FBI agents moved quickly against Hutaree because its members were planning an attack sometime in April, prosecutors said.

My hunch is the self-described "warriors" of the Hutaree probably circled April 19 on their calendars for any cop-killing fantasy they might have planned to pull off. Why April 19? That was the day, 17 years ago, when the FBI staged its final failed assault on cult leader David Koresh's heavily armed compound in Waco, Texas. It was on April 19, 1993, following a 51-day siege, that Koresh's fanatical followers, rather than surrendering to authorities, staged mass suicides (and, in some cases, executions) as the compound burned to the ground.

Precisely two years later, on April 19, 1995, right-wing zealot Timothy McVeigh commemorated the Waco inferno by declaring war on the federal government and blowing up his rented Ryder truck outside of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. McVeigh's act of far-right radical terrorism sheared the north side off the Murrah Building, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds more. ("I reached the decision to go on the offensive -- to put a check on government abuse of power," McVeigh later wrote.)

April 19 remains an almost mythical date among dedicated government haters. It's a date that lives in infamy as proof of the dark consequences of when a tyrannical government (run by Democrats) turns on its own.

So yeah, as the Hutaree gun nuts allegedly plotted in the woods of Michigan on the best way to kill cops, pieced together their seditious plans to wage war on the U.S. government, and planned their upcoming confrontation with the Antichrist, I'm guessing the landmark militia day of April 19 loomed large.

For anyone who thought the dark, Waco-fueled chapter of domestic extremism in this country was behind us, the Hutaree arrests were a jarring reminder that, with the election of another Democratic president, the violent militia message is back.

And it's stronger than ever.

Not only have the number of radical-right extremist groups exploded in the wake of President Obama's election (more than 500 today, as compared to just 200 during the 1990s), but these militia members now have a proud sponsor in the person of Fox News' Glenn Beck, who has done more than any other person to amplify and mainstream the movement's hateful and foreboding anti-government message. Beck continues to give a voice, and national platform, to the same deranged, hard-core militia haters and self-style "patriots" who hounded the new, young Democratic president in the early 1990s in the wake of Waco.

On TV and the radio, Beck rarely bothers to mention the militia movement by name. Instead, he's simply co-opted their rhetoric as his own. He's acted as a crucial transmitter, warning about Obama fronting his own private "army," and urging followers to "start food storage."

Not to mention these previous militia moments:

• Beck asserts: "The second American revolution is being playing out right now"

• Beck says "what is ahead may loosen the bonds of society," may end with "a French Revolution"

• Beck: "There is a coup going on ... it has been done through the guise of an election"

• Beck: "You can't convince me that the founding fathers wouldn't allow you to secede"

• Beck: "[I]f we don't have some common sense, we're facing the destruction of our country... it's coming"

The truth is that the daylight separating the radical, anti-government militia movement from self-styled mainstream conservatives is growing dimmer by the day. Like the fact-free Obama birthers, the militia remains a radical subset that today's right wing refuses to part ways with. That sad fact was highlighted when scores of far-right media voices initially downplayed the Hutaree arrests last week, or even defended the militia members and -- disturbingly reminiscent of Waco -- cast the FBI and the federal government as the over-reaching bad guys.

And at Fox News, it's not just Beck. The cable "news" channel's militia-flavored message (beware gun-toting IRS agents!) has been as simple as it's been relentless: Obama is destroying this country and he's doing it intentionally. It's not that people disagree with Obama and don't like what they call his "liberal" policies as applied to the economy and health care reform, etc. Instead, the conflict is much more dire. Obama is not just misguided in this political and legislative agenda. Instead, Obama is the incarnation of evil (the Antichrist?), and his driving hatred for America, as well as for democracy, runs so deep that he ran for president in order to destroy the United States from within.

Right on cue last week, Rush Limbaugh, who serves as sort of a militia godfather theses days, issued this back-against-the-wall warning: "Our country is being overthrown from within."

That's exactly what militias were saying about Clinton back in the 1990s, as historian David Bennett recently noted:

"I love my country but I fear my government," one bumper sticker proclaimed in the 1990s. A small North Carolina group of "Christian" constitutional literalists proposed to "resist the coming New World Order" by "removing treasonous politicians and corrupt judges." As today, they feared a liberal "tyrant" in the White House. At a gun rights rally in Michigan in 1995, a T-shirt called President Clinton a "Socialist-Marxist Comma-Nazi" ...

Sound familiar?

Folks, we're witnessing a militia rerun. Except this time, thanks to the likes of Beck and Fox News, the unwanted repeat is being broadcast nationwide.

Actually, today's hysterical warnings are probably even more extreme than the last time a Democrat sat in the Oval Office. What's disturbing is that instead of having to trade copies of The Turner Diaries, relying on grassroots fax networks, or traveling to gun shows to hear that kind of incendiary insurrectionist rhetoric (i.e. the president must be stopped!), haters can just turn on the highest-rated cable news channel.

In a way, I wonder why militiamen bother to form groups anymore if Fox News is willing to embrace and broadcast their fervent, anti-government New World Order rants on a daily basis? The militia flourished on the fringes in the 1990s, in part, because those on the far-right felt like their government-hating message was being ignored. But today it's celebrated and broadcast nationally. Talkers like Beck have trumped the militia movement. They've completely co-opted the message and made the groups increasingly irrelevant as Fox News cuts out the middleman -- the militia groups -- and hijacks their insurrectionist, government-hating rhetoric.

Don't think there's a larger connection? Just look at the initial reaction when news broke about the Hutaree arrests. The knee-jerk response from some right-wing bloggers to either defend the militia members, or at least raise all kinds of doubts and partisan suspicions about the law enforcement raids, told us all we needed to know about where their true allegiances lie. Meaning, conservative voices immediately telegraphed their support from the persecuted militiamen and clearly suggested they were being used as pawns in an Obama government abuse of power.

Blogger Pamela Geller complained that the FBI raids were "nuts." Glenn Beck's radio guest host Chris Baker decried the Hutaree arrests as "nothing more than attack on faith and free speech." And Washington Times columnist and frequent Fox News talker Monica Crowley likened Hutaree members to proud patriots, as she squarely placed the blame on the government for squelching the militia's right to dissent:

The Democrats handle dissent by isolating it, smearing it and delegitimizing it in order to crush it. The warning should be clear: If you have small-government, traditional values, you may be considered by your own leadership to be an enemy of the state.

Keep in mind that both Geller and Crowley conveniently forgot to inform readers that the militia members had been arraigned on charges of plotting to kill cops. Apparently that fact no longer moves the needle in today's right-wing media, which has severed its traditional ties with the law-and-order movement and instead today pledges its allegiance to whoever hates the government -- and Democrats -- the most.

Other conservative media voices rushed in to downplay the Hutaree news last week. At Lucianne Goldberg's site, the wannabe cop killers were portrayed as "dimwits that [sic] couldn't recognize a decent deer hunt." A New York Post editorial dismissed the armed Christian "warriors" as "a few guys in the woods with guns." And when not mocking the FBI's raid and raising doubts about the need for arrests, the right-wing blog Confederate Yankee referred to the Hutaree not as an anti-government militia group, but as a religious "cult." (Nice try.)

Still others took a third path, suggesting politics were behind the militia crackdown. For instance, this was what Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds instinctively wrote about the Hutaree raid:

THE TIMING APPEARS CONVENIENT

Reynolds, along with other right-wing bloggers, suggested the arrests were politically motivated; that the raid was perhaps part of a government-wide conspiracy to spotlight conservatives in a negative light and stymie dissent. Rather than immediately denouncing anti-government extremists who may have been plotting to kill cops, Reynolds played up the partisan angle, suggesting the timing of the raid was a bit too "convenient." (Of course it was convenient, but not in the way Reynolds meant: The FBI claimed the extremists were poised to strike this month, so naturally that wanted to act before then.)

And oh, by the way, at Tea Party Patriots: Official Home of the American Tea Party Movement, this was the headline that immediately went up after the first bulletins about the militia raids were posted:

That's right, some Tea Party leaders instinctively tagged the Hutaree compound as one of their own as it came under attack from federal law enforcement officials. And can you blame them? Today's right-wing, Obama-hating rhetoric -- as amplified by Glenn Beck and much of the GOP Noise Machine -- is indistinguishable from the militia message.

That frightening kinship is obvious for everyone to see and hear.

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Naturally, right-wing bloggers south of the Canadian border then went ballistic. Gateway Pundit claimed a menacing mob of 2,000, armed with "rocks and sticks," had surrounded the Ottawa campus building where Coulter was to speak. And yes, a fire alarm was even pulled.

Oh, my!

But it turns none of those hysterical claims were true (except for the part about someone pulling a fire alarm without cause). The 1,000 protesters were peaceful, according to university officials (good luck finding those rocks and sticks). And no, the police did not cancel the event out of our concern for Coulter's safety. They simply thought the event should have been held in a bigger venue to facilitate the large crowd. (Who invites Ann Coulter to campus and then books a lecture hall that, according to one estimate, holds just 400 people?)

Fact: Coulter and her promoters canceled the show on their own. There were no imminent signs of mob violence or threats of personal harm, just good old-fashioned, raucous, campus-style debate. But faced with a boisterous crowd, Coulter took her marbles and went home, while her conservative allies concocted tales of looming left-wing violence and feasted on the publicity.

Later, whining about her traumatic no-show in Ottawa, Coulter told a reporter, "I would like to know when this sort of violence, this sort of protest, has been inflicted upon a Muslim?" [Emphasis added.]

Oh, so now pulling a fire alarm qualifies as "violence"?

The hysterical hand-wringing was predictable. But the real stunner last week was watching the same conservatives who fretted over Coulter's safety then turn around and excuse and rationalize actual right-wing violence and intimidation stateside in the wake of the historic health care vote. Speaking out of both sides of their mouths with astonishing ease, conservatives denounced liberals who protested Coulter's appearance in Canada, and then played defense on behalf of marauding right-wing radicals who unleashed death threats, threw bricks through office windows, and hurled epithets at politicians. All in the name of saving America from President Obama's brand of evil socialism.

That form of intimidation and harassment the GOP Noise Machine had no problem with. Indeed, Democrats themselves were to blame for the rash of political violence.

Or so said the Tea Party team at Fox News, where there was little sense of remorse or shame -- or even apparent concern -- about the unprecedented bouts of violence and intimidation last week. (See list below.)

Instead, like Sarah Palin, Fox News simply reloaded and kept spraying the poisonous rhetoric all around. Worse, the "news" channel spent parts of last week either denying or rationalizing the uncorked madness. For instance, Glenn Beck suggested the incidents had been concocted. "It's almost as if the left is trumping all of this up just for the politics," said Beck.

Fox News friend Rush Limbaugh agreed:

Our side doesn't do this kind of stuff. It's all made up -- 95 percent of it's made up and it's being done to divert everybody's attention."

And from Andrew Breitbart's Big Government: "We doubt these threats are actually real."

Those who weren't denying the acts of violence were busy whitewashing them. On Fox News, S.E. Cupp made fun of Democrats who she claimed sought sympathy after being on the receiving end of a "couple of angry voices mails." Cheered Cupp, "I'm glad people are angry."

Hmm, "angry" voice mails? Here's an example of one of the actual hate messages left on a Democrat's voice mail:

"Congressman Stupak, you baby-killing mother f***er... I hope you bleed out your a**, got cancer and die, you mother f***er," one man says in a message to Stupak.

By skimming over the unpleasant details, Fox News talkers did their best to trivialize the illegal, terrorist threats made against elected officials. In fact, they were glad Democrats received voice mails like that.

And yes, it's been the rationalizing that's been so disturbing to watch -- the way the GOP Noise Machine fervently excused last week's violent behavior and eagerly tried to shift the blame onto the victims of the intimidation, and then demanded to know what the big deal was.

I mean, who hasn't had the line on a propane tank outside his house expected and nobody should have been surprised because Democrats, by passing the bill (i.e. desecrating the Constitution), pushed people too far. "So why are people angry?" asked Fox News' Steve Doocy last week. "Maybe because they didn't want this bill?"

Talk about the rise of tyranny and the minority-rule mob.

And that's where the fear of the perpetual angry mob comes in, and perhaps why Fox News, rather than lamenting the ugly and cowardly eruptions, seems to be encouraging it, or at least rationalizing it. Perhaps Fox News wants that threat of mob intimidation on the table, and Fox News, the de facto Opposition Party, wants Democrats to be thinking about the political consequences of further upsetting that unhinged mob.

As the blogger known as Digby noted last week:

They know that serious violence is very likely. They are simply inoculating themselves against the charge that it was their inflammatory rhetoric that caused it. It will be the Democrats complaining about their inflammatory rhetoric that made the teabaggers snap. If they'd just stayed quiet and not made daddy mad, he wouldn't have had to hit them.

And speaking of irresponsibility, who helped created the red-hot aura of right-wing hysteria over health care reform? Who has been driving the dangerous insurrectionist rhetoric? The right-wing media, of course. This was Beck, just days after the vote:

Get down on your knees and pray. Pray. It's September 11th all over again, except that we didn't have the collapsing buildings.

That's right, the U.S. government (by moving to help insure millions more Americans) had unleashed a surprise terrorist attack against the defenseless civilian population. But no, Glenn Beck doesn't incite people. Why would anybody think that?

And why would anybody think there was a connection between Fox News' hate speech and the recent police blotter of violent and frightening political incidents:

• Rep. Tom Perriello's (D-VA) brother's address was erroneously posted online by a Tea Party blogger who invited activists to descend on the house. A gas line outside the brother's house was cut.

• Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) was the target of threatening faxes and phone calls, including death threats. Some of the faxes included "racial epithets used in reference to President Obama," according to CBS News.

• A brick was thrown through the window of the Democratic Party office in Rochester, New York. The note attached read: "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice," roughly quoting 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater.

• Rep. Anthony Weiner's office in Kew Gardens, New York, had to be evacuated after suspicious white powder was found in an envelope mailed to the office.

• A thrown brick smashed a window at Rep. Louise Slaughter's district office in Niagara Falls, New York.

• Slaughter also received a message claiming that "snipers were being deployed to kill those members who voted yes for health care," according to Politico.

• A tossed brick demolished a window at the Sedgwick County Democratic Party headquarters in Wichita, Kansas.

• There were confirmed accounts of Tea Party protesters hurling anti-gay slurs at Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) on the eve of the health care vote.

• "Vandals also smashed the front door and a window at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' office in Tucson early Monday, hours after the Arizona Democrat voted for the health care reform package," reported the Kansas City Star.

