Guest editorial by D.R. Tucker

As a disillusioned conservative, what I wouldn't give to have someone who could make logical, fact-based arguments from the right. How interesting would it be to have someone just as intellectually skilled as MSNBC's Chris Hayes, just as sharp as him, just as devoted to sound logic as him-but coming from the opposite perspective?

Where the hell are the public intellectuals on the right, anyway? It used to bug me that Fox "News" Channel would promote Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity as the main faces of their network. I never had the sense that O'Reilly was actually a conservative, merely someone who knew that repeating conservative memes over and over again would be lucrative. As for Hannity, he lost me back in 2001 when I tuned into his radio show and heard him declare that he would condemn his kid if he decided to get an earring. What is this, I thought to myself, 1978?

One can debate when the right stopped investing in its intellectual infrastructure, but one cannot debate the reality of this phenomenon. Oh, wait --- the right debates the reality of certain phenomena all the time. Look at global warming, for just a start...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Corporate media finally covers climate change and extreme weather; Global warming making intense heat waves more likely; Dude, we are seriously stressing out the world's coral reefs; Climate change denial industry going after science journalists; PLUS: Mad scientists in Canada are revolting ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): US Navy's ‘Great Green Fleet’ Sails; NTSB blames Enbridge, ‘weak’ regulations in Kalamazoo oil spill; Studies Tie Human Bladder Infections To Antibiotics In Chicken; Texas judge rules atmosphere, air to be protected like water; GOP Doubles Down On ‘Pants On Fire’ Claims About Clean Energy; BP halts offshore Alaska project; MA Power Companies To Bill Customers For Lost Service ... PLUS: Climate change skepticism could wipe out rural towns in Australia ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Obama fires back at GOP over rising gas prices; Incredible rightwing hypocrisy on pain at the pump; Newt's hypocrisy on algae biofuels (Thanks, videotape from 2008!); PLUS: Abandoning Kiribati: the world's first climate change refugees ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): James Hansen: Why I must speak out about climate change (video); Iceland to turn CO2 into rock; Euro Car of the Year: Chevy Volt; Iowa outlaws undercover journalism; US pollution also Made in China; Spiders invading flood-stricken Australia; Alien species invading Antarctica; Carbon emissions threaten world's oceans ... PLUS: What if the Fukushima nuclear fallout crisis had happened in the US? ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Republicans taking hostages over Keystone XL pipeline --- again; Banner year for Big Oil profits --- again; Chevy Volt cleared of all charges; Florida invaded by snakes (no, not the GOP primary); PLUS: The Muppets Strike Back (at Fox 'News') ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): World lacks enough food, fuel as population soars: UN; Carmakers support CA's new clean car regulations; Illinois tops nation in new wind turbines; Will W.Va. prepare for a post-coal future?; Canada urged EPA to disregard oilsands emissions; New faux renewable energy scandal engulfs GOP; Debunking Murdoch's Daily Mail, Wall St. Journal climate denials; GMO crops spreading in the wild; TX heat, drought caused by global warming: Hansen ... PLUS: Saudi Oil Minister Calls Global Warming "Humanity's Most Pressing Concern"... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: What was Newt thinking?!; SPECIAL COVERAGE: UN Climate Conference in Durban, S. Africa; 'Occupy Durban'?; Canada's hard right turn on climate; 2011 not hottest year on record; PLUS: Fake hoax redux: Climategate 2.0! ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Radiation covers 8% of Japan; Fukushima crisis 'stunting children's growth'; Majority in U.S. Support Carbon Tax ... PLUS: The New Story of Stuff: Are we reaching "peak stuff"? ... and much, MUCH more! ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: The President fights back; the EPA doesn't --- for now, anyway; Shell Oil one step closer to drilling in the Arctic; Massive anti-nuke protests in Japan; PLUS: Australia's prime minister faces the global warming fight head on ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Clinton blasts Republicans on climate change denial; Poll: More Americans now believe world is warming; 3rd hottest summer globally; The Solyndra Timeline; Solyndra is the next 'Climategate'; Siemens quits nuclear industry; 'Gasland' wins Emmy; Are cosmic rays causing global warming? [No.]; Safety violations at ExxonMobil refinery; More shale well cement problems; China invests billions in Canada oil sands; Rising seas to wash out California tourism; China's crackdown on rare earth metals; New study links Gulf War vets illnesses to area of service; Missing global heat may hide in deep oceans; China closes solar panel plant after anti-pollution protests; America and oil: declining together? ... PLUS: Best way to convince deniers: Butter them up ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Not out of the woods yet: Japan's nuclear and humanitarian crisis continues as electricity returns to the Fukushima nuclear plant which remains precariously on edge while radiation poisoning is found in milk, vegetables and sea water --- but Japan's wind farms come to the rescue and new nuke reviews are set for US plants; PLUS: Surprise! A new 100-mile oil slick spotted in the Gulf of Mexico ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): New tech could make desalination portable, cheaper; Delay in coal plant rules cost thousands of lives; Record rains hit Phillipines, cause more flooding in Australia; German town where recycling really pays; US Chamber of Commerce: "The gang that couldn't lobby straight"; New UK plastic recycling plant takes all sorts; How not to change a climate skeptic's mind; Shipwreck threatens island's penguins; Wolves could be de-listed; King Crabs Invade Antarctica for First Time in 40 Million Years ... PLUS: World Water Day: Which nations are most at risk?....

