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Keith Olbermann slammed Fox's Dr. Keith Ablow for this op-ed claiming that presidential candidate Newt Gingrich's three marriages might actually make him a great president in this Friday's Worst Persons segment.

From Media Matters -- Fox's Dr. Keith Ablow: "Gingrich's Three Marriages Mean He Might Make A Strong President":

An opinion piece by Dr. Keith Ablow, a member of Fox News' "Medical A-Team," appeared on FoxNews.com today. In it, Ablow argues that the fact that Republican candidate Newt Gingrich has been married three times means that he could be an effective president. Read on...

Runners up were Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear -- Kentucky Gov. Cuts Education Funding While Preserving Tax Breaks For Biblically-Themed Amusement Park.

And Newt Gingrich -- Gingrich Bashes Obama for Holding Elitist Town Hall in Disney World.

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It appears the Tea Party Patriots Mark Meckler has gotten into a bit of trouble today while traveling in New York. You'd think since Meckler's an attorney, he'd have bothered to look up the state's gun laws before allowing this to happen -- Tea Party Leader Mark Meckler Arrested With Handgun At Airport:

Mark Meckler, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots and one of the most prominent spokesmen for the grassroots movement, was arrested at LaGuardia Airport on Thursday after trying to check in a handgun on his flight.

According to the Queens District Attorney’s office, Meckler arrived at the airport with the gun, a Glock 27, and ammunition locked in a safe and presented it to the flight attendant at the Delta counter. He allegedly told authorities that he needed the gun for protection after receiving threats, but did not have a New York State license to carry the weapon. He’s being charged with second degree possession of an illegal weapon, a charge that carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison.

“Before leaving home, passengers should acquaint themselves with the weapon laws of the jurisdiction that they are visiting and comply with any and all legal requirements if they choose to travel with a weapon,” Queens DA Richard Brown said in a statement. “Otherwise, they may find themselves being arrested and charged with a felony - as is what occurred in this case.” [...]

A spokesman for the Queens DA, Kevin Ryan, told TPM that the legal issue wasn’t whether Meckler followed airline regulations regarding safe transportation of a handgun, the issue was that he did not have a carry permit for New York state, which has strict requirements for handguns. Read on...

And as our contributor and webmaster Jamie pointed out, these right wingers just love state sovereignty, until it comes to their guns -- The GOP Wants "Gun Rights" To Trump State Sovereignty.

Meckler made Keith Olbermann's Worst Persons list following his arrest for his prior remarks about those law abiding tea partiers who never get arrested, unlike those evil dirty hippies at Occupy Wall Street.

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New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly got the first place honors in Keith Olbermann's list of Worst Persons for Monday night for their little fiasco this weekend with another over-hyped terrorism threat to distract from the Occupy Wall Street protesters that were showing up outside of Bloomberg's home.

Marcy Wheeler has more on that here -- The Bloomie and Kelly Show … with Fake Video Props!.

Runners up were deadbeat dad Rep. Joe Walsh -- VIDEO: Rep. Joe Walsh Calls Veterans Protesting Wall Street Un-American.

And child labor advocate and current GOP frontrunner, Newt Gingrich -- Newt Gingrich: "Child Labor Laws Are Stupid" -- UPDATED with Video!.

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Glenn Beck made Keith Olbermann's Worst Person's list for mocking Sgt. Shamar Thomas, who as we noted is the veteran who railed against police brutality during the Occupy Wall Street protests -- US Military Veteran Rants Against Police Brutality at #OWS Protest in Times Square -- and who also appeared on Keith's show the following day -- Sgt. Shamar Thomas Discusses His Experience Confronting the NYPD in Times Square.

Think Progress has more -- VIDEO: Glenn Beck Mocks Marine Who Protested NYPD Police Brutality:

On his radio show yesterday, hate radio host Glenn Beck mocked Thomas, implying that there was no police brutality that had taken place for him to be angry about. One of his co-hosts called Thomas just “one panicked man screaming”:

BECK: The guy who was like there’s no honor in this, these people are unarmed, there’s no honor in this and I’m watching this [laughing] and I couldn’t take it anymore, because the video shows this Marine yelling [mocking crying voice] stop brutalizing, we’re unarmed! And the cops have their hands in their pockets. [...] They’re like, “We know, we’re standing here.”

CO-HOST: What, you want us to brutalize you, is that what you want? [...]

OTHER CO-HOST: That video taken from the right angle is just one panicked man screaming. As long as you take that picture from one side, it’s pretty dramatic.

