video The big day for Rod Blagojevich's dubiously categorized “ethics” lecture at Northwestern University has come and gone and, judging from the footage college's newspaper has released, it lived up to the hype. America's fanciest gubernatorial coif and its disgraced owner proved he still has some tricks up his sleeve. Upon being showered with jeers for unleashing some vintage Blago on Senators Dick Durbin and Harry Reid - calling them "segregationist governors" for opposing his appointment to succeed Barack Obama in the Senate - Blagojevich abandoned his own typically fiery demeanor to channel a bit of Van Jones: “I've got nothing but love in my heart for you." (more...)

your moment of glenn Van Jones is really just the gift that keeps on giving. For Glenn Beck, anyway. In his NAACP image award acceptance speech over the weekend Jones jokingly announced that he loves Glenn Beck! "To my fellow countryman, Mr. Glenn Beck, I see you and I love you, and you cannot do anything about it." (more...)

Van Jones -- for months now only visible as a head on Glenn Beck's chalkboard representing all the is evil, Maoist, and worst of all, progressive in Barack Obama's administration -- raised his actual head last night and addressed the rampant rumors that he is a 9/11 Truther after his name appeared on a Truther petition. (more...)

video In a controversial move, the NAACP announced today that it would be awarding one of their top honors to Van Jones, the former White House Special Advisor for Green Jobs who resigned last fall under a cloud of controversy. Jones' history with extremist groups and the website 911Truth.org created a vocal conservative movement that ultimately cost him his position under Barack Obama, despite his work in creating the Green Jobs act in 2007 and declaring himself to be the victim of "a vicious smear campaign." The NAACP says ex-Green czar deserves the award and "may be the most misunderstood man in America." (more...)

video While there are plenty of jokes to be made about the Salahi's White House state dinner party crashing, it is at the core, an extremely serious breach of White House security that could have endangered the President's life. That is not a joke. Neither is the Congressional hearing that's been called for tomorrow to investigate what happened. Because as audacious at the Salahi's behavior was it pales in comparison to lapse in security that happened. The question now is whose lapse was it? The Secret Service, who has apologized, or somebody in the social office? (more...)

Despite the GOP's lack of numbers in the Democrat-controlled House and Senate, they have been remarkably successful at picking off enemies like Van Jones and ACORN with concerted attacks. Now, they're taking on a much bigger target: the AARP, which numbers more than 40 million members. Whereas their past targets have been on the fringes in one way or another, how is a campaign against a mainstream, powerful interest group going to play out? (more...)

video There's been a lot of chatter from the wings about Glenn Beck of late, and plenty of name-calling from certain quarters. But Beck is aiming to clear up any confusion: he is neither a journalist nor a rodeo clown. He is a dad and "he is doing what he believes is right." Furthermore he is doing a "job as a private citizen"...with a multi-million dollar cable TV contract no less(!) who just wants real journalists to look into these things instead of "looking into my past." Stop trying to do a Van Jones on Glenn Beck, world. FOX NEWS IS THE ALAMO FOR TRUTH. And that folks is why Glenn Beck is such a success, because of lines like that. Later on (the clip has been edited into two parts) he reiterates that he is "just a dad doing this for my kids." Cue, 'I believe the children are our future.' (more...)

I know. It's a stretch. But that is the first question that jumped into my head when I came across this New York Times article about how Roman Polanski's U.S. legal team has hired lawyer Reid Weingarten, who is "a well-known Washington power player and close friend and associate of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr." (more...)

Clark Hoyt, the New York Times ombudsman thinks the paper should stop running scared from Glenn Beck. Hoyt took the Times to task this weekend over their coverage (or lack thereof) of the ACORN and the Van Jones debacle, both incidents which arguably developed into national stories due to their flames being relentlessly fanned by "the polemical world of talk radio, cable television and partisan blogs." A world, says Hoyt, that the Times has trouble dealing with. (more...)

Just kidding! What, he can joke about killing a frog and I can't joke about him having a vagina? Whatever. It's Friday. I can do what I want. IT'S A FREE COUNTRY! IT'S IN THE 9/12 MANIFESTO!* You know what else is in the Manifesto? Number 3 from the 9/12 Manifesto: "I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday." LYING ABOUT BOILING A FROG ISN'T HONEST THERE, GLENNER! Anyhow. Hear me out. What did Megan Fox say again? "Men are scared of vaginas. And then when you give them a powerful, confident vagina, they’re terrified.” Now, permit me, for a moment, to engage in a light substitution: "Dems are scared of Glenn Beck. And then when you give them a powerful, confident Glenn Beck, they’re terrified." (more...)

video Bill Maher's main "new rule" Friday night on Real Time was "Democrats must get in touch with their inner asshole." In his monologue and on a blog post on The Huffington Post, he explained his reasoning. And a lot of it related to Glenn Beck. (more...)

