It seems Chris Matthews isn't the only former speechwriter for the Carter administration that's tired of Mitt Romney out there trashing his old boss on the campaign trail. Matthews took him apart during his "Let Me Finish" segment this Thursday evening, and The Atlantic's James Fallows, ripped him up in his column earlier this week.

'Even Jimmy Carter':

Mitt Romney informs us that the raid that took out Osama bin Laden one year ago was no big deal, because "even Jimmy Carter would have given that order."

Grrrrr.

Necessary disclosure: I worked for Jimmy Carter and admire his intentions, his character, and many of his achievements, although I am not usually considered an uncritical booster of his record as president.

But let's remember:

1) Jimmy Carter is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who spent ten years in the uniformed service of his country. As far as I can tell, this is ten years more than the cumulative service of all members of the Romney clan. [...]

2) Jimmy Carter did indeed make a gutsy go/no-go call. It turned out to be a tactical, strategic, and political disaster. You can read the blow-by-blow in Mark Bowden's retrospective of "The Desert One Debacle." With another helicopter, the mission to rescue U.S. diplomats then captive in Teheran might well have succeeded -- and Carter is known still to believe that if the raid had succeeded, he would probably have been re-elected. Full discussion another time, but I think he's right. (Even with the fiasco, and a miserable "stagflation" economy, the 1980 presidential race was very close until the very end.)

But here's the main point about Carter. Deciding to go ahead with that raid was a close call. Carter's own Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, had opposed the raid and handed in his resignation even before the results were known. And it was a daring call -- a choice in favor of a risky possible solution to a festering problem, knowing that if it went wrong there would be bad consequences all around, including for Carter himself. So if you say "even Jimmy Carter" to mean "even a wimp," as Romney clearly did, you're showing that you don't know the first thing about the choice he really made.

3) Precisely because of the consequences of Carter's failure, Obama was the more daring in making his go/no-go decision.

More there so go read the rest, but he and Matthews are definitely on the same page with their defense of Carter. And as Ed Kilgore noted, who flagged the Fallows op-ed in his column here pointed out:

Since Romney in particular and Republicans generally keep trying to make this election a rerun of 1980, they’d probably do well to get their facts a little straighter about Jimmy Carter (and while they are at it, about Ronald Reagan the serial tax-hiker).

Transcript of Matthews' comments from his blog below the fold.

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You may have seen David Barton on Jon Stewart the other night, or on several other shows, plugging his new book, "The Jefferson Lies." Barton is a right-wing fundie who's rewritten history to make Thomas Jefferson a religious man who never wanted religion out of public life. (You may also know him as a "professor" at the famous Beck University.) Slacktivist's Fred Clark, famous for calling out the charlatans in his faith, has a bone to pick with how the mainstream media depicts David Barton:

“Who is David Barton?” CNN’s Dan Gilgoff asks.

And then Gilgoff refuses to answer his own question.

Instead, Gilgoff retreats into a wretched, flaccid display of false-equivalence, view-from-nowhere, opinions-on-the-shape-of-earth-differ non-journalism.

“Barton’s work has drawn many critics,” Gilgoff writes, in lieu of actual journalism.

That’s a remarkable sentence. It’s like saying, “Bernie Madoff’s investment skills have drawn many critics.” Or, “Ty Cobb’s sportsmanship has drawn many critics.” Or, “Leroy Jenkins’ teamwork has drawn many critics.”

Who is David Barton? David Barton is a man who says things that are not true.

David Barton makes stuff up. He surgically alters quotations deliberately in order to deceive others.

David Barton says things that are not true. He is not merely “controversial.” He is not merely “a lightning rod for critics.” His many, many false assertions are not merely “disputed” or “questioned” or “challenged.”

David Barton says things that are not true. After being repeatedly, publicly corrected, he repeats those very same untrue statements. This is what he does. This is how he makes his living.

David Barton has not attracted “critics.” David Barton says things that are not true, and those Gilgoff mislabels as his “critics” are simply those many, many people who have pointed out the many, many untrue things that David Barton has said. His false statements are obvious. His false statements are extravagant. His false statements are hard to miss.

