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So how's that promise from Joe Lieberman working out for you Harry? We can trust Joe Lieberman huh? Yeah right. Transcript from Think Progress:

LIEBERMAN: A public option plan is unnecessary. It has been put forward, I’m convinced, by people who really want the government to take over all of health insurance. They’ve got a right to do that; I think that would be wrong.

But worse than that, we have a problem even greater than the health insurance problems, and that is a debt — $12 trillion today, projected to be $21 trillion in 10 years.

WALLACE: So at this point, I take it, you’re a “no” vote in the Senate?

LIEBERMAN: If the public option plan is in there, as a matter of conscience, I will not allow this bill to come to a final vote because I believe debt can break America and send us into a recession that’s worse than the one we’re fighting our way out of today. I don’t want to do that to our children and grandchildren.

Lieberman's promises are as empty as his rhetoric. And if Reid got any assurances from him, why is he coming on the T.V. again threatening to filibuster with the Republicans? This man should not be chairing any committees if he's going to filibuster his own caucus.

Corrente: One Down: Schlecher County jury convicts Jessop of child rape. And speaking of convictions...

Open Left: Only fiscal conservatives would say we can't afford to reduce the deficit

TPMMuckraker: Patriot Games: GOP lawmakers skip national security votes to toast tea baggers

Oliver Willis: Eric Cantor, soon to be pimp slapped...watch, ring, and all

David Rees:10 jokes about Joe Lieberman

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Brad Jacobson's investigative series..."Official" media criticism...A perfect match...Odd couple...Coming Sunday: NYT does something unprecedented...WaPo Co. crashed-and-burned-and-smoking...Terrorism, Islam and Fort Hood...Huffington: We do not live in the age of misinformation..Journamalism....Bumped... Gibbs...Special Suburbanites...More honors for Sy Hersh...Scribe nominates himself for CA Lt. Governor...

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Rachel Maddow talks to former Lieberman political rival Ned Lamont about what is driving Sen. Lieberman to obstruct health reform and threaten to filibuster his own caucus. As Ned notes, it was Republican money that got him elected and he's showing that political allegiance now. I think he doesn't care what party it is as long as his pockets are being lined.

Maddow: I have a feeling you're going to say "I told you so" but I have to ask. Does it surprise you that Sen. Lieberman would join Republicans to filibuster health reform?

Lamont: It surprises me in this sense, that everybody thought that our race three years ago was just about the war in Iraq, whether it was a good idea to invade or not, but we spent an awful lot of time talking about health care reform and during that race I accused Sen. Lieberman of dithering and after twenty years in the Senate not doing anything on fundamental health care reform, and he was the one that came back and said unilaterally "I support universal health insurance for all Americans and I'm going to fight for it". So I'm surprised that a few years later he is dithering again.

Maddow: I know...I went back and looked at some of the contemporaneous coverage from your race and I know back in September of 2006, during that fight Sen. Lieberman told reporters on a conference call “I have long supported the goal of universal health care. Ned Lamont can talk about it. I’ve been doing something about it all the time I’ve been here.” If he does end up being the one guy who stops it, if it is his filibuster, what do you think the political costs will be of that?

Lamont: Look the people of Connecticut are ready to have a vote. They want to have a vote on fundamental health care reform and they want the choice of a public option. Sen. Chris Dodd and all of our Congressionals are on board with that and it’s Sen. Lieberman who’s the outlier, so I think there will be political consequences if a Sen. Lieberman is the one person who stands in the way, who obstructs our opportunity to have a fundamental vote on health care reform.

Maddow: What do you think those consequences will be though? One of the things that we have to think about is what happens in Washington, whether or not the Democrats and the Senate allow him to keep his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee—there’s also the question of whether he faces political consequences at home. He seems to be planning to run again.

Lamont: I believe—I probably wouldn’t know—I’d be the last person in Connecticut to know whether he’s going to run again but I can tell you this; there’s an awful lot of folks here who are looking forward to the opportunity of challenging Sen. Lieberman. You know during our race a few years ago he said nobody wants to have a Democrat elected president as much as I do. He supported health care reform. Nobody wanted to get the troops home more than he did. Three years is a long time. I think there are a number of folks, independent, moderates, Republicans and Democrats who are disappointed where the words aren’t matching the action and are looking for a change.

Maddow: Why do you think he doesn’t just become a Republican?

