The Little Bill That Could

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/the-little-bill-that-coul_b_798768.html

Timothy Karr
Campaign Director, Free Press and SavetheInternet.com
December 19, 2010
The Little Bill That Could

Little noticed but extremely important to progressives, on Saturday afternoon Congress also passed the Local Community Radio Act.

This legislation opens up radio spectrum to hundreds, if not thousands, of local independent radio stations (also known as LPFM).

Its passing will bring new choices and voices on the radio dial nationwide, but is especially relevant to a broadcast area reaching 160 million people who lived in areas where these stations had previously been barred from local airwaves.

Anyone tracking the rise of radio personalities like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage understands the primary political significance of gaining access to spectrum.

With the opening of the airwaves to LPFM stations, progressives can gain a small but consequential spot on the radio dial. The challenge now is to organize local groups to gain access to licenses. Follow and support the Prometheus Radio Project to learn more.

Shaming the lobbyists

This bill would not have passed without the tireless work of a small, but dedicated corps of radio activists who faced down one of the most powerful corporate lobbies in Washington -- the National Association of Broadcasters.

After ten years of pushing and broad-based organizing these activists got broadcasters to yield on Friday.

With the corporate lobby out of the way the bill passed both the House and the Senate in little more than 24 hours.

This is what's possible.

Karma Police: Michael Savage Fired!

http://www.dangerousminds.net/index.php/site/comments/karma_police_michael_savage_fired/

Karma Police: Michael Savage Fired!
09.11.2009
Richard Metzger

Chalk one up for civil society! We here at Dangerous Minds loudly applaud the decision of San Francisco talk radio station KNEW 910 AM to fire hateful, racist sociopath Michael Savage. From the KNEW blog:

“Why did you take Michael Savage off the air?”

Here’s your no-spin direct answer; we have decided to go in a different philosophical and ideological direction, featuring more contemporary content and more local information.

The Savage Nation does not fit into that vision.


Again, nice one KNEW 910 AM management. This almost makes up for the fact that you’ve given this nasty asshat a platform for his cockamamie views for the past decade… Still it’s a step in the right direction and good for the country.

DHS Document Created During Bush Administration

http://www.prisonplanet.com/dhs-%e2%80%9crightwing-extremism%e2%80%9d-document-created-during-bush-administration.html

DHS “Rightwing Extremism” Document Created During Bush Administration
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
Friday, April 17, 2009

After the Department of Homeland Security’s report on “rightwing extremism” was leaked and posted on Infowars and other alternative news sites, so-called conservatives wasted little time blaming the Obama administration for the report.

However, recent evidence reveals the report has nothing to with the supposed “Marxist” (as Michael Savage and others would have it) persuasion of the Obama administration. It is a product created by a government not interested in the artificial divides of the right-left paradigm and concentrates on one primary objective – to demonize and criminalize all effective opposition.

The “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” document was produced during the Bush administration, as a quick check of the PDF document’s properties reveals. It was created on January 23, 2007.

In other words, the document is not a reflection of the supposed sinister political coloration of the Obama administration, said by many “conservatives” to be socialist or Marxist. It is a document produced specifically as part of a larger effort to demonize and eliminate all opposition regardless of political persuasion.

An earlier report produced by the Strategic Analysis Group, Homeland Environment and Threat Analysis Division of the DHS concentrated on “leftwing extremism” ( Leftwing Extremists Likely to Increase Use of Cyber Attacks over the Coming Decade), again demonstrating the government does not hold an ideological bias when it comes demonizing groups and individuals opposed to the government.

The latest DHS report is designed to portray anti-government groups as dangerous and potentially violent terrorists and thus scare off and balkanize supporters. It also provides the corporate media with an excuse to polarize important issues and dismiss supporters as either misled or as deluded and violent conspiracy theorists.

In particular, some observers claim the report was released and hyped by the corporate media in order to deligitimize Tea Party demonstrations against government spending and taxes held around the country. For instance, the Huffington Post reports: “If you think the conservative ‘Tea Party’ movement is daunting, take a look at a new report issued by the Department of Homeland Security that says right-wing extremism is on the rise throughout the country.”