David Barton says things that are not true. That is the primary, pre-eminent, pervasive fact about David Barton.

To say anything else about David Barton without also saying that is to be inaccurate, misleading and dishonest.

But Paul Harvey, a real history professor, says of course it won't matter:

I don't question the necessity of pointing out Barton's history of outright falsehoods, explaining the fallacies of his presentism (as in using a 1765 sermon or a 1792 congressional vote to show that the original intent of the founders was to oppose bailout and stimulus plans), and introducing to non-experts the abundant evidence calling his historical worldview of the Christian Founders into question. Yet while these kinds of refutations are necessary, they are not sufficient. That's because Barton's project is not fundamentally an historical one.

That's why historians' takedown of his ahistorical approach ultimately won't matter that much. Nor will historians' explanations of his presentism, and his obvious and unapologetic ideological agenda (albeit considerably muted for his appearance on The Daily Show). While all the historians' refutations are good and necessary, ultimately they won't matter for the audience which exists in his alternate intellectual universe, one described in much greater detail in my colleague Randall Stephens' forthcoming book The Anointed: Evangelical Experts in a Secular Age...

After all the refutations and belittling of pedigree, Barton still appears in a New York Times "puff piece," argues with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, and fields calls from congressmen and presidential candidates. In short, if this were a basketball game between Barton and professional historians, in some ways it's already a rout, with Barton far ahead and the scrubs in to play out the garbage time.

Some of that is because of the skill of Barton and his organization WallBuilders at ideological entrepreneurialism. Barton's intent is not to produce "scholarship," but to influence public policy. He simply is playing a different game than worrying about scholarly credibility, his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. His game is to inundate public policy makers (including local and state education boards as well as Congress) with ideas packaged as products that will move policy.

And once again, our librul media is easily outplayed.

David E's Fablog - Mayor Bloomberg, like every other Republican, goes after education funding;

DeSmogBlog - if you believe in climate change you're worse than the Unabomber;

Goblinbooks - wherein 'Jimmy Carter' loses it; (mature language)

No More Mr. Nice Blog - Obama campaign kickoff on Karl Marx's birthday, MUST CREDIT GATEWAY PUNDIT!!!1!one!!

Right Wing Watch - Michele Bachmann still insane, thinks ACA is the work of Satan.

blogenfreude blogs at stinque.com and can't wait for Kim Kardashian to run for mayor of Glendale.

detail from a very fine rendition of Botticelli, Avengers-style.

Open thread below.

Adam Yauch, Rest in Peace.

Today marks the forty-second year since the National Guard fired on a crowd of unarmed students, killing four. The deaths were the result of the students protesting the war in South East Asia which had escalated with an invasion of Cambodia and this culminated the third day of protests at the campus. The killings marked a decided reversal of support for the War in Vietnam. Now the overwhelming majority of Americans were against our role in the war, wanted it over and wanted us out. And now there were dead students to add to the outrage.

As well as the news from Kent State, also came news from Cambodia, the Vietnam War as well as a report on the sale of the Prop Department at MGM Studios. Run of the mill news for an otherwise unremarkable day.

Somehow, the rest of it really didn't matter. What mattered was how the spirit of protest was met with violent resistance by, of all people, our own National Guard. And how something went terribly wrong.

As reported by David Brinkley on The NBC Nightly News for May 4, 1970.

(h/t Heather at VideoCafe)

Philadelphia resident Viviette Applewhite's 93 years of life has mirrored the turbulent history of 20th century. Growing up in the Jim Crow era, she worked as a welder during WWII and marched with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr, during the fight for civil rights. Mrs. Applewhite takes her civic responsibility seriously, having voted in almost every election since 1960, including in 2008 for the first African American president, something that had to be scarcely conceivable to her the first time she pulled the lever in the voting booth.