Lamont: I think he’s been a Democrat for an awful long time, but I think tactically he’s probably looking at his options right now. I’ve got to believe when you walk away from health care reform, when you deny your fellow Senators the right to vote on health care reform, that seems to be somebody that knows he was elected in 2006 with overwhelming Republican support. I think that’s his base.

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Sen. Joe Lieberman says that health care reform is important but not so important that he would vote for a bill that includes the public option. The "independent Democrat" blames those that insist on having the public option for his threat to filibuster health care reform.

"I'd say to the people who are all of a sudden making the public option -- a government health insurance company -- the litmus test here, they're stopping us from getting something done," Lieberman told CBS' Bob Schieffer.

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From The Rachel Maddow Show Oct. 29, 2009. Rachel reports that Evan Bayh is now walking back from his comments made on CBS News and has released this statement:

Senator Bayh will support moving forward to a health care debate on the Senate floor, where he will work hard to address his concerns and craft affordable legislation that reduces the deficit and lowers health care costs for Indiana families and small businesses.

Maddow: In other words according to his office's statement today Sen. Bayh is now promising to allow the bill to come to the floor, but would he still like Lieberman filibuster the final vote with Republicans? Would he block a majority vote on the final bill and force his party to get sixty votes to pass health reform instead of fifty? Well, exclusively this afternoon Sen. Bayh told us this.

He told us that his position on health reform is not the same as Sen. Lieberman. Sen. Bayh told us it is extraordinarily unlikely that he would filibuster health reform. He said there is nothing in the bill he is aware of now that would cause him to vote to filibuster and he said that he currently "can't think of a set of circumstances under which he would vote against cloture.

What does this mean? It means that it's been a very big 24 hours for health reform. Sen. Bayh's statement as of 24 hours ago indicated that he had walked through the door that Joe Lieberman had opened--that he was willing to go even further than Joe Lieberman—not only willing to filibuster the final bill on health reform, but to filibuster any debate as well, both of those perceived threats from Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana have been walked way back. Which means that Joe Lieberman stands alone—Joe Lonely.

And round and round we go. Lieberman needs to be stripped of his chairmanship and as I said in my post yesterday, if Joe Lieberman wants to filibuster his own caucus, break out the cot and the diapers Joe.

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Rachel Maddow talks to Glenn Greenwald about Joe Lieberman's threat to filibuster the health care bill if it contains a public option, Evan Bayh quickly following suit and the financial gain being made by both men and their spouses for doing so.

Maddow: Sen. Lieberman has made it very clear that he plans to oppose health reform that includes a public option. He’ll filibuster it in fact which would be historic. What do you think is motivating him?

Greenwald: Well I think you have to look first of all at a Research 2000 Daily KOS poll that was taken last month that shows that a margin of 68 to 21% of Connecticut voters, the people who he’s essentially representing, favor a public option. That’s a 47 point margin which is almost impossible to find on almost any other issue. So when you ask why he’s doing this, it’s clearly not because the people he’s supposed to be representing favor it.

I think clearly what it’s about is primarily that fact that the industry that he’s serving by doing this—by preventing competition with the public option—is an industry from which he receives very substantial benefits. He’s drowning in campaign contributions from the insurance industry, the health care industry, the pharmaceutical industry—more than $2.5 million.

In early 2005 his wife was hired by a large P.R. firm, Hill & Knowlton, in the pharmaceutical division, which at the time was representing the health care giant Glaxo in major legislation before the Senate. And several months later Joe Lieberman was on the floor of the Senate offering legislation that would directly steer huge amounts of incentives to that company in order to develop vaccines.

So I think what you’re seeing here is the kind of legalized corruption, legalized bribery that runs the United States Senate; only in this case it’s particularly sleazy and transparent because Lieberman is ready to gut the major initiative of the Democratic Party.

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If I hear "He's with us on everything but the war" one more time, I'm going to go medieval on somebody.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, the Democrat-turned-independent from Connecticut, said Tuesday that he will not vote for a healthcare reform bill that includes a government-run insurance plan.

This means that as things now stand, Democrats will not have enough votes to pass healthcare reform with a so-called public option unless Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) can pick up unexpected GOP votes.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (Maine), the only Republican to vote for the Senate Finance Committee’s healthcare bill, said Tueday that she would vote against bringing up a bill that included a government-run insurance program unless the implementation of such a program were set to a trigger.

Lieberman said he would vote with Reid and other Democrats on a motion to begin debate on a healthcare bill because he believes it is an important issue that needs to be considered. But he said he would not lend his support to an effort to cut off debate on a bill including a government-run insurance program.

