I know some of you have missed my weekly “Republican Moron of the Week” feature over the past few months. It’s absence has been part of a bigger ‘kinder, gentler’ Dan Cody campaign where, believe it or not, I’ve tried to turn down the rhetoric.

So you have to believe it took a whopper of a moronic statement to bring it back out of retirement, and I don’t think anyone will be disappointed.

Bill O’Reilly has been, well, lying recently about the fact that he and FOX news have been on an ‘Al Qaeda death list’ according to the FBI. Here’s what he said:

“With the controversy comes death threats on a daily basis. Not only from kooks. But the FBI came in and warned me and a few other people at Fox News that al Qaeda had us on a death list. … That’s a little disconcerting.” – Bill O’Reilly

Wow, impressive! Except… not quite true:

A federal law enforcement officer reportedly told the website Radar that he is “not aware of any FBI agents warning anyone at Fox News of their presence on any list” and that he is “not aware of any Al Qaeda hit list targeting journalists.” Radar also noted that one “correspondent” at Fox News said that “neither he nor anyone he’s spoken to at the network has been warned by the FBI,” and that “the government has warned Fox about threats in the past, but I don’t think they involved specific people.”

Talk about an overinflated ego Bill! Making threats against yourself up to sound like a tough guy hardly seems like something an honest journalist with a reputation for integrity like yourself would do!

That’s why you’re my Republican Moron of the Week Bill O’Reilly. It takes a special kind of coward to make up a story like this when there are real people facing real threats from real enemies like Al Qaeda every day.

Bill O’Reilly’s claim to be on an Al Qaeda “death list” has reportedly been disputed by an FBI official and a “correspondent” at Fox News.

From CNN.com:

President Bush said Wednesday he would order U.S. forces to go after Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan if he received good intelligence on the fugitive al Qaeda leader’s location.

“Absolutely,” Bush said.

So today he would ‘absolutely’ go after bin Laden, but yet 4 years ago in Tora Bora when we had bin Laden, we decided not to finish the job.

George W. Bush: Against capturing bin Laden before he was for it.

And why the new qualifier for only ‘good intelligence’ to get the guy behind 9/11? We started a pre-emptive war with a whole lot less. Manipulated / bad intelligence was good enough to start a war, but only good intelligence will do to catch the #1 bad guy?

Interesting.

The lead from this AP story says it all:

A judge Tuesday struck down as unconstitutional the latest version of a new Georgia law requiring voters to show photo ID.

State Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford Jr. ruled that the photo ID requirement deprives otherwise qualified voters of the right to cast a ballot and adds a new, unconstitutional condition to voting. – AP

Don’t think it will stop Wisconsin conservatives who also want voters to show photo ID’s though! They’d like nothing better than to disenfranchise voters (most of whom just happen to be Democrats) and have never let overwhelming public and judicial opposition stop them before! (See TABOR and “concealed carry”).

Kudos to Georgia for defending one of our inalienable rights – the right to vote.

No surprise here. Just remember folks that when you hear the term “school choice” from Republicans, what they really mean is the public finance of (their) private schools.

U.S. Rep. Mark Green of Green Bay, the Republican candidate for governor, today proposed an education package that would eliminate the 22,500-enrollment cap on Milwaukee’s school choice program and expand the program to all of Milwaukee County.

The program allows children from low-income families to attend private schools using state tax funds. Green also proposed raising the current income limits for families participating in the program.

What Rep. Green really wants is public funding for private schooling, make no mistake about it.

Most people don’t know this, but these ‘choice’ schools are voucher schools that have no accountability at all in terms of what kind of curriculum they teach, how qualified their teachers are, or what – if any – benchmarks they have to prove their students are meeting the same achievement standards that public schools face.

The most disturbing twist on this is that he’s proposing raising the income limits for the programs which would in effect allow middle and upper class families to send their kids to private schools on the publics dime.

It’s been a Republican goal for decades to get the public taxpayer to finance private and parochial schools for their children, and the linguistic vehicles for that goal has been ‘school choice’ and ‘No child left behind’. What Rep. Green is proposing here sends a loud and clear message that if he’s elected, he’s going to do everything in his power to not only gut Milwaukee Public Schools but to further blur the line between church and state in Wisconsin.

While affluent Republicans are sure to like his idea, it’s bad for Milwaukee, it’s bad for Milwaukee’s children, and it’s bad for Wisconsin.

The chatterbox column in yesterday’s Sunday Journal Sentinel contained even more hard hitting, relevant journalism than usual when they informed us that – get this! – the money raised by a campaign often goes to pay the people who run it!

