Is it possible that Thor Hearne, the rightwing operative attorney The BRAD BLOG has been following for years after we discovered him at the heart of a phony "non-partisan" GOP astroturf operation set up just after the 2004 election, calling itself the American Center for Voting Rights (ACVR), has finally seen the light?

Seems highly unlikely for the national general counsel of Bush/Cheney '04 Inc., who knowingly misled Congress on that point and many others. But perhaps after our years dogging him and detailing his lies and phony agenda working to keep legal (Democratic-leaning) citizens from being able to exercise their legal right to vote, he's gotten tired of being the poster boy for the Republican's anti-democracy campaign.

As detailed yesterday by Fired Up! Missouri, who appear to be as confused as we are...

Can't believe Andrew Breitbart and the heroic citizen watchdogs fighting against bloated government corruption at BigGovernment.com haven't said a word about this yet! Perhaps James O'Keefe is not donning his pimp costume even now, for some "undercover journalism" to shut these corrupt, tax-payer robbing bastards down once and for all! And prostitution foe "Patterico" is sharpening his poison pen of the people even as we speak!

I can't deny it any longer. These are, after all, the most outrageous examples of ACORN corruption yet! And apparently it wasn't just a few low level employees this time, but system corruption said to go to the very top of the organization, resulting in the defrauding of millions, if not billions of tax-payer dollars! It's now clearer than ever that all of their federal funding must be denied once and for all! Get this...

[NOW UPDATED: Patty strikes back! Swings and misses again.]

Oh, noes! Rightwing blogger "Patterico", one of the only ones silly enough to throw in with GOP propagandist Andrew Breitbart to defend his employee, accused federal felon James O'Keefe, sez I'm "Liberal"! And a "stooge"!

Ouch! Thems good bloggery, Patty! U shure skooled me! 'Cept for the part where you hit publish before bothering to check your facts 'n' stuff...

From John Byrne at RAW STORY...

Gosh, and sure is unfair to paint any of these Tea Baggers as racist, isn't it?

Among the questions on one of those old Alabama literacy tests [PDF], as highlighted in Byrne coverage, are these questions which we wonder if Tancredo himself would be able to answer (not that it would matter, because he's white):

After it was revealed that the sponsor of the "National Tea Party Convention" in Nashville, TN, was a for-profit corporation charging some $500 for admission, previously confirmed Tea Bag speakers Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) dropped out.

None of that was a problem for Tancredo, apparently. Nor for Sarah Palin (R-FOX), who is still scheduled to be the weekend's keynoter for a reported speaking fee of $100,000. Perhaps she'll up Tancredo's racist ante and call for a repeal of that pesky 13th Amendment.

And speaking of literacy, below the fold is a photo of TeaParty.org founder Dale Robertson, taken at a Tea Bagger event in February of 2009. Plenty of literacy, no racism there...

Wow. These guys ain't fooling around.

If the Republican Gubernatorial primary candidate Carly Fiorina is willing to put out a web ad like this, against her Republican opponent Tom Campell in the race for the GOP nomination to run against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer this year, do the Democrats have any idea of the crazy train they're about to be barreling into?...

[Hat-tip TPM who tweets it as "Possibly the best web ad ever". We might have to agree.]

Seriously, the Republican Party wasn't always this whacked out, crazy and utterly misinformed, were they? Were they?!

The Daily Kos has enlisted the "non-partisan independent pollster Research 2000" to survey "over 2,000 self-identified Republicans." The results of which, I'll have to agree with Kos here, are "nothing short of startling."

Writes Kos: "Ultimately, these results explain why it is impossible for elected Republicans to work with Democrats to improve our country. Their base are conspiracy mongers who don't believe Obama was born in the United States, that he is the second coming of Lenin, and that he is racist against white people."

Just one case in point likely to be of interest to readers of The BRAD BLOG (and there are many others, far more extreme), one in five (21%) of self-identified Republicans believe ACORN stole the 2008 election. Another 55% are "not sure" if they did or not. Still waiting for any one of them to present even a shred of evidence to suggest that even a single vote was cast fraudulently via ACORN in some way, of course. For the record, Obama reportedly won by about 10 million of them nationally. You think we'd have some kind of evidence by now from the "Fox 'News' Voter Fraud Unit."

Also, according to the poll, a majority of Republicans, 53%, believe "Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama." Sigh...