Lieberman said he told Reid of his position in a recent conversation and that the leader “respected and understood.”

“We’re trying to do too much at once,” said Lieberman. “To put this government-created, government-run insurance company on top of everything else is just asking for trouble for the taxpayer, for the premium payer and for the national debt. I don’t think we need it now.”

Lieberman said he was not placated by allowing states to opt out of the public option “because it still creates a whole new federal government entitlement program, for which taxpayers will eventually be on the line.”

The motion to begin debate and the motion to move to a final vote are two actions that would require 60 votes and are considered the highest hurdles to passing a reform bill through the Senate.

Can we strip this traitor of his chairmanships already? I have several choice descriptors for Lieberman, but party/caucus loyalist is not one of them. Mr. Gang of 14/Up or Down Vote is more interested in letting insurance companies make a profit off you than helping Americans. He's afraid of doing "too much."

Too late. He already has done too much. Too much to ever be allowed to caucus with the Democrats again.

Ah, the audacity of playing it safe! Obama clearly doesn't understand how positively this will affect people's lives, or he wouldn't be so lukewarm. The public option is polling well everywhere - including those conservative districts.

In fact, just about the only group not strongly supportive are the big contributors:

President Barack Obama is actively discouraging Senate Democrats in their effort to include a public insurance option with a state opt-out clause as part of health care reform. In its place, say multiple Democratic sources, Obama has indicated a preference for an alternative policy, favored by the insurance industry, which would see a public plan "triggered" into effect in the future by a failure of the industry to meet certain benchmarks.

The administration retreat runs counter to the letter and the spirit of Obama's presidential campaign. The man who ran on the "Audacity of Hope" has now taken a more conservative stand than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), leaving progressives with a mix of confusion and outrage. Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill have battled conservatives in their own party in an effort to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. Now tantalizingly close, they are calling for Obama to step up.

"The leadership understands that pushing for a public option is a somewhat risky strategy, but we may be within striking distance. A signal from the president could be enough to put us over the top," said one Senate Democratic leadership aide. Such pleading is exceedingly rare on Capitol Hill and comes only after Senate leaders exhausted every effort to encourage Obama to engage.

"Everybody knows we're close enough that these guys could be rolled. They just don't want to do it because it makes the politics harder," said a senior Democratic source, saying that Obama is worried about the political fate of Blue Dogs and conservative Senate Democrats if the bill isn't seen as bipartisan. "These last couple folks, they could get them if Obama leaned on them."

But with fundamental reform of the health care system in plain sight for the first time in half a century, the president appears to be siding with those who see the Senate and its entrenched culture as too resistant to change. Administration officials say that Obama's preference for the trigger, which is backed by Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, is founded in a fear that Reid's public option couldn't get the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster. More specifically, aides fear that a handful of conservative Democrats will not support a bill unless it has at least one Republican member's support.

Getting the public option in the Senate bill makes it that much more likely that we'll be able to get it through conference, and not through the reconciliation process.

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You've just got to love this framing for Chris Matthews' first panel segment on his weekend bobble head show. Does President Obama have the "bedside manners" to tell the left they're not going to get a public option? How about this one instead Chris? Does President Obama have the "bedside manners" to tell anyone who wants to filibuster a public option to break out the cots and the Depends? How's that for a different lead in to this segment Chris? In case you didn't notice, it takes 51 votes to get something passed in the United States Senate, not 60. It's time for the Democrats to quit allowing these silent filibusters.

INTRO: Bedside manners--the time is coming when our Democratic President will have to break the bad news to his liberal supporters and have to tell them that they can't get the kind of health care bill on which they have set their hearts. Does he have the strong bedside manner to give them the bad news and still keep their spirits up?

[...]

MATTHEWS: Boy, Dan, this is a rock and a hard place. The liberals in the Congress are pushing and pushing, and the president has to face reality. He needs 60 senators, 218 members of the Congress.

Mr. DAN RATHER: Uh-huh.

MATTHEWS: Can both meet peacefully?

Mr. RATHER: No. The president isn't going to get a--the--what's been described as a public option. He may get something close to that, something he can camouflage up as if--he isn't going to get it. And this is going to take a long time, Chris. I wouldn't be surprised if we aren't talking about this same subject late into December. And there is the question of public fatigue. I think he will get a bill, I think it will be progress along the lines of health care reform, but he's going to need a health care reform number two. And whether he can get that in an election year of 2010 is a real open question.

