I find it interesting that this is the same network that has repeatedly rushed to judgment on any issue where it can take a partisan stand against either Democrats or left-leaners, or both.

Even sillier is the attack on NBC for the editing of the 911 recording of George Zimmerman. I agree that an NBC employee editing this material was unprofessional and inflammatory, and should be properly dealt with. However, if Fox wants to go down this road, I’m delighted. It means that they are ready to openly condemn the works of Andrew Breitbart and James O’Keefe, whose deceptively edited material have caused a tremendous amount of confusion and misery.

I’ve been more intrigued by Hannity’s desperation to see the Supreme Court rule the way he wants on the Affordable Health Care Act. It’s interesting that he also thinks he knows in advance what the High Court will rule, even when nobody else does.

There was also a strange moment in the Juan Williams/Mary Katherine Ham discussion, where O’Reilly opined that Zimmerman was the “Neighborhood Watch Patrol guy” so that to O’Reilly’s view, he was “just doing his job” when he called 911 about Martin. Nobody called him on this. The reality is that Zimmerman appointed himself to do that – and that’s crucial to understanding the situation.

It seems clear that Zimmerman’s chasing of Martin led to a fight between the two guys – one that Zimmerman was losing when he pulled his gun and killed Martin. The only confusion seems to be who initiated the fight – from the cellphone call of Martin to his girlfriend, it sounds like Zimmerman initiated it. But there’s no way to know for sure. Zimmerman’s voice is highly pitched enough that it could well have been him yelling for help. We’ll have to see if further investigation illuminates anything.

Bill, are you still trying to present your opinion about Professor Ogletree’s sarcastic commentary from a while back? I thought you had issued your final comment on this subject and moved on. Does this mean that you’re interested in getting involved in a serious discussion of real issues, and not just a reiteration of Sean Hannity’s desperate attacks on President Obama?

There’s one part of this that is confusing me. What’s the story about the fight between Zimmerman and Martin? Did Zimmerman attack Martin, or did Martin, thinking he was being stalked, jump on Zimmerman?

From what I read, it sounds like Zimmerman initiated the problem by stalking and chasing Martin even after being told to back off. It sounds like a fight then happened between the guys and that Zimmerman then shot Martin in the chest during the fight. Is that essentially what happened here?

The consistent pattern with both O’Reilly and Hannity is that they are vulnerable when the guests actually have a strong set of facts and figures in front of them. It is a usual O’Reilly “gotcha” to a liberal guest to immediately challenge them with a “Yeah? Name ONE example of that!” It is a usual Hannity “gotcha” to immediately challenge any materials if he thinks he can discredit the source of a poll or study.

Unfortunately, the liberal guests, like Alan Colmes when he was Hannity’s regular co-host, usually back down and don’t have all the facts for the debate at hand. It can be very depressing to watch one of them wither in front of obvious mistruths being spoken. But at the same time, these guests are clearly aware that they are only being brought on to be knocked down – since the show is really about O’Reilly or Hannity getting their moment to put them down rather than being about a real examination of the issues.

O’Reilly admitted in his rant that he did in fact call for a boycott of France at that time. (Of course, he painted the story as though France was siding with Hussein, rather than just taking the reasonable position that WMDs had not been proven to even be in Iraq.)

Worse in the show was O’Reilly’s inability to recognize that Brent Bozell has actually been a very negative presence in the media, and that he not only runs the MRC, he also is responsible for the behavior of the PTC, which was humiliated over 10 years ago, after they slandered the World Wrestling Federation, saying that WWF encouraged violence in children.

This is definitely a sign of desperation for Sean Hannity. He’s dredging up irrelevant material and making bizarre correlations on the level of a conspiracy theorist.

It’s not the first time. Remember the Joe Sestak “scandal” in 2010? The one that Hannity trumpeted every night for what felt like forever, insisting that it would cause Obama to be impeached? The one that turned out to be nothing – and in fact the result of former President Bill Clinton making a phone call?

The current list of bizarre connections Hannity is making are:

1. Obama “started his career in Bill Ayers’ living room” FALSE. Obama visited Ayers’ living room on a day when he visited many people’s homes in Chicago as part of his campaign for local political office.

