Huffington Post:

Keith Olbermann announced Thursday that he is suspending his Twitter account in response to sustained and, in his opinion, unwarranted attacks over his handling of the rape allegations surrounding WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Assange’s legal troubles have been rife with confusion and controversy about the nature of the crimes he has allegedly committed. Many have urged people not to dismiss the rape allegations as merely politically motivated, while others have said they are a smokescreen for a war against WikiLeaks.

One of the people making the claim that the case has been overblown is filmmaker Michael Moore, who also contributed $20,000 for Assange’s bail. On Tuesday, Moore explained why he had contributed the money. He also appeared on that night’s “Countdown.” In response, the website TigerBeatDown harshly criticized Moore for writing that the allegations against Assange were “strange” and that people should “never, ever believe the ‘official story.’” The site launched a Twitter campaign to get Moore to apologize. TigerBeatDown also criticized Olbermann for retweeting a link by Bianca Jagger which dismissed the charges and possibly revealed the identities of Assange’s accusers.

Olbermann began receiving a flood of heated criticism on Twitter for hosting Moore and for retweeting Jagger’s post. In response, Olbermann apologized for any offense he had caused, but denied that he had done anything else wrong [. . .]

The rest here.

Over to you, Keith. From yesterday’s press briefing with Robert Gibbs:

Q    Thank you, Robert.  Thank you, Les.  (Laughter.)  I have three quick questions.  First one, last week during his special comment, Keith Olbermann compared the President’s tax compromise to Nazi appeasement.  I wanted to see if you guys had a reaction to that.  Did the President hear that, or what do you think about that?

MR. GIBBS:  I doubt the President heard that.  I obviously have given a number of answers that would denote that we think it’s a good agreement.  And I would say this to Democrats or Republicans.  I think whenever you compare anything to what the Nazis did, if you ever get to that point in your speech, stop, because nothing does.  And hopefully, God willing, nothing ever will.

If this New York Times account of how it came to be that President Obama and former President Clinton ended up in the briefing room together is to be believed, the idea was a joint effort between Clinton and Obama. And from the account, the only person who could have stopped it was Robert Gibbs, and, rather than question if it was a good idea, he facilitated it.

Heckuva job, Gibby.

The latest phony Media Matters–controversy involves a Fox News memo that tells anchors to refrain from using the phrase “public option” when discussing Obamacare. Time points out why Media Matter, Howard Kurtz, and other Fox-bashers are wrong in their critique. An excerpt:

Here’s what Kurtz and Media Matters fail to note: Most Americans did not understand what the “public option” was. The term, in fact, seemed almost intentionally non-descriptive. Scores of journalists asked me during the health care debate to explain to them what the public option was – and these were folks interested in the news and paying attention to the issue.

The public option would have been a government-run insurance plan some Americans could have purchased. It would have been supported by premiums with no government subsidization and would be been purely voluntary. Like Medicare, the reimbursements paid by the public option would have been set by the government. Also like Medicare, the plan would not have needed to turn a profit, making it cost less than private insurance. It would have therefore provided tough competition for private insurers and pushed down premiums throughout the marketplace.

The whole post here.

He should be on MSDNC with Lawrence O’Donnell, not NPR. But, I have to assume this White House knows what it’s doing, right?

Aaron Sorkin has a temper-tantrum over at the Huffington Post over Palin’s shooting of a caribou during the most recent episode of her show. He writes:

Like 95% of the people I know, I don’t have a visceral (look it up) problem eating meat or wearing a belt. But like absolutely everybody I know, I don’t relish the idea of torturing animals. I don’t enjoy the fact that they’re dead and I certainly don’t want to volunteer to be the one to kill them and if I were picked to be the one to kill them in some kind of Lottery-from-Hell, I wouldn’t do a little dance of joy while I was slicing the animal apart.

I’m able to make a distinction between you and me without feeling the least bit hypocritical. I don’t watch snuff films and you make them. You weren’t killing that animal for food or shelter or even fashion, you were killing it for fun. You enjoy killing animals. I can make the distinction between the two of us but I’ve tried and tried and for the life of me, I can’t make a distinction between what you get paid to do and what Michael Vick went to prison for doing. I’m able to make the distinction with no pangs of hypocrisy even though I get happy every time one of you faux-macho s***heads accidentally shoots another one of you in the face.

So as long as Aaron Sorkin has no idea how the animals are killed that fill his billy, cushion his buttocks, or shelter his feet, then it’s okay? I guarantee that caribou suffered far less than any of the farm-raised meat products Sorkin consumes every day. And his statement, “you enjoy killing animals” is ridiculous. She killed the animal for food. Again, Sorkin is happy to have someone else kill his animals for him, but those who actually do the killing are somehow “faux-macho s***heads?” If Sorkin is so against the actual killing of animals, he should grab a lettuce wrap and shut up.

And I also don’t remember any collective rage from the Left when then candidate Kerry decided to go bird hunting in Ohio just days before the election in 2004.

Tune in tonight!

Special Comment tonight: Taxes, Blackmail, Bullies, the 99′ers – and Presidential Timidity.

Funny stuff with Ricky Gervais (mild content warning):

I’m not a hunter. All I know about hunting I’ve learned from Bambi and Red Dawn, so watching Sarah Palin shoot a caribou last not on Sarah Palin’s Alaska was kind of interesting. Palin eventually shoots the caribou, but only after a number of tries. (Later determined to be her dad’s fault for having the scope on the rifle not calibrated properly) Here’s the video. (Fast Forward to 1:50, and since she does shoot the animal and then “field dress” it, the usually warnings apply):

And since I’m not a hunter, I do have one question for any readers who are hunters. Why does Sarah Palin keep whispering when the caribou doesn’t run away after Palin keeps firing at it and missing? I’ve never seen an animal so stupid. It actually looks at the TLC cameras as if to say, “hey, what’s that loud banging over there? And there it is again. I wonder what’s up?” PETA can say what they want, but Palin did the herd a favor by removing this particular caribou from the gene pool.

Jake Tapper:

In addition to extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, President Obama has agreed to re-invade Iraq