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Crisis in Japan: Compounding natural disaster, humanitarian disaster, and spiraling nuclear disaster --- desperate measures to hold off a nuclear nightmare ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): EPA moves to curb toxic mercury pollution; Battle-proof wind farms survive Japan disasters; Op-ed: 'Save US children from toxic mercury'; End of cheap food in US?; Koch Bros: property rights only for polluters; Gov. Kasich (R) wants fracking in OH state parks; Sec. Chu: Clean energy puts U.S. ahead; PA: Coal Exec Given Vast Environmental Authority; WV considering geothermal future; Google backs biofuel startup; If President Obama calls it safe, watch out; Germany's Merkel plans faster shift to clean energy ... PLUS: Irish scientists help Guinness go green...

This flier was circulated in Dallas in the days before John F. Kennedy was assassinated...

Any of that look or sound familiar?

If not, and if you didn't see the Tucson Shooting coming months and months ago, then you are living in a world of complete and utter delusion.

[Update 1/11/11: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., responding to the Giffords shooting at Huffington Post, draws a similar allusion to the atmosphere in Dallas in the days prior to the murder of his uncle.]

If you, like pretend media critic Howard Kurtz, are finding rationalizations and excuses to justify what happened yesterday, dismissing it all as little more than the work of a "lone nutjob," you are similarly deluded and among the most dangerous of apologists.

You are also anything but "conservative," since the core of that ideology used to include personal responsibility. Taking none, unfortunately, seems to be the new hallmark of the no longer any more than name-only movement.

Remember what happened after this video-taped moment in September of 2009, when Nancy Pelosi called for "taking responsibility for our words" before tearing up while recalling the assassination of Harvey Milk in her own district in the 70's, and while decrying the scores of death threats and broken windows at offices of Democratic members of Congress after they'd voted in favor of Health Care Reform?...

If you watched the two separate nights over which Bill O'Reilly cut up his O'Reilly Factor interview with Jon Stewart on Fox "News" this week, as we did, you probably found that both nights fell surprisingly flat, given that Stewart, at least, usually offers a reason to make these things "must watch" moments.

Well, there's a reason it fell flat, as noted by Gawker today, O'Reilly cut out most of the best stuff...

Gawker's selection of some of the best video that never made air --- along with descriptions of how some of them were cleverly gutted before making it onto air --- is posted right here.

Now they've got the "must watch" stuff. Really. And all of it, far more entertaining and interesting and challenging than what actually made it onto O'Reilly's air. Go figure.

After just 37 minutes of deliberation, a jury in Kansas found Scott Roeder, the murderer of Dr. George Tiller guilty on all counts. The 51-year-old airport shuttle driver faces a mandatory life sentence with the possibility of parole in 25 years, though prosecutors have expressed they hope to get a "Hard 50" for him --- meaning he'd not be eligible for parole unless he lived to be 101.

Though during the trial the domestic terrorist Roeder told the court he'd decided as long ago as 1993 to try and kill Tiller, it wasn't until after months of increasing demonization by the rightwing media that Roeder finally found the courage to shoot Tiller in the head during a Sunday church service in Wichita last year.

Before his murder, Tiller, who for years had performed perfectly legal abortion procedures, had been villainized in an ongoing media campaign, led most notably by Bill O'Reilly of Fox "News." O'Reilly, who, despite his own false claims to the contrary had described him on air, time and again, as "Tiller the Baby Killer" and repeatedly told viewers on the most popular program on cable "news" that "This guy will kill your baby for $5,000, any reason. Any reason."

Roeder testified during the trial that he "did what I thought was needed to be done to protect the children. ... If I didn’t do it, the babies were going to die the next day."