As another example of this dismissal of the Tea Party movement by the corporate media, consider the rather disgusting and juvenile effort by CNN’s Anderson Cooper (the Yalie of Vanderbilt lineage who interned for the CIA and may thus be considered a Mockingbird asset). Appearing with David Gergen, a member of the Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg Group (who has romped at Bohemian Grove), Cooper said it is difficult for Republicans to find their voice when they are “teabagging.” The Urban Dictionary defines a “teabagger” as “a person who is unaware that they have said or done something foolish, childlike, noobish, lame, or inconvenient.” It is also used to define a pornographic act.

Around the same time the Bush administration’s DHS produced the “rightwing extremism” document, the FBI received a request to work on a similar report. “Fox News’s Catherine Herridge revealed that the report, along with an earlier report on radicalized left-wing groups, was actually ‘requested by the Bush administration’ but not completed until recently,” Think Progress reported on April 15.

The report, entitled “White Supremacist Recruitment of Military Personnel since 9/11,” begins with an “intelligence assessment” claiming “white supremacist extremist groups have attempted to increase their recruitment of current and former US military personnel.” According to the FBI, these “[p]ost-9/11 activities by current or former military personnel involved in the extremist movement span the range of activities engaged in by their extremist compatriots who lack military experience, and include weapons violations, physical violence, paramilitary training, intelligence collection, drug violations, fraud, threats, and arson,” that is to say all manner of evil and criminal activity.

It is no mistake this “disgruntled military veteran” appears in the DHS document. It is also no mistake the report claims “white supremacist and violent antigrovernment groups” present an ominous threat to Obama, primarily due to his race. The lines separating racist nationalism (a marginal threat at best) and opposition to the government are blurred in the document.

The Council on Foreign Relations reiterated the parameters of the DHS and FBI documents on April 21, 2008. A CFR “bakckgrounder” entitled “Militant Extremists in the United States” touches on both “rightwing” and “leftwing” extremism covered in the DHS and FBI reports. The CFR report states:

The September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington were the most destructive ever on U.S. soil. But law-enforcement officials have also long struggled with a range of U.S.-based terrorist groups. Domestic extremists include hate groups motivated by ultra-conservative ideals that are often anti-Semitic and racially motivated; ecoterrorists who use violence to campaign for greater environmental responsibility; and socialist groups who oppose the World Trade Organization. While homegrown Muslim extremists have proven more lethal in Europe than in the United States, U.S. authorities continue to worry about the prospect of attacks by militant Muslims who are American citizens.

The SPLC and the ADL work closely with the DHS, FBI, and apparently the CFR. The CFR cites materials provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center in its report.

Prior to the CFR “backgrounder,” the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project issued a report claiming in “the 10 years since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing killed 168 people, roughly 60 right-wing terrorist plots have been uncovered in the United States,” according to U.S.News & World Report. “The plots demonstrate that the Department of Homeland Security still needs to closely monitor right-wing groups, says Heidi Beirich, with the Intelligence Project.”

On March 26, after Alex Jones exposed the MIAC document, the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) issued a national advisory to all local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies and officers, along with all DHS Fusion Centers, warning against “any reliance upon faulty and politicized research issued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and Anti Defamation League (ADL).”

ALIPAC would like to advise all media sources, law enforcement officers and agencies, that the ADL and SPLC are political organizations, with stated political goals and agendas which are contrary to the candidates, political parties, and millions of Americans besmirched by the MIAC documents.

While both the ADL and SPLC actively market themselves and seek roles as advisers to law enforcement and the media, both groups regularly engage in political tactics like those observed in the now withdrawn Missouri Documents. Materials from one or both organizations contributed to this scandal.

The ADL and SPLC are notorious for targeting “rightwing” groups and individuals while the FBI has a long track record of going after “leftwing” groups, as evinced by COINTELPRO (the CIA also participated in this effort under its Operation CHAOS). The FBI also sponsored so-called “right-wing vigilantes,” who were given “funds and information, so long as they confined their attacks to COINTELPRO targets,” consisting mostly of anti-war and Black, American Indian, and Chicano “liberation” groups. (see Brian Glick, COINTELPRO Revisited: Spying & Disruption)

The FBI considered the putative “Militia movement” so threatening (primarily due to its constitutional underpinnings) it orchestrated the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 in order to demonize and criminalize the movement (and scare off support).