2. Obama is “close friends” or “worked closely” with Ayers and Dohrn, including sitting on a Board with Ayers, “an unrepentant terrorist”. FALSE/MISLEADING Obama barely knows Ayers, who made his living for many years as a professor in Illinois. As a local community member and teacher, Ayers served on the Board of a local foundation at the same time as Obama – a Board that had many people on it and was not an organization where anyone was working “closely” with anyone else. Ayers is certainly an unrepentant protestor, who wishes he could have done more to end the Vietnam War, but is not an “unrepentant terrorist”. He has made clear that people saying he wished he’d set more bombs with the Weathermen are mischaracterizing his statements. It should be noted that Obama made clear that he absolutely denounces the bombings done by the Weather Underground.

3. Obama went to Jeremiah Wright’s church for 20 years. SO WHAT? This claim was vetted during 2008 and hasn’t become any more relevant since then.

4. Obama supported Derrick Bell in a campus speech at Harvard in 1990 and hugged him in public. AGAIN, SO WHAT? Obama supported a popular professor at Harvard, the first black man to receive tenure there. (And who gave up that tenure in protest over black women being denied that tenure.)

5. Obama studied the work of Saul Alinsky and even went to a play about him, and included Alinsky’s writings in the syllabus of a course he taught. ONCE AGAIN, SO WHAT? Many on the right study the work of Saul Alinsky in terms of understanding the principles of organizing people for political purposes. Obama’s presence at a play and panel discussion about Alinsky only speaks to his position as a teacher and his knowledge about this particular person. The Alinsky text on the syllabus also included other materials by right wing authors, but the pundits aren’t complaining about those.

All of this simply goes to support the notion that Sean Hannity is dredging the bottom to find something, ANYTHING that could be the “gotcha” moment that somehow ends Obama’s chances for re-election. This is in spite of the fact that Obama is ahead in the polls, and that the GOP candidates are clearly in terrible shape.

And all of this speaks more to Hannity’s own desperation and dislike of Obama than it does to any substantive issue.

Bill, your citation makes no sense. Are you equating your posts with Jon Stewart’s editorial? He was clearly angry about the way he was publicly attacked – and particularly how people tried to either threaten his life or terrorize him into shutting up. It’s totally understandable why anyone would be angry about having their life threatened.

In your case, however, you simply expressed anger over your unhappiness both with the current President and with posters here who do not accept your assumptions as truths. Nobody said you couldn’t state your opinions, and nobody threatened your life.

Jason Mattera is one of those commentators that just makes you shake your head. His book is loaded with assumptions about Hollywood that are not borne out by the facts. His latest embarassment is his attempt to “punk” Chris Rock, which has had an unfortunate result for Mattera and his camera. One has to wonder why Sean Hannity gives any credence to this man.

Lynn, it’s interesting that the Fox News response to Limbaugh’s indefensible rants at Sandra Fluke is to raise the false comparison to Bill Maher. As though progressives had never condemned Maher’s remarks.

The fact here is that Limbaugh acted terribly toward this person and only made the smallest move toward an apology after days of consistently bad behavior when his advertisers began to flee. Trying to spin this in another direction feels like an act of right wing desperation.

Laura, you have not answered any of the reasonable statements and facts I have presented to you. Instead, you have referred to some kind of “lies” that you do not specify, and which you say you don’t believe.

Your comment about gun sales is a bit disturbing, however. You seem to be saying that you intend to buy a gun after Obama is reelected. For what purpose are you doing this? Why do you need to own a gun? What do you plan to do with it?

And if you think Obama “has ruined this country”, what exactly do you mean? Your assertions have already been disproven and debunked, so what evidence do you have to support your thinking?

It’s not getting traction because there’s no story. Barack Obama participated in a campus protest to support a popular professor who was taking a stand. Really nothing unusual about it. And Charles Ogletree’s remarks about it were obviously a joke to his students.

It’s just a sign of how desperate the right wing is getting, now that they can see that the primary races are not having the results they want.

Calm down, Robert. You’re reciting Rush Limbaugh talking points and they’re as inaccurate as usual for Rush.

I don’t know anyone on the left saying that it’s okay for Bill Maher to make nasty comments about Sarah Palin or anyone else. And the whole David Letterman thing was something he apologized for, on the air. As for Ed Schultz making a nasty comment about Laura Ingraham (who herself has been openly nasty to people), he apologized both on the air and in a phone call to her the day he did it. He also took himself off the air. Essentially, he lost his temper and acted badly – he admitted it, and both he and Ingraham moved on.

