This week’s debunkers —

The filibuster deal
What’s the fallout? What will happen when – not if, when – Bush nominates an over-the-top wingnut to the Supreme Court later this year, when Rehnquist retires? Will Democrats successfully block the nominee under the “extraordinary circumstances” clause, while complaining that the president failed to seek their “advice"? Or will Republicans repeat the play-acting of the last few months and accuse Democrats of “unprecedented abuse” of the process?

Nobody knows. Those who wish to continue the nuclear threat, like most of the conservative commentariat, have to keep insisting on their old myths in order for it to work.

Foreign policy: Public diplomacy edition
Moral authority: putting our best foot in our mouth with torture & Bolton. In the foreign policy arena, the right wing kook patrol spent the week residing on a foreign planet. For all their religious musings, it seems right wingers always forget the golden rule. Instead they operate under a different modus operandi: two wrongs make a right.

Newsweek and torture
The old liberal media myth strikes again. Funny how the right wing smear machine wasn’t up in arms when Bill O’Reilly lied about Jane Fonda (saying she gave notes from Americans POWs to the North Vietnamese), when O’Reilly “admitted misquoting and mischaracterizing a Houston Chronicle edtorial” or when Sean Hannity “left viewers with the false impression that illegal immigrants cannot be prosecuted for murder, only deported.”

Yet, when right wingers see a chance to score political points by repeating the discredited liberal bias myth, they all fancy themselves as media critics extraordinaire.

PBS and “propaganda”
The real propaganda threat comes from the conservative operative now heading the CPB. Are American households the equivalent of freedom-starved East Berliners? Could Tomlinson be the one, ironically, to bring “state-sponsored propaganda” to PBS?

Politics
Down on Dean. Plus: a Christian college protests Bush.

Fringe bytes
Amnesty International: a terrorist group? So says Bill O’Reilly…

“Now the problem, as we pointed out last night, is that Amnesty International works with the International Red Cross and the left wing American media to subvert the Bush administration’s terror war strategies. Everybody should know that. […]

“But let’s stop the nonsense. Amnesty International isn’t an objective human rights group. It’s a far left outfit that sympathizes with people who kill Americans. That’s what it is. The evidence is irrefutable.”

Does that mean we can invade them? Plus: Rush, Boortz, and a Double-Date with the Doles!

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