For me, the biggest surprise in today's Power Grid results didn't come from the people who went up or went down in the ranks -- it came from Glenn Beck staying in the same place, at least on TV. Beck is currently #10 in the TV Anchors/Hosts category. Beck dominated last week's news cycle with attacks on Obama's health care plan, daring stunts, and even art history lessons, and this past weekend, he successfully called for the head of Obama's adviser Van Jones, who resigned over what seemed to be a small connection to the controversial "9/11 Truther" movement. So why did Beck stay in the same place? (more...)

Give Arianna Huffington some credit: she still knows how to surprise people. When her personal friend (and former gubernatorial campaign adviser) Van Jones was ousted from his White House job after Glenn Beck's incessant needling, it would have been the easy move for Huffington to decry the firing and jump reflexively on the Glenn Beck hate train. Instead, Huffington thanked Beck in a recent Huffington Post column. But why? (more...)

A little over six weeks after Glenn Beck introduced the world to Van Jones (tell the truth, how many of you knew who he was prior to this August?), Jones has resigned. Time's Joe Klein says good riddance: "The work of this presidency is too important to be side-tracked by a too-angry blowhard spouting foolish radicalism. " But really, if Beck hadn't relentlessly pounded Jones for the past two weeks especially, would the "work of this presidency" have been side-tracked enough to lead to Jones' resignation? Doubtful. Lest doubtful is the fact that Beck is officially playing in the big leagues now. (more...)

White House Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality Van Jones - aka President Barack Obama's "Green Czar" - resigned this weekend after controversy about his past and a rather unfortunate signature on a 9/11 Truther petition. Ulp. Well, here's another truth for you: Van Jones is HOT. (more...)

webcast Van Jones' resignation yesterday can be easily traced to the exposure of key information by Fox News anchor Glenn Beck and a couple others. It is the latest way Beck is "winning" recently - in the ratings and in the media conversation. Beck weighed in with reaction to Jones' decision. (more...)

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. The Scrabble-averse pundit has already set his sights on new quarry, and Keith is pushing back. (more...)

I spent the past several months away from politics. It was an involuntary hiatus made necessary by personal and professional commitments that demanded my utmost attention. When I left, we had a stimulus bill in place, a president with high approval ratings and some remaining afterglow from election night and inauguration day. When I returned in mid August, it was to a country that had clearly lost its damn mind. I turned on one cable station to hear people demanding President Obama prove he’s an American citizen, an insane movement led by an Israeli citizen. I switched channels to see another group screeching in fear that Obama’s health care proposal would institute death panels to kill grandma. On yet another station, Glenn Beck accuses this president of having a deep-seated hatred for half of himself. Flip again to find parents removing their children from school because they don’t want their kids exposed to Obama’s socialist indoctrination. And yesterday, Green Jobs Czar Van Jones resigned after extreme pressure from right wing groups and extreme tepidness from the White House that hired him to do his very important work. Great. After a brief respite, the most accessible American political discourse has returned to fearful, hate-filled, ignorant rants of a high-volume, low-intellect minority. (more...)

Is there a better time to bury news than Saturday night of a sleepy holiday weekend? Probably not —by Tuesday, this will be a two-day-old story that will be pushed aside in favor of focusing on Obama's scary, propagand-tastic speech to America's children. Even the Sunday shows didn't get into it too deep. Such is the holiday weekend news cycle. (more...)

video Glenn Beck's head may finally explode tonight. From glee. If you've been watching Beck at all recently you know that he has spent the better part of the last two weeks tearing apart President Obama's Special Advisor for Green Jobs Van Jones. Last night Beck added 9-11 Truther (Truthers vs. Birthers should be some sort of reality show) to the chalk board list of things the public should be concerned about regarding Jones (video below), after it was revealed yesterday that Jones signed a petition back in 2004 which called for an investigation into whether the government was involved in 9-11. But it's the fact that Jones has now responded to that petition going public, which will no doubt be enough fuel to keep Beck's fire going for the next little while. Per ABC's Jake Tapper: (more...)