If Beck and the co-host had bothered to actually watch the video to its completion, they could see that Thomas explained that he had witnessed police brutality earlier and that he wanted to tell the police to stop using those same tactics — not that the police who were standing there were directly responsible for the behavior. But it seemed like Beck was all too eager to mock this Iraq veteran to study the facts first.

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As Keith Olbermann joked during his Worst Persons segment above, maybe this case will set a precedent on whether anyone can sue for being forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh from now on. Don't we wish.

From The Houston Chronicle - Suit: Detained woman forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh:

Talk about your Monday from hell. Not only did Bridgett Nickerson Boyd's car break down on her way to work, but when she pulled over to the side of the freeway, a sheriff's deputy named Mark Goad pulled behind her, wrote her a ticket for driving on the shoulder, decided to arrest her, followed her to the hospital when her suddenly racing heart prompted a call to paramedics, then took her into custody again after she was treated by doctors and finally drove her to jail.

To make matters worse, Boyd claims in a lawsuit that the handcuffs were put on her wrists painfully tight and that she was forced to listen to conservative broadcaster Rush Limbaugh "make derogatory comments about black people" all the way to the jail. Boyd is African-American.

Because of the incident, which occurred on Oct. 4, 2010, Boyd filed a federal lawsuit Monday against Goad and Harris County alleging defamation, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, assault and battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

"Deputy Goad was aware that Boyd had not committed a crime and her arrest was without probable cause," according to the lawsuit filed in Houston.

The magistrate who saw her while jailed apparently agreed and dismissed all charges.

A spokesman for Sheriff Adrian Garcia declined to comment on the lawsuit.

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Keith Olbermann didn't pull any punches with how he felt after reading a Tweet by Donald Rumsfeld saying he'd canceled his subscription to the New York Times after reading Paul Krugman's op-ed on 9/11.

From Countdown's Worst Persons:

OLBERMANN: Rumsfeld was bothered by that for some reason? Rumsfeld? Who with Cheney and Bush and all the others took the unanimity of that left and right gave them and exploited it in order to start a phony war in Iraq. Who ruined this nation's standing internationally with torture designed to get false information. Who spied on Americans without any law saying they could. Who fostered Islamophobia. Who spread panic and manipulated counter terror efforts to advance their own political power. That Rumsfeld?

Why did he cancel his subscription? Because Krugman didn't give him enough credit for all that? I've said it before and I'll say it again. Remembering that terrorism is as much about compelling irrational fear as it is about actual violence, between 2002 and 2009, the leading terrorists groups in this country were the Republican party and the presidential administration of George W. Bush.

Donald Rumsfeld, shut up! Today's Worst Person in the World.

Runners up were Rep. Peter King -- At UK terror inquiry, Rep. King defends IRA terror.

And Sen. Jeff Sessions -- Senate GOP largely quiet as Dems score points over disaster funding bill.

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Keith Olbermann didn't parse any words during his Worst Persons segment on Countdown this Thursday and went after Sen. Tom Coburn for his eliminationist rhetoric where he said that “It’s just a good thing I can’t pack a gun on the Senate floor." And then as John already noted, proceeded to attack President Obama as an affirmative action recipient and claimed the country was better off before we had Medicare in place.

Keith called for Coburn to resign and I agree with him. Not that he's going to care what anyone thinks since he's not running for reelection anyway.

OLBERMANN: But when he moved from health care and casual racism to the debt ceiling deal, Sen. Coburn took a step down from the simply mean spirited, out of touch, whiny elitism which has marked his political career and moved towards ineligibility for the office which he holds.

He called his colleagues “cowards” and then added “It's just a good thing I can't pack a gun on the Senate floor.”

Yes it is, but apparently that's insufficient protection for the rest of us. For a sitting U.S. Senator to say in public that he even daydreams or jokes about the prospect of shooting other Senators is not just to ignore the supposed lessons of the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords and the other victims of Tuscon. It is not just to ignore the years before the Civil War when Congressman Preston Brooks of Georgia went up to Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in the Senate chamber and beat him into unconsciousness with a cane and kept him out of office for a year.

Continue reading »

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Good for Keith.

OLBERMANN: As you'll hear in the next few minutes all of us here at Countdown and a lot of us among the progressives had one major well defined problem with the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear and we're going to address that in a moment in our number one story; a false equivalence between what we do here and what Fox News and the like do there.

But first, the overall message that the tone needs to change, that the volume needs to change was not lost on any of us. The anger in this news hour was not an original part of it, nor was it an artifice we added to it. It was a response to a threat to this democracy posed by Mr. Bush and now by his lineal descendants. The anger happened, it will still happen, it is not for ratings and it is not get angry first and find a reason later.

