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Lou Dobbs is hardly the only right-wing pundit on the air transmitting bogus right-wing conspiracy theories. See, for instance, Sean Hannity on his Fox News show last night.

Hannity must be looking over his ratings shoulder at Glenn Beck these days, because he was cribbing from Beck, promoting the bogus far-right "constitutionalist" theories about state sovereignty Beck himself promoted a couple of months ago.

Hannity had on a couple of doofus state legislators from Nebraska who are promoting the notion of "state sovereignty" -- distinct from outright secession, but nonetheless built on a set of theories that were popularized in the 1990s by the Patriot/militia movement.

As I explained at the time:

Now, it's one thing to point out the radical origins of these "constitutional theories." But it's also important to understand where they want to take us -- to a radically decentralized form of government that was first suggested in the 1970s by the far-right Posse Comitatus movement.

They essentially argue for a constitutional originalism that would not only end the federal income tax, destroy all civil-rights laws, and demolish the Fed, but would also re-legalize slavery, strip women of the right to vote, and remove the principle of equal protection under the law.

Suffice to say that no one in this segment was particularly, um, persuasive. The only thing Hannity and his guests managed to convince anyone of was the growing reality that Hannity, like Dobbs and his Fox colleagues, has no compunction about reaching into that far-right grab bag for his nightly talking points. It's always amusing to see the critters they come out with.

(Video - Ed Schultz's take on this story from 7/29)

Only at Fox News.

This afternoon, Bill Shine, SVP of Programming told TVNewser, "During Fox & Friends this morning, Glenn Beck expressed a personal opinion which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel. And as with all commentators in the cable news arena, he is given the freedom to express his opinions."

Make no mistake, the powers that be at Fox News couldn't care less about Beck's statement. If they did, Beck would have been suspended, or at the very least, reprimanded. This kind of outrageous propaganda permeates their network and they use it daily to hold on to their racist viewers.

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John Amato: When did a living will become a bad thing and one that marks you for death? This is insanity. I've had a living will for ten years already approximately and I had one drawn up for legal reasons as well as medical. I remember when people were running to be able to sell loving wills to make a few bucks.

On one hand Tweety can debunk Glenn Beck and the birthers and on the other hand he can sound just as nutty.

C&Ler Jolynn emailed me this: If Terri Schiavo had an End of Life Consultation and a Living Will, she could have saved everyone a lot of money and heartache. Matthews is an idiot.

Why is Chris Matthews carrying water for the "deathers" -- as Rachel Maddow aptly called them on her show -- and conflating end of life counseling with abortion, and something to fear, while his network has allowed Maddow to do a thorough debunking of both those talking points and where they came from?

Matthews went so far as to conflate end-of-life counseling with the government paying for abortions, and called them both "social policy". So Chris, are you now trying to find a nice way to call the President a "socialist" without coming right out and saying so? And why is it something to be afraid of if someone under the age of 65 is allowed to get some help with making a living will?

Matthews: It's a provision that allows you to get counseling every five years or so. I wonder what the hell this provision's doing in a bill that's aimed at people who are younger. It's not Medicare recipiants, people over sixty five. Why do we want to be visited every five years by somebody to talk about how you want to die? I think it's crazy this in in there, but your thoughts.

Romano: But it's not in there. I mean basically...

Matthews: It is in there!! (crosstalk) It's in the bill, in the Dingel bill..

Romano: Chris, first of all, it's an extension of a 1999 bill that was enacted during the Bush administration and it's a self determination and a patients' rights bill, and all it really says is that Medicare will pay if somebody wants to go and have a consultation. It doesn't sa you have to have a consultation...

Matthews: It's not about Medicare Lois. You already have that in Medicare. This is about people under sixty five, younger people. This is not about Medicare, we've got it in Medicare coverage. I'm not saying that. This is about a health care bill to help people in their middle years and their younger years. Why would you have this conversation with them?

Uhhhh..Chris, because maybe people under age 65 who are ill might want access to this sort of counseling? Matthews goes on to fear monger about the counseling and compare it to something that goes on in...gasp..Europe.

