs did the maintainers of the Free Republic site place the thread under review for a second time, before finally pulling it.