Fox News' response to the mayhem? "This happens all the time," shrugged paid contributor Stephen Hayes. His colleague Charles Krauthammer added, "I'm sure a lot of this is trumped up."

It's a chilling prospect, but one that seems more and more plausible: What if Fox News actually wants mob violence?

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Honestly, unless you've been monitoring the ticking time bomb that is the far-right media in recent days, you probably don't appreciate how frighteningly possible that cultish scenario has become, as the GOP Noise Machine, led by Fox News, publicly suffers a nervous breakdown. It's a mental and emotional collapse that's been advertised in recent days as cablers, radio talkers, and right-wing bloggers have reached for increasingly hysterical, often blood-curdling rhetoric to describe the irreversible atrocity -- an incurable, metastasizing malignancy!! -- that's about to seize and destroy the United States in the form of a bill to expand health care coverage.

Listening to the calamitous warnings (i.e. "the end of America as we know it"), it's not that unreasonable to think that at some point one of the media mob leaders is going to suggest that life itself just is no longer worth living.

After all, late last week the nation stood on the precipice, just three "days away from the United States of America being over as we've all known it," according to Rush Limbaugh, who warned that reform would drive every private insurance company out of business. Glenn Beck also went full tilt, warning that the bill represented a "turning point," like the Civil War and Peal Harbor, while colleague Sean Hannity pinpointed the health care vote as the "very hour" that America turned "completely towards socialism."

The Washington Times likened reform to the "Black Plague," and the online reaction was somehow even more unhinged. It was "RIP USA," because with the vote, America would become "occupied by a hostile foreign power." Indeed, a "socialist putsch" had been sprung and "America's Day of Wreckoning [sic]" was at hand. Why? Because the Democrats' health care legislation "will make every American a POW, strip them of their Freedoms and Liberty and shove them in a meat cellar for cold storage."

Not scared yet? Well, just keep in mind that "Fascist healthcare will destroy America," "civil unrest is coming," and President Obama is to blame. More? "Fascist House Democrats are preparing to euthanize America." And don't forget that Sunday's health care vote in Congress represented a "dark day for America, the worst since 9/11."

And, progressive politicians, heed this warning: "Democrats who crammed this unwarranted bill down the throats of the American people who clearly and overwhelmingly opposed it deserve to be drawn and quartered."

That's right, tortured.

As Jon Stewart noted last week while playing the straight man in a Daily Show bit about the increasingly unhinged, right-wing response, "The rhetoric seems completely divorced from reality." And that observation came before the weekend theatrics inside the Beltway, when self-described patriots, egged on by the right-wing media, rallied to "Kill the bill!" and in the process reportedly tossed racial and anti-gay epithets at Democratic members of the Congress. (The far-right reaction? So what if they did?)

Trust me. This televised, incoherent meltdown has gone way beyond sore loserdom. Or even sore loserdom on steroids. This hasn't just been more of the usual Democrats-are-crooks type of whining that Fox News has turned into an art form since Obama's inauguration. And it's gone far beyond the usual scare tactics that the cable channel has trademarked. (Recent on-screen graphics: "Will the health bill ruin the economy?" and "Does Obamacare mean millions more jobs destroyed?")

Instead, this bout of spastic lashing out has been unique even by the previous standard adopted by Beck, who, on the eve of the health care vote, likened Democrats to Al Qaeda terrorists who were trying to bring America to its knees from the inside.

Because apparently when conservatives lose consecutive nationwide election cycles, thereby allowing Democrats to set the legislative agenda, conservatives' objections render passing bills a criminal act, and "tyranny" threatens to topple our democracy.

Let's face facts. It's never pleasant when activists are confronted with their own political impotence. (Not to mention their abysmal vote-counting skills.) But that's exactly what happened over the weekend as Democratic members of Congress passed health care reform -- reform that the radical right had already pronounced dead. In fact, the GOP Noise Machine had spent weeks dancing on reform's grave and mocking Democrats' inability to act. So how did it all go so terribly wrong for health care haters?

My hunch is that over the past few months, the right-wing media, along with self-adoring Tea Party members, made the mistake of believing their own hype. They convinced themselves that not only did 2 million people take to the streets of the nation's capital last September to protest Obama (a number that was off by 1.9 million), but that "millions" more had marched coast-to-coast over the past 12 months (a number that was completely fabricated). They fastidiously constructed their own parallel universe and convinced themselves that last summer's mini-mobs at local town hall forums had defeated health care reform. They thought their rowdy show of force, complete with Nazi and Hitler posters, and even some protesters parading around with loaded guns, had changed the debate.

Listening to Limbaugh, they thought they were dictating the agenda. Watching Fox News, they though they reflected the mainstream. And reading right-wing blogs, they thought they had killed health care reform.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong. It was the sudden and rude realization that, instead, they'd spent the past few months trapped inside an echo chamber, I think, that created the volcanic and unhinged response we've seen play out in recent days. It's the kind of childish and hysterical reaction I didn't think we'd ever witness from a major political movement.

Indeed, imagine if this is how progressives and Democrats had behaved during the run-up to the Iraq war, the last time the country found itself in this kind of national public policy "debate." Imagine if the liberal pundits and opinion makers had reacted to the prospect of war not with thoughtful anti-war analysis (analysis that, it turned out, was dead on), but instead opted for tantrums and shameful vitriol, the way right-wing pundits have in recent days and weeks.

For instance, imagine if the anti-war movement, and its highest-profile media supporters, had attacked military families whose sons and daughters were fighting in Iraq as the invasion unfolded. That kind of abhorrent behavior would have been universally condemned as just being beyond the pale. Yet last week, as its opposition to reform grew increasingly futile, the GOP Noise Machine dedicated lots of time and energy to mocking and attacking cancer-stricken patients, as well as a motherless 11-year-old boy who had the audacity to speak out in favor of health care reform.

Limbaugh's immortal words to the boy: "Your mom would have still died, because Obamacare doesn't kick in until 2014."

To me, the attacks indicated a withering of the right-wing media's shrinking moral compass, not to mention common sense. (Mocking the seriously ill is a winning political strategy?) It was another tell-tale sign of the unfolding, and unstoppable, nervous breakdown.

Because how else do you describe this kind of erratic, disturbed behavior? And it's worth repeating: This wasn't coming from minor, fringe players. It's been coming from the supposed leading lights of the conservative media; leading lights who, blinded by paranoia, have suffered a collective collapse and can no longer make sense of their surroundings.

The cold shoulder was expected, though. Why? It's simple: the results didn't fit the script.

Adopting the polar opposite narrative from the Bush era when pundits and reporters seemed obsessed with trying to boost the president's standing, Beltway scribes today have made it plain that when it comes to Obama and polling, good news is no news.

Feeding off right-wing talking points, political journalists love to push the idea that Obama's polling numbers are in the tank and that he's fading fast. It's all part of the preferred, CW narrative that his entire presidency is slipping away. (It must now be "save[d]," according to Newsweek.)

Does the White House wish Obama's job approval rating was higher? I'm sure advisers do. Is there anything unusual in Obama's approval number, other than the fact that it nearly doubles the rating his predecessor left office with? No, not really.

Indeed, the news media's ongoing hand-wringing about Obama's polling numbers and how he's only around 50 percent (it's "tepid" and cause for "worry") is rather odd considering former President Bush served nearly his entire second term with an approval rating below 50 percent and left the presidency with an almost incomprehensibly low 22 percent approval rating.

Also note that for the majority of Bush's first year in office (i.e. up until September 11, 2001), his approval rating remained pretty much exactly where Obama's has been since late last summer: hovering around 50 percent. But do you recall a media obsession about Bush's super-soft poll numbers back during the spring and summer of 2001?

Neither do I.

More queries: Has there been any dramatic shift in President Obama's approval number since late last summer? No. (See below.) Has the press in recent months, busy echoing right-wing falsehoods, often pretended that there has been a sizable shift? Without question. (Rush Limbaugh, last month: "If Mr. Obama hasn't noticed, his approval numbers are in a free fall.")

Just take a look. From The New York Times, December 19, 2009:

After weeks of frustrating delays and falling poll numbers, Mr. Obama decided to take what he could get, declare victory and claim momentum on some of the administration's biggest priorities, even if the details did not always match the lofty vision that underlined them.

Washington Post, January 19:

On Wednesday one year will have passed since President Obama's inauguration. Much of the tidal wave of assessments has been negative: Falling poll numbers. Unfulfilled promises.

Miami Herald, January 29:

Amid declining poll numbers and political fortunes, President Barack Obama on Thursday tried to reconnect with the fickle state that helped put him in the White House and urged voters to keep the faith despite Florida's withering recession.

CNN's Wolf Blitzer, February 23:

The president's falling poll numbers, ongoing backlash from Republicans, even some grumblings from Democrats. Might someone inside the White House bear most of the blame?

Los Angeles Times, March 7:

For months, Obama had been on the defensive, facing electoral setbacks, declining poll numbers, dissident Democrats and stories that highlighted the deal-making often needed to grind out legislation.

Everybody agrees that Obama's poll numbers are falling, so it must be true, right?

Wrong.

If you look at Gallup's weekly ratings for Obama, in late August 2009, he had a 50 percent approval rating. And for the most recently completed weekly tabulation from Gallup, Obama's rating stands at 48 percent. That's right, over a nearly seven-month period, the president's approval rating, as measured by Gallup, dropped exactly 2 percentage points, which obviously falls within Gallup's margin of error. That means you could accurately say that Obama's job approval rating has remained unchanged over the last six-plus months.

And it's not just Gallup that has chronicled Obama's rock-steady polling numbers. Take a look at the cumulative ratings posted daily at Real Clear Politics, which averages eight different polls (including Rasmussen's outlier tabulations) to come up with Obama's composite job approval rating.

Here are some of the data points from RCP:

• August 20, 2009: 51 percent
• September 23, 2009: 52 percent
• October 4, 2009: 52 percent
• November 4, 2009: 51 percent
• December 7, 2009: 49 percent
• January 11, 2010: 48 percent
• February 18: 48 percent
• March 3: 49 percent

And for the most recent, month-long snapshot, between February 17 and March 14, RCP pegged Obama's approval rating at 49 percent. So, much like Gallup, RCP has found that, since last August, Obama's job approval rating has basically shifted downward just a few points, or again, within the typical survey margin of error.

Given those figures, I'll ask again: Why is the press so eager to push this storyline about Obama's "falling poll numbers"? Where is the proof to back it up? And since when does a 1-3 point movement in any direction qualify as news? It's absurd.

By the way, if for some reason Obama's approval rating does significantly sag this month, or next, that won't somehow vindicate the previously erroneous coverage. Because the press has been claiming for the last several months that Obama's poll numbers have already fallen noticeable (which they have not), not that they're going to.

The media fixation on a barely there approval decline is especially bizarre when you consider how blasé the same press corps was during the Bush administration when the president often suffered gargantuan job approval declines. For instance, between December 2003 and May 2004, Bush's job approval plunged 17 points, according to Gallup. But it's hard to find much proof that the Beltway press corps was obsessed with Bush's "falling poll numbers" at the time.

But back to Obama. From September 1, 2009, to March 1, 2010, there was literally no change in Obama's approval rating. So why is the press so anxious to push the "falling poll numbers" meme? And is that why, when the White House did receive rays of good polling news during those months, the press seemed so anxious to look away?

Was it because when it comes to covering this Democratic White House, good news is no news?

At times it sure seems that way.

Back in January when The Washington Post reported on its latest political survey, the newspaper forgot to mention that Obama's job approval had gone up that month. Not a single reference to that fact was made in the article, which did set aside plenty of space to pile on the doom-and-gloom rhetoric:

A year into his presidency, President Obama faces a polarized nation and souring public assessments of his efforts to change Washington, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Nearly half of all Americans say Obama is not delivering on his major campaign promises, and a narrow majority have just some or no confidence that he will make the right decisions for the country's future.

By the way, this was the Post's headline:

Poll shows growing disappointment, polarization over Obama's performance

According to the Post, there was "growing disappointment" over Obama. Yet the Post itself forgot to report that his approval rating had gone up that month.

The same was true over at CNN.com in December 2009. Writing up the results of its latest poll, CNN not only didn't think the news hook was that Obama's approval rating had gone up 6 points in just two weeks, but the CNN article didn't even reference that finding until two-thirds of the way into the piece.

And then there was the AP in November 2009. Same drill. Its polling at the time showed Obama enjoying a robust 54 percent approval rating. So where was that information buried? In the article's ninth paragraph, after the AP painted an almost comically bleak picture of the political landscape Obama faced at the time.

And again, it's not just that the press has often misstated the facts about Obama's polling numbers. It's that this is the same Beltway press corps that often treated Obama's Republican predecessor in the exact opposite way, often itching to suggest that Bush's horrendous polling numbers were on the mend and spending years denying Bush's glaring job approval ratings collapse.

For instance, in January 2006, Time magazine's Mike Allen announced that Bush had "found his voice" and that relieved White House aides "were smiling again" after a rocky 2005. Of course, within months, Bush's approval rating fell to new all-time lows.

In April of that year, Katie Couric, then with NBC News, was asking Tim Russert if the White House could "breath[e] a sigh of relief" because Bush's latest approval rating had only fallen to 36 percent. In the end, Bush's phantom rebound never materialized and he left office as the least popular president in modern American history.

And yet for most of his eight years in office, the press seemed to have a gut feeling that Americans just liked Bush. And today, their instinct tells them that Americans don't really approve of Obama.

Here's an idea: Maybe journalists should simply report what Americans tell pollsters and stop trying to concoct a storyline.

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Few other issues seem to whip media conservatives into a frenzy of misinformation and half-baked conspiracy theories like the decennial count of Americans.

You see, for the world of "conservative journalism," the census is a manifestation of everything they fear. Put yourself in their shoes: Obama's administration is hell-bent on imposing a socialist-fascist-communist-totalitarian-Marxist police state, and now he's sending us all mail! Even worse, Obama's thugs may show up at your door to get a more accurate count.

Why wait for the third installment of the Twilight franchise when you've got these scary bloodsuckers wanting to ... gulp ... count you?

To hear Beck tell it, the Census is just part of the "modern day slave state." Hardly surprising for a man who has called President Obama a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people" and claimed Obama's policies in general are driven by little more than "reparations" and a desire to "settle old racial scores."

For government-haters like Beck, attacks such as these are as calculated as they are mean-spirited. Why would he want his audience to think highly of the once-a-decade count if it has a direct result in determining just how federal money for schools, hospitals, job training centers, senior centers, emergency services and a host of public works projects are allocated? He doesn't believe the federal government should be involved in these programs in the first place.