Kennedy is not the only one to have benefited from his campaign’s fund-raising prowess. Since January 2005, Kennedy’s team has paid $73,185 in salary and expenses to Democratic Consulting, a one-man shop run by Kennedy’s buddy and ex-student Bill Elliott.

Granted, Bill is a friend of mine, but when I read this over dinner yesterday I couldn’t help but wonder why the busybody ‘Spiceboys’ were trying to make a big deal out of the fact that Brian Kennedy’s campaign manager actually got paid.

But on the other hand, that’s what they get paid to do: make even the most routine happenings seem like big deals.

The only difference that I can see between this example and every other political campaign in existence is that Bryan was paying Bill’s company whereas most campaign managers are actually employees of the campaign itself.

So what’s the big deal? Good question.

Another corrupt Republican bites the dust:

Rep. Bob Ney agreed Friday to plead guilty to federal criminal charges he made false statements and conspired to commit fraud and violate federal lobbying laws in the congressional corruption probe spawned by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. – AP

That’s two sitting Republicans that have pled guilty now and the investigation into the corruption isn’t over yet.

I’ll now await the predictable comments on how this really proves how Democrats are corrupt.

I wish I could say I was surprised that we were over-exaggerating the nuclear threat of a country in the middle east that begins with “I-R-A”… but hey, it’s not like it hasn’t happened before!

The UN nuclear watchdog has protested to the US government over a report on Iran’s nuclear programme, calling it “erroneous” and “misleading”.

In a leaked letter, the IAEA said a congressional report contained serious distortions of the agency’s own findings on Iran’s nuclear activity. – BBC

I imagine that this is a huge disappointment for the Bush administration who would like nothing better than to start a brand new war to take the attention away their major screw-up next door in Iraq.

Yesterday was election primary day in Wisconsin, and while most people outside Wisconsin won’t care, there are a lot of us here in the state that put a considerable amount of money, time, and effort into the races that were decided yesterday. The milwaukeechannel.com has complete details, but I’ve got just a few thoughts one day after the 2006 primary.

- Biggest surprise: the number of votes that Republican Attorney General candidate Bucher lost by to (winner) J.B. Van Hollen. I had the feeling that Bucher would lose, but I was surprised by the margin of victory he ended up losing by: 40% to 59%

- Most disappointing: The re-election of Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke. Vince Bobot made it a close race, but Clarke managed to BS voters again by running as a Democrat.

- Least surprising: Bucher’s concession speech that blamed ‘big money’ and everything else except his own campaign for the loss. Funny, he didn’t seem to have a huge problem with the amount of money in the race until mid-summer when he fell far behind.

- Race I’m glad is behind Democrats: The contentious Attorney General race between Kathleen Falk and Peg Lautenschlager. Falk ended up winning (another mild surprise) the race, and hopefully that puts a very divisive race behind us.

- 2nd biggest disappointment: My friend Bill Elliott finished second in voting for the 23rd Assembly seat. He ran a very hard race for the nomination and we’re all very proud of him for that. In the end though, it’s very hard to compete against a 4 to 1 cash advantage.

So while a number of the candidates I did support didn’t fair as well as I would have hoped last night, I’m still very excited and optimistic about Wisconsin Democrats chance this November.

President Bush had this to say in his primetime speech tonight:

Winning this war will require the determined efforts of a unified country. So we must put aside our differences, and work together to meet the test that history has given us. We will defeat our enemies, we will protect our people, and we will lead the 21st century into a shining age of human liberty.

It’s ironic that 5 years after 9/11 Pres. Bush is now calling for people to “put aside our differences, and work together…”. He seems to forget that the entire nation – and world – were united behind him and America in the days and months after 9/11. Instead of using that unifying power, unmatched popularity, and bi-partisan support, he squandered it.

There was a singular opportunity for America to start a new era of cooperation in bringing terrorists to justice, but instead, we went it alone, threw our allies support out the window and started a pre-emptive war on the shallowest of intelligence and questionable honesty from this administration.

And now that the President is suffering from unflagging unpopularity at home and abroad both of his policies and for himself, we should just throw our hands up in the air, shrug our shoulders, and get back on board with the President and his policies?

As has been the case with the administration of Pres. Bush, he should stop talking up the big game of bi-partisanship and start doing something about it. I think despite his best efforts, people see this for what it is: a last ditch effort on the eve of an election to keep his party in power.

After all, if working together is so important to the President, why hasn’t be been trying to do it for the last five years? I mean, really, what else has he and his administration been doing for the past five years besides executing a disasterous policy in Iraq, cutting checks to mega-corporations in the form of tax breaks, and watching as the man responsible for 9/11 continues to thumb his nose at us?

If bi-partisanship and “putting aside our differences” is so important to you Mr. President, go ahead and do it.

Five years after 9/11, we’re still waiting.