Last week on the network talk show The View guest Bill O'Reilly was subjected to a walkout by two of the program's interviewers, Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg.

Was the walkout justified?  By examining O'Reilly's comment that triggered the exit the logical conclusion to be drawn by examining the facts is that not only were the walkouts justified; Behar and Goldberg should be heartily commended.

The walkout was triggered by a comment that O'Reilly made that was consistent with anti-Islamic bigots who have spoken out on the topic.  O'Reilly opposed the building of an Islamic center near ground zero.  

This opposition exists despite the fact that the imam supporting the measure has been the quintessence of inclusive thought in the religious sphere.  The FBI has used him to brief agents as part of their sensitivity training.  He has interacted regularly with figures from the Christian and Jewish communities.  

It is no surprise that the New York Post has taken a page from fellow Fox team player Bill O'Reilly in the non-artful realm of the non-apology apology.

Amid picketing and the angry response to the tasteless cartoon regarding the gunning down of a chimpanzee the Post has issued an "apology" on its own unique terms that smacks hard of a non-apology, to wit, an editorial on the Post's website was "meant to mock" the stimulus bill promoted by President Obama but "to those who were offended by the image, we apologize."

Actually, who were the critics, and were they included in the apology?  The editorial asserts that the image was, in the words of MSNBC, "exploited by its longtime antagonists."  

The editorial further asserts that those people who had longstanding differences with the Post saw the cartoon "as an opportunity for payback."  These purported mischief makers were labeled "opportunists" alongside the gritty pronouncement, "To them, no apology is due."

In surfing You Tube one of the most popular of all entries is Bill O'Reilly's interview of Phil Donahue.  Considering the amount of meaningful substance distributed over an 8-minute interview span this enthusiasm is understandable.

O'Reilly on his home Fox News turf began by introducing Donahue as a supporter of one of the right's most hated anti-war symbols, Cindy Sheehan.  

As a veteran television moderator who regrettably lost his own MSNBC program when he dared, in the lead-up to the Iraq War interview experts who persuasively argued against invasion, Donahue knew the value of delivering short, pungent comments in the face of a host known to intimidate some guests through loud accusations and swaggering bravado.

O'Reilly unleashed his full bag of tricks and came up empty.  Donahue was successful in countering his host's anticipated propaganda tricks and reliance on blustery emotional by delivering a concise barrage of attacks that left O'Reilly initially shrieking, then softer spoken in the manner of a shouter who has lost his steam.  

Media critic Brent Bozell III has for years been sounding the clarion call concerning a "left wing media" that controls American opinion.

In the manner of right wing colleagues, during the presidential campaign Bozell denounced Barack Obama as a leftist from the Marxist-Socialist school whose agenda was compatible with the ideas of William Ayers during his Weatherman Underground days and Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

As soon as the election was decided Bozell made one of those infamous rightist U-turns.  Bozell had the answer on why Obama won.  He did so by running as a conservative.

Such contradiction amid fantasy fuels the far right.  It was therefore anything but a surprise when Bill O'Reilly showed up on Jon Stewart's show.  Not only was he plugging his new book; he was there to enlighten Stewart and his viewers about the election.

One of the key elements psychiatrists look for in patients that have gone over the edge is the failure to exercise self control and a given propensity for, whenever differences in opinion surface, to succumb to towering rage.

Another important sign of such dangerously dysfunctional behavior involves an inability to reason and construct thinking not on realistic application of facts, where even then a person can reach a wrong conclusion, but in absurdly dysfunctional applications of subject matter to reach nonsensical conclusions.

Fox's right wing propaganda panderer Bill O'Reilly has succumbed in both areas with disastrous results.  

His interview of Jeremy Glick, whose father died as a first responder to the 9/11 tragedies, provided an instance of a frothing at the mouth O'Reilly who shut off Glick's microphone after he strayed from the acceptable course set out by the moderator of a love feast for George W. Bush and the acceptance that he was the hero and national symbol for 9/11 leadership.

The mainstream media is back in its snake oil mode amid the hand-wringing of Republicans about MSNBC and, in reality, Keith Olbermann.

To show the "objectivity" of parent station NBC as the McCain campaign files a formal complaint to the network's news division, a senior staff member of the network, who asked to remain anonymous, was quoted in the September 8 New York Times:

"MSNBC is behaving like a heroin addict.  They're living from fix to fix and swearing they'll go into rehab the next week."

To set the record straight, and bring the discussion back to reality, there is no record of any MSNBC talk show hosts having addiction problems.  Perhaps the confused "anonymous executive" was mistaking MSNBC's personnel with the confirmed drug addiction of the darling of right wing talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, someone who has never and will not ever be subjected to scrutiny by Republicans.

On Fox News snippets were distributed throughout the mainstream media of Bill O'Reilly snarling with impending dyspepsia to Hillary Clinton over the sheer audacity of her statement that his federal income tax might be raised to 39 percent under a plan she would offer as president.

This is so prevalent under the crybaby yuppie mentality of the Bush-Cheney Administration, fostered by the neoconservatives at the top carrying the spears for the likes of the company Cheney continues to, in all reality, lead, Halliburton, along with Bechtel.  

Then there are the revered telephone communication giants, and how Bush wants you to believe that U.S. intelligence sources will dry up post haste if we do not grant these giants immunity from prosecution.

Amid this jockeying that is occurring not only in America but worldwide over the New World's Order to keep things running in a neoconservative fashion by having the "super haves" hold on to all they have while expanding to own even more, there are efforts afoot to provide economic justice by giving those groups whose rights have been lying dormant all too long in the wake of expanding costs an opportunity to achieve needed economic benefits.  