MATTHEWS: Kelly, you cover it all the time, and my question is, can you square a circle? You've got people on the Republican side now, Olympia Snowe, who's aboard so far. Maybe Susan Collins, the other senator from Maine. Maybe, maybe. But you've also got Joe Lieberman of Connecticut saying, `I'm here for the--for the insurance industry of Hartford. I'm not going to be for this bill as it stands.'

Ms. KELLY O'DONNELL: Well, getting all the Democrats will be tough if you're talking about a government insurance plan. That is going to be difficult because not only Joe Lieberman, but there are a number of moderates. When you're talking about Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins, the Republican ladies of Maine who get a lot of attention, they're kind of--they're using their influence really effectively right now. They still can have a phone call with the president, a one-on-one meeting with the president, which most Republicans don't have any chance of having, and they're still also talking to Republicans, expressing concerns about what it would cost, how big the change would be, could government be competent to have this kind of a program. So they're keeping the conversation going. In the end you could see Snowe, you could see Collins joining on, but that might be crucial to get to 60 because you may lose some of the moderate Democrats.

MATTHEWS: Right. Well, that's what I don't get here. Helene, jump in here. I mean, you cover the White House. How in the world does this president deliver health care if the price is a public option, when so many people who will have to vote for this to pass are against it? I don't see how it works.

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...to vote! White lace and promises...

There are a bunch of votes still left to take in the Senate. How many, you ask?

Ezra Klein knows:

Louisville, Ky.: Ezra, can you shed some light on the process involved in moving the Health-Care bill through the Senate? I've heard bits and pieces about number of votes required, but would like some clarification about: voting to block filibuster in the Senate, taking the bill back to a joint Senate-House conference, then back to the floor for final vote. Would you expand on this? Thanks.


Ezra Klein: Sure. Next move is the Finance Committee vote on Tuesday: that requires a bare majority of the committee (I think that means 11 votes, but that's just memory). Then Reid and the Democratic leadership blend the HELP and Finance bills into one bill. That doesn't require any votes. Then the bill comes to the floor. It'll need 60 votes against a filibuster, and 51 votes in favor of the legislation.

Then we have to deal with the House bills. Do you have a headache? People are becoming very irritable in America. Haven't you noticed? The health-care debate and the economic situation is really, really making life miserable for most of America.

A kiss for luck and we're on our way...

Before the rising sun we fly...
So many roads to choose...
We start out walking and learn to run...

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This is quite a change from the days where the Republicans were threatening to blow up the Senate filibuster rule isn't it?

MATTHEWS: Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. He is a member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Well, there is Senator Schumer putting the best face on a 13-10 loss. Three Democrats joined your party in opposing a public option. Five Democrats joined you on another vote. Where does it stand, the public option, right now?

HATCH: Well, it‘s going to be very difficult. Look, the Democrats are going to do everything they can to pull every trick they can to try and get all of the Democrats lined up to go with a public option.

But, look, if you pass a health care bill that involves one-sixth of the whole American economy and you don‘t get at least 70 votes, meaning bipartisan votes, you‘re not doing what‘s right for the American people. And I can tell you right now, Doug Elmendorf said that it‘s virtually next to impossible to be able to have a public option which would be a level playing field.

There‘s no way it would be level, and that‘s one of the problems. And I think the people out there realize that. And they also realize that you know they promised the same level playing field for Medicare back in 1965. It wasn‘t long until they realized they couldn‘t keep up and had to start setting prices.

Today Medicare pays less than 20 percent to doctors, less than 30 percent to hospitals, and by the way, Medicare‘s $38 trillion in unfunded liability, that‘s what you get when you just have the federal government involved.

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Senator Tom Harkin, who leads the HELP committee, made a stunning statement to The Hill:

The Senate has the votes to pass a healthcare reform bill including a public option, a key Senate chairman said Tuesday.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said that the Senate "comfortably" has a majority of votes to pass the public plan, and that he believes Democrats can muster 60 votes to break a filibuster.

"I have polled senators, and the vast majority of Democrats — maybe approaching 50 — support a public option," Harkin said told the liberal "Bill Press Radio Show." "So why shouldn't we have a public option? We have the votes.

"I believe we'll have the 60 votes, now that we have the new senator from Massachusetts, to at least get it on the Senate floor," Harkin later added. "But once we cross that hurdle, we only need 51 votes for the public option. And I believe there are, comfortably, 51 votes for a public option."