Bemoaning the purported ills of the Census is just one more way Beck advances his mantra that all things government, especially Obama-government, are evil.

When the Commerce Department announced this month that the Census Bureau would "develop a Supplemental Poverty Measure that will use the best new data and methodologies to obtain an improved understanding of the economic well-being of American families and of how federal policies affect those living in poverty," Beck claimed the new measure would put him "on the poverty scale" since it would "compare" him to his wealthier neighbors.

Get that? To Beck, who has made as much as $23 million a year according to some reports, poverty and the government's attempts to assist the poor are deserving of mockery. It's all part of his larger goal of souring his audience on the very idea of the Census, and this time the poor are his piñata du jour.

Of course, if you present Beck with his own words on the Census (or any other issue for that matter), he's likely to demand you "stop listening to the Internet. There's a lot of garbage out on the Internet." In a sense he just may be right. If you were to Google "Beck" and "U.S. Census" you are bound to find video and audio clips of his rants on the subject that can only be described as, well, garbage

Beck's attacks on the census fit nicely into his larger worldview, one that he's been pushing more and more of late -- his broader disdain for social justice and the religious and political actors and institutions that champion the tradition of helping the least among us. He's called it "code language for Marxism" and encouraged his audience to "run, and don't listen to anyone who is telling you differently."

To Beck, the poor should trudge their difficult path alone, and no one -- not the church, not our political institutions, and certainly not the U.S. Census -- should be there to offer a helping hand.

This type of thinking was summed up well by the words of Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert when he quipped, "I believe in pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. I believe it is possible -- I saw this guy do it once in Cirque du Soleil. It was magical."

I don't buy it, and neither should you.

So, like generations of Americans before me, I will be counted so my community receives the help it needs.

Knowing that Glenn Beck doesn't like the census? Well, that's just icing on the cake and all the motivation I need to complete the questionnaire and drop it in the mail just as soon as it arrives at my door.

Karl Frisch is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog, research, and information center based in Washington, D.C. Frisch also contributes to County Fair, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the web as well as original commentary.  You can follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube or sign-up to receive his columns by email.

Another week, another wild, right-wing-media-driven conspiracy theory centered on the Obama administration.

Conservative blogs led the charge in advancing the dubious story, posting their own spin under headlines like "Obama: The Will Of The People Be Damned - I'LL Decide Who Can Go Fishing" in the case of RedState.com and "Obama's war on fishing?!?!?!" from the queen of right-wing blogging and bellyaching, Michelle Malkin. It mattered little that the story was complete bunk -- unsupported by a shred of proof.

It wasn't long before Fox News' Glenn Beck, a regular purveyor of ridiculous Obama-centric conspiracy theories, took up the yarn. In classic Beck fashion, the crew-cut host told his audience, "I told you a year ago this would happen. I'm not some prophet by any stretch of the imaginations. ... People are losing their rights. Who's more important: the fish or you?"

Beck aside, no smear of the Obama White House would be complete without an assist from Rush Limbaugh, the granddaddy of the conservative media. On back-to-back shows, El Rushbo laid it on thick, one day saying that "fishing is about to become a privilege controlled by Barack Obama," and the next, speaking as if he were Obama: "[Y]ou can't touch me. ... I can stop you from going fishing wherever you want. ... I can do whatever I want to do."

In perhaps the strangest turn of events surrounding the story, FoxNews.com ended up debunking Fox News, with the conservative outlet's reporter Joshua Rhett Miller writing that government documents didn't contain "language pertaining to a potential ban on recreational fishing, as some reports had previously asserted." Of course, some of those "reports" included the Fox Nation website, Fox Business Network, and the previously mentioned Beck.

Ultimately, an ESPNOutdoors.com editor acknowledged "errors" in the handling of the piece and its lack of "balance," but you can expect this one, like so many others, to end up in some chain email from your Fox News-loving uncle in the coming weeks.

The controversy surrounding the latest debunked, conservative-driven conspiracy theory is not the first, nor is it the strangest. Like other bogus stories from the past year, it shares a similar cast of characters, most notably Beck, all eager to tar the president, evidence and journalistic integrity be damned.

Did you know that OnStar, the popular automobile safety feature, is actually a cause for concern because Obama's liberty-killing government could use it to impose "martial law?" You can thank Beck for that one.

Then there was the absurd story that FEMA was building concentration camps for those who disagree with the Obama administration. A year ago, Beck addressed the subject on Fox & Friends stating, "We are a country that is headed towards socialism, totalitarianism, beyond your wildest imagination," later adding that he "wanted to debunk" the theory that FEMA was building camps, but he just couldn't. Beck would go on to spend weeks sowing the seeds of this bizarre conspiracy theory, noting that he would debunk the issue when and if he could, before finally hosting the editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics to set the story straight.

The FEMA camp conspiracy dovetailed nicely with another Beck-driven tale of totalitarianism: that Obama is busy assembling a "civilian national security force," which Beck said was "what Saddam Hussein" did and "what Hitler did with the SS." Beck's relentless pursuit of this "story" was sparked by a speech in which Obama spoke of expanding the Foreign Service, AmeriCorps, and the Peace Corps. That's right, to Glenn Beck, these respected outfits are akin to Hitler's SS. Shameful.

Reporters who value truth and journalistic integrity should be on notice: Don't trust these Beck-ian right-wing conspiracy theories, the people who spread them, or the networks that offer these kooks a platform. Deeming these folks rational players in the conservative movement deserving of our attention only serves to further undermine the already fragile reputation journalists have among the American people.

It almost makes one yearn for the days when right-wing cranks prattled on about the president's birth certificate. Even Beck wouldn't touch that one.

Karl Frisch is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog and research and information center based in Washington, D.C. Frisch also contributes to County Fair, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the Web, as well as original commentary. You can follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, or sign up to receive his columns by email.

Washington Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli worried "that we are not well-enough informed about conservative issues. It's particularly a problem in a town so dominated by Democrats and the Democratic point of view" -- a concern echoed by his deputies and Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander.

At The New York Times, managing editor Jill Abramson said the Times suffered from "insufficient tuned-in-ness to the issues that are dominating Fox News and talk radio" and that the paper would assign an editor to monitor such media. Public editor Clark Hoyt criticized the Times for being too slow to pick up the ACORN allegations, fretting that the delay made the Times look "partisan." And Hoyt took the Times to task for what he thought was too great an emphasis on the political motivations behind the attacks on ACORN:

By stressing the politics, the article irritated more readers. "A suspicious person might see an attempt to deflect criticism of Acorn by highlighting how those pesky conservatives are at it again," said Albert Smith of Chatham, N.J.

I thought politics was emphasized too much, at the expense of questions about an organization whose employees in city after city participated in outlandish conversations about illegal and immoral activities. (Acorn suggested some videos were doctored but fired or suspended many of the employees.)

Hoyt went on to criticize the Times article for omitting mention of a video of, and allegations about, ACORN workers in Brooklyn.

The hand-wringing at the Post and the Times about being insufficiently attuned to conservative arguments should ring false to any fair-minded person who remembers the role those papers played in the relentless hyping of Clinton-era non-scandals, their heavily slanted coverage of the 2000 presidential campaign, or their disastrously inadequate coverage of the Bush administration's march to war. (Alexander and the Post editors have ducked requests that they reconcile the paper's coverage of those events with their statements that the Post needs to be more responsive to conservatives.)

But even worse than the myopic view of their treatment of conservatives over the years was the misguided premise that the media should pay attention to certain people simply because they are ideologically conservative -- as if a person's ideology, rather than the accuracy and honesty and importance of his claims, determines whether he should be taken seriously.

That's dangerously wrong. It's the kind of thinking that leads the media to grant equal weight to scientists who say the Earth is warming and politicians who respond by pointing out the continued existence of snow.

And, indeed, the conservative media have spent the last several months proving again and again that they simply do not deserve to be taken seriously.

Take, for example, the ACORN tapes that the Post and Times apologized for not covering sooner. Turns out the right-wing activists behind them were badly misrepresenting what they showed (we're still waiting for the Times to correct its false claim that James O'Keefe was dressed in an outlandish pimp costume while meeting with the ACORN employees). And the Brooklyn district attorney has reportedly found that the tapes were misleadingly edited:

The video that unleashed a firestorm of criticism on the activist group ACORN was a "heavily edited" splice job that only made it appear as though the organization's workers were advising a pimp and prostitute on how to get a mortgage, sources said yesterday.

The findings by the Brooklyn DA, following a 5½-month probe into the video, secretly recorded by conservative provocateurs James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles, means that no charges will be filed.

Many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers were taken out of context so as to appear more sinister, sources said.

Remember: Times public editor Clark Hoyt criticized his paper for not covering that Brooklyn tape. And he complained that the paper's coverage of the ACORN allegations focused too much on the political motives of the accusers. Think maybe he'd like to have that one back?

Or consider The Weekly Standard's comically inept attempts to create scandal out of whole cloth, which involve inventing a totally baseless allegation of vote-buying, then rapidly back-tracking once they're called on the improbability of their claims.

Then there's the absurd-on-its-face conspiracy theory that President Obama wants to ban fishing. Believing such a thing requires tinfoil-hat-level paranoia and inability to reason -- and yet Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and several right-wing bloggers eagerly peddled that nonsense. Stupid, or dishonest? It doesn't matter -- either way, it's further evidence that nobody should take anything they say seriously.

And how about Beck's claim that an alternative measure of the poverty level proposed by the Obama administration would classify him as "in poverty," despite his millions of dollars in annual earnings. That's obviously false -- yet Glenn Beck said it. How can you trust anything said by someone who is willing to say things that are obviously false? On Fox & Friends, the hosts assert that Democrats "want Americans to pay 70% of their income in taxes." Is that true? Of course not! So why do they say it? Because they have no hesitation whatsoever when it comes to lying.

And yet The New York Times and The Washington Post think they should pay extra attention to claims that come from the right-wing media; that they should be quicker to repeat the nonsense churned out every day by this pack of professional liars, simply because they are conservatives. But the decades-long track record suggests the opposite: The fact that Fox News or The Weekly Standard is promoting some story is pretty good reason to assume it isn't newsworthy.

Jamison Foser is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog and research and information center based in Washington, D.C. Foser also contributes to County Fair, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the Web, as well as original commentary. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook or sign up to receive his columns by email.

Under increased scrutiny for the rampant anti-government rhetoric of the Tea Party movement, along with its often violent imagery and open talk of insurrection, right-wingers seemed anxious, even frantic, to hold up the Pentagon killer as proof that they weren't responsible for -- or connected with -- every political act of vigilante violence that makes headlines these days.

But as more details emerge about the incident, the far-right bloggers may wish they hadn't shone a spotlight on the disturbing Pentagon story. If anything, as we learn more about the anti-government rantings and writings of Bedell, this madman attack looks an awful lot like a string of other "lone wolf" attacks, such as the recent kamikaze pilot who flew his plane into an IRS office in Austin.

They're attacks that appear to be fueled by an almost pathological hatred for the U.S. government -- the same open hatred that right-wing bloggers, AM talk radio hosts, Fox News' lineup of anti-government prophets, and Tea Party leaders have been frantically fueling for the last year; pushing radical propaganda and warning of America's permanent, democratic demise under President Obama.

As I noted last year when the first red flags were raised about the specter of anti-government violence, what the GOP Noise Machine is doing today is embracing, and mainstreaming, the same kind of hate rhetoric and doomsday conspiratorial talk that flourished on the far-right fringes during the '90s. (Think Waco and black helicopters.) And legitimizing that kind of talk is dangerous.

On the one hand, right-wing media love mainstreaming vile, alarmist, anti-government rhetoric. Yet they're also hyper-sensitive to the charge that they're, y'know, mainstreaming vile, alarmist anti-government rhetoric and might also be goading some crazies into action. Consumed with Obama Derangement Syndrome, 'wingers literally cannot help themselves. Just this weekend, one prominent, albeit unhinged, right-wing site branded Obama as "suicide-bomber-in-chief." They've removed all sensible filters, which means the crazy talk flows 24-7.

Similar to the problematic birther brigade, the right-wing's crazy uncle who keeps showing up at public functions, radical insurrectionist rhetoric (i.e. war may have to be waged against the government) has been unleashed into the far-right masses and there's nothing that supposed leaders can do to contain it. They can't limit the violence that it continues to set off, either. Instead they scramble, like after last week's Pentagon attack, to shift the blame to the political left.

But the clumsy scapegoating doesn't work for obvious reasons: There are no major American liberal players, in media or politics, who today routinely preach the need to take up arms against the federal government. Conservative blogger Erick Erickson certainly couldn't point to any in his laugh-out-loud funny rewriting of history, in which he dutifully absolved the right-wing of any responsibility for anti-government violence, and instead blamed liberals.

Sorry, right-wingers, but you fostered this toxic environment. You're the ones who rally around Rush Limbaugh when he calls the president of the United States a Nazi. You're the ones who cheer when Glenn Beck compares our commander in chief to a dangerous, Hitler-like tyrant who wants to "take your gun away one way or another."

You're the ones who toasted the anti-Obama mobs last summer when members marched around with Swastika posters, brandished guns, and gave speeches about the need to wage bloody war against the federal government. You're the ones who compare health care reform to a bloody terrorism campaign waged by the government against its own citizens.

You cultivated this poisonous, arm-yourself-against-the-government hysteria -- and now you own it. You have to deal with increasingly predictable, and at times deadly consequences.

For instance, last year, it was Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), a right-wing media darling and Tea Party favorite, who said to Glenn Beck during an interview on his radio show that she wanted "people in Minnesota armed and dangerous" to oppose the Obama administration. She also stressed that Thomas Jefferson "told us 'having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,' and the people -- we the people -- are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country."

We've been down this road before.

On April 19, 1995, feeding off his hatred of the federal government, Timothy McVeigh drove a rented 20-foot Ryder truck and parked it in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. His truck's three-ton ammonium nitrate bomb detonated and sheared the north side off the Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds more. McVeigh later wrote, "I reached the decision to go on the offensive -- to put a check on government abuse of power." McVeigh wanted to "send a message to a government" by "bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government."

Back in 1995, McVeigh, keyed into far-right conspiracies and still seething about the siege at Waco, declared war on the federal government. Today, more and more combatants seem to be signing up for duty.

Last week's shooter, who traveled all the way from California to attack the Pentagon, certainly expressed a dark and unstable contempt for the government:

When the government can control how private property is used, and especially when the government controls the monetary system that is use to exchange private property, the government has the mechanisms and the motivation to control individuals to the smallest detail.

