After the triumphal glow of a dynamic Democratic National Convention speech by Hillary Clinton reminiscent of such great past oratorical efforts by Alben Barkley, Frank Clements, Eugene McCarthy and Barbara Jordan, it was significant that a trip to Fox News revealed not analysis of a great political stem winder but gloom and doom.

The gloom and doom naturally centered around Democrats with Hillary Clinton playing a role, but certainly not in a unifying stellar speech tradition on behalf of Barack Obama.  

Fox's legal expert Greta Van Susteren, who launched her TV career at CNN in the nineties proclaiming the prosecution's failure to prove up a murder case against O.J. Simpson, had put on her political hat and was talking to the network's Democratic Party resident expert.

That expert would be Susan Estrich, currently a University of Southern California law professor and formerly a chairperson of the dismal presidential campaign of Michael Dukakis in 1988.

Ah, how much piety was in the air with Republicans such as Newt Gingrich and Henry Hyde, both of whom were marital philanderers, when they sought along with their similarly self-righteous party colleagues to remove Bill Clinton from the presidency.

The key question for these self-righteous Republicans was:  "Did Clinton lie?"  The corollary was that if President Bill Clinton lied on the subject of whether or not he had sex with White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office then grounds for impeachment existed.  

It is doubtful that thoughts of the stains on Lewinsky's blue dress have left the "chaste conscience" of "moralist" Ann Coulter for a single waking minute since the Clinton-Lewinsky liaison occurred.  

To put the issue in perspective, the lie that Clinton ultimately acknowledged he told was in an affidavit in a civil legal case.  Virtually any domestic relations attorney or psychologist dealing with matrimonial affairs would concur that perhaps the single leading instance of lying occurs when spouses deny extra marital affairs, the type of conduct applicable in the case against Clinton for impeachment.

The Progressive Democrat Newsletter grew out of the frustration of the 2004 election. After much pressure from readers, this email newsletter is now going the blog route. I update the blog once a week focusing on both national issues and issues of interest to particular regions or states. In general, NYC, California, New Jersey, Virginia and the Midwest get special attention simply because those are the areas where I seem to have the most readers. However, these days I am too busy to give each region the attention I used to. As my readership on Daily Gotham and Culture Kitchen goes up, I have to spend more time on those sites. So this newsletter is fading a bit. I hope it is still usefull to you, though.

This week I am focusing once again on Fox News, keeping antibiotics effective and a critical election THIS YEAR in Mississippi. I also present a new feature that started with an unexpectedly recommended Daily Kos diary as well as some local actions for Michigan, NYC and Indiana.

The Progressive Democrat Newsletter grew out of the frustration of the 2004 election. After much pressure from readers, this email newsletter is now going the blog route. I update the blog once a week focusing on both national issues and issues of interest to particular regions or states. In general, NYC, California, New Jersey, Virginia and the Midwest get special attention simply because those are the areas where I seem to have the most readers. However, these days I am too busy to give each region the attention I used to. As my readership on Daily Gotham and Culture Kitchen goes up, I have to spend more time on those sites. So this newsletter is fading a bit. I hope it is still usefull to you, though.

This week I talk about corruption in government, focus on a Sierra Club action targeting Home Depot and Fox News, energy solutions and I focus on some local goings on in New York, Florida and New Jersey.

Been doing the Progressive Democrat since shortly after the 2004 election. It originally grew out of my attempt to keep people's grassroots spirits up after the 2004 election and originally it was just a handful of readers. When I spend time on it, nowadays I get around 80 hits a day. Though when I am away on vacation and not keeping it up, that drops to more like 25 hits a day. Still, since I originally had less than 100 readers period, that's growth.

Nothing prompts Karl Rove to salivate faster than the prospect of a new protégé.  It was reported that Rove waxed enthusiasm from the first time he met George W. Bush, loving his "swagger" and recognizing what he perceived as a natural and engaging charisma that he believed he could take all the way to the presidency.

Despite Rove's enthusiasm he recognized that he could not accomplish this feat independently.  The important thing about promoting an incurious and inarticulate buffoon-like figure such as Bush to the presidency was a willingness to please the neocon power structure and that he did.

To invest Bush with the kind of manufactured machismo that typified Ronald Reagan, who had earlier been fine-tuned by the corporate establishment all the way to the presidency, some early steps were taken.  

Like Reagan, Bush developed a "man's man" image by becoming an instant cowboy as arrangements were made for him to purchase his Crawford, Texas ranch, the first step toward becoming the Lone Star State's governor, an important pivotal position en route to Washington.

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.