That's great news. Let's hope it plays out this way.

Mike Lux has more:

I have said before (most recently here) that the Senate Finance Committee was conservative, in fact the most conservative committee makeup in the Senate, and that we would be likely to lose these votes:

With numbers like this, and with the entire Democratic base mobilized intensely around the issue, you would have to be politically tone deaf as a Democrat to oppose this, but this is the Senate Finance Committee, so public option advocates are likely to lose these votes. The question, though, will be the margin. On a committee this conservative, far more conservative than the Senate as a whole, if we only get seven votes for the public option amendments, that would have to be considered a major political victory, and a sign that the public option can definitely get a majority vote on the floor.

So getting 10 votes on this is promising for those of us who believe a public option is essential. Baucus, Conrad, Lincoln, Carper, and Bill Nelson are five of the ten most conservative Dems in the Senate, and on the Schumer amendment, even two of them went with us. President Obama is for it, a majority in the House is for it, and the whip count we're running right here at OpenLeft.com shows that 51 Democrats are in favor of it. And today Tom Harkin confirmed that our whip count is right...

Will all this evidence, the public option will only be hard to beat if Democratic leaders decide they don't want to do it.

And Digby has more:

Carper and Nelson flipped on the Shumer public option amendment, leaving only Conrad, Lincoln and Baucus voting against it. This is good news believe it or not. It indicates that there are 51 votes for a public option in the senate.

The question most certainly is whether or not the president can change their minds. And frankly, if he doesn't have enough juice to at least hold them together for one cloture vote then I have to wonder if he has any real juice at all. Every one of these corporate lackeys can vote against the final bill if they dare. Assuming they can bring Byrd in to do it, all they need to do is break a Republican filibuster and "allow an up or down vote."

Now matter what FOX News says, the public option is not dead. I saw Schumer on with Tweety and he was ecstatic that he flipped a couple of votes. It sucks that he has to kowtow to Max Baucus, though. He was talking to him like he was the Duke of Westminster. All that royalty cannot be overlooked.

Tweety asked Schumer about those pesky liberal ads that are being run against Baucus, as if Matthews thought he was NOT going to defend his Senate brother. And during our President Obama blogger conference call, Obama told US to keep the pressure on everybody. He's got to push for the public option hard no matter what Rahm thinks.

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Keith Olbermann talks to Sen. Jay Rockefeller about the foot dragging by the Republicans during the amendment process on the health care bill. Rockfeller still intends to try to have a public option included in the final bill. When Keith said it didn't appear that they have the votes to get it passed, Rockeller said "nothing is impossible, and that particularly includes the public option".

From TPM: Schumer And Rockefeller: We Will Get Public Option:

I just got off a conference call with Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). They are confident -- very confident -- that health care reform will include a public option.

"The health care bill that is signed into law by the President will have a good, strong, robust public option," Schumer said.

How that will happen remains an open question. But the Senators assured reporters on the call that we're all going to get a taste of their passion and persuasiveness on this issue at the ongoing Senate Finance Committee hearings on Friday.

"I think it's a great idea," Rockefeller said of the public option. "Chuck Schumer thinks it's a great idea. And we're going to be all over it tomorrow."

Schumer said there will be a "full-blown debate" and that "even though the public option might be the underdog in the Senate Finance Committee, don't count it out."

"Tomorrow is the opening day in our big fight," he said.

Reporters tried to press on how, exactly, a public option would make its way out of the Senate Finance Committee, let alone make it to the President's desk. Will a public option amendment be tacked onto the Baucus bill? Will it be added on the Senate floor? How many votes do the Democrats have on a public health insurance option? Will they try to pass it through a 51-Senator reconciliation vote?

Rockefeller responded to TPM's question by saying "I think we have a good shot of getting it out of the Finance Committee."

He continued: "Don't rule it out. Don't fall victim to this feeling that it's not going to happen."

Chuck Schumer appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show and added this:

Schumer: Well tomorrow is really the first day of the fight. It won't be the last. We are going to offer Sen. Rockefeller and myself, two public option amendments and have the Finance Committee vote. Your viewers should know that this is the beginning of the fight because the Finance Committee is more conservative than the Senate as a whole. The Finance Democrats tend to come from rural and redder states. We'll then move to the floor of the Senate where the public option has a better chance than in the Finance Committee and then we'll move to Conference Committee with the House where it has a better chance still because the House has been very strong.