How many elected Democrats will have to lose their jobs in 2010 and 2012 before they figure out who/what they're dealing with in this once-Grand, now just utterly insane (actually, just successfully and expensively disinformed) Old Party?

Poll "high"lights are here...

It's up to the wingnuts. If they want to keep lying about Obama, then we'll do our best to set the record straight. If they want to bring up legitimate criticism, and there's plenty of it, then we'd likely join them, and we could all have an Obama bashing party together. But they're not that smart.

So as long as the wingnut media --- and thus, virtually the entire corporate media --- insist on using the people's airwaves to lie to the people (eg., Rush Limbaugh continues to repeat every day what a "complete failure" the economic stimulus package has been), I guess we'll just have to keep countering that phony message by posting the truth in order to try to offer some balance to the unending stream of lies from the GOP and their extremely effective mouthpieces across the near-entirety of the corporate media.

Rachel Maddow did the same last week in her lead-up piece to Obama's first State of the Union address, in which she brutally attacked the Administration's call for a partial spending freeze, even as the economy, thanks in no small part to Government investment, struggles to come out of its tailspin.

Before her critique however (which I hope you'll watch in full --- it's embedded below), she also pointed out the salient, indisputable facts of how responsible actions taken by the Obama Administration, whether you liked them or not --- and as opposed by virtually every single Republican in Congress --- have, in fact, with all of their many failings, helped shore up, and even reverse for now, what had been a near-death spiral by the time Obama finally took office.

Here are two charts from her report which highlight that point quite simply, and help to counter the loud, GOP-spun political/partisan nonsense echoed, naturally, by the gullible tea baggers...

[NOTE: Since Maddow's report last week, the GDP figures for the 4th quarter of last year have now been announced and the up trend continues. As her original chart included data only through the 3rd quarter of last year, we've augmented that original chart below to reflect the recently announced 5.7% growth in GDP for the 4th quarter of '09]:

Love him or hate him, or anything in between, recognition of the overall effect of the broad points of Obama's emergency economic policies --- quickly passed at an historic moment of looming disaster --- is due. At least along with any honest appraisal of those policies.

Maddow's entire report, both praising and critiquing Obama and those policies --- something known as "fairness and balance" --- can be watched below...

AP's investigative unit produces an appropriate criminal investigative report today on the background of the Republican Party operatives --- and there appear to be more than just four --- behind James O'Keefe and Andrew Breitbart's "TeaBugger" operation at U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu's (D-LA) office in Louisiana last week.

Compare and contrast that with the shameful, fawning 2,250 word Sunday New York Times article attempting to turn the accused federal felons into folk heroes.

And, again, as we have in our coverage to date, we'll ask the following simple questions, among others, which everyone should be asking --- loudly:

1) When will GOP operative/propagandist/con-man Andrew Breitbart tell his BigGovernment.com readers and Fox "News" dupes that he's been lying to them, and that his employee James O'Keefe never appeared as a pimp in the offices of ACORN?

2) When will snake-oil salesman Andy release O'Keefe's complete, unedited, illegally-obtained ACORN video tapes publicly?

3) Why hasn't he done so already?

4) Could it be because two independent investigations found they were heavily-edited, likely illegally-obtained, heavily over-dubbed, and showed [PDF] "no evidence that action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers"?

5) When will "Orly Taitz" Andy share the existence of Marcy "emptywheel" Wheeler's evisceration of his employee O'Keefe's failure of a cover story for the alleged Louisiana "TeaBugger" felonies with his own readers? He claims to be a "journalist" (ironically enough) decrying the "biased" "Liberal Media," who selectively report things, right?

6) Why does GOP operative Andy think his employee O'Keefe should be presumed "innocent until proven guilty" as he's tweeted time and again, when he's shown no such benefit of the doubt for ACORN, ACORN employees, or even Gitmo detainees who may face punishment of death?

7) Why is ACORN itself "guilty," according to Angry Andy, of something or other, based on what he believes their employees did, but faux "journalist" Andrew Breitbart, who admits accused felon O'Keefe is on his payroll, is somehow not "guilty" of anything?

There are, of course, many more such question that the cowardly and professionally-deceptive Mr. Breitbart won't be answering. But I thought it'd be nice to give Andy --- and perhaps the "Liberal MSM" --- a chance to start ignoring the above right away.

