Friday Open Thread

Welcome to your Friday open thread. It’s some crazy weather this week so I guess that means spring is coming. Share your spring fever below.

I think I’m getting immune to stories about Fox and its role as a propaganda outfit for the Republican party.

A person could grow weary compiling all the “Fox Nutwork loves to lie” stories out there.

Well, no rest for the weary! Here’s another one:

After the publishing powerhouse Judith Regan was fired by HarperCollins in 2006, she claimed that a senior executive at its parent company, News Corporation, had encouraged her to lie to federal investigators two years before.

The investigators had been vetting Bernard B. Kerik, the former New York City police commissioner who had been nominated to become secretary of Homeland Security and who had had an affair with Ms. Regan.

The goal of the News Corporation executive, according to Ms. Regan, was to keep the affair quiet and protect the then-nascent presidential aspirations of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Kerik’s mentor and supporter.

And who was this senior executive? Why, the most senior one they had.

But now, affidavits filed in a separate lawsuit reveal the identity of the previously unnamed executive: Roger E. Ailes, chairman of Fox News.

This was all done to protect Rudy Giuliani. It looks like Judith Regan was too smart to take Ailes’s advice. Could Ailes face a criminal inquiry over this?

Is anyone surprised that John McCain is now rated as the most conservative senator?

According to the National Journal’s new ideological rankings of Congress members, released this afternoon, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) — who once characterized himself as an independent “maverick” — has repositioned himself so far to the right that he is now tied with Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and John Barrasso (R-WY) as the Senate’s most conservative member. McCain earned an 89.7 out of 100, which even beat out the reliable right wingers like Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

I’m still trying to figure out the media crush on him. The media is on to him, and they’ve transferred their crushes to Chris Christie.