I'm sure there will be many on the right who get offended by that. But it's not an equivalent comparison to the death panel claims because he's not claiming it's actually a component in their bill. It's a rhetorical device to characterize their point of view. It might go too far for beltway sensibilities, but it's not actually trying to scare people by misleading them about real, specific components of significant legislation that is about to be voted on. That's a pretty big difference.

I grew up in the age of no-holds-barred right wing smears. The first election I followed close up was the 1988 Bush-Dukakis race and the GOP's animalistic primal viciousness was no less intense then than it is now. The media played a contemptible role in that affair and in many ways further lowered the bar for what it was willing to call out.

But I'm sure you could keep going back through the annals of American history and find that it started with the colonization of Massachusetts and Virginia.

This country has been at war with itself for all its existence, really.

I don't know. I'm against a national id card and I happen to believe the FBI acted in a grossly excessive manner w/r/t Randy Weaver.

Those are issues of individual liberties which are not the sole territory of the right. At least I hope not. I personally don't see this guy as a threat. He may have crazy ideas, particularly with the birthers, but I don't know if I'd target him as hostile and dangerous.

His support of Randy Weaver does not necessarily make him a supporter of white supremacy - Weaver is as much a symbol of law enforcement abuse as he is racism and those who defend him are not always doing it out of agreement with his specific beliefs.

This was really an outstanding piece.

A consumer economy based on the assumption that we can perpetually use a finite amount of resources for an infinite amount of demand is gone.

Good God, Glenn. I've read your column every day for the past two years and I finally think you've offended me with that Washington Post video. What if my children saw that? Am I going to have to put an internet privacy setting on your site now? I just threw up in my mouth.

It's funny to me how they use the word "torture" around the edges - like a quick shorthand as a teaser for a story on the issue, but the actual stories won't touch it. It strikes me as a subconscious admission of reality and then when the word is avoided descriptively in a piece, you can almost feel the internal denial. I think people are just scared to admit that we've done something truly horrific.

Imagine what words they would use to describe the institution of slavery if it were the mid 1800s. "Enhanced free labor" or "stringent working contracts"?

Liesman is also a Pulitzer Prize winning economics reporter, formerly with the Wall Street Journal.

Here's a good example of Liesman fighting the good fight:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1054460158&play=1

Since Santelli's big rant, I've been watching videos of CNBC pretty much every day to get a feel for the network. Your description is pretty accurate but I'm guessing you watched on a day when Steve Liesman wasn't on. That's a shame. Steve is sort of the rational, sane reporter/economic analyst and he often has to beat back the inanity of the talking heads who are not really specialists or have much of a macroeconomic perspective. Day in and day out, Liesman is contending and dismissing crazy assertions by people like Santelli and Kudlow, to name a few. He does it with real integrity and knowledge, leaving the others to try to just chew at the edges of his points, which largely serve to make them look extremely narrow focused or, in Kudlow's case, simplistically outdated with his supply-side gibberish.

It's because of Liesman that I actually go back repeatedly and watch CNBC videos because he serves both an insightful purpose and a therapeutic purpose by demonstrating that there is some rationality on the network.

Just watched the documentary on Joe Strummer and feel considerably less malaised than Mr. Sirota.

Campfires, people.

Yes! Both Colbert's piece here and Stewart's slam of Rick Santelli and MSNBC in general were fine pieces of smackdown. And people thought they wouldn't be as funny without Bush in the White House...

I disagree that the incident had the perverse effect of making Bush look good. A president with a 30% approval rating, largely due to this horribly unpopular and criminal war, getting a shoe thrown at him on his "farewell tour" of the country he turned upside down is a form of humiliation he properly deserves.

Compare that to the thousands of civilians killed, the prisoners at Abu Ghraib, over 4,000 US soldiers killed - and it's not that egregious of a thing to me to celebrate this man's protest.