A declaration from alleged Timothy McVeigh co-conspirator Terry Nichols, filed in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City in 2007, reveals McVeigh was taking orders from Larry Potts, a top FBI official. “Potts was no stranger to anti-government confrontations, having been the lead FBI agent at Ruby Ridge in 1992, which led to the shooting death of Vicki Weaver, the wife of separatist Randy Weaver. Potts also was reportedly involved in the 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993, which resulted in a fire that killed 81 Branch Davidian followers,” the Desert Morning News reported on February 22, 2007.

The DHS, FBI, and we can assume military intelligence and the CIA (along with other intelligence agencies), are intimately involved in a highly orchestrated effort to demonize and criminalize activists opposed to the government, in particular the patriot movement.

In the corporate media realm – a corporate media long in the orbit of intelligence agencies – this process is limited to propaganda designed to make constitutionalists and patriots look either absurd or dangerous. The fact the latest document was leaked a few days before the Tea Party demonstrations held around the country is probably not coincidental.

Demonizing and criminalizing the patriot movement – characterizing them as “rightwing extremists” and white supremacists with the help of SPLC and ADL propaganda – is a last ditch effort on the part of the globalists and international bankers in control of the government. Our rulers realize the threat posed by a large grassroots movement – especially one including veterans – demanding less government intrusion in our lives and a return to a constitutionally limited Republic.

Blogger: Poplawski Inspired to Murder

http://www.prisonplanet.com/media-matters-blogger-poplawski-inspired-to-murder-by-the-obama-deception.html

Media Matters Blogger: Poplawski Inspired to Murder by The Obama Deception
Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Eric Boehlert, a writer for Rolling Stone and blogger at the Huffington Post and Media Matters, has taken the liberal hysteria artificially inflated around the cop killer Richard Poplawski to new heights. It seems, for the Obama libs, Poplawski’s murder campaign is a godsend. It gives them an excuse to call for censoring their ideological enemies at Fox News and broadcast over the talk radio airwaves.

“Jones has been warning listeners like Poplawski about The Obama Deception… and how President Obama is bound to destroy America.”

In a blog entry today on the Media Matters website, Boehlert basically regurgitates the ADL propaganda line that Poplawski is a creation of not only white supremacists but the Fox News noise machine. He throws in Alex Jones and tries to make the ludicrous case that Alex’s latest film inspired Poplawski’s murder rampage:

We learned that Poplawski hosted his own (failed) Internet radio show and that he visited the website of 9-11 conspiracy backer Alex Jones, who has been hyping the threat of a totalitarian world government for years. More recently, Jones has been warning listeners like Poplawski about The Obama Deception (that’s the name of Jones’ new documentary DVD) and how President Obama is bound to destroy America. (Emphasis added.)

Linking the cop killer Poplawski to The Obama Deception is not enough for Boehlert. He is determined to discredit all opposition to the government and Obama by insinuating such behavior invariably leads to slaughter. Alex Jones figures prominently in this scheme:

Who’s Alex Jones? Even according to some conservative bloggers, the anti-government, anti-Obama talker is a “freak” who’s popular with “the tin foil hat crowd.” Like with Poplawski, apparently.

Next Boehlert attempts to link Jones to Fox News, thus revealing he knows nothing about Alex Jones or his criticism of the network and so-called “conservatives” who enthusiastically supported George Bush and the premeditated murder of over a million Iraqis and the dismemberment of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, a process that continues under the “liberal” cover of Obama and a Democrat-dominated Congress.

Fox News is the “right” side of a false right-left paradigm designed to distract people from the real issue at hand — the systematic looting and destruction of the United States by a small number of international bankers determined to impose world government. Eric Boehlert is on the “left” side of this equation along with CNN, MSNBC, and the foundation created and supported “progressive” opposition now engaged in an orchestrated and rather transparent attack against the artificially created “right” represented by Fox News and the corporate media shill and operative Glenn Beck.