Matthews: I just have a sense this is put in by a lobbyist who wanted this in for hospice care. Somebody pushed this in there. It's the kind of social policy dynamite that sounds like Denmark or Scandanavia, and it's that kind of mind set that drives a lot of moderates and conservatives crazy.

Politico's Jonathan Martin does his best to continue Matthews fear mongering. Nice job with helping out the likes of Virginia Foxx there Martin. Matthews gets in a shot at the "lefties" and then does this bit or mental acrobatics:

Matthews: I think it's like the abortion issue that's been jammed into this thing, there shouldn't, we have the Hyde amendment Lois that says the government will not pay for abortion. People were talking about putting that into the bill here. Pro-choice that want the government to pay for abortions. There's a lot of social policy being jammed at us on what is essentially a financing issue.

I've got news for you, Chris. This doesn't drive moderates crazy. It drives crazy people to be even more crazy, and you're not helping the situation with this kind of talk.

Thankfully Rachel Maddow added some sanity to the network's coverage for the day, and reminded everyone just where this "deathers" rhetoric came from. Video below the fold.

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AFSCME has been very busy running ad campaigns targeted at both Republicans and Democrats, encouraging and embarrassing them when it comes to passing real health care reform:

Washington, D.C. — The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO (AFSCME) has launched a new television ad featuring the union’s nurses. The ad highlights the desperate need nurses see for health care reform, as they serve on the front lines of the crisis each day.

The views and statements in AFSCME's new ad are exactly what I've been hearing for years from my friends and family who work in the health care field. Send a link to your representatives in the House and Senate and make sure they see this ad and remind them how urgently we need real health care reform. If you like the ad, contact AFSCME and let them know.

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As Bob Cesca points out we have another epic fail in GOP hyprcrisy on health care reform. Jed at Daily Kos has more:

PENCE: This is not a deal that will go over well with the American people. They understand what a governmentment run insurance plan will mean.

PENCE: A government run insurance option that the President’s insisted on is going to amount to a government takeover of our health care economy.

PENCE (challenged by Andrea Mitchell on support for Medicare): Oh, no, I support Medicare, and have supported the program.

Do the Republicans have any idea just how stupid they sound when they simultaneously attack the idea of government health insurance and lavish praise on the largest government health insurance program in the nation?

Jed, I think they know but don't care. They've got their fixers in the main stream media to keep their message from looking like the hypocrisy that it is. Mitchell called him out mid-interview, and allowed him to finish up unchallenged. As long as that's the norm, these people have no reason to fear going on the TV and lying to the public.

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Bernie Goldberg has a theory about why there's been a significant controversy over Lou Dobbs' promotion of the "Birther" conspiracy theory: It's all an evil plot by the Obama White House to string the story along indefinitely so as to make his right-wing opposition look like a nuttier bunch than a PayDay bar.

Goldberg: Well, let's get the easy part out of the way first. CNN should not, repeat, not fire Lou Dobbs for talking about this. Lou Dobbs didn't say Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States, he said just the opposite! He said he was born in the United States. But then he said he should produce his birth certificate.

Now let's think about this for a second. Why wouldn't President Obama release his birth certificate? He was born in Hawaii, Hawaii last I checked is in the United States, and -- why in the world wouldn't he release his birth certificate?

O'Reilly: Can I answer that question?

Goldberg: Well, let me answer it first. OK? Let me just answer my own question first.

O'Reilly: OK, you answer it, and then I'll have the correct answer.

Goldberg: I have a theory. And the theory is this: That the Chicago Mafia inside the White House want to keep this crazy controversy going. Because the longer it goes, the better the chance that they will conflate the crazy right-wing fringe with regular conservatives and regular Republicans.

O'Reilly: That's not a bad theory. But from dealing with the Obama White House, now, for almost, more than a year, I will tell you they are, uh, as every White House I've ever experienced, they're arrogant, they're arrogant. And they're saying to themselves, 'We're not gonna let Lou Dobbs tell us what to do. We're not gonna let these cranks on talk radio tell us what to do. They want the birth certificate released? Tough. We're not going to do it, because we have the power, and we don't like that.' That's what it's all about -- it's a 'Ha ha, we're not gonna do what you say.'

Interesting theories, gentlemen. Unfortunately, they both tend to run aground on a simple fact: Obama actually released his birth certificate in June 2008. It reads, "Certification of Live Birth."