But Viviette Applewhite won't be voting in the 2012 election. Because Viviette Applewhite never learned to drive, and consequently, never possessed a driver's license. All other identification was lost when her purse was stolen years ago. She asked for a copy of her birth certificate to get another set of identification, only to find that officials have been unable to track it down. And the state of Pennsylvania will not allow her to vote without a driver's license or other officially-sanctioned picture i.d., thanks to draconian laws signed into law by Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and designed by ALEC (.pdf). I'm sure that is comes as no surprise that Pennsylvania is considered one of the key battleground states in the upcoming election. Mrs. Applewhite, as an elderly African American Democratic Party member, hits the trifecta of demographics that this kind of legislation intends to prevent from voting. So Mrs. Applewhite is the perfect person to be the lead plaintiff suing against the Voter ID act:

Applewhite, who is 93 and uses a wheelchair, became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed here in state court by the ACLU and the NAACP challenging Pennsylvania's new law requiring voters to produce a driver's license or other photo identification before they are allowed to vote.[..]

The suit seeks to overturn what it calls a "draconian" law, a measure the plaintiffs and their lawyers contend will lead to the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of voters - including Applewhite.

"It stinks," she said in a video prepared by the ACLU and aired Tuesday at a news conference in the Capitol. "They are taking our rights away."

The suit was filed in Commonwealth Court on behalf of 10 plaintiffs, among them three elderly women who say they cannot obtain necessary ID because they were born in the Jim Crow South, where states have no records of their births.

"What we're not talking about here is just any right, we're talking about the right to vote," Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said at the news conference. "Two hundred years ago, we actually fought a war for this right. This is an extremely important right."

This is why we fight, why we can never stop fighting. If Republicans cannot attract voters on the strength of their ideas (and I think there's a good argument that they really can't) then they're going prevent people from voting on the other side.

As the unemployment rate hit a three-year low of 8.1 percent on Friday, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney escalated attacks on President Barack Obama by moving the bar to 4 percent.

"Just this morning there was some news that came across the wire that said that the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.1 percent," the former Massachusetts governor told a group of supporters in Pittsburgh. "And normally, that would be cause for celebration, but, in fact, anything over 8 percent, anything near 8 percent -- anything over 4 percent is not a cause for celebration."

"But, in fact, the reason it dropped from 8.2 to 8.1 was not because we created a lot of jobs -- as a mater of fact, only 115,000 net new jobs were created. That was well beneath what it was expected to be. It should have been in the hundreds of thousands, but it wasn't. The reason the rate came down was because about 340,000 people dropped out of the workforce."

He continued: "I think it helps to have a job to create a job. And I have and I will. Now, people ask me, what will I do to help create jobs? And one thing I know I'm not going to do is go and hire a bunch more people in the federal government. ... First of all, I'd take away one of the things that frightens entrepreneurs and innovators and businesses of all kinds from hiring. I'll get rid of Obamacare!"

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, no Republican president in the last 40 years has lowered the unemployment rate below 4 percent. Under Democratic President Bill Clinton, the rate was below 4 percent for five months in 2000.

Earlier on Friday, Romney had told Fox News that Obama should be creating at least 500,000 jobs per month, something that had only happened four times in the the last 50 years.

The Republican candidate explained to the crowd in Pittsburgh on Friday that he gained a lot of insight by privately meeting with business owners.

"The numbers don't really tell you what's going on in people's lives," he said. "Before I begin an event like this, I typically am able to sit down with a few people, and in an off-the-record kind of basis, I agree not to say who they are to members of my media -- not my media! I don't have my media. I wish I had my media."

Hidden Tragedy: Underreporting of Workplace Injuries and Illnesses

The number of workplace deaths across the U.S. continues to rise, something it has done every year since 2004. AFL-CIO released its annual report Wednesday—Death in the Workplace: The Toll of Neglect—which covered 2010. The report notes that the number of deaths in 2010 was up 149 over 2009, to a recent high of 4,690—meaning an average of 13 workers die on the job every day in the U.S. On top of that, an estimated 50,000 additional workers died in 2010 because of occupational diseases. More than 3.8 million work-related injuries and illnesses were also reported, but it is estimated that the real number is much higher, between 7.6 million and 11.4 million annually.