Other related statements, for which O'Reilly has never been held accountable, include:

• "In the state of Kansas, there is a doctor, George Tiller, who will execute babies for $5,000."
• "For $5,000, 'Tiller the Baby Killer' --- as some call him --- will perform a late-term abortion for just about any reason."
• "Tiller has killed thousands, thousands of late-term fetuses without explanation."
• "No question, Dr. Tiller has blood on his hands."
• " 'Tiller the Baby Killer' out in Kansas, acquitted, acquitted today of murdering babies."
• "This guy will kill your baby for $5,000, any reason. Any reason."
• "If we allow Dr. George Tiller and his acolytes to continue, we can no longer pass judgment on any behavior by anybody."
• "If we allow this, America will no longer be a noble nation."

O'Reilly also said of Tiller:

• He "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000."
• He's guilty of "Nazi stuff,"
• a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida
• "This is the kind of stuff that happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union"
• "operating a death mill"
• "has blood on his hands"
• "executing babies about to be born"

...Among many other similar statements.

While legal abortion providers have been forced to further defend themselves against continuing terror threats such as that carried out by Roeder, O'Reilly, who arguably helped foment the rage expressed by the murder of Tiller, remains on Rupert Murdoch's cable channel where he continues to "report" in similarly irresponsible fashion to millions of Americans each night.

VelvetRevolution.us has called on the U.S. Dept. of Justice to take the threat of domestic rightwing terrorism such as Roeder's, and the use of public and government-subsidized broadcast media to help foment it, seriously, via its StopDomesticTerror.com campaign. Please sign on to that campaign in you haven't already. [Disclosure: The BRAD BLOG is a co-founder of VR.]

From AP today on the hostage stand-off that took place yesterday at a VA post office [emphasis added]:

Now I wonder where Taylor could have gotten those completely-misinformed ideas?

Of course, as non-disinformed folks know, there have been no moves --- zero, not even a peep --- by the Democratic-controlled Congress or White House about taking away anybody's "right to bear arms," and taxes have been lowered, not raised, since Obama took office, for 95% of working families. Though you'd be hard-pressed to know that if you did nothing more than watch Fox "News" or listen to talk radio on the public airwaves.

In one sadly ironic note, the AP article adds...

Sue, Bill, sue! Enough is enough! Go get 'em!...

(Hat-tip @Frank_Schaeffer)

First, my thanks to Michelle Malkin, and all her of sycophantic re-linkers in the wingnut echosphere for all the swell traffic yesterday while I was on the road all day.

Second, how desperate the poor, sad, angry woman must be to try to find some story, somehow, somewhere, by someone, that she thinks she's gotten right and others must have gotten wrong, after having gotten so many stories completely and embarrassingly wrong over and over again over so many years.

Her latest: Apparently she believes that Andrew Sullivan and/or The BRAD BLOG (both of us, great mavens of "the Left," dontcha know?) have something to "retract" concerning the story of U.S. Census worker Bill Sparkman whose death by hanging in Clay County, KY, last September --- which appeared to be a possible murder by rightwing fomented "Fed"-haters --- is now believed by officials to have been a staged suicide meant to appear as such a murder...

How many times does he have to get these stories wrong before ABC News cans their hapless and constantly wrong "investigative correspondent" Brian Ross? We suspect he'll be allowed to keep screwing up, again and again and again, so long as his screw-ups result in lots of media attention. Little wonder Ross is one of the only broadcast network news stooges invited on Bill O'Reilly's show, again and again and again.

Gawker's John Cook takes apart Ross' big "scoop" yesterday, which swept both the wingnut and non-wingnut media alike --- cooking up the alleged Fort Hood shooter Army Major Nidal Malik "Hasan's Contacts with al Qaeda".

Those "contacts with al Qaeda"? Um, not so much, as Cook details. Turns out that Hasan's "attempt to reach out to al Qaeda" were, in actuality, three emails sent to the imam of the mosque that Hasan attended in Virginia in 2001, back when two of the 9/11 hijackers, reportedly, also attended the same mosque. The cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, has since moved to Yemen where he has reportedly spoken out in favor of al-Qaeda.

The emails sent to him by Hasan? Whatever they were about, Ross doesn't know, and the FBI, who reportedly did know, apparently didn't find they warranted any action be taken.

Oh, and the "people" connected to al-Qaeda who Hasan allegedly "attempt[ed] to reach out to"? Ross now admits there was just one --- singular, not plural --- and it was al-Awlaki.

Here's our favorite passage from Cook's excellent evisceration of Ross' yet-again irresponsible coverage, proving (by ABC News' own standards) that Ross himself may well be an al-Qaeda terrorist!...