And:

When governments are able to confiscate the resources of their citizens to fund schemes that need only be justified by lies and deception enormous disasters can result.

And:

The imperative to defend the freedom of conscience must lead us to eliminate the role of the government in education and leave parents and communities free to raise their children as they see fit.

As blogger Charles Johnson, at Little Green Footballs correctly pointed out: "If you gave a speech at a tea party rally consisting of nothing but the quotes from Bedell you see above, you'd get a standing ovation."

But today, far-right bloggers scramble to deflect the connection. They excitedly point to the fact that Bedell was a 9-11 "truther," who demanded answers about the government's supposed involvement in the attacks that day, and so that automatically made the mentally ill gunman a liberal. But wait, wasn't it a right-wing Tea Party candidate for governor who recently made news when she refused to knock down the anti-government "truther" conspiracy?

Indeed. Texas Tea Party activist and candidate Debra Medina appeared on Glenn Beck's radio show and suggested she was open to the idea that the 9-11 attacks were an inside government job. "I have not taken a position on that," said Medina. (It's the same insurrectionist Medina who told a Tea Party crowd that "we are aware that stepping off into secession may in fact be a bloody war. We understand that the tree of freedom is occasionally watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.")

And meanwhile, aren't lots of Ron Paul supporters famously attached to the 9-11 conspiracy theory? And isn't that the same Ron Paul who ran away with the straw poll at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference convention in Washington, D.C.?

And isn't the 9-11 truther movement's most famous advocate the conspiratorial radio nut (and full-time Obama hater) Alex Jones, who has been mainstreamed by Fox News? And isn't that the same Alex Jones who today complains that Glenn Beck's show now sounds so much like Jones' that Beck is just ripping him off?

From this month's issue of Texas Monthly (subscription required):

More troubling, [Jones] told me, is the way personalities at the top of the media food chain have been co-opting his message. Glenn Beck is the worst, he said. "Two weeks after I have a guest on, they have him on. ... Glenn Beck is literally word for word taking everything I do and twisting it and turning it into a Roger Ailes Fox News evil doppelgänger of my show," he said" [emphasis added].

Bloggers also pointed to the fact that Bedell was reportedly a registered Democrat as more proof of his allegiance to the left. But that doesn't make much sense, either. Are bloggers really suggesting that no registered Democrats have attended anti-government Tea Party rallies this year? Haven't Tea Party leaders been bragging about how they're attracting a wide range of disaffected voters? And in fact, haven't Tea Party leaders been stressing how wrong it is to assume the movement is synonymous with the Republican Party? But suddenly a distant political registration proves all.

For the record, I'm not suggesting that Bedell was a dedicated Glenn Beck fan, or that Rush Limbaugh made him do it. I think the specifics of this case are too muddled for those kinds of conclusions. But the idea that panicked right-wing bloggers can turn Bedell into a tree-hugging Greenpeace activist is ludicrous. The allegation doesn't withstand scrutiny, simply because dangerous, anti-government rhetoric is not part of today's liberal dialogue.

It is however, a proud cornerstone of the conservative one.

Unfortunately, that obsession has not actually resulted in reporters consistently getting the story right. Basic facts that should be central to the debate over the propriety of reconciliation have gotten lost in the mix. First, nobody is talking about passing the entire health care reform package via reconciliation -- the Senate has already passed its bill, and did so by overcoming a filibuster. Reconciliation would, instead, be used to pass a much smaller package of changes to that legislation via majority vote. Second, there is nothing hasty or debate-stifling about using reconciliation in this case: Congress has been considering health care reform for more than a year. Finally, reconciliation isn't all that unusual, having been used in connection with some of the highest-profile legislation in recent decades, including President Bush's tax cuts and the welfare reform bill President Clinton signed. Those are facts, and they are not in dispute.

And yet the media are referring to reconciliation as the "nuclear option" and portraying it as an obscure procedural gimmick being considered in an attempt to circumvent Senate rules and "ram" health care legislation through Congress. The conservative media are going so far as to claim that use of reconciliation would be "unprecedented."

Funny, I don't remember this level of media outrage in 2003, when Republicans passed President Bush's tax cut legislation via reconciliation.

But what's really striking about the media's approach to reconciliation is how much it differs from the way they treated the Republicans' use of reconciliation to pass President Bush's 2003 tax cut legislation. Only two Democrats voted for that bill -- one of whom, Georgia Sen. Zell Miller, doesn't really count, as he was a de facto Republican -- and Vice President Dick Cheney had to break a 50-50 tie. (Three Senate Republicans joined 46 Democrats and one independent in voting against the bill, which these days would be described as "bipartisan opposition.")

And yet, in the weeks leading up to the reconciliation vote, the media didn't portray the Republicans as ramming tax cuts through Congress via unprecedented use of an obscure procedural gimmick to circumvent Senate rules. In fact, they didn't say much of anything at all about reconciliation.

The Senate reconciliation vote occurred on May 23, 2003. In the month of May, only one New York Times article so much as mentioned the use of reconciliation for the tax cuts -- a May 13, 2003, article that devoted a few paragraphs to wrangling over whether Senate Republicans could assign the bill number they wanted (S.2) to a bill approved via reconciliation. The Times also used the word "reconciliation" in a May 9, 2003, editorial, but gave no indication whatsoever of what it meant.

And that's more attention than most news outlets gave to the use of reconciliation that month. The Washington Post didn't run a single article, column, editorial, or letter to the editor that used the words "reconciliation" and "senate." Not one. USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press were similarly silent.

Cable news didn't care, either. CNN ran a quote by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley about the substance of the tax cuts in which he used the word "reconciliation" in passing -- but that was it. Fox News aired two interviews in which Republican members of Congress referred to the reconciliation process in order to explain why the tax cuts would be temporary, but neither they nor the reporters interviewing them treated reconciliation as a controversial tactic.

And ABC, CBS, NBC? Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Even the insider publications that tend to cover legislative minutia paid little attention to the Republicans' use of reconciliation. National Journal made passing mentions on May 3 and May 10, 2003, neither of which so much as hinted that reconciliation was unusual, inappropriate, or controversial. And Roll Call mentioned reconciliation exactly once: a May 14, 2003, article about Republican angst over having committed a "procedural snafu" that delayed their use of reconciliation. The article quoted Grassley saying of Senate parliamentarian Alan Frumin: "He could be technically right. ... But there's no need to have a strict interpretation of the rules like that." And, Roll Call noted, "Some GOP aides even hinted that Frumin's position as parliamentarian could be in danger if he continued to make rulings that disadvantaged their political goals."

You'd think that if reconciliation was really the controversial and heavy-handed tactic the media is currently portraying it as, there would have been a ton of media coverage of Senate Republican aides suggesting the parliamentarian would be fired if he didn't let the GOP handle reconciliation however they wanted. Particularly in light of the fact that Frumin was elevated to his post by the Senate Republican leadership in 2001 -- after they fired his predecessor for issuing rulings that complicated their efforts to use reconciliation for that year's round of tax cuts.

But there wasn't even a blip -- not a single mention in The New York Times, The Washington Post, or on ABC, CBS, NBC, or CNN. Well, that's not quite true: The Times did mention GOP unhappiness with Frumin on May 31, 2003, -- more than a week after the reconciliation vote took place.

Even if you look at the five months preceding the May 23, 2003, reconciliation vote, you find very little major media attention paid to the process. And when reconciliation was mentioned, it was only in passing, without any indication it was controversial. Like the March 14, 2003, Washington Post article that simply stated, "Parliamentary -- or 'reconciliation' -- language in both the Senate and House budget resolutions ... would ensure that a $ 726 billion tax package would need only 51 votes for Senate passage rather than the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster blocking a floor vote." Or Tim Russert's matter-of-fact statement on January 7, 2003: "[T]he Republicans are going to use a technique called reconciliation. It's a budget process where they would in effect take away the right of the Democrats to filibuster, which means you would only need 51 votes to pass this legislation." And that's about it: The Times, Post, the three broadcast networks and CNN combined for fewer than a half-dozen other mentions of the process over the course of five months, none of which portrayed it as controversial.

The current hyperventilation about the use of reconciliation is completely inconsistent with the way the media covered reconciliation in 2003. Back then, they didn't treat reconciliation as an unusual or controversial tactic -- in fact, they barely noticed it, even when Republicans made noises about firing the parliamentarian they elevated when they fired the previous parliamentarian.

Jamison Foser is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog and research and information center based in Washington, D.C. Foser also contributes to County Fair, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the Web, as well as original commentary. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook or sign up to receive his columns by email.

That's right -- Breitbart didn't know what was on the tapes. Take a few seconds to let the implications of that confession sink in, and what it means to Breitbart's already dented credibility.

Recall that for months Breitbart personally vouched for the ACORN videos, braying loudly that they could not be ignored and that they represented the unvarnished truth. Breitbart claimed he had told "the truth" every step of the way about the controversial ACORN clips and bragged that "[t]hroughout the ACORN story I applied my conscience to the material."

But now it turns out that Breitbart was fooled by the ACORN pimp hoax and mistakenly assumed, after watching deceptively edited clips from his protégé James O'Keefe, that O'Keefe strolled into ACORN offices wearing the outlandish pimp outfit.

Now Breitbart, the chief promoter of the ACORN sting, claims he "didn't know" the truth about the tapes. Although he's quick to insist it doesn't really matter anyway.

And yes, that sound you hear is Breitbart throwing O'Keefe under the bus. Because it's O'Keefe who Breitbart now blames for the "discrepancy" regarding the pimp hoax. It's O'Keefe, who Breitbart once touted as a should-be Pulitzer Prize winner, who created the false impression that he walked into ACORN offices last summer dressed as a garish pimp.

In a video interview posted Monday at Stark Reports, as well as The Brad Blog, Breitbart, filmed by blogger Mike Stark at the recent CPAC convention, claims he did not know the facts about O'Keefe's pimp outfit. (See video below.)

Essentially, Breitbart claims he was duped like everyone else who saw the ACORN clips created by O'Keefe. He was duped because at the outset, the misleading clips contain cut-away shots filmed outdoors, which feature O'Keefe decked out in the cane-fur-sunglasses pimp costume. (Breitbart deceptively refers to the dressed-as-pimp section as the "title sequence" of the videos, but it's really much more than that.)

It appears that many viewers just assumed O'Keefe wore the get-up while he surreptitiously filmed the ACORN workers who ignited a scandal when they gave O'Keefe and his pretend prostitute girlfriend, Hannah Giles, tax advice on how to run a brothel.

The dressed-as-a-pimp storyline was one Breitbart, O'Keefe, and others eagerly pushed last fall. And it was one the press quickly embraced. (In truth, O'Keefe was often dressed rather conservatively -- slacks and dress shirt -- when he talked to ACORN staffers, and he often presented himself as a law school student and an aspiring politician trying to rescue his prostitute girlfriend from her abusive pimp.) The outlandish costume was used as a prop to both mislead viewers, and to make ACORN staffers look like idiots for not being able to spot the obvious ruse.

But it was all a hoax. And for weeks now, ever since the trick was highlighted by blogger Brad Friedman, Breitbart has been wrestling with the glaring contradiction and struggling to explain his own role in the hoax. He's been straining to explain why, for instance, in a September 21 column in The Washington Times, Breitbart specifically claimed O'Keefe had been "dressed as a pimp" while receiving tax advice from ACORN workers.

That claim was categorically false.

He's been laboring to explain why he never sought a single correction last year when an avalanche of news outlets erroneously reported O'Keefe was dressed as a pimp inside ACORN offices.

And he's been struggling to explain why, in light of the pimp hoax, he refuses to release all of the unedited ACORN tapes so we can see what other discrepancies might pop up.

At least now, thanks to Stark, we finally have Breitbart's unequivocal admission: It was all O'Keefe's fault.

From the Stark interview [emphasis added; full transcript here]:

Hello to anyone that thinks that I was misleading. I did not know that there was a discrepancy between the title sequence -- I didn't think it was significant. I saw the videos. I read the transcripts to make sure that there was continuity, and my only mistake -- and I've admitted it to Brad, I've admitted it, now that I now know about it -- is that there is a title sequence and it doesn't reflect what he was wearing when he was in there. But he still represented himself as a pimp.

In the interview, Breitbart also stressed that because O'Keefe is an "independent film producer," Breitbart couldn't "tell him what to put on these things." And to make his point clear, when Stark pressed further about the hoax, Breitbart responded, "Your problem is with James."

Breitbart may have tried to shift the blame, but the admission was a devastating one. After all, he's the guy who won't stop bragging about how he's going to reinvent online journalism, and how he and his conservative activists are going to shame the liberal media with relentless fact-checking. Yet it turns out that for the biggest story of his career, Breitbart didn't even know what was on the ACORN tapes.

Not only did Breitbart clearly fail Journalism 101 in this case, but the way he's refused to publicly accept responsibility for the blunder represents another body blow to his credibility. To date, Breitbart has made no effort to correct the record on his site, which helped launch the ACORN sting. Which means that, to date, Breitbart's sycophantic readers have not been told that, oh, by the way, that whole dressed-as-a-pimp thing was bogus.

With that in mind, what journalist would take seriously the next undercover video sting Breitbart might sponsor, when we find out that for the all-important ACORN caper he didn't even know what was on the tapes until observers pointed out a glaring discrepancy?

Meanwhile, should we believe Breitbart's pimp spin? Tough to say. It probably represents his only way out of this mess. If Breitbart actually confessed that he knew the pimp costume story was a fake, and that not only did he do nothing to try to stop the misinformation last year but actively helped to spread the hoax, then I think his credibility would be permanently demolished. At that point even mainstream journalists, who tend to turn a blind eye to Breitbart's mendacity, would have to acknowledge he is nothing more than a partisan propagandist.

So, searching for a face-saving move, it appears Breitbart has opted for Plan B: Blame the young "independent film producer" O'Keefe, who brought the videos to Breitbart, complete with the misleading pimp costumes shots already embedded. (Does Breitbart really expect people to believe that he never had a single conversation with O'Keefe about the pimp outfit prior to the release of the videos?)

The problem with Breitbart's alibi (i.e. it's O'Keefe's fault!) is that it means Breitbart has copped to the fact that he didn't know what was on the tapes that he relentlessly hyped and used as a weapon in his oddly unhinged attack on ACORN, an underfunded and somewhat adrift nonprofit that advocates for poor people. (In one disturbed dispatch from a pro-ACORN rally last year, Breitbart attacked the attendees as "common street thugs, the dregs of society.")