P.S. We have sent the above questions to Andy, with a promise to post his answers in full here, if he cares to offer them. Unlike his political hit-man "Big" sites, we have no interest in being unfair to anybody here, and have no fear of sharing all sides of any story.

You folks do realize that James O'Keefe never actually wore his ridiculous pimp costume into those ACORN offices on those doctored and illegally recorded video tapes, right? But, rather, he was filmed outside of the offices wearing his get-up, while appearing as the conservatively dressed boyfriend of a hooker trying to escape an abusive pimp when the cameras were rolling inside the offices. That's just one of many deceptions O'Keefe carried out.

As one of two independent investigations of the incidents which clear ACORN of wrong-doing noted, this one by former MA Attorney General Scott Harshbarger [PDF]:

Since Crazy Andy Breitbart, who released the phony video tapes on his propaganda website, didn't bother to man up and point that out before, during, or after posting them, or while appearing on Fox "News" and elswhere to promote both them and himself, or even after the reports came out, you may not have realized that salient fact.

You may also not have known that while both independent reports, the other one by the Congressional Research Service [PDF], found no criminal wrong doing by ACORN, they did find that O'Keefe likely the broke the law in at least two states by secretly recording the videos which had voice-overs deceptively edited into them later, "in some cases substantially," according to Harshbarger's report, so that it was "difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding."

In other words, the videos were a scam perpetrated by both Breitbart and his employee O'Keefe, who now faces felony charges that Breitbart has been tweeting his adorable angry little heart out over the last few days trying desperately to downplay. Who can blame him? Nothing less than whatever little credibility he ever had is on the line after all. No doubt P.T. Barnum faced similar circumstances as he plied his trade to the suckers born every minute. So do actual pimps. Like Andy.

But just imagine the years of outrage and endless repetition of the charges from the Rightwing media and their acolytes --- folks like Crazy Andy --- that would accompany four operatives allied with the Democratic Party, perpetrating a scheme to dress up as phony telephone company employees in order to access and manipulate the phone system in the office of a sitting Republican U.S. Senator.

Of course, it would be the Crime of the Century to the wingnuts, likely led by Breitbart, accompanied by cries of "What did Obama, Pelosi, Reid, ACORN, SEIU and Saul Alinsky know and when they did they know it?!" along with calls for resignations in disgrace because of it.

But when the "Liberal MSM" report on a very serious federal felony offense allegedly committed by four Republicans disguising themselves and attempting to interfere with the the phone system of a sitting Democratic U.S. Senator, well, that's just another example of the outrageously "Liberal MSM," at least according to Breitbart and O'Keefe's latest attempted gambit.

That's the embarrassing meme that the Rightwing propagandist and GOP operative Breitbart is busy Twittering himself to death in hopes of selling, as he desperately tries to reclaim any credibility that he or his GOP "news" outlets might have ever had.

Crazy Andy is angrily and frantically using the tried and true tactics of Republican Reframing Magic® in the wake of the felony arrest of his own employee O'Keefe, the dirty trickster, and junior propagandist-cum-failed-superspy. And given the rubes and dopes in the Not-Liberal-At-All MSM, it's likely they'll fall for it as hard as they fell for Breitbart/O'Keefe's ACORN video scheme. Case in point: The "liberal" New York Times is already running a fawning 2,250-word feature story on Breitbart and his gang of desperados in Sunday's paper. Can you imagine any such coverage of accused Democratic Party criminals like that?! And the GOP outrage that would accompany it if it did?!

But now that Breitbart and O'Keefe, as of Friday, have decided on a cover story (posted in full below), and seem prepared to stick to it and sell it, let's give it a look before it all falls completely apart, as it largely already has, even before I had time to finish this story which I got distracted from after beginning to write it yesterday...

Guest Blogged by Frank Schaeffer

It is my great honor to be part of a Tuesday, Feb 2 press conference to announce the formation of The American Prayer Hour. (Press released posted below.) Why am I doing this? Because the secretive group "The Family" and/or "C-Street" organizations of the far loony Right is the sponsor of the current annual Prayer Breakfast.

"The Family" are closely associated with the American and Ugandan evangelical "Christians" who have been trying to impose the death penalty on gay men and women.

This is my chance as a straight, fifty-seven year old practicing Christian, father of three and grandfather of three to step up and show my solidarity with my gay brothers and sisters. It's also a chance to try and begin to restore the reputation of Christianity that has for far too long been violated by the Religious Right.

