As gathering outrage over the “forcible rape” language in a proposed anti-abortion law crested with a piece of devastating satire on Wednesday night’s The Daily Show, Politico reports that the phrase has been stricken from the bill. The law seeks to restrict the use of taxpayer funds for abortions, and although they have restored the [...]

People of every political persuasion were rightly outraged when, in 2009, Whoopi Goldberg presented the odd defense of Roman Polanski that his crime “wasn’t rape-rape.” A new law, introduced by a GOP congressman and lauded by House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), seeks to similarly redefine the circumstances under which public funds may be used to fund abortions by replacing the current “rape or incest” exemptions with something they call “forcible rape.” So far, the outrage is a bit one-sided.

A week after Countdown host Keith Olbermann and guest Michael Mooresparked a Twitter protest over their dismissive treatment of rape allegations against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Moore made an appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show in which he failed to address the protest directly, but made their imprint obvious in his transformed rhetoric on rape accusations. In a crowning irony, the man whose zeal for transparency-God Julian Assange started this protest finally made direct acknowledgement of it…in a private Twitter message to #MooreAndMe creator Sady Doyle.

After a self-imposed weekend suspension (an emerging MO), Countdown host Keith Olbermann returned to Twitter this morning to engage the controversy surrounding his dismissive treatment of rape allegations against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Given the time to compose a calm, reasoned response, Olbermann elected to use a single random tweet to tar the #MooreAndMe protest as violent, accuse its members of financial coercion, attack #MooreAndMe creator Sady Doyle for smoking cigarettes, and finally, to ignore the central issues in this brouhaha.

Someone should gently suggest to Olbermann that when you’re already in a hole, stop digging.

While Keith Olbermann has been unwilling to respond to legitimate questions regarding dismissive treatment of rape allegations against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, he has announced that he was quitting Twitter until the “frenzy” died down. If Sady Doyle, the woman who started the protest that forced him off Twitter, is any indication, he could be waiting a long time, and taking serious damage in the process.