Jones might be a “freak,” but he has recently been embraced — and mainstreamed — by Fox News, as part of the news channel’s unprecedented drive to push radical propaganda warning of America’s democratic demise under the new president.

During a March 18 webcast of FoxNews.com’s proudly paranoid “Freedom Watch,” Andrew Napolitano introduced a segment about “what the government has done to take your liberty and your property away.” And with that, he welcomed onto the show “the one, the only, the great Alex Jones,” who began ranting about “exposing” the New World Order and the threat posed by an emerging “global government.

Alex Jones’ appearance on Judge Napolitano’s show, March 18, 2006.

In fact, Fox News, with the exception of Andrew Napolitano, has consistently vilified Alex Jones.

He was arrested outside Fox News while protesting during a Geraldo Rivera broadcast in September, 2007. “Geraldo ridiculed protesters and lauded the arrests as live footage of Alex being frog marched away by officers was broadcast, referring to them as ‘anarchists,’ ‘communists’ and ‘one of the least attractive groups of protesters I’ve ever seen,’” wrote Paul Joseph Watson at the time.

Glenn Beck (at the time on Headline News) characterized members of the 9/11 truth movement as “insane” and “dangerous anarchists.” Alex Jones is recognized as the leader of the 9/11 truth movement, so therefore Beck likely consiers him a crazed anarchist.

Fox News host Brian Kilmead has suggested protesters who confront politicians should be “beaten to a pulp.”

Fox News and so-called “progressives” have a lot in common — both characterize 9/11 truth activists as kooks and loons and believe there is no such thing as a New World Order, never mind world leaders calling for a New World Order on a daily basis.

Jones also noted with excitement that Fox News’ Glenn Beck had recently begun warning about the looming New World Order on his show, just like Jones had for years. “It is great!” cheered the conspiracist. (Like Jones, Beck recently warned viewers that “the Second Amendment is under fire.”) Concluding the interview, Fox News’ Napolitano announced “it’s absolutely been a pleasure” listening to Jones’ insights.

Alex Jones does not trust Glenn Beck and considers him a government operative. Beck’s task is to polarize the growing grassroots movement against the New World Order and the move toward a world government. His corporate media assignment consists of making a growing number of activists look like stark raving mental cases and paranoids, an effort facilitated by Beck’s goofy demeanor, wide-eyed antics, and off-the-wall diatribes. Eric Boehlert and the “progressives” do their part by insisting Beck and the movement he now claims to represent — notice Beck attempting to hijack the tea party movement and suddenly embracing Ron Paul — are dangerously paranoid gun crazies and cop killers in need of some kind of restraint lest they kill more innocents.

Boehlert admits as much when he writes:

We don’t know if Poplawski tuned in to watch Jones’ star turn for Fox News last month. But is there any doubt that Fox News is playing an increasingly erratic and dangerous game by embracing the type of paranoid insurrection rhetoric that people like Poplawski are now acting on? By stoking dark fears about the ominous ruins that await an Obama America, by ratcheting up irresponsible back-to-the-wall scenarios, Fox News has waded into a territory that no other news organization has ever dared to exploit.

Replace “exploit” with co-opt and you have a good idea what is going on here. Glenn Beck is about neutralization. Boehlert is too, although unlike Beck he probably does not realize it.

Boehlert rounds out his article by attempting to link other disinfo operatives to Alex Jones — namely Michael “Savage” Weiner, Bill O’Reilly, and former Clintonite Dick Morris.

And it’s not just Beck. Appearing on Fox News, Dick Morris recently made a wildly irresponsible comment that looks even worse in light of the Pittsburgh law-enforcement slayings: “Those crazies in Montana who say, ‘We’re going to kill ATF agents because the UN’s going to take over’ — well, they’re beginning to have a case.”

And it’s not just Fox News. Radio nut Michael Savage recently claimed that “we have a naked Marxist for president.” And high-profile conservative blogger Erick Erickson contemplated the beating of politicians: “At what point do [people] get off the couch, march down to their state legislator’s house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?”

