Countdown host Keith Olbermann has issued a call to the millions of readers at Daily Kos to dig up some dirt (real dirt, not this kind) on Fox News personality Glenn Beck, his producer, and Roger Ailes. The “Fox-twa” comes on the heels of the resignation of Obama adviser Van Jones, whose abrupt departure has been attributed to a weeks-long campaign by Beck.

When former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge’s book first came out, there was a lot of vigorous overselling of the tome as a smoking gun in the politicization of terror alerts. While Ridge’s book seems to indicate he had concerns that efforts to raise the alert level might have been political, it is hardly proof of that. However, Ridge appeared on last night’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” and promptly tried to walk back even that suspicion.

When a high-ranking government official meets an establishment journalist, the ensuing fawning at the feet of power can sometimes be too much to bear. Last weekend, Chris Wallace was compared to a “teenage girl interviewing the Jonas Brothers” for his lack of incision in a televised segment with former Vice President Dick Cheney. And then there’s Rachel Maddow, who on last night’s episode of her MSNBC show was the most well-prepared “teenage girl” on TV, calmly dismantling every argument put forth by former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge’s new book has been causing quite a stir this week, with media outlets hyping the “bombshell” revelation that the book proves that the Bush administration manipulated the color-coded “Terror Alert” system for political gain. However, American Spectator’s Caleb Howe has read Ridge’s book, and he calls this frenzy a con job.

On Friday, the former Alaska Governor posted some grade-A crazy talk on her Facebook page, alleging that the Obama health care plan promoting “Death Panels” — where “his bureaucrats” would decide the fate of babies like her son Trig, born with Down Syndrome. The echoes of the accompanying cuckoo-clock noises had barely died down when Newt Gingrich rushed in to agree with Palin that Death Panels were, indeed, cause for concern. Exactly the health care issue Obama wanted!

In June, I wrote a story that raised big questions about the value of the government’s $80 billion deal with Big Pharma, and wondered if the deal came with the trade-off of killing legislation that would enable the government to negotiate directly with pharmaceutical companies for lower prices. Such a trade-off would be indefensible. That [...]

The Democratic National Committee released a web ad Tuesday that seems to have hit a “Marathon Man”-style nerve with conservatives online. Entitled “Enough of the Mob,” the ad features clips of recent disruptions at health care town hall meetings, including a “Birther” with what looks like a large wonton wrapper in a Ziploc bag.

To paraphrase our current President, Sarah Palin’s supporters acted stupidly in defending Meg Stapleton’s decision to deny divorce rumors on Palin’s Facebook page. Conservatives4Palin is leading the charge to conflate the unsourced Alaska Report story with CNN, in an apparent attempt to push the “media martyr” meme.

The President made a surprise appearance at today’s White House Press briefing to address the uproar over his comments about the arrest of Skip Gates at Wednesday’s press conference. The President described a phone call he’d had with the arresting officer, Sgt. James Crowley. They apparently spoke for awhile, and the President even suggested that [...]

This is unbelievable. In last night’s “NBC Nightly News,” Pete Williams had a segment on the Holocaust Museum shooter, James von Brunn, and they presented a guy by the name of John de Nugent to attest to his pre-shooting mental state. Which John de Nugent, you ask? This one – the one who thinks that [...]