Leaning Forward ... To Insanity: Rachel Maddow Claims GOP Congressman Had Advance Notice of Oklahoma City Bombing

If MSNBC has the slightest bit of credibility this woman would be unemployed by this afternoon.

Yes, this has happened to a smaller degree before. In 1994, in the first mid-term election after the last Democratic president was elected, we got a slate of candidates that included Helen Chenoweth of Idaho and Steve Stockman of Texas. These two were so close to the militia movement in this country that Mr. Stockman actually received advance notice that the Oklahoma City bombing was going to happen

Of course nothing of the sort ever happened. But why let facts get in the way when your goal is to smear people?

Is this what Lean Forward means? Accusing Republicans of knowing about an upcoming mass murder yet doing nothing to prevent it? It's bad enough when you have simpletons like Rosie O'Donnell spew her idiocy about 9/11 on The View, but MSNBC is supposedly a news network. Are they going to let this nonsense stand?

Probably.

Update: Reader Sylvia points out this item from Power Line last February debunking the lunacy of New York Times propagandist Frank Rich.

Rich links to a rather funny and typically paranoid Times piece on Congresswoman Chenoweth of Idaho, who served three terms in Congress and then retired consistent with her term limits pledge. But the Times article to which he links, while lengthy, makes no mention of Chenowith supporting any violent acts or "endorsing groups preaching violent revolution," which was the standard that Rich applied to his own Democratic Party. Likewise, Rich's link to a Times article on Steve Stockman, of whom I have no recollection, does not in any way support his claim that Stockman somehow supported violent political action.

Now take a wild guess who's appeared on Maddow's show spewing lies? Why, none other than Frank Rich.

“I think we have a problem,” said Frank Rich to Rachel Maddow on her show Wednesday night. He was talking about people bringing guns to health care rallies. Yesterday’s distraction about whether or not MSNBC deliberately edited footage of a black man with a gun so they could then talk all about dangerous white anger was just that: a distraction.

So here we have a "news" network that deliberately edits footage, invites on a discredited New York Times hack to discuss said discredited footage, that same hack promotes an outright lie that a GOP Congressman had prior knowledge of the Oklahoma City attack, and the host of the same show then repeats the lie a year later.

Meanwhile, these two are guests of Obama's at the White House.

Obama held a meeting with several columnists and liberal commentators this morning, following up on last night's dinner with conservative writers, according to sources with knowledge of the meeting.

The group included the Washington Post's E.J. Dionne and Eugene Robinson, the Wall Street Journal's Gerry Seib, National Journal's Ron Brownstein, the New York Times Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan, and MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, among others.