Savage is but another example of a New World Order plant with his doggerel about Marxism. It is patently absurd to call Obama a Marxist when he has stacked his administration with bankster minions and high level operatives from the CFR and the Federal Reserve. Savage tells his audience that it is completely irrelevant that some of Obama’s trusted advisors are Bilderberg members. But then Savage is talking about a fanciful schoolbook Marxism and not the Marxism supported by the Guggenheims and the Morgans.

It is no mistake Eric Boehlert has included The Obama Deception in his attack. Obama supporters are livid about the film because it reveals with crystal clarity how Obama is nothing but a front man for the international bankers. Jones’ latest film is a virtual Obama deprogramming tool and this sincerely outrages the libs and “progressives” who when it comes down to it have no problem with dictatorial government, so long as it used as a blunt force instrument against the opposition.

Fact of the matter is the left side of the manufactured political spectrum embrace the tactics of Stalin in the same way the fake right side embrace those of Hitler and the fascists.

In the end, both sides lose and the ruling elite win.

Why pay the bigot?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200706300002?f=h_top

Media Matters; by Jamison Foser
Friday June 29, 2007

Summary:

Why pay the bigot when you can get the bile for free?

In 1996, MSNBC hired Ann Coulter as a contributor. The Washington Post later quoted an MSNBC official describing Coulter's performance: "What she said was so outrageous she was immediately put on probation, and the next one was even worse." Coulter has acknowledged: "They kept firing me, but then they'd rehire me." Coulter barely lasted a year before MSNBC fired her for good for on-air comments she made to Vietnam Veterans of America founder Bobby Muller.

In 2003, less than five months after it began broadcasting his show, MSNBC fired Michael Savage for telling a caller he should "get AIDS and die." An MSNBC spokesperson explained: "Savage made an extremely inappropriate comment and the decision to cancel the program was not difficult." Just a few months earlier, then-NBC chairman Bob Wright had declared: "We strongly defend his new show as a legitimate attempt to expand the marketplace of ideas."

Earlier this year, MSNBC fired Don Imus after he made racist and sexist comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team.

It may be tempting to conclude that, despite the ridiculous decisions to hire the likes of Coulter and Savage in the first place, the firings indicate that MSNBC understands that their violent and hateful rhetoric adds nothing of value to the public discourse.

But maybe MSNBC has simply decided that it doesn't make much sense to pay the bigot when you can get the bile for free.

On Tuesday, for example, MSNBC's Hardball featured Ann Coulter as the sole guest for the entire hour. MSNBC continues to provide a platform for Coulter's hate; the network's just stopped paying her.

During Coulter's last appearance on Hardball, in July 2006, host Chris Matthews told her, "You write beautifully," and, "You have a brilliant brain." He described her as "the picture of heaven." Then Coulter called former Vice President Al Gore a "total fag," and Matthews ended the interview by saying of Coulter, "We'd love to have her back."

Earlier this year, Coulter called Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot" during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). During an appearance on CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck this week, Coulter defended that comment, claiming, "I wasn't saying it on TV. I was saying it at a right-wing political convention with 7,000 college Republicans. I didn't put it on TV." Like much of what Coulter says, this wasn't true, and wouldn't be particularly meaningful even if it was. Coulter's speech was broadcast on C-SPAN, which extensively covers CPAC speeches. (Host Glenn Beck didn't point out Coulter's lie; nor did he point out that she used the same epithet to describe Gore "on TV.")

During her Monday appearance on ABC's Good Morning America, Coulter responded to a question about her CPAC description of Edwards as a "faggot" by saying, "Bill Maher was not joking and saying he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack. So I've learned my lesson. If I'm gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

Those comments prompted the Edwards campaign to denounce Coulter, and Elizabeth Edwards called into Hardball the next day to confront Coulter.

Coulter and her defenders have criticized the Edwards campaign for omitting the Maher portion of her comments about wishing Edwards was killed by terrorists, claiming that her comments were taken out of context. But the context she claims is missing is itself false.

