Pundit posturing poohbahs of hate

(Photo of Laura Ingraham)

The following comes from Glenn Greenwald at Salon.

Let's start with Laura Ingraham. On Fox News, interviewing Marjorie Cohn about the Gitmo Supreme Court ruling, Ingraham said President Bush should not "respect the decision of the court."

"...if I were President Bush ... I would have said at this point, that's very interesting that the court decided this, but I'm not going to respect the decision of the court because my job is to keep the country safe."

This is what it has come to: a Fox News commentator urging the President of the United States to break the law by ignoring a Supreme Court ruling, thus negating the Constitutional provision of separation of powers.


Mr. Greenwald further notes that Michael Reagan, a talk radio host who serves occasionally as a guest anchor for Fox News, referred to a group that "was sending letters to U.S. soldiers arguing that the U.S. Government had a role in the 9/11 attacks..." Reagan considered this a major problem and offered this solution:

"Take em out and shoot em. . . . They are traitors to this country, and shoot them. . . . Anybody who does that doesn't deserve to live. You shoot them. You call them traitors. That's what they are. And you shoot em dead. I'll pay for the bullets."

Mr. Reagan, son of the late President Reagan has also "previously said that 'Howard Dean should be arrested and hung (sic) for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war.'"

Greenwald thinks this frantic rhetoric of deceit, assault and murder derives from the fact "that their [Right wing] political movement lies in ruins" ... and thus "the desperation and frustration level increases..."

So, Andy McCarthy of the National Review, in response to the Supreme Court's Gitmo ruling, said "we should take all of the Guantanamo detainees and just slaughter then en mass..."

As Mr. Greenwald points out, these right wing commentators are dangerous and a threat to our system of government.

"Having millions of citizens inculcated over many years with truly deranged, extremist tripe of this sort ... obviously has consequences. We've seen just some of those over the last seven years, and the reaction is likely to intensify as that movement grows more impotent and marginalized."

It is sad that Laura Ingraham and other of these pundit posturing poohbahs of hate are willing to sell their souls and risk destroying the very country they pretend to love merely for the sake of obtaining higher ratings.

You can read Mr. Greenwald's entire essay, titled "Various items," here.