And my prediction is that at the end of the day we will have some form of public option, and a good form of public option in the final bill. Tomorrow's fight to be honest with you is uphill given the membership of the Finance Committee but we want to start the debate because the more the public hears what the public option really is the more they like it.

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Funny, I don't remember any Republicans saying this when they wanted to get Bush's judicial nominations through the Senate.

HANNITY: And that was Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus earlier today making a plea on behalf of his health care reform plan. Now we had hoped and, in fact, promised it would be a bill that would garner bipartisan support. Instead, Senator Baucus, he found himself standing all alone this afternoon.

There were no Democrats. There were no Republicans by his side. So, is his bill DOA, dead on arrival? We're joined now by former White House communications director Nicolle Wallace and Sandra Smith from the FOX Business Network.

You know, the interesting part of this is nobody came out with him. It's still going to be $800 billion. Still hasn't been scored. But you got Rockefeller saying no, Wyden saying no. That's on the Senate side. And then Olympia Snowe saying get rid of the government option.

You have Weiner in the House. Pelosi in the House and the CBC in the House saying no way without a government option. It's the Democrats' problem.

NICOLLE WALLACE, FORMER WH COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: Yes. Look, I think what we'll never know is how this would have played out if this is where the Democrats started. You know the one thing I thought today was this would have been a great opening position if the Democrats had spent the last four months trying to rally support around this as their position to come to the table and invite Republicans to sit down with them.

This is the best we can do. We think this represents the desires of most -- many Americans.

HANNITY: Right.

WALLACE: What do you have? But, you know, instead, this is near the end of the process and he walked out alone.

SANDRA SMITH, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK: And the whole point here is that the proposal -- we understand that this is a proposal. This is not the actual plan. It's a mark up. It can be changed. It will be changed. But the whole point, Sean, is that he was coming out with this in hopes of garnering Republican support. He steps out today. He is alone. No one is joining in with him.

HANNITY: Not one person.

SMITH: Not one person.

HANNITY: Well, Harry Reid, for the first time this week, said he will use the nuclear option. If he goes down that road, what will the reaction be not only from Republicans but from people in this country that are out there protesting at town halls, the march on Washington this week. What's the reaction?

WALLACE: I think the nuclear option is the only thing less appealing to the American people than the public option. I mean you saw the outcry. We all saw over the summer. This is not a Republican revolt. This is a revolt of the American people. And I think if he turns to that tactic, I think the Democrats will pay hefty price.

And of course she's wrong about support for the public option.

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From Lou Dobbs Tonight, in what looks like another potential hit piece on ACORN, Joe Conason and Keith Richburg point out a few problems with the conservative filmmakers' "reporting". Of course Dick Cheney sychophant Ron Christie disagrees with them, and as usual pulls the Republican stunt when debating anyone on television. Never stop talking if the host lets you get away with it, feign being insulted when you're interrupted by the other guest who would like to get a word in and is sick of your lying, and then filibuster until the times runs out for the segment.

PILGRIM: We are back with our panel, and on this note, why don't we start with this controversy, Keith, of what do you make of this discussion?

RICHBURG: You know, it's another embarrassment for ACORN. It's another embarrassment, you know. And the only reason they're on the radar screen is because they became well known -- most people, they've never heard of ACORN two years ago.

They became well known because they were helping "Get Out the Vote" efforts for the Obama campaign. You know, so it's an embarrassment for ACORN. I don't know if it's going to go beyond that and I'd be interested if that is true, what the spokesman said, that these conservative filmmaker went around to three or four offices and basically got thrown out with this ruse, and they found one office where there were two people stupid enough to sit down and give them this kind of silly advice.

And it sounds to me like that's just entrapment. You know? Let's go around various offices until we can finally trick somebody into...

CONASON: It's not journalism unless they report everything that happened. It's propaganda. If you're a reporter and you're doing something this, then you would report, yes, we went to the four offices and one said, you know, fell for -- took the bait.

If you don't report that, if you act as if you went into one office and they did it, then that's dishonest. The other thing is, Bill mentioned that it's a two-party state. The filmmakers could be liable to civil or criminal action, in fact, for taping people without telling them in the state of Maryland. I have a reporter who works in the capital district that knows about this. It came up during the Linda Tripp affair whether Tripp could be prosecuted in Maryland for recording Monica Lewinsky unlawfully. So that could be an interesting sideline, and may be why the filmmaker did not show up to be on television to discuss this tonight.

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