Coulter misrepresented Maher's comments about Cheney. In fact, Maher didn't say he wished Cheney had been killed; he said "if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn't be dying needlessly tomorrow. ... I'm just saying that if he did die -- other people -- more people would live. That's a fact."

During the March 5 broadcast of his show, MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough (FL) debunked his fellow conservatives' attacks on Maher: "Conservatives accuse Bill Maher of calling for Dick Cheney's assassination, but he didn't, and I should know. I was there." But Scarborough didn't correct Coulter when she appeared on Morning Joe, even though he and Coulter did discuss her reference to Maher.

During that same appearance on Morning Joe, Coulter falsely accused Elizabeth Edwards of lying about Coulter's November 19, 2003, column:

SCARBOROUGH: Now, I will tell you the part of that Elizabeth Edwards interview that jarred the most people -- jarred me, jarred just about everybody I spoke with -- was the part where she brought up the fact -- she said that you had written some column where you had made light of John Edwards' dead son. What's the story behind that?

COULTER: Needless to say, that is not true. And coming from people who have done what we have just seen them do in the earlier segment, I don't think they deserve a lot of credibility on this. You can look it up. It's all over the Web. It's a fabulous column, titled "The Party of Ideas," written in 2003. I had to go back and get the full gist of the column. It was about all of the Democratic primary opponents.

In the column in question, Coulter wrote of John Edwards: "If you want points for not using your son's death politically, don't you have to take down all those 'Ask me about my son's death in a horrific car accident' bumper stickers?"

Again, Scarborough did not challenge Coulter or confront her with what she had actually written; he simply accepted her assertion that Elizabeth Edwards had lied about the column.

On Thursday, MSNBC Live host Chris Jansing asked Elizabeth Edwards, "There are people who support your opinion, I'm sure you know, who say, 'Why even dignify it with a response? Why give Ann Coulter more publicity?' "

That same day, Jansing's network gave Ann Coulter publicity by hosting her on Morning Joe. Two days earlier, Jansing's network had given Ann Coulter publicity by hosting her -- alone, for a full hour -- on Hardball.

This week alone, Coulter appeared on ABC's Good Morning America, MSNBC's Hardball, MSNBC's Morning Joe, CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, and Fox News' Hannity & Colmes. (On Fox, she took a swipe at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama: "I do think anyone named B. Hussein Obama should avoid using 'hijack' and 'religion' in the same sentence.")

The notion that the targets of Ann Coulter's hateful speech should ignore her and she'll go away is absurd. Coulter was booked on Good Morning America and Hardball long before Elizabeth Edwards confronted her. Time magazine put Coulter on its cover long before Elizabeth Edwards confronted her. NBC's Today hosted her -- repeatedly -- long before Elizabeth Edwards confronted her.

It isn't Elizabeth Edwards who gives Ann Coulter publicity. It is the nation's leading news organizations. They may claim to find her distasteful, but they keep promoting her.

And they not only provide a forum for her hate speech and let her lie and dissemble without consequence, they repeat her false attacks on progressives as though they are true.

On Today, for example, David Gregory pretended that Ann Coulter has a point:

GREGORY: You said rather pointedly that you think Ann Coulter is guilty of hate speech against your husband and others as well. If you strip away some of the inflammatory rhetoric against your husband and other Democrats, the point she's trying to make about your husband, Senator Edwards, running for the White House is in effect that he's disingenuous, especially on the signature issue of poverty, whether it's a $400 haircut or taking big money to speak in front of a poverty group. If you, again, strip away the inflammatory rhetoric, is that a real point of vulnerability that you have to deal with in this campaign?

This is complete and total bunk.

There's simply no reason to pretend that Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a "faggot" and musing about him being killed by terrorists is about anything other than Ann Coulter being a contemptible human being and a national disgrace. There's no deep point there; she's just a sad and pathetic little person.

