Crooks & Liars has an exhaustive post on Glenn Beck, James W. Von Brunn, and the limits of responsible discourse. The takeaway point, as always, is not some binary assertion of "guilt" or "innocence" but the simple observation that people gifted with mass media bullhorns should use them responsibly, not to promulgate known falsehoods or fan the flames of extremist hysteria. They shouldn't—just for starters—use that bullhorn to validate fringe ideologies like Posse Comitatus or neosecessionism.

Monday night bloggity blogs.

* Samuel Delany's "The Star Pit" as a radio show. Really good.

* More on the surprise Dollhouse renewal, including word that "Epitaph One" will likely be aired after all and an interview with Joss. Too bad about Terminator; Bill Simmon links to a Fox executive explaining the one had nothing to do with the other, except insofar as it did.

"[Sarah Connor] has completed its run," Fox entertainment president Kevin Reilly confirmed at a press conference this morning. "I think it had a nice little run. It was a good show. It was not an either or [with Dollhouse]. We did see it tailing off a bit [in the ratings]. It had a nice creative core, but, ultimately, we made the bet on Dollhouse, so that's it for [Sarah Connor]... We make no apologies. We gave it a lot of support and some consistent scheduling. We tried and thought it was time to move on."

* Benen and Yglesias explain how the right's schoolyard strategy on Pelosi and torture may be making a truth commission much more likely.

* Rick Perry has abandoned neosecessionism. Score one for the Northern aggressors.

* I was so outraged by the very idea of this I completely forgot to blog it: someone's written a Catcher in the Rye sequel and their name isn't J.D.

"Just like the first novel, he leaves, but this time he's not at a prep school, he's at a retirement home in upstate New York," said California. "It's pretty much like the first book in that he roams around the city, inside himself and his past. He's still Holden Caulfield, and has a particular view on things. He can be tired, and he's disappointed in the goddamn world. He's older and wiser in a sense, but in another sense he doesn't have all the answers."

Bunch of phonies.

* Maureen Dowd plagiarizes Josh Marshall and everyone has a really good time with it.

* The New Yorker covers the sixth mass extinction event. Print edition only, because analysis of an ongoing mass extinction event isn't something you just give away for free. A few more links at Kottke.

* Kos and Yglesias on epically bad ideas to save newspapers.

Neosecessionism: because the Left hates America and only conservatives are patriots.

It's Tuesday and I'm feeling just a little bit feverish.

* It's come to this: they're going to remake Drop Dead Fred. Don't ask why.

* Oh, the wisdom of markets: Stephen Dunbar demonstrates that Peak Oil has "peaked" by citing the temporary crash in demand due to the financial crisis and speculative recovery technologies as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Crisis averted!

* Meanwhile, the climate is still totally screwed. See also: The 340 residents of Newtok, Alaska will soon be among the first “climate refugees” in the United States. What's their governor have to say about this?

* Superpoop messes with Texas.

* David Kurtz comes through with your daily dose of swine flu commentary, the first on the rhythm of pandemic and the second on the deep, pervasive rot throughout the global meat industry.

* Science has proved that conservatives don't get Stephen Colbert.

Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements.

Whenever I hear about this sort of thing I'm just shocked. Not only is the parody on The Colbert Report completely unsubtle—it's so unsubtle I even wouldn't say it counts as satire—but it's not as even as if Colbert is trying to fool anyone. If you didn't get the point just from reading the sidebar during "The Word," he breaks character, both deliberately and undeliberately, all the freaking time. Multiple times every show. He's practically holding the audience's hand.

Let's hope "more likely" still represents a rather small part of the sample...

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), who was last making headlines for suggesting that Texas may consider seceding from the Union, is requesting help from the federal government to deal with a possible swine flu pandemic.

Thursday!

* Following up on my article in the Indy this week on the excessive costs of nuclear power, here's a report from the head of FERC claiming "We may not need any [new nuclear or coal plants], ever."

* Also at Climate Progress: Obama vs. the Ponzi scheme and what the climate of the U.S. might look like a hundred years from now.

* Republicans aren't just talking about secession to rile up the base; they're actually invoking neo-secessionist legal strategies. It's funny, but it's not a joke.

* Jonathan Martin on why the Republican noise machine can't seem to get anywhere against Obama. It's interesting that the issue that seems to have to most traction against this White House is his failure to prosecute the previous, Republication administration for its many crimes. It's the only place where their attempts to derail Obama have worked, but it's not a viable strategy for electoral success.

* And speaking of prosecuting the Bush White House: Vermont Senator (and Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee) Patrick Leahy is determined to move forward with a torture probe. Amen to that.

I have a ton of tabs open representing the blogging I intended to do this week but never did. Let us begin with the ongoing implosion of the Republican Party.

* Secession! It's everyone's favorite new fantasy. Polls show a quarter of Texans like Gov. Crazy's crazy idea, though said governor is now backpeddling. And if Texas does secede, some people are saying this time we should just let them go.

It would be the world's thirteenth largest economy -- bigger than South Korea, Sweden, and Saudi Arabia. But its worth would crater precipitously, after NAFTA rejected it and the United States slapped it with an embargo that would make Cuba look like a free-trade zone. Indeed, Texas would quick become the next North Korea, relying on foreign aid due to its insistence on relying on itself.

* In less hilarious eliminationist wingnuttery, an Illinois state senator has repeatedly suggested that "Illinois residents 'are ready to shoot anyone who is going to raise taxes' as much as Gov. Pat Quinn is proposing." This talk never should have started back during the election, and really needs to stop.

* The ante's likely been upped for forthcoming Republican antics because the teabagging parties were such a bust while Obama's popularity remains consistently high, no matter what sort of shit they fling at the wall.

* How to become the Republican candidate for vice president. It's easier than you think!

A.B. Culvahouse, a powerful Washington lawyer and former counsel to President Reagan, told an audience of Republican lawyers that for McCain, selecting a vice president came down to three questions: Why do you want to be vice president? Are you prepared to use nuclear weapons? And the CIA has identified Osama bin Laden, but if you take the shot there will be multiple civilian casualties. Do you take the shot?

Night.

* Glenn Beck, lunatic, openly calls for secession.

You can't convince me that the Founding Fathers wouldn't allow you to secede.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact, and if a state says: `I don't want to go there, because that's suicide, they have a right to back out. They have a right -- people have a right to not commit economic suicide...

...Texas says go to hell, Washington, which by the way has been said before. I believe it was Davey Crocket...it's about time that somebody says that again.

He's riffing off some similarly histrionic language from Texas Gov. Rick Perry. When is Fox going to pull the plug on this guy?

* New York joins the future: Gov. David A. Paterson on Thursday will announce plans to introduce legislation to legalize same-sex marriage, according to people with knowledge of the governor’s plans.

* Roasted Peanuts: a blog devoted to the best of classic Peanuts. Via MeFi, which points one I'm rather fond of.

* Barack Obama, great president or greatest president? The president recently sent a video praising Chicago in its bid to hold the 2016 Summer Games. Now he has endorsed the United States’ effort to hold the World Cup of soccer either in 2018 or 2022.

* After two years of work of collecting, scanning, and tagging, the Government Comics Collection at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln library has gone live. This digital collection features "comic books affiliated with state and federal U.S. government agencies, as well as the UN and the EU (and a couple from Canada and one from Ghana)" and includes comics and art by Will Eisner, Scott Adams, Hank Ketcham ("Dennis the Menace Takes a Poke at Poison"), and more.