The Foley pedo scandal ate up so much bandwidth most people don't even know Baghdad is under a daytime curfew.  Therefore, it's no surprise this shocking exchange on FOX News fell completely off the table.  It's so tasty, I just had to pick it up, transcribe it, and share it around.  This is a dog bites man kind of story.

Shep Smith is a popular FOX News anchorman, yet even this avid supporter of the war, Bush, and all things conservative finally got so enraged, he stomped Bill Kristol like a grape.  Talk about making Kristol whine.   Shep started off calling this administration's policies horrifying and repulsive and it went downhill from there.  By the end of the segment, Shep was holding Bush responsible for any deaths that occur in Iraq between now and the mid-term elections!  In so many words!  On FOX NEWS!  This is Must See TV.  Transcripts and links to this "come to Jesus" talk are below the fold.  

Joseph Lieberman's declaration in the wake of his Connecticut Democratic Party Primary defeat on Tuesday is reminiscent of an event linking President Richard M. Nixon and Secretary of the Treasury John Connally in 1972.  The cases are particularly intriguing in view of the ideological strategy ploys invoked in each case.

It was later learned that Nixon, who had been given the nickname "Tricky Dick" for a reason, was disenchanted with Vice President Spiro Agnew, his reelection running mate in 1972 in his race against Democratic presidential nominee Senator George McGovern of South Dakota.  

Nixon, who had handpicked Agnew four years earlier for his 1968 race against Vice President Hubert Humphrey, had privately lamented that "the guy doesn't have it" and jokingly referred to the man residing one heartbeat from the presidency as his "insurance policy against assassination."

In 1971 Nixon, one year removed from a pivotal election, tapped former Texas Governor John Connally, a protégé of Lyndon B. Johnson and leader of the state Democratic Party's conservative wing, to become his Secretary of the Treasury as America was mired in a recession.  

The current predicament of right wing talk show idol Rush Limbaugh symbolizes the hypocritical double standard of that group.  Analysis of Limbaugh and his legal problems demonstrates rightist cognitive dissonance at its most conspicuous.

Limbaugh's recent difficulties with the law stemming from a drug addiction problem have prompted faithful right wing followers to distort logic and reason to accommodate their unswerving loyalty to a badly tarnished idol.  

When media attention about Limbaugh's drug problems had reached zenith I had a conversation with one faithful follower doing his utmost to avoid reason.  I recalled those occasions not many years before when, at the very mention of Bill Clinton and his problems with Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky, this same person would beam with unbounded glee.

The source of any Clinton criticism or its liability never mattered.  The important thing was that Clinton was being accused.  Accepting all negative accounts came as an article of faith to this fervent Limbaugh enthusiast.

Senator Joseph Lieberman has been the recent recipient of solid praise from Sean Hannity at Fox News.  Lieberman has been appearing with such delightful frequency that he has received the tag "Fox Democrat" for that and the compatibility of his views with those such as Hannity who interview him there.

Hannity in a recent broadcast took the step of endorsing Lieberman for reelection in Connecticut, adding that he would either praise or denounce him, whichever yielded the most positive results.  

In that same conversation Hannity delivered another of his unwittingly side-splittingly humorous lines in stating that perhaps he and Lieberman should start a third party, where his own Reagan conservative values could be better represented than in the current Republican Party.  The statement was particularly revealing in analyzing the beliefs Hannity imputes to Lieberman.  

The Connecticut solon responded revealingly by stating sadly that so many members of his current nominal party, the Democrats, have trouble embracing traditional American values, presumably the kind he and the Hannity Fox mainstream come by naturally.  

Professors should beware.  That is any professors to the left of Fox News, since anyone failing to heed and speak the devout word is in the sights of David Horowitz, the self-anointed head of the Thought Police maintaining watchdog status over academia.

According to Horowitz there are 50,000 college and university professors currently endangering students with exposure to anti-American propaganda.  Since this is a tall order for even as devoted a right wing zealot as Horowitz to handle at one time, he has concentrated his efforts on those he deems to be the 101 leading malefactors.

The Horowitz crusade takes the form of a propaganda-laden book entitled The Professors:  The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America.  Assuming equal interest to the author's background and agenda is the identity of the publisher, Alfred Regnery, also known, and with good reason, as "the right wing publishing ghetto."  

One work that emerged as a gigantic bestseller released by Regnery was Unlimited Access, written by former CIA operative Gary Aldrich.  

Professors should beware.  That is any professors to the left of Fox News, since anyone failing to heed and speak the devout word is in the sights of David Horowitz, the self-anointed head of the Thought Police maintaining watchdog status over academia.