His new song and dance (literally -- see the 6:40 mark in the video below) is that none of this matters because it's irrelevant whether O'Keefe was dressed flamboyantly inside the ACORN offices. It's true, as I've stated many times, that the costume question does not negate what was captured on the ACORN videos. But the hoax certainly does matter in terms of the larger ACORN attack and how the press embraced it. Breitbart knows it, and that's why he's been so slow to clear up the confusion. (And it's why he seemed so eager last year to spread the confusion.)

As the blogger Digby recently explained:

But the less than obvious reason this is a big deal is that the pimp and ho costumes were a send-up of over-the-top racial stereotypes that both reinforced some very ugly notions about the African American community, but more importantly, made these ACORN workers look as though they were so dumb they shouldn't be allowed to cross the street, much less handle tax dollars. And this was done for a reason.

The pimp hoax is not some footnote that can just be dismissed. The glaring blunder goes to the heart of Breitbart's credibility as a wannabe journalist. The lie was absolutely central to the rollout of last year's ACORN attack campaign. And now, six months later, Breitbart claims he didn't know the first thing about the hoax because, truth be told, he didn't even know what was on the ACORN tapes.

Cook's Illustrated's success in charging for online content is remarkable when you consider just how easy it is to find free recipes on the Internet. From the Food Network's Web page to Epicurious.com to countless amateur gourmets, you can quickly find a recipe for just about anything from meatloaf to chateaubriand with a port reduction sauce.

But Cook's Illustrated has one big thing going for it: trust. Subscribers trust the magazine's recipes and equipment recommendations because of the dozens of tests that go into each one. And unlike most magazines, Cook's Illustrated doesn't run ads, so readers don't have to wonder if the magazine is recommending an OXO garlic press on Page 13 because there's an ad for an OXO salad spinner on Page 21.

There are lessons here for news organizations like The New York Times that want to charge for online content. People may pay for things they don't necessarily need, or that don't give them everything they want -- but it's doubtful they'll pay for things they don't trust. Granted, it is almost certainly not plausible for the Times to forgo ad revenue, but that just means the paper has to be careful to maintaining its readers' trust in other ways.

Unfortunately, the Times seems to be doing very little to give readers a reason to trust its journalism.

The two most basic things a news organization needs to do in order to earn trust: Make as few mistakes as possible, and quickly and clearly correct the mistakes that do occur (as some inevitably will). The Times itself has made clear the importance of those two things. In 2005, a New York Times "Credibility Group" prepared a report (PDF) for executive editor Bill Keller on steps the paper had "taken to increase readers' confidence in The Times." Among the Credibility Group's recommendations:

Nytimes.com should improve its electronic posting and archiving of corrections.

Corrections should be posted as promptly as possible, even before they appear in the paper. A correction should appear in the text of the online article, with a note appended to inform readers of the change.

Nytimes.com should stop its current practice of keeping outdated and possibly inaccurate multiple versions of news reports posted for several days. The final New York print version, when it becomes available, should supersede all others.

In response (PDF) to the Credibility Group's report, Keller wrote:

It's amazing that some people at this paper believe fact-checking is someone else's responsibility. It is not. Accuracy is everyone's responsibility.

[...]

Mistakes that are not corrected live on in the archives, and get repeated in subsequent stories.

[...]

I have asked Al [Siegal] to consult with Len Apcar to make sure that corrections are posted as promptly as possible on Web versions of our stories, and that the website make a routine practice of promptly substituting the final New York print version of news stories in place of earlier versions.

Unfortunately, that's just talk. When it comes to actually fact-checking and posting corrections when necessary, the Times' track record in recent years has been abysmal. 

Let's begin with the most clear-cut example imaginable: A factual error The New York Times has already acknowledged, but refuses to correct on the Web.

On March 18, 1994, the Times published an article by Jeff Gerth that falsely reported that during Bill Clinton's tenure as governor of Arkansas, Tyson Foods "benefited from a variety of state actions, including $9 million in government loans." The article suggested that Tyson won such benefits because of its lawyer's personal and financial relationship with the Clintons. Over the next few weeks, two more Times articles and an editorial mentioned the $9 million in loans Tyson received from Clinton's state government. But those loans never happened, and on April 20, 1994 -- more than a month after the initial false report -- The New York Times ran a correction stating, "Tyson did not receive $9 million in loans from the state."

In May 2007, Media Matters discovered that the articles were available on the Times' Web page, with the original false claim about $9 million in loans, and without a correction appended. Even after Media Matters pointed out the articles, the Times did nothing for months, as I explained in a September 2007 column: 

In four different places, a visitor to the Times' website can read that Tyson benefited from $9 million in government loans while Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas. It isn't true, and The New York Times has admitted it isn't true, yet they leave the false claim on their site, without appending a correction, even after it has been publicly brought to their attention multiple times.

This is really very simple: if The New York Times cares about the truth at all, they'll append a correction to these three articles and this editorial.

Then, on October 17, 2007, the Times posted the following under the header "Correction: For the Record":

An article on July 5, 1994, about James B. Blair, then the general counsel for the Tyson Foods company and a longtime confidant and personal emissary for Bill and Hillary Clinton, misstated benefits that Tyson received from the state of Arkansas while Mr. Clinton was governor. Although the company did benefit from at least $7 million in state tax credits, it did not receive $9 million in loans from the state. (The error appeared in three other articles and in an editorial in 1994, all of which were corrected on April 20 of that year. The correction should have been appended then in The Times's archives to those articles: one on the front page on March 18 about Mrs. Clinton's commodity trades in the late 1970s; a March 19 article about President Clinton's defense of Mrs. Clinton's investments; a March 30 article about the White House's disclosure of the amount Mrs. Clinton invested in commodities trades, and a March 31 editorial.)

The error in the July 5 article was discovered during research after the watchdog group Media Matters twice pointed out that the 1994 correction had not been appended to the other articles. 

Well, it took several months and a great deal of prodding, but at least the Times solved the problem, right? Wrong. To this very day -- nearly two and a half years later -- those articles are still available on the Times site. They still contain the false claim about the $9 million in loans. And the necessary correction still is not appended. See for yourself here, here, here, and here. Even after the Times admitted it had failed to append the correction to the articles, it still didn't append the correction!

Remember, back in 2005, the Times' Credibility Group wrote: "A correction should appear in the text of the online article, with a note appended to inform readers of the change." Executive Editor Bill Keller responded by instructing two staffers "to make sure that corrections are posted as promptly as possible on Web versions of our stories." It seems there remain some glitches in the system.

The best you can say for the Times' failure to correct those 1994 articles is that the paper has been shockingly negligent. The current controversy over the paper's coverage of conservative activist James O'Keefe's ACORN videos cannot be characterized in such charitable terms.

As Media Matters' Eric Boehlert and Brad Friedman of The Brad Blog have documented, the Times reported that O'Keefe visited ACORN offices dressed "in the gaudy guise of pimp" and "so outlandishly that he might have been playing in a risqué high school play." But it turns out that there is no evidence that O'Keefe actually wore his "outlandish" costume in his dealings with ACORN employees. (What's the difference? O'Keefe's costume was so over-the-top that anybody who took him seriously while he was wearing it would look absurd, which is presumably why O'Keefe wanted the Times and other media to believe he wore the getup into ACORN's offices.)

According to Friedman, when contacted about the Times' baseless reporting that O'Keefe was dressed in the gaudy costume while meeting with ACORN employees, New York Times "Senior Editor/Standards" Greg Brock responded:

Our article included that description because Mr. O'Keefe himself explained how he was dressed --- and appeared on a live Fox show wearing what HE said was the same exact costume he wore to ACORN's offices. ... If there is a correction to be made, it seems it would start with Mr. O'Keefe himself. We believe him. Therefore there is nothing for us to correct.

That would be a reasonable response -- if the Times had reported that O'Keefe said he visited the offices dressed in the costume. But that isn't what the Times reported: The paper reported that O'Keefe did visit the offices dressed in the costume. Brock's suggestion that the Times was right to state that as independent, verified fact based on nothing more than O'Keefe's word is simply stunning. But it only got worse when New York Times public editor (that's what the Times calls its ombudsman) Clark Hoyt got involved. According to Friedman, Hoyt told him:

Under the circumstances, I am recommending to Times editors that they avoid language that says or suggests that O'Keefe was dressed as a pimp when he captured the ACORN employees on camera. I still don't see that a correction is in order, because that would require conclusive evidence that The Times was wrong, which I haven't seen.

That is an absolutely amazing statement. Hoyt clearly agrees that there is no evidence that O'Keefe "was dressed as a pimp" when he filmed the ACORN employees, otherwise he wouldn't recommend that the Times avoid using such language. But he doesn't think the Times owes its readers a correction, because he hasn't seen "conclusive evidence" the paper was wrong. That's ridiculous: The Times could (and should) easily append a correction stating that there is no evidence O'Keefe was wearing the costume -- that doesn't require "conclusive evidence that the Times was wrong," it simply requires acknowledging that the Times made an assertion without evidence and retracting the assertion.

Hoyt essentially said The New York Times has -- and should have -- higher standards of evidence for running retractions than for making assertions in the first place. That is exactly the opposite of the way a trustworthy news organization would behave.

And it fits a pattern of behavior in which the Times seems to look for any excuse not to correct faulty reporting. Last year, Los Angeles Times reporter Jim Rainey wrote a devastating piece about an "egregiously error-ridden tribute to Walter Cronkite" by The New York Times' Alessandra Stanley. Rainey quoted Hoyt describing Stanley's piece as the product of "a television critic with a history of errors [who] wrote hastily and failed to double-check her work, and editors who should have been vigilant [but] were not." Rainey also noted that in 2005, former public editor Byron Calame wrote about "what he said was a cut-and-dried inaccuracy, in which Stanley accused Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera of grandstanding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. ... Rather than agree to a correction, however, Times Editor Bill Keller defended Stanley."

None of this is meant to deny that the Times is capable of producing quality journalism or that it often does so. The problem is that when the Times stubbornly refuses to correct glaring errors of fact, it undermines that journalism by making it impossible for readers to trust the paper. The Times' reluctance to run necessary corrections presumably stems from a concern that its credibility would be damaged if it is seen as mistake-prone. But the paper's credibility stands to suffer far more if it is seen as refusing to correct mistakes. As Keller told Rainey: "One thing that sets a serious newspaper apart from most other institutions in our society is that we own up to our mistakes with corrections, editor's notes and other accountability devices, including the public editor's column."

If the Times wants to be a newspaper worth paying for, it needs to live up to Keller's description of a serious newspaper.

Jamison Foser is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog and research and information center based in Washington, D.C. Foser also contributes to County Fair, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the Web, as well as original commentary. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook or sign up to receive his columns by email.

The wisecracking Gutfeld especially loved the whole pimp-'n'-ho premise of the sting and was stunned that ACORN staffers bought the ruse, considering the outlandish way Giles and O'Keefe were dressed when they strolled into the community organizers' offices. In the ACORN clips posted online, viewers could see Giles strutting around outside in a revealing outfit, while O'Keefe was decked out in fur with sunglasses and a goofy-looking cane.

As Gutfeld excitedly mentioned to Giles [emphasis added]:

GUTFELD: It's amazing to me because, seriously, you guys look like you came from a frat party where it was pimps 'n' hos. I would think they just would've said, "Get out of here!" But in fact they were trying to help you set up a brothel.

According to Gutfeld, O'Keefe walked right into the ACORN offices looking like he came from a costume party, and they still didn't catch on.

But, of course, we now know Gutfeld had the story all wrong. As I noted last week, and as blogger Brad Friedman had pointed out previously, James O'Keefe never wore his crazy hustler outfit to meet with community organizers. Instead, the '70s-style blaxploitation pimp costume O'Keefe helped make famous was a propaganda tool used after the fact to deceive the public about the undercover operation.

Yet in the very infancy of the ACORN scandal, Fox News host Gutfeld was peddling a false story about O'Keefe's pimp costume, a false story that quickly morphed into accepted fact. (Eventually, after an avalanche of repetition, didn't pretty much everyone believe O'Keefe was decked out as a pimp?)

It quickly morphed into fact because the lead propagandists helped to spread the tall tale. And now they won't come clean about their role.

For instance, during that September 12 broadcast, Giles said nothing to set the record straight. That night, she sat and listened to Gutfeld tell the phony pimp story, and she became complicit in the lie. Obviously, Giles knew her undercover pal didn't look like he just came from a costume party when he walked into ACORN outposts with his undercover camera. But on Fox News, when Gutfeld spread that tale, Giles did nothing to correct the record. 

Soon, her undercover cohort joined in the misinformation campaign. Two days later, O'Keefe appeared on Fox & Friends decked out as a pimp. Host Steve Doocy announced that O'Keefe was "dressed exactly in the same outfit that he wore to these ACORN offices up and down the Eastern Seaboard."

O'Keefe made no effort to correct Doocy's falsehood.

And then one week later, writing in The Washington Times, O'Keefe and Giles' mentor, conservative activist Andrew Breitbart, whose website Big Government first hosted the ACORN clips, added to the misinformation movement. He wrote that O'Keefe had been "dressed as a pimp" while "getting" tax advice inside ACORN offices.

It was all part of a campaign, often fueled by winks and nods, to plant the indelible image of O'Keefe strolling into inner-city ACORN workplaces on summer afternoons decked out in his furry pimp costume and clueless employees not batting an eye.

It wasn't enough to uncover dubious practices inside the offices. Breitbart and his colleagues, consumed by hatred for an underfunded and somewhat adrift nonprofit, were determined to demonize ACORN (a "thug organization," as Giles put it) and paint its workers as immoral fools for not being able to spot the spoof a mile away. (In truth, O'Keefe was dressed rather conservatively -- slacks and dress shirt -- when he talked to ACORN staffers, and he often presented himself as an aspiring politician.)

Last week, when highlighting how the pimp story was a fake, I stressed two things. First, that fact does not change what happened on the Candid Camera tapes, and it certainly doesn't excuse the behavior of the low-level ACORN staffers who seemed shockingly eager to help people skirt the law. Second, the pimp revelation does raise all sorts of questions about the ethics and accuracy of Breitbart, O'Keefe, and Giles and indicate that the hoax should send up a red flag among journalists. Breitbart claims he's championing a new breed of "journalism." But is his brand built on lies?