But there is an institutionalization of it that may no longer be valid. That is the Worse Persons in the World Segment. Which started, of all things, as a way of defending Tucker Carlson. Its satire and whimsy have gradually gotten lost in some anger. So in the spirit of the thing, as of right now, I am unilaterally suspending that segment with an eye towards discontinuing it. We don’t know how that works long term. We might bring it back. We might bring back something similar to it, might kill it outright and next week we will solicit your input.

Its just that today, given the serious stuff we have to start covering tomorrow, we think its the right thing to do short term and then we will see what happens. And we’ll also see if anybody else, on T.V., or radio, will do something similar.

Don't hold your breath Keith.

For some similar perspective on Jon Stewart's comments at their rally this weekend, here's more from Bob Cesca's place -- The Messy Fray of Democracy.

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ABC News made Keith's worst person's list for this fiasco. Apparently as Media Matters has reported, they're going to feature Andrew Breitbart in their coverage of the mid-term elections this year. Put this one under the you've got to be f**king kidding me column.

Failing Upward: Breitbart To Be Featured in ABC's 2010 Election Coverage:

Media Matters has confirmed that noted propagandist Andrew Breitbart will provide analysis for ABC News during their election night coverage.

After Breitbart's BigJournalism.com website reported that Breitbart would "be bringing analysis live from Arizona" for ABC, Media Matters confirmed his participation in a town hall meeting anchored by ABC's David Muir and Facebook's Randi Zuckerberg that will be featured in the network's coverage.

Asked about Breitbart's history of unethical behavior and misinformation, ABC News' David Ford told Media Matters: "He will be one of many voices on our air, including Bill Adair of Politifact. If Andrew Breitbart says something that is incorrect, we have other voices to call him on it."

Media figures and outlets from across the board rejected Breitbart's race-baiting lies after he smeared former USDA official Shirley Sherrod as a "racist," using as "proof" a heavily edited video of comments she made during a March NAACP event that he posted on his site BigGovernment.com.

ABC's Terry Moran subsequently reported that "Breitbart had released only a clip of her speech, which distorted her real meaning, that she was wrong and had learned from her error," while Donna Brazile said that Breitbart "should apologize" to Sherrod. Both Brazile and Moran will also be featured during ABC's election night coverage.

Go read the rest and here's more from Digby on this -- Send In The Clowns:

ABC has hired Andrew Breitbart and his lying little helper Dana Loesch to do election night coverage. Seriously.

I don't think I have to spell out all the ways in which it is an insult to its viewers and to its journalists to do this. There are many examples of his grievously bad judgment and disgusting behavior, many of which are listed here. But my personal favorite of his "journalistic" top ten screw-ups has to be this one: [...]

ABC must know that the Shirley Sherrod or ACORN stories aren't the only examples of his mendacious ways. He's made his career out of these racist video hoaxes. It isn't a coincidence. So I think we have to assume they think having a lying racist on the air will bring in some ratings. Whether they foolishly see this as adding "edge" to their allegedly hip "Facebook" program or whether they are making a pitch for Fox's white supremacist audience, it's a journalistic travesty to allow this man and his lying lieutenant anywhere near a legitimate news organization.

But then these news outlets are all making huge profits from the right wing buy out of our democracy, so maybe it's just the price of doing business.

There's more at Digby's place as well, and if you'd like to voice your displeasure over this decision here's ABC's contact page.

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Keith Olbermann makes all of the media the winner in his "Worst Persons" segment for failing to acknowledge that there was a mosque on the 17th floor of the World Trade Center's second tower as reported in The New York Times over the weekend.

Muslims and Islam Were Part of Twin Towers’ Life:

Sometime in 1999, a construction electrician received a new work assignment from his union. The man, Sinclair Hejazi Abdus-Salaam, was told to report to 2 World Trade Center, the southern of the twin towers.

In the union locker room on the 51st floor, Mr. Abdus-Salaam went through a construction worker’s version of due diligence. In the case of an emergency in the building, he asked his foreman and crew, where was he supposed to reassemble? The answer was the corner of Broadway and Vesey.

Over the next few days, noticing some fellow Muslims on the job, Mr. Abdus-Salaam voiced an equally essential question: “So where do you pray at?” And so he learned about the Muslim prayer room on the 17th floor of the south tower.

He went there regularly in the months to come, first doing the ablution known as wudu in a washroom fitted for cleansing hands, face and feet, and then facing toward Mecca to intone the salat prayer. Read on...

Keith also knocked RNC Chairman Michael Steele for flip-flopping on his stance on small business loans.

Steele Attacks Today What He Supported Last Week, Claiming Small Businesses ‘Don’t Need’ Credit Lines

At least he's consistent. Republicans always hate any of their ideas as soon as a Democrat decides to support them.