But that isn't all: Gregory made the nonsensical suggestion that John Edwards is "disingenuous" about poverty because he paid a lot of money for a haircut. It doesn't matter how often pundits keep saying that, it's still dumb. Gregory's statement that Edwards took "big money to speak in front of a poverty group" repeated Coulter's own false claim that he "charge[d] a poverty group $50,000 for a speech." This falsehood is apparently a reference to a paid speech Edwards made at the University of California-Davis, not "in front of a poverty group." So, obviously, he didn't "charge a poverty group" (in fact, his speaking fee was offset by ticket sales.)

Ann Coulter is not only a remarkably unpleasant person, she's a serial liar. And yet NBC's David Gregory -- among other journalists -- pretends that she has a meaningful point and makes false assertions about progressives based on her lies.

That's why it would be folly for progressives to ignore Coulter in hopes that she goes away: because the media don't ignore her. They promote her. They parrot her false claims. It's also why progressives should not only denounce Coulter, but MSNBC and ABC and CNN and Time and every other news organization that gives her a platform and doesn't challenge her lies and repeats them as though they are true.

During the Wednesday edition of Scarborough Country, MSNBC viewers got a hit of another reason why it would be folly to let Ann Coulter's hate and lies go unchallenged. An MSNBC contributor said of Coulter: "I don't think she's peddling hate. And if she -- and MSNBC certainly doesn't ... because if they did, they would never put her on the air for an hour, would we, Dan?"

The MSNBC contributor? Pat Buchanan.

The same Pat Buchanan who called Martin Luther King Jr. "one of the most divisive men in contemporary history."

The same Pat Buchanan who called Adolf Hitler "an individual of great courage" and wrote a column questioning whether World War II was "worth it" and wondered, "[W]hy destroy Hitler?"

There was Pat Buchanan, paid contributor to MSNBC, repeatedly vouching for Ann Coulter:

JOAN WALSH (Salon.com editor in chief): Ann Coulter had a whole hour to herself on Hardball, and she was going to sell her books and peddle her hate on Hardball pretty much unchallenged.

[...]

BUCHANAN: Joan, let me tell you where you're wrong here.

WALSH: Yes, Pat, sure.

BUCHANAN: I don't think she's peddling hate. And if she -- and MSNBC certainly doesn't --

WALSH: "Faggot"? "Faggot"?

BUCHANAN: -- because if they did, they would never put her on the air for an hour, would we, Dan?

WALSH: Well, she wasn't on for quite a while after she called --

DAN ABRAMS (MSNBC general manager): Oh, come on, Pat. Come on.

BUCHANAN: Well, come on! I mean --

WALSH: -- after she called Al Gore a "total fag."

ABRAMS: Pat is misusing his MSNBC analyst moniker there.

WALSH: Thank you, Dan.

ABRAMS: Go ahead, Pat.

BUCHANAN: Look, she is very, very -- look, she's a very good debater, and she's very good on TV and good on her feet, and she's a conservative, and she's an excellent writer. [New York Times columnist] Maureen Dowd's an excellent friend on the other side.

WALSH: No. No, Pat. You're -- Pat, you know what? You're a good debater.

[crosstalk]

BUCHANAN: She's good --

WALSH: You're a good debater.

ABRAMS: [Congressional Quarterly columnist] Craig Crawford -- wait. Wait.

WALSH: She peddles hate.

ABRAMS: Let's at least admit something, Craig Crawford.

BUCHANAN: Oh, cut it out.

WALSH: No, seriously.

[...]

ABRAMS: But that glosses over -- hang on. Hang on a second. That glosses over -- Pat. Pat, what you're doing is you're cherry-picking the pure politics stuff out of what she says and ignoring the sort of unnecessary hateful words that she uses, as well.

BUCHANAN: What hateful word did she use?

ABRAMS: You know, she described him as a gay person, but using a different term.

BUCHANAN: A what? Oh, you mean, that thing?

Pat Buchanan hasn't suffered from his own history of inflammatory comments: He has repeatedly been hired to host television shows on CNN and MSNBC; he currently works as a contributor to MSNBC, where he defends Coulter from charges that she peddles hate.

If people look the other way when Ann Coulter lies and smears and insults, it will only be a matter of time before Coulter will have her own cable television perch from which she can defend the next generation of right-wing hate merchants.