According to Horowitz there are 50,000 college and university professors currently endangering students with exposure to anti-American propaganda.  Since this is a tall order for even as devoted a right wing zealot as Horowitz to handle at one time, he has concentrated his efforts on those he deems to be the 101 leading malefactors.

One work that emerged as a gigantic bestseller released by Regnery was Unlimited Access, written by former CIA operative Gary Aldrich.  

The author disclosed that while in the White House Hillary Clinton decorated the national Christmas tree with pornographic ornaments while Bill snuck away from his Secret Service detail in the wee hours of the morning and walked by himself to the Marriott Hotel a few blocks away on Pennsylvania Avenue to engage in secret trysts with young women.  

Former right wing author-propagandist David Brock, who ultimately broke away from the Fox-Scaife-Limbaugh-Reveren d Moon axis, revealed that he was the "source" that Aldrich thought reliable enough to use for the Bill Clinton "disclosure."  

Brock explained that he disclosed to Aldrich that such a rumor was making the rounds, which was good enough for both the author and his publisher, even though Brock stressed that it was unconfirmed.  

When employees at the Marriott were interviewed in connection with the Aldrich charge by the media, raucous laughter was the response.  As one employee stated, "How could President Clinton come and go in the early hours when our lobby is virtually empty without being discovered?"

Despite no evidence being forthcoming to substantiate either absurd charge, Alfred Regnery stuck by both revelations and the work became a bestseller icon to the hate Clinton crowd.  Regnery also was noted for providing that historian of probity and incisive accuracy, Ann Coulter, with an early showcase to try out some of her earliest "traitor" lines in print.

Horowitz fits comfortably into the aforementioned tradition, a former Marxist firebrand who merely traded brands of extremist thought.  

It is significant how many times this occurs, only to find the right douse their newly devoted converts with an appropriate holy water welcome.  The right's leading voices assert that a watershed conversion has occurred when in reality a troubled fanatic has no more than begun reading from a different script.

Two of the accused professors have responded recently to Horowitz's charges while, in recent Amazon.com reviews, students have come to the defense of others, relying on a firsthand experience unknown to Horowitz.  

One of the professors Horowitz singled out was Professor David Barash of the University of Washington.  Considering the topic Barash chose for his latest book, Horowitz's suspicions are understandable.  

The psychology professor, who teaches a course in Ideas of Human Nature, dared to co-author a book on Peace and Conflict Studies, crossing paths with the neoconservative agenda embraced by Horowitz natural allies such as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.  

"Some of the assertions in Horowitz's book are flat-out lies," Barash wrote in an e-mail, the contents of which were published in The Daily, Washington University's campus newspaper.  "He evidently didn't bother to read my Peace and Conflict Studies book, but simply took it as an occasion to agitate."

Barash tackled the crux of the issue in stating, "I've never made any bones about my personal politics, but I also think it's very important that I don't expect my students to agree with me."  Barash noted that, while it might be true that in social work and the humanities there might be a "left bias," he conjectures that "the exact opposite is true in engineering schools or business."

Taking up a related point was another individual singled out for rebuke by Horowitz, Professor Robert W. McChesney of the University of Illinois.  

Considering that McChesney has been an articulate critic of the current monopoly of the mainstream media by the likes of Fox and Clear Channel, and co-authored with John Nichols the incisive work Tragedy:  How The American Media Sells Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy, he would thereby loom as a conspicuous Horowitz target.

After all, don't O'Reilly, Hannity and their Fox colleagues insist that the network is objective and is criticized only because they refuse to sell out to the left?  This is the message that the propaganda machine, of which Horowitz plays an ardent part, has attempted to inculcate into the minds of Americans.

McChesney, in responding to Horowitz's attack on the website CommonDreams.org, cited the prevalence of staunchly conservative thought in an area where Horowitz has never treaded, that of the U.S. military.  

"Generals and military officers are far more important (than professors) to the functioning of a government," McChesney wrote, "and, as history shows in depressingly frequent detail, a much greater threat to democratic governance than anthropology professors.  In the United States the military is enormous, it is entirely funded by taxpayers, and the officer corps is significantly right-wing Republican.  There is hardly a liberal Democrat in the bunch, and I dare say probably not a single soul to the left of the Clinton-Kerry center of the Democratic Party."

McChesney, a shrewd media critic who knows undiluted propaganda when he observes it, finds it "revealing that Horowitz uses the term `dangerous' as a pejorative in his book's subtitle.  Dangerous professors are those with ideas with which Horowitz disagrees.  This is a ludicrously opportunistic and undemocratic framing.  The entire premise of a viable democratic public sphere is that what some perceive as `dangerous' ideas be protected, even encouraged, and permitted to be thrown into debate.  Especially, above all else, in universities."