And since in years past (in the 1970s and 80s) my family and I played such a leading role in the formation of the Religious Right this is the least I can do to try and correct the horrible hate and polarization we (my late father Francis Schaeffer and I) personally helped set in motion...

[UPDATE: Complete video of Obama Q&A with House GOP members now embedded at end of article.]

Via Olbermann this afternoon at dKos:

The event this afternoon, where Obama spent an hour and a half taking any and all questions from GOP House Members was, indeed, remarkable. As I tweeted at the time, "Can u imagine Bush ever doing anything like that? Ever?!"

If you missed it, we'll try to get video, or links to it, posted here shortly. Apparently, tweets emptywheel, "so many people want to see Obama's GOP talk that they've crashed CSPAN's servers. Has that ever happened before?"

It was sober, reasonable, helpful and historic and Obama came across as extraordinarily reasonable and Presidential. It was little surprise then that Fox "News," I read, cut away from the historic moment to...do something else.

[Update: Video of all 85 minutes of Obama's "Question Time" is now posted here with transcript, and embedded in full at the end of this article.]

A few clips follow below, courtesy of TPM's excellent coverage, along with an extended segment from their report. In one of the clips, for example, Obama tells the Republicans to portraying the "pretty centrist" health care bill as "some sort of Bolshevik plot"...

So if ACORN itself is "guilty" for something or other, based on what some of their employees did, what does that make rightwing faux "journalist" and Matt Drudge poodle Andrew Breitbart, who has now admitted that accused felon James O'Keefe worked for him?

In a rather embarrassing "interview" (really a staged dog and pony show, ostensibly meant to try and help Breitbart out of his apparent jam of being found to have been 'palling around with federal felons') conducted by rightwing propagandist Hugh Hewitt yesterday on the public's airwaves following O'Keefe's arrest in an alleged scheme to tamper with the phones of a U.S. Senator, Breitbart admitted that he "paid a fair salary" to the alleged felon.

After Hewitt asked, "so he is an employee?" Breitbart impossibly demurred: "I'm not sure that's technically the thing, but yes, he's paid for his life rights."

Mmmm-kay. Having trouble seeing the distinction there. Nonetheless, what's clear is that Breitbart pays O'Keefe for his work, whatever the hell that "work" is.

But wait, this gets far more ridiculous as these two knuckleheads proceed to blow away years of their very own propaganda. In further comments, overlooked for the most part by others so far, made by Breitbart and Hewitt in that "interview," they succeed in moving this entire affair from the utterly ridiculous to the laughably absurd...

And what they will never tell you on Fox "News," and probably not even on CNN or MSNBC, etc., is contained in the following three emails sent to Mikey Weinstein of the Nobel Prize-nominated Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), following an ABC News exposé last week on the bible verses that are encoded on the rifle scopes made by Trijicon, Inc., and used by our military serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The first disturbing email below is from a U.S. soldier who happens to be a Caucasian Muslim, horrified by the dangers of having such verse referenced on military equipment used in the Middle East, particularly in the event of capture. The soldier shares an appalling alleged account of his superior officer's description of the weapon as the "the Fire Arm of Jesus Christ." All the better, said the officer according to the soldier, than what they might have received, since "Uncle Sam had seen fit not to give us a 'pussy "Jewzzi" (combination of the word 'Jew' and Israeli made weapon "Uzi").'"

That account is then followed by two very short, anti-Semitic threats sent to Weinstein in regard to the same matter, following ABC's report. Moreover, a senior company executive is said to have described MRFF as "not Christian" to ABC, according to a letter threatening legal action sent to the company by the non-profit organization which counters that it's allied with thousands of Christian troops and organizations.

All three of the email missives are horrifying, though none of them are likely to receive the time of day in the bulk of the cowardly corporate media, where the real cause and effect of the Rightwing's modern day politicized religious agenda is rarely broached in any way, shape, or form...

Via Eric Boehlert...

Guest blogged by Frank Schaeffer

It’s clear that America’s Founding Fathers must have made a pact with the Devil. How else to explain the curse America is so obviously under today? I want to go even farther than Pat Robertson and tell it like it really is!

(Disclosure: back in the 1970s and 80s before I quit the evangelical right, I was on the 700 Club with Pat 6 times, given my late father Francis Schaeffer was a founder of the religious right).

What else besides a punishment for a satanic pact could explain the following?...