I have, and always have had, tremendous respect for Cenk Uygur. His contract with his audience is that he will never put himself in a position where he cannot say what he really thinks.  And in turning down MSNBC’s offer to host a weekend show so he could give his audience a fair appraisal of what happened, he honors that contract.

Last Friday, many outlets covered the story of Adam Dillon, a former British Petroleum contractor-turned-whistleblower who claimed he was fired for taking covert photographs of BP cleanup operations. Dillon was originally caught by WDSU cameras as part of a team chasing reporter Scott Walker away from photographing booms. Shortly thereafter, Dillon said he was fired [...]

Google apparently must not be working today. Either that, or Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher has yet to master this useful internet tool: Hamsher, meanwhile, drew the ire of many progressives when she led a last-minute assault on the health care reform bill. In trashing the bill, she invoked the $80 billion PhRMA deal, with which she [...]

Matt Yglesias analyzes the “failure of the progressive block strategy,” and chalks it up to progressives not picking issues that “centrists” care about. He doesn’t note his own role in that failure, vilifying the leader of the progressive block Raul Grijalva as “the world’s greatest monster” unless he backs down. (Our own whip effort started [...]

WaPo’s Ruth Marcus is the latest to lament that the barely-acceptable is the enemy of the godawful, both on the air and in print.

Religious leaders of all stripes are pushing for health care reform, rooted in the belief that health care is a basic right for all people, not a commodity. Not that you’d know this by following the TradMed . . .

Yes, I know, there is practically nothing that a Fox News person can say or do that’s vile enough to cost them their job. Bill O’Reilly is still batting cleanup even after being exposed as a creepy sexual harasser, and Glenn Beck just keeps on catering to the right wing’s most paranoid and dangerous elements while shedding advertisers like a leaky centrifuge. But I think Shep Smith has really gone beyond the pale here:

It’s not just that the Villagers are passing along without comment or correction RNC-dictated lies about Teddy Kennedy. It’s that the Republicans’ lies are based on projection.

Dear CNN and Fox: This is what happens when you give a microphone, and false legitimacy, to people like Glenn Beck. Sow the crazy wind, reap the danger-to-herself-and-others whirlwind.

In the wake of Tim Pawlenty’s announcement that he wasn’t running for governor again in 2010 (probably so he can run for president in 2012), the Minneapolis StarTribune put out an article listing the various persons in the Republican Party of Minnesota who were looking at taking his place — and yes, Norm Coleman was mentioned as possibly being one of these people. Here’s my take on the names they mentioned.