From ABC News:

“By providing in state tuition for those who are not residents of his state, because the illegal immigrants who are there — they are not even obviously — not residents of America legally much less the state of Texas,” Palin said. “It sounds like Rick Perry is having a heck of a time trying to explain his position on illegal immigration when he has incentivized some to be able to really grasp a benefit that the majority of Americans would never be able to take an advantage of: in state tuition in the state of Texas.”

Unlike ABC News and The Colorado Independent, Firedoglake just couldn’t resist having some fun with this latest Palin effort to be relevant.

Hamsher did not respond; I posted at 3:57. At what’s timestamped as 2:33 — Pacific Time, I assume — she responded:

Dave Weigel isn’t a journalist, he’s a smear-monger that makes things up and projects his own fantasies onto his stories… I know Katherine, we were on MSNBC together and we’ve spoken about working on the pot legalization measure in California in the future. She tells me that when Weigel approached her and asked her who her “source” was, she didn’t say. He said “It’s Jane Hamsher, isn’t it…I’ve been around.” According to Katherine, she didn’t respond. Weigel decided to print his own suspicions as fact, and didn’t bother to contact me for confirmation.

More insults follow, including a subtle swing at possible TWI donors. I’m more interested in Serkes’ response to my post in an email — she now says that she did not mean to attribute “union thuggery” to Hamsher, and because Hamsher denies saying that, I’ll update my original post. But I am disappointed that Hamsher would use such personal insults and fabricate quotes to make me look like a liar.

Here is the relevant part of my conversation with Serkes. I was recording the rally, so I have audio to back up this transcript.

SERKES: They’re saying that there’s some serious arm-twisting, and their words were union thuggery.

ME: Who’s the they?

SERKES: The progressive side. A progressive source told me that there was serious union thuggery going on this weekend.

ME: Is this the Firedoglake folks?

SERKES: It’s Jane. You’re figured it out.

ME: I’m not new at this.

SERKES: She said they were after Altmire this weekend. Yeah, because Jane and I last talked Saturday.

As I said, Serkes no longer stands by her attribution of “union thuggery” to Hamsher, so I will correct that. I apologize to Jane Hamsher for not giving her more time to respond to my email. When Serkes spoke to me, it seemed clear that she was characterizing her conversation with Hamsher and recalled “union thuggery” enough to use it twice and, twice, attribute it that way. But that is not what she meant to say.

As for Hamsher’s insults of me and my publication — which she supports with fabricated quotes — I’d welcome an apology and a retraction.

By the way, by “I’m not new at this,” I meant I’ve been covering this stuff closely and know that Hamsher has made some high-profile team-ups with conservative activists such as Grover Norquist. And I’d argue that figuring this stuff out, and getting people to name sources, is absolutely the work of a journalist.

UPDATE: Here’s the audio.

Click To Play

D’Ippolito told me she is the first woman to ever run for the US Senate in Indiana. Her impression from working on prior campaigns and from this one is that Indiana political culture is a “tight old boys school, it borders on sexism.” In a state where the population is 52% women, D’Ippolito says “in the future, we women of Indiana are not going to tolerate” the chummy, insider culture.

Worth pointing out, since D’Ippolito has repeated her “first woman ever” quote to multiple reporters — the 2008 Indiana Democratic candidate for governor was Jill Long Thompson. She was, and is, female. She was also the party’s unsuccessful 1986 candidate for U.S. Senate against incumbent and future Vice President Dan Quayle. D’Ippolito doesn’t really know what she’s talking about.

Interestingly, the comments on Dayen’s article broadcast some immediate support for D’Ippolito — whose nomination would functionally hand the Senate seat over to Republicans. One Republican who realizes that is Erick Erickson, who’s encouraging RedState readers to get signatures. But that’s less surprising than the FDL reaction, which is of a piece of that site’s turn against Democrats seen by readers to be puppets of Rahm Emanuel.

UPDATE: The conservative, Anschutz-owned Washington Examiner runs an item instructing readers how to help out the D’Ippolito effort.

Under one proposal, if a person does not carry health insurance from a private insurance company, they would be fined up to 2% of their income. Is this fair, or unfair?

The poll found that Snyder, already losing badly to Griffin, was four points further behind if he backed the bill.

The question, raised by Nate Silver and others: Is Firedoglake trying to scare vulnerable Democrats into retirement in order to kill health care reform? All indications point to “yes.” I’m hearing that FDL will conduct more polls in vulnerable Democratic districts, based largely on this chart of the “top 20 Democrats who could lose their seat over health care vote[s]. Snyder was at the top of that list, posted by FDL’s Jane Hamsher on Jan. 6. (One irony: Snyder is a fairly progressive member of Congress, and not a member of the Blue Dogs.)

Tension between FDL and some other progressive sites has increased since the Senate’s health care compromise took shape–Hamsher has campaigned aggressively to “kill the bill.” A month ago she predicted that “left/right populist outrage” would do so, and she hasn’t slowed down since.

The ACLU, meanwhile, has identified an important point about the chronology of the CIA’s internal communications about the tapes. Although the communications remain classified, the dates and summaries of their content provided by the government reveals that a request to destroy the 92 tapes were  made just days after The Washington Post reported on the existence of secret overseas CIA prisons known as “black sites.” Another request was made on the day The New York Times reported that the CIA inspector general had issued a report questioning the legality of the agency’s interrogation methods.

The tapes were destroyed that same day.

But the President’s speech seemed primarily aimed at stopping torture abroad, which is presumably why he’s called on the State Department to get involved. But what about torture committed by our own government?

I know some are still debating which techniques constitute “torture” — such as in this scolding piece from The Washington Times — but because the Convention Against Torture, which the president was commemorating, prohibits torture AND cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as I’ve noted before, at this point we can put that debate aside. There’s little question that the sort of techniques engaged in by U.S. government officials — whether partial drowning, “walling,” weeks of sleep and food deprivation or locking detainees inside a tiny box with what were believed to be deadly insects is, at the very least, cruel and degrading.

It’s odd, therefore, as Marcy points out, to see the president — who vowed on his third day in office to end torture — refusing to prosecute those who engaged in acts that clearly violate the anti-torture convention he commemorated on Friday.

As Marcy put it: “Mr. President, the agency that must take the lead in stopping torture is the Department of Justice. The effective policies for stopping torture you’re looking for? They start with prosecuting torture.”

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Get on the phone ASAP. The vote has not happened and it looks like it won’t until next week. Why? Because we are bringing pressure to bear and the Democrats are having a very hard time keeping a majority on the legislation.

We absolutely cannot falter on this. We must keep up the continuous pressure headed into the weekend. See the list of names below and call, call, call.

We should not be bailing out European national banks. We are less than a dozen votes away from being able to kill this. Call these members of Congress ASAP.

RedState and Firedoglake, working together – total insanity.