Now, as FactCheck.org's definitive piece on the certificate issue explains, this is in fact the "short form" of Obama's birth certificate, not its long form, which is filled out by the hospital and kept in its records. So why doesn't Obama release the long form? Because Hawaiian law doesn't give him that option:

The document is a "certification of birth," also known as a short-form birth certificate. The long form is drawn up by the hospital and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents' hometowns. The short form is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department. We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response.

Now, if Goldberg and O'Reilly are so concerned that the public might conclude that mainstream conservatives are prone to far-right conspiracy theories and various other forms of wingnuttery, they might look in the mirror. It's the virtual definition of wingnuttery to even be asking why Obama won't release his birth certificate when he has in fact done so.

There's no Obama conspiracy keeping this garbage alive and tying it around the necks of mainstream conservatives. They're doing a very fine job of that themselves.

Beggars Can Be Choosers: Why does David Feherty still have a job?

Mock, Paper, Scissors: Why does Larry Craig still have a job?

CREW blog: Why does Senator Ensign still have a job?

Daily Kingfish: Why does Senator Vitter still have a job?

The Mills River Progressive: Why does Governor Sanford still have a job?

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Bobby Jindal continues to refuse to credit the stimulus package for Louisiana's economic recovery even though as Think Progress noted, he was happy to go around the state presenting jumbo sized checks which included money from those funds.

Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) reemerged on the national stage yesterday, penning an op-ed in the Politico to slam efforts to reform health care and declaring the Economic Recovery Act a failure. Jindal declared the Recovery Act “a nearly trillion-dollar stimulus that has not stimulated.” However, less than 24 hours before Jindal published his op-ed, Jindal traveled to Anacoco, Louisiana to present a jumbo-sized check to residents of Vernon Parish. The funds included hundreds of thousands of dollars directly from the Recovery Act — at least $157,848 in Community Block Grant money authorized by the Recovery Act and $138,611 for Byrne/JAG job training programs created by the Recovery Act. Rather than credit the federal government or the Recovery Act he opposed, Jindal printed his own name on the corner of the massive check.

When asked about this on Blitzer's The Situation Room, Jindal refused to acknowledge that the stimulus package has been successful, and instead touted the use of the line item veto and said the stimulus money should have been temporary and targeted, and included more tax cuts. Blitzer didn't ask him about the jumbo sized checks he was using for photo ops.

I thought they weren't going to allow that to happen?

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has a message for Republican governors hemming and hawing over whether to accept the stimulus money Uncle Sam is mailing to each state: Take it or leave it.

Several GOP governors, including Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and South Carolina's Mark Sanford, have cited ideological differences with the stimulus spending and suggested they may take some parts of it and decline the rest. For Schumer, it's all or nothing.

"No one would dispute that these governors should be given the choice as to whether to accept the funds or not. But it should not be multiple choice," Schumer writes in a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag.

So why is Jindal being allowed to use the line item veto to block part of the stimulus spending in Louisiana? Full transcript below the fold.

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In my eight months of intensely monitoring Fox, this is perhaps the first O'Reilly segment I positively enjoyed. This kayaker is nuts, but wow. I dunno what makes him a "patriot" per se, but still, wow. Palouse Falls is gigantic.

(h/t Heather)

I had no clue of Head East's existence until Heather here at C+L recommended this song, which is sending me on a rock and roll archaeological dig through clips of 1970's also-rans to find other gems like this downstate IL combo who according to my not so exhaustive research made a minor splash in the Midwest before fading into obscurity.

John Schlitt, like many rockers before him, crashed and burned on drugs and booze and then found God. Like still many but a smaller few, he started making music about it. Like no one I can think of off the top of my head, he had far more success than he ever had in his secular rock career once he joined Christian rock pioneers Petra, a band often credited with being the band that mainstreamed the idea of ministry through rock and roll. I'm sure readers are lining up to thank them . I've always been grudgingly grateful to them since one of my favorites, King's X, met in a Petra-related project that never got off the ground.

Enjoy this clip and ponder the question, "What makes someone edit grainy footage of a band over the track of a different one?" If you have any suggestions for my classic rock also-ran excavation, fire away!