The Hollywood Liberal

Rachel Maddow’s Open Letter To Orrin Hatch

Crooks & Liars
Excerpt:

Dear Senator Hatch –

You don't call, you don't write…

I've just about exhausted myself trying to get someone in your office to call me back this week.  Please apologize to your adorable receptionist on my behalf – the poor man now gets audibly exasperated as soon as I say "hello".

What I'd like to talk with you about is very simple:  on NBC's Meet the Press this past Sunday, you said this about Carol Lam, the US Attorney for San Diego who was fired by the Justice Department in December:

"She was a former law professor, no prosecutorial experience, and the former campaign manager in Southern California for Clinton"

I checked the transcript against the video (or click here for the specific clip) and it's clear to me that you weren't misquoted.  

Here's my question for you or your staff:  what in the Lord's name are you talking about? 

Here at Air America, we called John Emerson, who managed Clinton's California campaign in '92 and again in '96 to ask if Carol Lam had been the "campaign manager in Southern California for Clinton" – you might have thought we'd asked him if the sky was green. 

First of all, uh, NO, she wasn't. 

And second, Carol Lam was an Assistant US Attorney at the time of Clinton's campaigns, and she therefore couldn't have also been a campaign manager for any presidential candidate without violating the (ironically-named) Hatch Act, which restricts political activity by federal government employees.

Then we called a source close to Carol Lam in California, who expressed utter bewilderment at what old Orrin said on Meet the Press. 

The source confirmed for us publicly-available documents about Lam's career which indicate that she is not a law professor, she's "been a federal prosecutor for nearly 18 years and [has] never been a fundraiser for any president". 

Senator Hatch, what's going on here? 

Seems like Geraldo Rivera is still Liberal about one issue. Immigration. Geraldo wouldn’t play along when O’Rielly suggested that a Drunk driving accident (involving an illegal alien) was about Illegal immigration, and not about drunk driving. They go at it pretty good, check out the video below.

Daily Kos
Bill O’Reilly’s “interviews” follow a simple pattern: invite a guest on, introduce them, and then spend the next five minutes cutting them off and challenging their love of country. As we know, O’Reilly never debates the person he has on the show, never engages their points or responds directly to their arguments. No, O’Reilly doesn’t do that type of debate because he simply can’t win that type of debate. Rather, O’Reilly’s m.o. is to debate a false caricature of the opposition. He pummels his guests with non sequiturs, shoving absurd statement after absurd statement down their throats until…well, until he decides to cut off their mike
But what happens when the guest refuses to take it? What happens when the guest refuses to shut up and thows his insanity back at him?

A complete and utter meltdown. That’s what happens: Geraldo Rivera pretty much sums up O’Reilly’s entire career in one sentence:
Don’t obscure tragedy to make a cheap political point.