If the trio's willing to obfuscate about clothing, then reporters and pundits need to use extreme caution when dealing with any claim they make in the future. And that probably goes double for O'Keefe, who offered up pretty dubious spin following his arrest in New Orleans last month in connection with the Keystone Kop capering inside Sen. Mary Landrieu's office.

So last week, Media Matters helped highlight how the pimp story was bogus, and what did Breitbart do in response? Did he accept responsibility and make plain to his Big Government readers that any confusion on the pimp issue was his fault and that he regrets not being straight about it?

Of course not. Breitbart, allergic to fair play and decency, at first insisted he had nothing to correct in his Washington Times column, even though he falsely reported O'Keefe was "dressed as a pimp" while receiving ACORN advice. He then posted a nasty, insincere "correction" via Twitter. And at CPAC last weekend, his voice dripping with contempt, Breitbart announced he was "so sorry" that O'Keefe "apparently" hadn't been dressed as a flamboyant pimp when taping ACORN. (Breitbart ought to take lessons from fellow conservative Michelle Malkin on how grown-ups post corrections.)

Meanwhile, Giles last week flatly denied they had ever claimed O'Keefe entered ACORN offices as a pimp:

"We never claimed that he went in with a pimp costume," said Giles. "That was b-roll. It was purely b-roll. He was a pimp, I was a prostitute, and we were walking in front of government buildings to show how the government was whoring out the American people."

Ah, the B-roll. For those unfamiliar with the video production term, B-roll is secondary footage often included in TV reports that shows the featured subjects in some sort of pedestrian action mode, like walking through their office or taking a phone call at their desk.

When the ACORN tapes were first posted at Big Government, they contained plenty of B-roll, or cutaway shots, featuring O'Keefe in his flamboyant pimp outfit outside. And, of course, that's a key reason viewers and news consumers first got the false notion that O'Keefe did his entire undercover sting in the costume, because the video-makers left that obvious impression. (Since O'Keefe did the ACORN filming, he's rarely seen on tape inside the offices.)

Indeed, wasn't the entire point of the deceptively edited B-roll clips to create confusion from the outset? Giles says they "never claimed" O'Keefe wore a pimp outfit, but why else would they purposefully include footage of him in the video if not to create that false impression? Meaning, the videos in and of themselves represent proof that Breitbart, O'Keefe, and Giles knowingly tried to peddle the pimp lie.

As blogger Conor Friedersdorf sensibly noted last week:

After watching the ACORN videos, I shared them with several apolitical friends who don't follow the blogosphere very closely. All assumed Mr. O'Keefe walked into the ACORN offices wearing the pimp suit.

For me, the "Hey, look, I'm dressed like a pimp" B-roll clips posted on Big Government tell us all we need to know about the purposeful attempt to mislead the public. But if you want more proof, let's continue.

Let's go back and reread a Washington Post article from last September and note the picture painted by O'Keefe. It seems pretty definitive [emphasis added]:

The proposition was outrageous, outlandish and right up James E. O'Keefe III's alley. Hannah Giles was on the phone from Washington, D.C., and she was asking him to dress as her pimp, walk into the offices of the ACORN community activist group, openly admit to wanting to buy a house to run as a brothel and see what happened.

It was serendipity, O'Keefe said Thursday. On that day in May, he was still burning mad after watching a YouTube video of ACORN workers breaking padlocks off foreclosed homes and barging in. "I was upset," he said.

O'Keefe, 25, packed his grandfather's old wide-brimmed derby hat from his swing-dancing days, his grandmother's ratty chinchilla shoulder throw, and a cane he bought at a dollar store, then drove from his parents' home in northern New Jersey to the District to execute the idea with Giles, 20.

Last September, the Post interviewed O'Keefe, who told the newspaper all about how the ACORN videos came to be. According to his telling, Giles called and asked him to dress as a pimp and "walk into the offices of the ACORN community activist group," as the Post relayed it. And after getting Giles' call, O'Keefe told the Post, he packed up his pimp costume and drove south to execute the plan.

But today, Giles claims they never claimed O'Keefe was dressed as a pimp for the sting. 

Meanwhile, I already noted the time when Giles appeared on Fox News and remained silent while the host pushed the bogus talking point about the pimp costume. But that wasn't the only time Breitbart and friends remained mum.

Question: Isn't sitting idly by while a lie is broadcast about your story nearly as bad as broadcasting the lie yourself?

Let's go back to Sean Hannity's show on September 14, 2009. (That's the same day O'Keefe appeared on Fox News in his full pimp costume.) Giles and Breitbart were the guests, and host Hannity was hyping the ACORN clips (transcript from the Nexis database):

GILES: Yes. Imagine that. Everyone is suffering and looking for a loan and they tell us and you know, we're going through all this financial problems, and they're telling me to bury funds in the back yard so that the government or my pimp can't come steal the money.

HANNITY: And by the way, and he is the least convincing pimp that I would think in the world. But he pulled -- you guys pulled it off and did a great job.

Hannity claimed O'Keefe wasn't even convincing as a pimp, yet was still able to fool ACORN employees, to "pull it off." Of course, as we now know, O'Keefe wasn't dressed as a pimp inside the offices, so that didn't fool any of the employees.

So what did Breitbart and Giles do as Hannity pushed the phony pimp story on national TV? Did they jump in quickly to set the record straight, so no misinformation spread across the airwaves? Did they stress how important it was to be factually accurate about the ACORN sting operation and that neither one of them wanted to mislead Hannity's viewers into thinking O'Keefe was actually dressed as a pimp on the undercover videos?

Nope. Neither Breitbart nor Giles tried to correct Hannity, because by all indications, O'Keefe, Giles, and Breitbart wanted the bogus pimp story to be pushed in the press.

The same dance played out on November 16, 2009, when Hannity again hyped the tapes. His guests that night were O'Keefe and Giles (transcript from Nexis):

HANNITY: All right. You were both dressed as -- and by the way, you are the least convincing pimp in the entire world. I mean, I just don't -- I don't get it.

O'KEEFE: It's pretty outrageous. It's ridiculous. And look at the way that Hannah's dressed. They didn't blink an eye.

HANNITY: And by the way, Hannah, you are the least convincing prostitute. I want that to be clear, too, in the entire world.

But in all honesty, it is outrageous.

Not only did Giles and O'Keefe fail to correct Hannity's false implication that O'Keefe had worn the pimp outfit while secretly filming, but O'Keefe enthusiastically agreed the whole thing was "pretty ridiculous." 

Last point: When many in the mainstream press began to erroneously report the pimp costume falsehood, did Breitbart or O'Keefe or Giles contact reporters to set them straight? Out of a concern for accuracy and fair play, did any of them step forward and spell out the facts, which were routinely mangled in the press? Did Breitbart, who seems obsessed with seeking corrections, contact New York Times editors, for instance, when the newspaper last year mistakenly reported that when he "visited ACORN offices," O'Keefe was "dressed so outlandishly that he might have been playing in a risque high school play"? Did Breitbart get in touch with the New York Post when it made a similar blunder? NPR? The Dallas Morning News?

I suspect the answer is no, because the right-wing activists wanted the falsehood to flourish. And, as I've detailed, they helped plant it in the first place.

But now the fooling is over, and it's time for Breitbart, O'Keefe, and Giles to come clean about the ACORN pimp hoax and their role in spreading it.

Follow Eric Boehlert on Twitter.

The Daily Beast and Forbes magazine have both named Hiatt one of America's five most influential liberal journalists -- though the Daily Beast acknowledged that many liberals would question that assessment given Hiatt's "near-neocon" views on foreign policy, while asserting "there is no doubt at all that he is a traditional liberal in all matters domestic."

The assertion that a neocon -- near or otherwise -- is the nation's fifth most influential liberal is self-evidently absurd. But that bizarre assessment isn't limited to Tunku Varadarajan, the Scaife-funded Hoover Institution fellow who compiled both lists. NewsBusters' Warner Todd Huston has called Hiatt a "socialist" -- a kinder assessment than that of his colleague, Matthew Sheffield, who thinks the Post's editorial page is merely "liberal." Fellow NewsBuster Noel Sheppard expresses surprise when the Post publishes an op-ed that is "counter to leftwing economic dogma." Tim Russert described the Post in 2006 as "hardly an organ for Republican views."

Even the Post's own media critic, Howard Kurtz, says that the paper's editorial page is "left-leaning" and that "liberals are pretty well represented on the Post op-ed page" by, among others, Richard Cohen. For his part, Hiatt has insisted that the Post has "a pretty good balance on the oped page."

So, the idea that the Post's opinion operation is liberal is pretty well-entrenched, if not unanimously held. But is it true?

Let's start with the Iraq war -- that's kind of a big thing, being a war and all. A few years ago, I took a look at the reaction in the Post's opinion pages to Colin Powell's deeply flawed presentation to the United Nations:

Powell's U.N. address occurred on February 5, 2003. A look at the editorials and columns that appeared in the next day's edition of The Washington Post makes clear how quickly the media ran to Powell's side.

The Post itself led things off with an editorial headlined -- what else? -- "Irrefutable" that declared, "AFTER SECRETARY OF STATE Colin L. Powell's presentation to the United Nations Security Council yesterday, it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction. ... Mr. Powell's evidence ... was overwhelming."

The Post's columnists took it from there. Four Washington Post columnists wrote on February 6 about Powell's presentation the day before. All four were positively glowing.

[...]

Not only did all four buy what Powell was selling, they did so without an examination of the goods. The salesman's smile, his voice -- and his impeccable credentials as an "old trooper" -- were enough.

Worse, three of the four directly attacked anyone who would dare disagree with Powell. You'd have to be a "fool" or a "Frenchman" to disagree with Powell's assertions, according to [Richard] Cohen. [George] Will added that such foolishness would require the closed mind of a conspiracy theorist. [Jim] Hoagland concluded that skeptics were guilty of "enduring bad faith" and seemed to speak for the entire punditocracy when he observed that to remain skeptical of the Bush administration's case required the belief "that Colin Powell lied." And that, of course, was unthinkable.

Yes, that's the same Richard Cohen who Howard Kurtz claims represents the liberal point of view in the Post's opinion pages. But we'll come back to Cohen and the Post's columnists later.

That unanimous praise for Powell's presentation -- and sneering contempt for anyone who would dare question the great man -- set the tone for years of Washington Post cheerleading for the Iraq war, the enthusiasm of which was matched only by its lack of fidelity to the truth.

A 2004 Post editorial actually defended Dick Cheney's statements linking Iraq and September 11. In 2007, an editorial conflated -- as the Bush administration had done -- the Sunni insurgent group "Al Qaeda in Iraq" with the Osama bin Laden-led group behind the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

Meanwhile, Post editorials lavished praise on war supporters and attacked critics of the war, with a disingenuousness typically associated with a political campaign rather than a newspaper editorial board. John McCain was a staunch supporter of the war, so he was praised for his prewar "foresight" in an editorial that conveniently overlooked his repeated assertions that U.S. troops would be greeted as "liberators." On the other hand, Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were critical of the war during the Democratic presidential primary campaign -- so the Post blasted them for a "troubling" "refusal ... to acknowledge the indisputable military progress of the past year." In fact, the candidates had acknowledged such progress, but that didn't stand in the way of the Post's dishonest demagoguery.

The Post editorial board's rabid, Rovian willingness to do whatever it took to support the war effort and discredit its critics was most vividly illustrated by its attacks on Joe Wilson, and its defense of the Bush administration's attacks on him.  

An April 9, 2006, Post editorial titled "A Good Leak," for example, bashed Wilson and defended President Bush's reported authorization of Scooter Libby to disclose selected classified portions of a 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction program. In its zeal to defend the leak, the Post went so far as to claim there was nothing "particularly unusual" about the leak -- a claim not even Libby was willing to make. As Media Matters detailed at the time, the editorial "echoed numerous falsehoods also promoted by conservative media figures and Republican activists" and "seemingly ignored its own paper's past reporting on the CIA leak scandal, which has thoroughly debunked the false claims made by conservative and Republican figures and echoed in the April 9 Post editorial." Later that year, a Post editorial falsely asserted that the notion of a coordinated White House effort to discredit Wilson had been disproved -- a claim immediately echoed by several Fox News anchors and commentators.

The Post's stable of opinion columnists also defended Libby and attacked special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the outting of Joe Wilson's wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Merely banging the drums for war -- and smearing those who got in the way -- isn't enough at "near-neocon" Fred Hiatt's Washington Post, which has resolutely opposed efforts to bring those responsible for Bush administration torture policies to account, even as it professes its opposition to those policies.

But The Daily Beast's assessment of Hiatt acknowledged he is a "near-neocon" on foreign policy. Perhaps we should move on to domestic matters, and see weather the claim that "there is no doubt at all that he is a traditional liberal in all matters domestic" holds water.

First, a reminder of the Post editorial board's treatment of the two most immediate past presidents: When the Post did get around to editorializing against the Bush administration's "lawlessness" -- their word, not mine -- they still couldn't bring themselves to call for a special counsel to investigate the wrongdoing. Those with long memories may remember that the Post called for such an investigation of President Clinton's real estate history -- even as it acknowledged there was "no credible charge" the Clintons had done anything wrong. That's your "liberal" Washington Post: demanding investigations of a Democratic president despite a lack of credible charges, then refusing to call for such an investigation of a "lawless" Republican president. (It should be noted that Fred Hiatt joined the editorial board in 1996 and took over as editor in 2000, so he is not responsible for the absurd call for a Whitewater special counsel.)

And that pretty much sums up the relative interest in Bush and Clinton scandals among the Post editorial board, which obsessed over the Whitewater non-scandal, then ignored the paper's own reporting in order to defend the Bush administration's controversial purging of U.S. Attorneys. The paper demanded investigations when it didn't see any "credible charge" of wrongdoing by the Clintons, and refused to do so when it thought the Bush administration was breaking the law left and right.

That isn't the only example of the Post blatantly holding Democrats and Republicans to different standards. Despite having called for Teresa Heinz Kerry to release her taxes when John Kerry was running for president, the Post's editorial board suddenly lost interest in the tax records of wealthy spouses when John McCain ran for president. And in April 2008, Media Matters found that the Post had published 20 times as many editorials and opinion pieces that mentioned Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright as mentioned John McCain and John Hagee.