The risk of job fatalities and injuries varies widely from state to state, in part due to the mix of industries. West Virginia led the country with the highest fatality rate (13.1 per 100,000), followed by Wyoming (11.9), Alaska (11.8), South Dakota (8.6) and North Dakota (8.4). The lowest state fatality rate (0.9 per 100,000) was reported in New Hampshire, followed by Massachusetts (1.7), Rhode Island (1.8) and California, Delaware and New Jersey (2.0). This compares with a national fatality rate of 3.6 per 100,000 workers in 2010.

Latino workers continue to be at increased risk of job fatalities, with a fatality rate of 3.9 per 100,000 workers in 2010. There were 707 fatal injuries among Latino workers, down from 713 in 2009. Sixty-two percent of these fatalities (441 deaths) were among workers born outside the United States.

The cost of job injuries and illnesses is enormous—estimated at $250 billion to $300 billion a year.

The report notes that one of the key reasons for the recent increases in workplace death and injury is the weakening of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which on the federal level only has the workforce and funding to inspect each workplace once every 131 years. State regulators are only a little better off. Additionally, OSHA doesn't have the ability to punish violators in a way that will make them improve dangerous situations.

Eight years of neglect and inaction by the Bush administration seriously eroded safety and health protections. Standards were repealed, withdrawn or blocked. Major hazards were not addressed. The job safety budget was cut. Voluntary compliance replaced strong enforcement. In the absence of strong government oversight and enforcement, many employers cut back their workplace safety and health efforts.

The Obama administration has returned OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to their mission to protect workers’ safety and health. The president appointed strong, pro-worker safety and health advocates to head the agencies—Dr. David Michaels at OSHA and Joe Main at MSHA.

The Obama administration has moved forward with new initiatives to strengthen enforcement and with some new safety and health standards on job hazards. The administration has increased the job safety budget and hired hundreds of new inspectors, restoring the cuts made during the Bush administration.

But with the election of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives in 2010, progress in safety and health is threatened. Business groups and Republicans have launched a major assault on regulations and have targeted key OSHA and MSHA rules.

In the face of these attacks, progress on developing and issuing many important safety and health rules has stalled.

Read the full report.

As if the interview with former CIA torture architect Jose Rodriguez on 60 Minutes wasn't bad enough, Sean Hannity followed up the next day with an even more infuriating interview of Rodriguez as well. If you were disgusted by Leslie Stahl lobbing friendly softballs to this war criminal, it's probably not going to do your blood pressure any good to watch the Hannity job he received the next evening on Fox.

Hannity brought on Pat Buchanan this Wednesday evening and was continuing to parrot Rodriguez's talking points that without torture, President Obama would not have had the intelligence needed to send in the SEAL team after bin Laden.

As Media Matters has been documenting, carrying water for Bush and Cheney's torture program is nothing new for Fox or the right-wing media. You can read more about that from last year here: Right-Wing Media Still Hyping EITs, Ignoring Experts' Dispute, and here: Right-Wing Media Tout Bin Laden Death As Victory For Torture, Ignore Dispute.

And here is their latest report debunking Hannity's talking points in the clip above: One Book Defending Waterboarding Doesn't Change The Fact That Torture Doesn't Work:

In a book published Monday, Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA's Clandestine Service during the Bush administration, defends the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) such as waterboarding, a technique that groups such as Amnesty International have called "torture." Rodriguez claimed that EITs "led to the capture and killing of Usama bin Ladin." However, multiple experts, including a CIA interrogator, an FBI counterintelligence expert, a former CIA inspector general, and the chairs of the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, have said that these techniques were not effective or did not lead to the strike against bin Laden. [...]

One can hear the same argument Rodriguez is making on Fox News and other conservative media outlets, which have touted bin Laden's death as a victory for EITs and President Bush. But it's an argument rebutted by many experts, who dispute whether the use of EITs yielded critical intelligence that led to bin Laden.

And you can read those rebuttals in the rest of their post. I'm still waiting for Hannity to take up that offer Keith Olbermann made for him to be waterboarded back in 2009 if he still doesn't think it's torture. Transcript of Hannity and Buchanan below the fold.

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