Dobbs recently left CNN, reportedly with an $8 million payoff, after Latino and immigrants’ advocates campaigned the network to oust him for vilifying Latino immigrants on his nightly news show. In announcing his departure, Dobbs promised to continue to “be a leader in [the] national conversation,” which he’s suggested could include a run for political office.

That may be why he told Maria Celeste on Telemundo that “I am one of your greatest friends and I mean for us to work together.”

The Los Angeles Times notes that the wealthy Texas-born host lives on a 300-acre farm in Northwest New Jersey, where he could launch a run for a Senate seat. Unless his sights are already on the presidency.

Sitting in a coffee shop, this 28-year-old associate editor of the Weekly Standard explains that despite the highly politicized subjects of his books and articles, writing—not politics—is his real passion. Political journalism was simply “a way to get paid writing.”

… He got assigned his first piece for the magazine—a profile of General Wesley Clark during the 2003 presidential primaries—when the editor who had previously covered the general “didn’t feel like writing about him again.” And the contract for The K Street Gang fell into his lap after another Standard writer, Andrew Ferguson, passed it up: “Andy had already signed papers to write his book on Lincoln [Land of Lincoln]…At that point, I was 23, and again, had no clue what I was doing.”

Last night, Dobbs told his audience that he would be leaving the network, saying that “some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in positive problem-solving, as well as to contribute positively to the great understanding of the issues of our day,” he said.

In fact, as the The New York Times and others reported last night, Dobbs had been told by CNN president Jonathan Klein to tone down his anti-immigration rhetoric and report a straightforward newscast. Although at first he agreed to go along, yesterday he announced that he’s no longer playing the game.

There’s been much speculation since Dobbs met with Fox News president Roger Ailes that Dobbs will join the Fox News Channel, but yesterday both Dobbs and Fox denied having any such arrangement.

Roberto Lovato, co-founder of Presente.org, an advocacy organization coordinating the BastaDobbs.com campaign, said he’s “thrilled that Dobbs no longer has this legitimate platform from which to incite fear and hate.”

Dobbs, however, is not likely to fade from the media spotlight anytime soon. As he put it yesterday, he feels he has an important role to play. Citing health care, jobs, immigration, climate change and the ongoing wars as the major issues of the day, he said:

“Unfortunately, these issues are now defined in the public arena by partisanship and ideology rather than rigorous empirical thought and forthright analysis and discussion. I will be working diligently to change that as best I can. And as for the important work of restoring inspiration to our great free society and our market economy, I will strive as well to be a leader in that national conversation.”

– Rush Limbaugh, reacting to news accounts placing Ft. Hood murder suspect Nidal Malik Hasan at a Virginia mosque that hosted an extremist imam.

Audio after the jump:

My favorite response to that comes from VetVoice’s Richard Allen Smith:

A dumb f—— idea, not the least of reasons being that Major Hasan’s records indicated he had no religious preference”, so he wouldn’t have been screened anyway.

But this is the way it goes. We were told by Fox News that to blame right-wingers for the actions of George Tiller’s murderer or the anti-Semite who shot up the Holocaust Museum was out of line. But Muslim soldiers — people who guard the freedoms that Fox bleats about with jingoistic sanctimony — are to be slandered by association. This is a disgrace to the memories of Spc. Kareem R. Khan, Capt. Humayun Saqib Khan, and so many others who have given their lives for this country.

Update: Via Glenn Greenwald’s Twitter, conservative writer David Frum provides an elegant and moving illustration of this point.

I contacted Frank Cillusso, the director of the HSPI at George Washington University, who tells me that Nidal Hasan has no affiliation with the HSPI or with George Washington University, at all. “[Hasan] has no role on the task force, other than the fact that he attended these meetings as an audience member, as did hundreds of others.” Hasan’s name appears on the list of participants only because he provided the HSPI with an RSVP, indicating his attendance. Cillusso told me, “We always record RSVPs and publish them as a matter of transparency, and will continue to do so.”