OK, how about issues? Social Security is kind of a big one, no? Surely an editorial page run by someone who is "a traditional liberal in all matters domestic" must be strongly against dismantling Social Security with a privatization scheme, right?  But what do we have here? It's a column on Dick Armey's FreedomWorks web site, written in 2004 by conservative icon Jack Kemp, and it is headlined "On Social Security: The Washington Post Gets It." Interesting:

[O]n August 14th, 2004, the Post editorialized that, "Mr. Bush's sympathizers are right that Social Security privatization could reduce long-term deficits, and right that the nation should not be deterred by the transition costs." The Post also discarded the class-warfare mantra that has consumed Democratic candidates and party loyalists for so long by reasoning that: "Privatization could also stimulate economic growth, boosting tax revenues and so strengthening the nation's fiscal prospects via a second route." They continued, "Private accounts would boost national savings" thus "savings would become more plentiful," which, in turn, would "stimulate extra corporate investment and growth."

The Washington Post editorial writers realize that Social Security, as it currently stands, is the "risky scheme."

Well, that doesn't sound like the work of a "traditional liberal in all matters domestic," does it? But there's more: When Republicans decided that "personal accounts" polled better than "private accounts," the Post editorial page shifted its terminology. And a 2006 Post editorial peddled the disingenuous spin that Bush's Social Security scheme wasn't actually privatization and blasted Democrats for "cynicism" in opposing it. Much more has been written about the Post's hostility to Social Security -- but it's all pretty much what you'd expect once you know that the Post's editorial board relied on analysis of privatization that was conducted by an investment firm that would benefit from it.

Speaking of dubiously sourced Post editorials, here's a fun one: The Post praised No Child Left Behind, citing a study that specifically warned that "it is difficult to say whether or how much the No Child Left Behind law is driving the achievement gains." 

Then there's the paper's editorials praising John McCain for an immigration stance he had already backed away from and campaign finance promises he had already hedged on and saluting him for being a "champion" of reform just a few weeks after acknowledging that his decision to "deriv[e] some benefit from the matching funds system and then abandon[] it when that was to his advantage" was "not Mr. McCain's proudest moment as a reformer."

And who could forget the Post's startlingly naive editorial endorsements of John Roberts and Samuel Alito?

At this point, you might want to get up, stretch your legs, walk around the block -- so far, we've just taken a quick look at the Post's editorials; the paper's columnists are up next.

Let's start with David Broder -- he is, after all, the much-lauded "dean" of the Washington press corps, and frequently described as a liberal. In the context of the Post's roster of opinion writers, he may be one. But from his 1969 complaint that nasty anti-war activists were out to "break" an unfairly maligned president Nixon to his 2006 description of anti-war activists as "elitists" and his Cheney-esque 2007 slur that Democrats have little "sympathy for" the military, David Broder has made clear that he is no liberal.

I've previously laid out at some length the case against David Broder's sterling reputation. This is a man who thought that President Clinton should have resigned because he "may have" lied about an affair, but who didn't think President Bush should have done so after he lied his way into a war. Not even when he declared Bush "lawless and reckless" did he think resignation was in order. And, having piously insisted that he and his beltway buddies don't like being lied to when Bill Clinton wasn't telling the truth about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Broder lavishes praise upon Sarah Palin, a politician who only lies when she speaks. And when she writes.

In his 2006 column declaring Bush "lawless and reckless," Broder seemed more upset with the "vituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers on the left" and gratuitously slammed Al Gore and John Kerry for a "know-it-all arrogance rankled Midwesterners such as myself" (no surprise, really: During the 2000 campaign, Broder bashed Gore for the sin of offering too many details about "what he wants to do as president.")

In 2005, Broder blamed congressional Democrats -- who were in the minority -- for a failure to conduct oversight hearings; in 2007, when Democrats were in charge, he bashed them for doing so. He's against investigating torture, and he was against investigating the outing of a CIA agent. But he's in favor of investigating the Clintons' marriage (not the marriages of Republicans, though!).

Anyway: there's much more here, including the fact that David Broder praised President Bush's response to Katrina. What more do you need to know?

At least Broder seems to recognize that torture is bad, even if he doesn't want to do anything about it. The same cannot be said for Post columnist Richard Cohen, the so-called liberal who sneeringly dismissed Iraq war skeptics as fools and Frenchmen and who wrote that opponents of the war did not "feel compelled to prove a case or stick to the facts." The easily-scared Cohen just loves torture. No, no, "loves" isn't strong enough. He lurves torture. And he defends a rapist (only he calls the rape a "seduction"). And defends Monica Goodling. And downplays the "crappy little crime" of outing a CIA agent (a defense that involved spreading falsehoods about the victims).

Cohen has accused "leftists" of thinking "America is usually at fault in war" -- the kind of sentiment that makes one want to check to see if Karl Rove's lips move when Cohen speaks. And the torture-loving, rapist-defending Cohen even bashed Barack Obama for a lack of "moral clarity" because -- get this -- Obama bowed towards the Japanese emperor. He sided with President Bush during the controversy over the deal to allow a company owned by the government of Dubai to take control of six U.S. ports, inaccurately blasting critics of the deal as bigots.

He defends financial company executives and the business media, and attacks comedians who suggest the media should have done a better of covering the financial crisis. That wasn't his only attack on a comedian: He also blasted Stephen Colbert's "rude" skit at a White House Correspondents Association dinner, but didn't expressed any concern over a skit two years earlier in which George Bush made light of the lack of WMD in Iraq.

Cohen opposes affirmative action with the well-off white man's certainty that "everyone knows" race "has become supremely irrelevant." He peddles the bogus right-wing myth that "being pro-choice is a litmus test for all Democrats" (accusing in the process Democrats, but not Republicans, of "counter[ing] reasonable questions and qualms with slogans").

During the 2000 campaign, he caricatured Gore as dishonest even after acknowledging that portrayal was baseless -- then, years later, criticized his colleagues for doing the same thing. During the 2008 Democratic primaries, Cohen trashed Hillary Clinton for "incessant exaggerations," "cheap shots," and "flights into hallucinatory history" -- then, a few months later, denounced the "calumny, a libel and a ferocious mugging" Clinton was forced to endure, as though he had played no role in it. He joined David Broder in declaring McCain principled and credible while ignoring voluminous examples to the contrary. And Cohen touted McCain's "visceral hostility" towards lobbyists, ignoring the fact that McCain was busily surrounding himself with them.

And when liberals criticize him, Cohen whines that they "would have been great communists" if they had been born earlier -- which, I suppose, means Cohen would have made a great McCarthy had he been born earlier.

Ruth Marcus has called the Obama administration's criticism of Fox News "Nixonian," which might be a reasonable point if the Obama folks were bugging Fox's phones and auditing their taxes, or if they were plotting to kill Chris Wallace. But as it is: Not so much. She ignored key evidence against former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in a column defending him from allegations that he may have perjured himself. She has argued against investigating Bush administration torture and domestic spying -- bizarrely suggesting that doing so is inconsistent with "ensuring that these mistakes are not repeated" -- and insisted that Berkeley must not fire John Yoo in wake of the release of memos Yoo wrote justifying torture. And Marcus frequently (and sometimes misleadingly) bangs the Social-Security-is-in-crisis drum -- which seems to be something of a requirement for Post columnists -- and has written approvingly of a "reform" plan that includes privatization.

Dana Milbank shifts seamlessly between calling the secretary of state a "bitch" and lecturing others on civility, calls the AFL-CIO and NAACP the "far left," draws inane equivalences between Democrats and Republicans, mocked Democrats' concern over the Downing Street Memo indications that Bush had lied about Iraq, adopted the spurious portrayal of Sonia Sotomayor as possessing an unimpressive intellect and being "abrasive" (perhaps we should be impressed he avoided the word "bitch") and mocked Barack Obama as "presumptuous" -- misrepresenting quotes in the process. He lazily adopted John McCain's budget demagoguery and the Heritage Foundation's attack on global warming science. Little surprise, then, that Milbank has a preference for Republican presidential candidates.

Now: Broder, Cohen, Marcus and Milbank are among the more liberal of the Post's columnists. The conservatives -- a virtual alumni association for former Republican presidential administration staff -- are even worse.

Bill Kristol, for example. A former aide to Dan Quayle and editor of The Weekly Standard, Kristol played a key role in killing health care reform in the early 1990s, so you can thank him, in part, for your skyrocketing health care costs. In 2002, he testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that American forces "will be greeted as liberators" by the Iraqis, so you can thank him for the Iraq war. He has argued that the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh will and should set the GOP's course, so you can thank him for an increasingly insane and irresponsible public discourse. He has dismissed concern about global warming as "hysteria," so you can thank him for the destruction of the planet. Even worse: He reportedly "discovered" Sarah Palin and played a key role in her selection as John McCain's running mate, so you can thank him for the fact that you know who Sarah Palin is.

Kristol has echoed Sarah Palin's "death panel" nonsense that was the "lie of the year" in 2009. He doesn't like unions or women but does like torture (and dismissed Abu Ghraib as a "small prisoner abuse scandal") and favors military attacks against just about everyone. He has argued that The New York Times should be prosecuted for exposing a secret Bush administration program and accused Democrats of disliking Joe Lieberman because the Connecticut senator is "pro-American." He has falsely denied the existence of evidence that Bush misled the U.S. into Iraq and defended Scooter Libby and attacked Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame. And he has hackishly attacked Nancy Pelosi for visiting Syria while ignoring the fact that Republican members of congress were doing the same thing.  

But most of all, Kristol has been wrong -- wrong about nearly everything, nearly all the time, as Salon's Joan Walsh noted when The New York Times hired him in 2007:

I'll leave it to Crooks and Liars to document Kristol's sad history of being wrong on everything (about the likelihood Sunni and Shi'a in Iraq could all get along, on the urgency of a strike against Iran's probably non-existent nuclear program, about the Times itself deserving prosecution for its" totally gratuitous revealing of an ongoing secret classified program that is part of the war on terror.") Hey, we're all wrong sometimes. But Kristol has been consistently, spectacularly wrong for a living. He bears a special responsibility for selling the Iraq war using any means necessary, and for savaging war opponents to this day as traitors who don't care about national security. And I can't help but think in the long run that he hurts the paper. The main thing the Times has, as a brand -- and believe me, it's a lot -- is its association with and dedication to the truth. Kristol is anti-truth.

You could spend an entire day reading variations on the "Bill Kristol is always wrong" theme, most of which will include his claim that "There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all." Wrong. (For a less consequential example of Kristol's uncanny knack for being wrong, check out his hilarious series of predictions of a Bush political rebound in 2005.)

Charles Krauthammer says environmentalism is "the new socialism," compares Barack Obama's 2008 campaign to China's Cultural Revolution, accuses Obama of thinking of himself "in messianic terms" and of using "Orwellian language that you expect" from Hugo Chavez and calls Chavez Obama's "new pal" and invokes the Nazis in writing about Obama's stem cell policies. He referred to Khamenei as Iran's "Supreme Leader," attacked Barack Obama for doing the same thing a few days later, then just a few days after that, again referred to Khamenei as the "Supreme Leader." Principled!

Krauthammer has called possible torture investigations "banana republic politics" and made false claims to support his case against investigations. That's unsurprising, given that Krauthammer goes back and forth on whether waterboarding is torture -- but is unwavering in his support for it. And like any good Washington Post columnist, he didn't like the Plame investigation, or feel bound by the facts when discussing it -- and even wrote that Bush should pre-emptively pardon Libby. And Krauthammer has falsely defended the Bush administration's use of Iraq intelligence. He even praised Dick Cheney for doing the "manly thing" in withholding information about his shooting of a hunting companion.

Finally, while Krauthammer was never actually employed by a Republican politician -- unlike several of his colleagues -- he did apparently run afoul of Washington Post conflict of interest rules by offering advice to Bush administration strategists and speechwriter Michael Gerson, who would later join Krauthammer at the paper. Hiatt stood by his columnist, denying that Krauthammer had advised the administration, even though the Post's own news division had broken the story.

Gerson was a Bush administration speechwriter until 2006, when he joined the Washington Post as a columnist. At the time, Hiatt said of Gerson: "I expect he will be an independent voice." He didn't say who he expected Gerson -- described by the National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru as "Bush's soul" -- to be independent from. According to Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Gerson's work for Bush included helping prepare Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations, inserting yellowcake references into Bush speeches including the 2003 State of the Union, and conceiving the warning of a nuclear Iraq: "The first sign of a smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud." As Media Matters detailed upon Gerson's hiring by the Post, many of the Iraq falsehoods he helped craft for the Bush administration were adopted by his future Post colleagues -- and never corrected.

As media critic Jeff Cohen explained in 2006, the Post enthusiastically supported Gerson's pro-war efforts for Bush:

As Gerson's "smoking gun/mushroom cloud" soundbite took flight, Al Gore made an Iraq speech questioning "preemptive war." On the Post's op-ed page, Gore's speech was "dishonest, cheap, low" and "wretched ... vile ... contemptible." And that was all in one column. Another called it "a series of cheap shots."

By contrast, the error-filled Colin Powell speech at the U.N. (that Gerson worked on) was hailed at the Post with almost Pravda-like unanimity. An editorial -- headlined "Irrefutable" -- declared: "It is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction." And the Post's op-ed page from right to "left" embraced Powell's speech.

[...]

Gerson and his new colleagues at the Post worked together to help bring us one of the worst foreign policy debacles in our nation's history. Newspapers are supposed to hold discredited public officials to account. The Post is hiring him.

As a Post columnist, Gerson has continued to advance his pet cause (that would be war, of course). In an April 2008 column, he argued for three simultaneous wars -- in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Gerson pays lip service to opposing what he tactfully calls "harsh interrogations," but when you get past the throat-clearing, Gerson argues that firm opposition to such tactics simply "is not an option for those in government." And he has bitterly denounced efforts to investigate Bush administration interrogation methods, using rhetoric Nathan Jessep would appreciate:

And now Obama has described the post-Sept. 11 period as "a dark and painful chapter in our history." In fact, whatever your view of waterboarding, the response of intelligence professionals following Sept. 11 was impressive. ... Now the president and his party have done much to tarnish those accomplishments. So much for the thanks of a grateful nation.

Given the magnitude of Gerson's culpability in crafting a bogus case for war, it seems small change to point out that this "independent voice" shares with his colleagues the habit of attacking liberals for things conservatives do, too. Or that he has been accused of plagiarism by another former Bush speechwriter, David Frum -- an allegation that the Post kindly omitted from an article that mentioned other Frum criticisms of Gerson. Probably just another example of that famed "church-state" separation between the Post's news and opinion operations.

