One of the beauties of the transfer of power from major media operations to individuals, bloggers and tweeters is that they — we — can all serve as a sort of fact-checking peanut gallery. So it’s hard to imagine that, in this day and age, the mainstream media could repeatedly misstate the holding of one of the most significant Supreme Court decisions without being roundly excoriated. Not a matter of opinion or a partisan viewpoint, but, simply parroting a mistake or lie about the holding in that crucial ruling.

During a discussion of Glenn Beck‘s departure from Fox News’ air on Sunday’s Reliable Sources, progressive radio host Bill Press joined host Howard Kurtz in pushing back against the idea that MSNBC’s opinion personalities are somehow equivalent to Beck. While Press and Kurtz were correct in their overall assessment, Press’ declaration that MSNBC hosts are “not calling anyone Nazis” is only true because Keith Olbermann is no longer at the network. Oddly, though, Olbermann’s record of Nazi references only reinforces the contrast between Beck and MSNBC.

Congratulations are in order to First Amendment attorney and Mediaite contributor/dad Floyd Abrams, who made it onto Above the Law‘s list of Top Partners to Work for in New York! The list in no particular order commends New York’s law partners who are the most fulfilling to work with as associates, and is compiled based on surveys distributed throughout the state.

On the cusp of the first major national elections since the Supreme Court ruled corporations have the First Amendment right to speech in politics, the echo chamber of public political discourse sounds all the louder with all those extra voices. While on legal grounds it’s unclear what it is about Citizens United that seems to evoke hysteria in many talking heads, they have good reason to want to lower the volume: to better hear themselves talk.

Immediately after thoroughly dressing down CNN’s Campbell Brown on last night’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann set his sights on popular Worst Persons fixture Glenn Beck, and he couldn’t have asked for an easier layup. Beck committed his umteen-zillionth violation of Godwin’s Law, this time aiming his Nazi comparison at a particularly poorly-chosen target. Olbermann executes the takedown perfectly, but blows it on the dismount with a petty, snarky reference to Beck’s struggles with alcoholism.

Despite the absurdity of the Liz Cheney/Keep America Safe “Al Qaeda 7″ ad, and the fact that Cheney’s group sounds like its mascot ought to be a pee-pants version of Woodsy Owl, the spot has been generating a lot of heat. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and frequent Countdown contributor Eugene Robinson wrote a scathing op-ed yesterday attacking the fallacy behind the ad, but it could have easily been directed at his friend and colleague, Keith Olbermann

On Meet the Press yesterday, David Axlerod had this to say about Justice Alito’s SOTU response: “Well, I–look, we–in this weird political season, we’ve become accustomed to unusual outbursts in the chamber during these speeches, so.” Meaning that between the town halls and Joe Wilson, being heckled by a Supreme Court Justice is pretty much par for the course.

Just hours after Jon Stewart‘s sharply observant takedown of Keith Olbermann‘s Special Comment segments, the Countdown host launched into a diatribe that made Stewart’s segment look like a love letter. In railing against yesterday’s hotly debated Supreme Court decision, he effectively said it was worse than slavery, and compared Floyd Abrams, who is Jewish, to a Nazi.

Is Keith losing it?

Israeli professor Neve Gordon published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times urging a boycott on Israel. In response, the president of his university, Rivka Carmi, issued a statement strongly disagreeing with him. The New York Review of Books published an open letter from ten American scholars supporting Gordon and criticizing Carmi. They did not, however, publish this critical response to the open letter from constitutional lawyer Floyd Abrams:

Anyone who works in media these days — especially online — knows that it can be an all-consuming lifestyle, caught up in the immediacy of the 24-7 news cycle and very much given to being swept up by the wildly fluctuating highs and lows of the moment. That’s why it’s so nice to step back [...]