The Progressive Democrat Newsletter grew out of the frustration of the 2004 election. I have try mixing my own rants and ideas, with national issues, news items, and some very local groups and events in an attempt to both help shape debate and to help people find their own ways of getting involved.

This week I highlight Bill O'Reilly's latest insult: denying the existence of some 200,000 homeless Veterans. For my NYC readers I highlight a very important attempt in the City Council to require permits for citizens to use devices that detect harmful materials in the air, water and soil. For my North Carolina readers I highlight a Democratic candidate for Congress, Marshall Adame, who is pissing off the mercenary firm Blackwater. I am urging people to support Marshall Adame for his willingness to challenge Blackwater. And I continue to highlight local events in all the states where I have had a good number of readers. Interestingly, Florida and Texas are joining New York and California as states where I have lots of readers. Don't forget to visit an advertiser or two and if you want more, please visit Culture Kitchen.

Roy Pearson, a judge in Washington, D.C., had his "15 minutes of fame" when he filed a lawsuit against a cleaning establishment for $54 million after the cleaners lost a pair of pants that accompanied his suit.

The owners of the Korean cleaning establishment claimed to have spent $100,000 in court costs fighting this irrational lawsuit.  They were ready to return to South Korea, but finally managed to settle this frivolous nonsense.

What is a judge with such poor judgment doing in the U.S. legal system?  This is the question that demands an immediate answer.  He is obviously exploiting freedom that citizens have fought and died to deliver and preserve.

Equality before the law is the boasted hallmark of the American justice system.  

In the current college football fever to determine which two teams should meet for the national championship this season, the term "style points" has caught on big with sports commentator and writers in conjunction with how teams might fare in the continuing Bowl College Series computer sweepstakes.

Fox Television is a tough act to beat when it comes to finishing dead last in any style points media sweepstakes.  

Just when you think the network has hit rock bottom with another session of Ann Coulter shrieking that the Democratic Party exists "to kill babies" or Bill O'Reilly delivering another hand wringing declaration that to criticize Cheney and Bush on Iraq is at least coming perilously close to treason Fox delivers a fresh surprise.

Fox's latest effort at informing the public is a two part series arranged by book publisher Judith Regan.  Regan has scored a two-tiered "triumph" by announcing a book and two part interview on Fox starring O.J. Simpson.

Amy Richards is at work on Opting-In: The Case for Motherhood and Feminism, which will be published in 2007. She is also the co-author of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future and Grassroots: A Field Guide to Feminist Activism. In 1992 she co-founded the Third Wave Foundation and since 1995 she has been the voice behind Ask Amy, an online advice column.  This is her first time writing on www.RHRealityCheck.org.

Bill O'Reilly doesn't scare me. I have been on his show a few times and know that his bark is a lot louder than his bite. He's a bully, in that classic playground sense - he's not nice, unless you play his game. That said, however, when his producer invited me to contribute to a segment about the then impending Supreme Court cases dealing with later-term abortions, and the medical records from two abortion providers in Kansas being turned over to that state's Attorney General after a two year escapade, I was apprehensive.

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline finally obtained private medical records from Kansas abortion clinics last week, though months ago the Kansas Supreme Court made efforts to protect people's medical privacy by limiting the scope of information.  Someone else had been seeking them too, Fox News' own Bill O'Reilly, who said on his program Friday that he had been seeking these records for months and months, and finally got them, from an "inside source."

Just think of what we read in high school civics books.  We were told that good citizenship was inextricably tied to voting.  This was our contribution toward making our voices heard.

When Dwight D. Eisenhower, the forgotten Republican president, was seeking reelection in 1956 he delivered a brief announcement to the nation shortly before Election Day urging all Americans to exercise their right to vote.  He urged every eligible American citizen to vote, even if that meant voting against him.

We have come a long way.  Sean Hannity, who drips with syrupy self-proclamations on patriotism, has a different view.  Voters should only turn out if they favor the candidates he and his "fair and balanced" Fox News colleagues such as Bill O'Reilly and Neil Cavuto sanction, meaning Republicans slavishly supporting the Cheney-Bush agenda.

Recently Hannity encouraged Democratic voters to "stay home on Election Day," adding that, "your vote doesn't matter anyway."  His rationale was that Democrats should stay away from the polls "for the sake of the nation" since their votes "won't change who occupies the White House" and Democratic "candidates have absolutely no idea how to win the war on terrorism."

Next week, CBS plans to air a documentary about some of the events on 9/11/2001.  The documentary is controversial, even though it was shown before.  What makes it controversial is not revisiting the raw horror of that day,  it's that people -- some of them recorded live in the midst of these events -- curse.  After all, you have to remember 2/1/2004 changed everything.  Daring to let a four letter word through the nation's television speakers could cost CBS more than half a million dollars per offending syllable.

The Republicans, who so often poke the left as pushing a "nanny state," have made radical increases in fines for "indecency" part of their pretense at family values.  But as usual with the current crew in Washington, they've missed the target.  Not only have they failed to stop the real obscenity that threatens our country, the radical right has become the largest source for filth and indecency.  They've turned the Republican Party into the biggest pornographer in the world.

We often talk about the Republican Culture of Corruption, the excessive cronyism that exists between current Halliburton Republicans and the military-industrial complex. In today's Republican party, there is the ultimate fulfillment of what President Eisenhower warned the nation against. But bad though the widespread Republican Culture of Corruption is, there is an even worse side to the modern right wing: the Culture of Intolerance and Violence.

One of the worst examples of this was the Delaware Pogrom.

Hate Crimes have been on the rise in America since 9/11, and, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, hate groups in America have increased by 33% in the past five years. A peak in attacks on Muslims after 9/11 was rapidly followed by an increase in anti-Semitism in the US and worldwide. There was a slight decline in anti-Semetic incidents in 2005, but incidents are still at disturbingly high levels.