Speaking of Bush administration speechwriters, the Post just hired another one. Marc Thiessen became a Post columnist earlier this month. It probably won't surprise you to learn that Thiessen has made dubious claims in defense of waterboarding. He has equated waterboarding of detainees with training of U.S. military personnel, a comparison that even the Bush Justice Department disagreed with. (Naturally, he opposed the release of documents relating to the Bush administration's interrogation practices.) And Thiessen claimed in a Post guest op-ed last year that the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed had prevented a terrorist attack on Los Angeles -- a claim that was undermined by the Bush administration's statements that the attack was thwarted more than a year before KSM was even captured. In another 2009 guest op-ed for the Post, Thiessen claimed there were no domestic terror attacks under Bush after 9-11 -- an example of damning-with-faint-praise if ever there was one. Oh, and it isn't true, as anyone who worked in Washington during the anthrax and sniper attacks of 2001 and 2002 surely knows.

Some editors would be upset that Thiessen used their opinion pages to peddle such transparent nonsense. Fred Hiatt hired him.

Former Reagan administration speechwriter Robert Kagan writes for the Post, too. A supporter of the Iraq war, Kagan used his perch at the Post to attack Al Gore for an "astonishing reversal" on Iraq, though Gore hadn't actually reversed himself. Then a few sentences later, Kagan complained: "At least in the short run, dishonesty pays. Dissembling pays."  Showing a deep commitment to that principle, Kagan earlier this month described a proposed $14 billion increase in defense spending as a 10 percent cut.

And Kagan memorably lauded Sen. Joe Lieberman as "the last honest man," which pretty well speaks for itself.

Post editorial board member and columnist Charles Lane has argued for cutting -- yes, cutting -- the minimum wage. (The current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour comes out to $15,080 for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year.) And he wrote a dishonest screed defending Joe Lieberman by arguing that we should take him at his word rather than assessing his actions. No, really.

Post columnist George Will still finds time to deny the efficacy of the New Deal, but spends much of his time these days peddling falsehoods about global climate change -- falsehoods Hiatt and the Post refuse to correct. Will seems to share Lane's belief that the minimum wage is overly generous. And he shared his colleagues' dismay at poor Scooter Libby facing punishment for his crimes. Will also opposes prosecution of those responsible for Bush-era torture practices -- perhaps because he thinks "[t]here are intelligent men and women of good will who say that anything that inhibits the President's power to defend the country is not binding."

Finally, we come to Fred Hiatt, the so-called "traditional liberal in all matters domestic." He's the kind of "traditional liberal" who thinks health care reform is too expensive -- all while disregarding liberal reform proposals that would reduce the cost. The kind who distorted Barack Obama's comments while praising John McCain's strongly held "principles" on issues on which McCain had shifted and displayed inconsistency. The kind who allows Will to mislead readers about climate change, over and over again. And Hiatt, of course, opposed a special prosecutor examination of Bush terror practices. (Argue, if you like, that applying the rule of law to government officials is not a domestic matter -- but I don't buy it.)

A few of the guest op-eds published by Hiatt are worthy of mention. Last summer, the Post published an op-ed in which Martin Feldstein falsely claimed that Barack Obama supported "a British-style 'single payer' system in which the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are salaried." When the inaccuracy of Feldstein's claim was pointed out by, among others, Jon Chait and Paul Krugman, Hiatt refused to run a correction. Instead, he has rewarded Feldstein by publishing two more of his op-eds attacking "Obamacare," Feldstein's opposition to which may have something to do with his service on the board of directors of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.

Hiatt published two op-eds by Sarah Palin last year, one of which repeated several already-debunked claims about climate change. The Post dragged its feet in running a response to Palin, doing so only after running a Palin letter to the editor.

Last October, Hiatt handed insurance company lobbyist Karen Ignagni op-ed space to tout a deeply-flawed "study" her organization commissioned -- a study the Post's news pages had already debunked. In August, Hiatt ran an op-ed defending the "death panels" lie. Last spring, Hiatt published an op-ed by Charles Murray, darling of the "white nationalist" VDARE crowd. And just this month, the Post actually commissioned a column baselessly asserting that liberals are more condescending than conservatives.

It seems the real reason The Washington Times has never been able to make any money may be that its hard-right editorial stance is redundant in a city that already has Fred Hiatt's Washington Post.

Jamison Foser is a Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog and research and information center based in Washington, D.C. Foser also contributes to County Fair, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the Web, as well as original commentary. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook or sign up to receive his columns by email.

In his Times column, Breitbart was quite clear about what he saw that day in his office: He watched videos of O'Keefe "dressed as a pimp" sitting inside ACORN offices "asking for -- and getting -- help" from the misguided employees.

But today we know that's almost certainly not true. Breitbart didn't huddle in his office and watch clips of O'Keefe "dressed as a pimp" chatting with ACORN employees, because based on all the available evidence, O'Keefe wasn't dressed as a pimp while taping inside the ACORN offices.

Make no mistake: Last fall, both Breitbart and O'Keefe, with the help of Fox News, did their best to confuse people about that fact. It's true the duo seemed to purposefully push that falsehood and mislead the public and the press about the ACORN story. And more importantly, they did it to make the ACORN workers captured on video look like complete jackasses for not being able to spot O'Keefe's pimp ruse a mile away.

But the story was not true.

Fact: On the guerilla clips posted online and aired on Fox News, O'Keefe was featured in lots of cutaway shots that were filmed outside and showed him parading around with Giles in his outlandish cane/top hat/sunglasses/fur coat pimp costume.

The cutaway shots certainly left the impression that that's how O'Keefe was dressed when he spoke to ACORN workers.

But inside each and every office, according to one independent review that looked at the public videos, O'Keefe entered sans the pimp get-up. In fact, he was dressed rather conservatively. During his visit to the Baltimore ACORN office, he wore a dress shirt and khaki pants. For the Philadelphia sting, he added a tie to the ensemble.

Instead, the '70s-era, blacksploitation pimp costume was a propaganda tool used to later deceive the public about the undercover operation. It was a prop that was quickly embraced by the mainstream media and turned into a central part of the ACORN story.

It's true that Giles was seen on the ACORN office tapes scantily clad as she discussed her future prostitution plans with ACORN workers. But it was the pimp costume, or the idea that O'Keefe was sitting there getting ACORN advice while decked out in it, that really hit the laughter button and caused the press -- and public -- to guffaw at ACORN's apparent cluelessness. Read: Not only were the ACORN employees morally suspect for doling out tax advice to a would-be prostitute, but the low-income advocates were dumb as stumps to boot!

"I can't believe ACORN believes this dude is a pimp!" exclaimed a Washington City Paper blogger last year, falsely reporting that O'Keefe arrived inside ACORN offices "looking like he had recently crawled from a frat house basement."

There's no doubt the pimp costume story worked. (Raise your hand if you were duped.) My guess is if you polled Americans today, and even ones who followed the story closely last year (including right-wing partisans), at least 90 percent would say O'Keefe sat inside ACORN offices while decked out in his pimp costume.

But it's not true. At least there have not been any publicly released ACORN videos to suggest otherwise.

And no, by pointing out the holes in the ACORN sting story, I'm not trying to excuse what was captured (illegally?) on tape. Everyone knows the embarrassing mistakes the poorly trained, low-level ACORN employees made when dealing with O'Keefe and Giles. That situation, and the continued fallout surrounding it, is for the organization to deal with.

Why the costume story is still important, though, is that it highlights the almost pathological streak that runs through Breitbart and O'Keefe's work, and how the press too often falls for their concocted cover stories. (See below; and yes, Media Matters has, at times, incorrectly stated O'Keefe wore his pimp outfit while meeting with ACORN workers.)

It's important to understand how Breitbart and O'Keefe were able to so easily plant the ACORN falsehood. That's especially true in the wake of O'Keefe's recent arrest in New Orleans, where he was cuffed with entering a federal building under false pretense and tagged with intent to commit a felony. As blogger Marcy Wheeler noted, O'Keefe's cover story for that failed caper is riddled with holes, which should be a red flag for journalists as Breitbart concocts his contradictory spin.

Wrote blogger Brad Friedman last week, as he highlighted the pimp falsehood against the backdrop of the New Orleans arrest:

If O'Keefe, and Breitbart, who still employs him, were that willing to out-and-out lie about the ACORN scam, seen as a successful one, just how far would the two GOP operatives be willing to go to get off the hook for what appears to be a very serious federal felony?

More importantly, if news organizations are still making the dressed-like-a-pimp mistake, it's time that they stop. And yes, that means you, New York Times.

Friedman has been trying to get the newspaper of record to correct its inaccurate reporting on the pimp issue -- reporting that appeared as recently as last month, following O'Keefe's New Orleans arrest. When one of Friedman's readers contacted the newspaper urging the same request, the reader was informed, via email by a Times senior editor for standards, that because O'Keefe claimed he'd been dressed as a pimp inside ACORN offices, and because O'Keefe had appeared on Fox News and made that claim, the Times did not need to post a correction.

Wrote the Times standards editor: "We believe" O'Keefe. (Yikes!)

That's nuts. It's one thing to be suckered in by Breitbart and O'Keefe's pimp costume tale, it's another for the Times to now defend its erroneous reporting. And even worse is the Times' implication that it's O'Keefe who gets to decide which version of the pimp story is true, despite all the contrary evidence.

Last December, former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, commissioned by ACORN to independently review the facts surrounding the scandal, released his findings. Highly critical of ACORN and its employees, Harshbarger nonetheless concluded the undercover sting did not catch any employees breaking the law.

Harshbarger also shed light on the controversial videos, noting that portions had been "substantially" edited, including some voice overdubbing. And because O'Keefe and Breitbart refuse to let any outside observers -- including journalists -- view the full collection of unedited tapes, it's impossible to tell just how significantly the tapes were manipulated prior to their release.

This was another key, albeit mostly overlooked, finding from the report:

Although Mr. O'Keefe appeared in all videos dressed as a pimp, in fact, when he appeared at each and every office, he was dressed like a college student -- in slacks and a button down shirt.

It's worth nothing that if O'Keefe and Breitbart wanted to rebut Harshbarger's damaging claim about the lack of pimp costume -- a narrative both men worked hard to prop up last year -- it's logical they would release clips to disprove Harshbarger's finding. They would release a video that showed O'Keefe clearly dressed outlandishly as a pimp while sitting inside ACORN offices. But two months after the release of Harshbarger's report, Breitbart and O'Keefe have not done that.

Also note that earlier this month, after Friedman once again highlighted Harshbarger's finding, Breitbart posted this tweet:

How did the story first come to life? Not surprisingly, Fox News played a key role in hyping the phony pimp tale. During the second week in September 2009 when the ACORN story was breaking, O'Keefe appeared on Fox & Friends dressed up in his eccentric pimp get-up. Co-host Steve Doocy introduced O'Keefe as being "dressed exactly in the same outfit that he wore to these ACORN offices up and down the Eastern Seaboard" [emphasis added].

O'Keefe made no effort to correct Doocy's falsehood. Indeed, the entire point of O'Keefe dressing up that morning was so that Doocy could spread the pimp costume falsehood, which is why O'Keefe told Fox News viewers during the show: "I'm one of the whitest guys ever. I just wear ridiculous stuff and put people in ridiculous situations." The clear implication was that he wore "ridiculous stuff" into the ACORN offices.

There's just no proof he ever did.

Initially, many news outlets referred to O'Keefe as having "posed" as a pimp inside ACORN offices. And while there were problems with that wording, it was certainly better than claiming the undercover cameraman was "dressed" as a pimp while talking to ACORN employees. Yet for some reason, many journalists couldn't resist the lure of the "dressed" storyline.

Here's how CNN.com first reported the story on September 10, 2009:

Two employees at the Baltimore, Maryland, branch of the liberal community organizing group ACORN were caught on tape allegedly offering advice to a pair posing as a pimp and prostitute on setting up a prostitution ring and evading the IRS.

But note the erroneous change CNN made the following day:

T.J. HOLMES: Allegedly video out there taken by a conservative activist who dressed up like a pimp and had someone with him that was dressed up like a prostitute. They go into an office in Baltimore, one of these ACORN offices.

Soon, claiming O'Keefe was decked out in his comical pimp outfit while sitting inside the ACORN offices became the accepted norm.

New York Times:

They visited Acorn offices in Baltimore, Washington, Brooklyn and San Bernardino, Calif., candidly describing their illicit business and asking the advice of Acorn workers. Among other questions, they asked how to buy a house to use as a brothel employing under-age girls from El Salvador. Mr. O'Keefe, 25, a filmmaker and conservative activist, was dressed so outlandishly that he might have been playing in a risque high school play.

New York Post:

O'Keefe and Giles were garishly dressed as a stereotypical pimp and prostitute. O'Keefe was decked out in excessively snazzy flesh-peddler couture, and Giles, going by the name "Eden," wore almost nothing. The ACORN workers were not the slightest bit judgmental or put off by the request for help in getting financing for a brothel.

Philadelphia Daily News:

O'Keefe and Giles were dressed as a pimp and prostitute, just as they were during undercover visits to ACORN offices in Baltimore, Washington, Brooklyn and San Bernardino, Calif., over the summer.

NPR:

If you watch cable TV at all this week, you've almost certainly seen the images again and again -- a young man dressed as a pimp with a young woman posing as a prostitute. They are with ACORN workers who were supposed to be advising low-income people on taxes and home loans, but instead you hear this.

Dallas Morning News:

James O'Keefe, 25, dressed up as a cartoon version of a pimp. Hannah Giles, 20, barely dressed as a stereotypical hooker (or "freelance performing artist," as one Baltimore ACORN worker helpfully suggested). They stashed their camera and walked into ACORN offices from coast to coast, blatantly asking for help setting up housing for a prostitution business, which also would employ underage prostitutes from El Salvador.

Baltimore Sun:

The video sounds like a satire: A young man and woman, dressed as caricatures of a pimp and prostitute, walk into the Baltimore office of ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and spin an outrageous story about how the woman needs help buying a house to set up as a brothel for underage Salvadoran girls.

Breitbart and O'Keefe have made it clear that they think they've stumbled onto the future of "conservative journalism" in the form of undercover pranks, so look for more Punk'd-style capers to come. But based on the trumped-up pimp story, and the fact that they chose to mislead the public about something as trivial as clothing, it should be clear journalists cannot accept as fact anything either man says.

Follow Eric Boehlert on Twitter.

Don't get me wrong, the calm quiet brought to my neighborhood by several feet of fresh powder blanketing the streets and sidewalks made for some amazing photos and an impromptu snowball fight or two.

It's the right-wing media that have spoiled the Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog and research and information center based in Washington, D.C. Frisch also contributes to County Fair, a media blog featuring links to progressive media criticism from around the Web, as well as original commentary. You can follow him on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, or sign up to receive his columns by email.