If there is one thing that Horowitz and his ideological allies do not want it is a free marketplace of ideas.  What troubles Horowitz is that there are those that dare to think rather than fall into the tidy pattern of Fox zombies, docilely accepting the communicative Big Brother's message of the moment, whether it be disseminated by Horowitz, Limbaugh, Coulter or Hannity.  

The phrase "dare to think" is a toxic to the likes of Horowitz.  If you dare to stand up for the First Amendment and freedom to worship or not to do so without government interference, if you believe that the government has no right to intrude into an individual's thoughts or bedroom, known traditionally as a right of privacy, or if you believe that searches should be preceded by warrants from magistrates, or that the Nuremberg and UN charters along with the Geneva Code should all be followed under both U.S. and international law, then Horowitz and his thought police have news for you.

The foregoing used to be regarded as bedrock constitutional principles by both traditional John Stuart Mill liberals as well as Edmund Burke conservatives.  To adhere to these principles currently is to invite at least suspicion, perhaps investigation, and maybe prosecution under the dire Orwellian warning, "We are at war!  You are making the world safer for terrorists!"    

Charlie Reina, a former producer at Fox News wrote an open letter to Bill O'Reilly on the media site, Romenesko.

He asks for an invitation to appear on O'Reilly's show. He better make it quick. At the rate O'Reilly's ratings are dropping, no one will see his appearance.

Dear Bill:

I just watched a clip from Monday's "Factor" featuring Eric Burns, the host of your network's media criticism show, News Watch. During the segment, you implored Eric to fire one of his panelists, Neal Gabler, whom you called a "rabid dog" and described as "cowardly" for declining an invitation to appear on your show. Since not a word was said in Neal's defense, I would appreciate an opportunity to do so as a guest on the "Factor."

As you know, I was the producer of "News Watch" from its inception in 1997 until I left FNC six years later. (By the way, thank you for complimenting "News Watch." I'm sure I speak for all of us responsible for making it exactly what it is today, the best show in FNC's weekend lineup.) Neal joined us in 2002, replacing Jeff Cohen in the panel's "liberal" chair. Like Jeff, he took seriously management's implicit "hands-off" pledge to News Watch, and he clearly has felt free to criticize Fox during debates on the show. For the most part, Fox has made good on its pledge, and I would hate to think that Neal's job is in jeopardy now just because he offended the network's highest-rated personality.

Bill, I know that you don't engage in personal attacks, so I'm sure the "rabid dog" thing was merely a bit of hyperbole - nothing more serious than, say, calling a harmless blowhard a "demagogue." But it was disappointing to see your characterization of Neal as a coward go unchallenged. As you know, people of all stripes often refuse to appear on programs for reasons other than cowardice - for instance, when they consider the show or its host or other guests beneath their dignity. A case in point: Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center won't appear on any show alongside Jeff Cohen. At least, that's what Bozell told us when we invited him to fill the "News Watch" panel's "conservative" seat one week and he turned us down flat.

There are many other examples we can discuss. And I'm not even including cases in which hosts declare topics taboo after they've had their say on them. If you invite me, I promise not to raise any subject you may have vowed never to speak of again. I would, though, like to discuss - in general terms, of course -- other acts that happen in and around television newsrooms which might be considered cowardly. For instance, a physically-imposing on-air personality publicly humiliating a staffer so cruelly that she can no longer return to work. Or a network public relations department so depraved that it sets out, behind the scenes, on a campaign to destroy the career of another channel's rising on-air star. Or a network executive who feels free to embarrass a vulnerable young anchorwoman by ogling her legs on a public escalator as others watch.

Anyway, Bill, I think we could have a really eye-opening discussion. Properly promoted, it could raise your already-astronomical numbers a notch. And it might even do me some good. Remember when I agreed to have you on "News Watch" so you could promote one of your novels? If you return the favor, the book I'm writing could wind up a best-seller.

All the best.

Charlie Reina

Wonder if Reina will get an invite to appear on O'Reilly's show? Nah. O'Reilly's too cowardly. UPDATE: O'Reilly is even more cowardly than I thought. People who call his show and mention MSNBC's Keith Obelman is getting a follow up call from Fox News Security. Link to adigal's account and Mike Stark's.

Well the puppet master will finally break his silence on shooting a man.

A belated start on what was obvious to anyone on scene or down the pipeline.

Fox News (where else?) will feature the sharpshooter Veep at 2:00 pm EST today.  

No doubt everything will be cleared up then.  I'll update only if anything new "comes to light."

(No link here to Fox, by the way. Go there at your own risk.)