Annie Lowery at Foreign Policy does the same yeoman work.

There is now literally nothing left of Corsi’s report. Nothing at all. Will he retract it and issue the full and frank apology that his readers deserve? Or will, instead, the smear linger, in the hope of being picked up by Glenn Beck?

At a time of deep sorrow in the midst of this horrific tragedy, our thoughts are first and foremost with the Fort Hood shooting victims and their families. One can only imagine the unspeakable pain and loss they are and will be dealing with in the weeks, months and years to come.

It is unfortunate that whatever demons possessed Nidal Hasan, that he chose to deal with his problems in this way.

In the aftermath of this terrible tragedy, it is more important than ever that we not make the same scapegoating and broad stroke mistakes that were evident in the aftermath of previous tragedies. The Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military urges the media, government officials and all of our fellow Americans to recognize that the actions of Hasan are those of a deranged gunman, and are in no way representative of the wider Arab American or American Muslim community.

In fact, thousands of Arab Americans and American Muslims serve honorably everyday in all four branches of the U.S. military and in the National Guard. Additionally, many of us have willingly stepped forward to fulfill our duty with our fellow soldiers in both Afghanistan, Iraq and other locations around the globe, including most of the member of APAAM. Indeed, many of us are today currently deployed in both countries, honorably serving each and every day.

The Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military (APAAM) was created shortly after September 11th, 2001, in an effort to organize current and former Arab- Americans in the military. There are approximately 3,500 Arab- Americans serving in our Armed Forces. Based on the fact that there are no other formal organizations representing Arab- Americans in the military, APAAM has the distinction of being the first official organization for Arab- Americans in the Military.

As John Nichols pointed out at The Nation, the fact that Hasan comes from an Arab-American background filled the airwaves with predictable innuendo that his Arab heritage and Muslim faith inspired the shooting. To be very clear: it makes no sense to speculate about Hasan’s motivations, and we’ve heard, for the past 16 hours, no shortage of wild speculation that stigmatizes a lot of people. Hasan has never been to war, yet that didn’t stop the cable networks from making the predictable and ignorant point that somehow combat stress motivated him to pick up those guns. Similarly, the media, and especially the right-wing media, are throwing out innuendo that Hasan was an Islamic radical, and, lacking the courage of their noxious convictions, retreat to the line that the mainstream media “does not mention the shooter’s religion at all,” as if this was some data point that unlocked the mystery of his murderous intentions.

Hasan is alive. He will be interrogated and tried. We will presumably learn soon why he committed the cowardly actions he committed. Until then, those who speculate only reveal their own prejudices.

“Basta Dobbs” [translation: "Enough Dobbs"] is sending around this video about CNN anchor Lou Dobbs and his connection to anti-Latino hate crime. Dobbs, of course, has long been a target of criticism from Latino organizations and those who monitor hate groups, because for years he’s obsessively focused on the subject of illegal immigrants in the United States, and regularly refers to “criminal illegal aliens” as the source of many of the country’s worst problems, from rape and murder to failing schools and communicable diseases.

The effort to oust Dobbs from CNN is heating up now because the network has decided, in an effort to cater to the growing Latino population in the United States, to run a new two-part special program called “Latino in America”. Yet “Latino in America,” which premieres tonight and tomorrow, curiously neglects to mention that Dobbs spreads “fear and hatred in our communities,” as Basta Dobbs puts it on the group’s Website.

BastaDobbs.com is organized by Presente.org — a coalition of about 40 Latino organizations in 25 cities across the United States.

Update: Asked for CNN’s response to the “Drop Dobbs” and “Basta Dobbs” campaigns, a CNN spokesperson (who asked not to be named) said “we do not have a comment.”  She also would not discuss whether the network is considering canceling or not renewing Dobbs’s contract. “We do not discuss contract negotiations with anyone,” she said.