In the case of Rush Limbaugh, it’s not just that he called Sandra Fluke names. And it’s not just two words. He did rant after rant about her for days, even after he knew he was in the wrong. He only offered a token apology over last weekend when his advertisers began jumping ship.

If anyone is having an issue with their ideology taking precedence over their morals, Rush Limbaugh would be a good place to start. I’d argue that Bill Maher would also fall into the same category.

It’s just sad that Fox News and Limbaugh are trying so desperately to spin this situation into something else. This is akin to when Limbaugh insulted and imitated Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s Disease symptoms, or when Limbaugh called anti-war Iraq veterans “phony soldiers” and then tried to hide behind Jesse MacBeth. It would do Rush Limbaugh a world of good to simply own up to the things he’s done and to humbly apologize for his behavior. Not try to justify himself or say that he picked the wrong words. Not try to say that he was “using the tactics of the left”. But to do the right thing, the honorable thing, the human thing and just say that he was wrong, admit it and move on.

The next time that Newt Gingrich is being interviewed on CNN or on Meet the Press and he goes off on a rant like this, I’d really like to see the interviewer answer him with:

“Mr. Gingrich, you seem very angry and upset. Would you like to take a moment to compose yourself or do you think you can proceed with this interview?”

Hannity’s next guest made a point of calling him on the double standard, referring in particular to Coulter and the terrible things she has said. Hannity had no answer other than to try to bluster past it, without success.

Andrew’s behavior was really more about being outrageous in order to get people to pay attention to him. He liked to present himself as a tactician but he really didn’t understand tactics or strategy. He just liked to make a grand statement or gesture.

I think he really did cross the lines of decency with several of his works, including the pushing of the edited ACORN videos and the slander and libel against Shirley Sherrod. The lawsuit over the latter matter will certainly drain his estate when they are forced to settle it.

This was a guy who seemed to enjoy walking out into a crowd of protestors and yelling at them. He seemed to enjoy being mean to people. And that, unfortunately, is his real legacy.

Bill O’Reilly joined the pile-on on Friday, this time trying to say that Brent Bozell has never attacked anyone. This is untrue. Brent Bozell’s group, the Parents Television Council, which is really an offshoot of his Media Research Center, got in trouble ten years ago for attacking WWE and saying that they were encouraging children to violence. The WWE sued Bozell’s PTC and got a 3.5 million dollar settlement. Bozell was also compelled to post a humiliating apology to the WWE to complete his discrediting.

Joseph, I hear you. I think we may agree to disagree on some of this.

I just think that a blanket statement that the buyers didn’t know what they were getting into when buying these overpriced properties goes past what actually happened here. It assumes that the buyers were not reading the documents they were signing every page of, or that they simply didn’t understand the terms of their loans. I’d like to think that most people, when making such a significant investment (for almost all of us, it’s the single biggest investment of our lives) would take the time to find out exactly what they were getting into. And that could and should take more than 30 minutes.

I’m not denying that there were bank and real estate people who acted in an unscrupulous way. There absolutely were. But there is still something to be said about the responsibility of the buyer. Again, without getting into the morality detour, the buyers were not forced to sign these papers and agree to these terms. I believe the overwhelming majority willingly signed because they wanted that nice house and because they assumed that if anything went wrong, they could just sell it at a higher price and still come out okay. I believe many of them didn’t think through the ramifications of the downturn that people like Dean Baker were warning about for years.

Many people specifically did NOT buy the expensive homes during this time because they knew they couldn’t afford them. There’s a simple logic to this – if I’m making 50K per year, that means I can’t afford a 500K house. I can’t afford it even if I take an ARM with no downpayment in the hopes that I can sell the house if the balloon payments are too much. Because at that point I’d be gambling – and doing so with the most significant purchase of my life.

And again, this doesn’t mean that there weren’t some really slimy real estate people peddling overpriced properties under ridiculous terms. There were. But nobody forces me to deal with those people – if the numbers don’t add up, I don’t press that button.

Even more to the point for this, I’m not certain that the Obama Administration relief effort here can do much to help the people who are underwater by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Further, there are plenty of people who paid their mortgages for 20 and 30 years and played by the rules, who are wondering why they don’t qualify for any relief…

I’ll give van Susteren a point for making Trump admit he was also taking cheap shots at Jon Huntsman, including a gratuitous one about refusing a meeting with Huntsman. Van Susteren pushed Trump into admitting that this is something that happened while Huntsman was a candidate months ago, and not something he just did today.