Are you kidding me? The radical right? The last terror act assigned to them was the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995.

In reality, acts of political violence connected to the far right are a regular occurrence. To make his claim, O'Reilly even had to overlook at least two domestic terror acts apparently inspired by his Fox News colleague Glenn Beck.

In July 2010 Beck devotee Byron Williams shot two California Highway Patrol officers when they stopped him on his way, as he later told police, to kill people at the Oakland California offices of the progressive Tides Foundation and the ACLU. Byron cited Beck, who journalist John Hamilton pointed out had aired anti-Tides commentaries on 29 separate editions of his Fox News show, as an inspiration.

Furthermore, the ADL reported that Pittsburgh's Richard Poplawski--who was arrested after a shootout with police that left three officers dead--was so inspired by Beck's anti-government conspiracy theories he posted to a neo-Nazi website tape of Beck suggesting the government was building concentration camps for dissidents.

And how could O'Reilly forget Jim Adkisson, who shot and killed two people at a progressive Tennessee church in 2008? In his "manifesto," Adkisson wrote that he "wanted to kill…every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book." (These days, Adkisson inspiration Bernard Goldberg is best known for his regular appearances on the O'Reilly Factor.)

But there's more. What about anti-abortion terrorist Eric Rudolph, who killed two and injured scores in bombings carried out between 1996 and 1998, including attacks at women's health clinics and the 1996 Atlanta Olympics?

And far-right racist and anti-Semite James von Brunn, who took a rifle to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. in June 2009, shooting  to death a security guard before he was stopped by police?

Perhaps O'Reilly doesn't consider Scott Roeder, the anti-abortion activist who murdered women's health provider Dr. George Tiller, a terrorist. After all, before his May 2009 murder, O'Reilly and his guests had demonized Tiller in 27 separate editions of his show, with the host dubbing Tiller a "killer" and accusing him of "Nazi stuff."

On January 17, city workers in Spokane, Washington, found a sophisticated bomb set to go off along the route of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Day march. Of course, there's a chance O'Reilly hasn't heard about this; the single mention O'Reilly's network has made of the crime was in a 100-word rip-and-read (Special Report, 1/18/11) the day after the march.

Then there's also the possibility that O'Reilly and his colleagues just don't care about right-wing domestic terrorism--especially when the news might undermine Muslim-bashing congressional hearings they do care about. On Wednesday, the day before King's congressional witch hunt began, federal officials arrested white supremacist Kevin William Harpham for  attempting to use a "weapon of mass destruction" in the Spokane terror crime. To this point, the arrest has not been mentioned on Fox News.

CNN featured William Schneider, Sanjay Gupta and Bill Press. On Fox, Bill O'Reilly defended his use of "baby killer" and "death mill" to describe Dr. Tiller and his clinic. On MSNBC, Keith Olbermann--who the last time I checked in spent a whole segment making fun of Miss Anti-Gay Marriage California's breast implants with waspish misogynist Michael Musto--had only men: Slate's Will Saletan, who thinks we can "end" abortion by stigmatizing women with unwanted pregnancies, because right now everyone is just too kind....

In the more than three decades since Roe v. Wade, "the fetus" gradually became the star of the abortion drama, and the voices of women who had abortions, aka "the woman," leached out of the public discussion. How many embryos can dance on the head of a pin--now that's interesting! Off-the-cuff judgments about how late is too late and what kinds of health problems count as serious--everyone's a doctor!

Noticing that "the murder of Dr. Tiller has gotten more women telling their stories," Pollitt calls that "a crucial, good thing"--but "not so that panels of pundits can approve or disapprove but so that society can hear, firsthand, what girls and women go through." Listen to FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: "Fred Clarkson on Tiller Murder" (6/5/09).

In a week that saw the killing of an off-duty police officer by an another police officer in New York, and the killing of a women’s doctor in Wichita, it's hard to believe that anyone in their right mind would disagree with Sotomayor.

The New York shooter took the victim for a criminal at least in part because the victim was a black man.

Women’s lives are not the same. The assassination of the country's eighth abortion provider brought out of the margins and into the media the reality that women seeking legal care and the people who look after them are still, after decades, subject to the kind of daily harassment, vandalism and threats that no corporate CEO would tolerate for a weekend.

Considering these events, Flanders finds it "hard to believe that anyone in their right mind would argue that to mention difference in America is to be racist--or that to have experienced discrimination might make one smarter about it." In her eyes, big media's "right minds would rather that we pretend we’re all already equal, because then we’ll stop working to make it that way."

Read the FAIR Media Advisory: "Misquoting Sotomayor: Media Let Right-Wing Critics Frame Debate" (6/2/09)

In the good old days of the last century, the years before the collapse of the economy and the World Trade Center towers, political discourse in the U.S. was, too often, rutted in issues that didn't affect the lives of most people. They were important moral and symbolic issues, to be sure. And they were difficult issues, although their subtleties were obscured by extremists, who tended to dominate the debate. Still, the people directly affected by the so-called social issues--abortion, gay marriage, racial preferences--pale in comparison with the tens of millions who have lost their jobs and fortunes in the past year and with the global, life-and-death impact of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Didn't affect the lives of most people"? The people who are "directly affected" by abortion, gay marriage and "racial preferences" are women (roughly half of whom experience an unintended pregnancy at least once in their life), people of color and gay people--i.e., just about everyone except straight white males like Klein.

(I'm still trying to figure out what an "extremist" pro-gay position on gay marriage would be. Is that the one where gay rights advocates "want to change the way *I* live"?)

Then Klein writes this:

Late-term abortions--no more than a few percent of the total performed in the U.S.--were Tiller's specialty. These are usually hard cases, sometimes the result of rape or incest or the discovery of severe birth defects. But they are, without question, the taking of a life. At the same time, the pro-life community should concede that sex education and the widespread availability of morning-after pills and condoms are necessary if we're going to prevent these tragedies.

First of all, abortions performed after 19 weeks actually account for only 1.1 percent of all abortions. Viability usually starts around 24 weeks, so what are usually termed "late-term" abortions surely account for well under 1 percent. More importantly, that they are "without question, the taking of a life" is just kinder, gentler baby-killer language. And how are "sex education and the widespread availability of morning-after pills and condoms" going to prevent "the discovery of severe birth defects"?

Finally, Klein launches into an attack on affirmative action:

The Sotomayor debate has been polluted by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, who claim, ridiculously, that the judge is a racist. That sort of rant is so-o-o 20th century. Beneath the pollution, however, is a serious policy question that needs to be resolved: With an African-American president and a polychromatic society moving toward racial (if not economic) equity, why do we still need preferences enshrined in law?

Klein's assertion that we're "moving toward racial...equity" is a little hard to figure; the fact that a biracial man was elected president doesn't change the reality for people of color that racial disparities in the United States are still very much with us.

Klein went on to say that Judge Sonia Sotomayor crossed a line

when she agreed in 2008 to toss the results of a promotion exam for the New Haven, Conn., fire department because an insufficient number of minorities passed it. That seems inherently unfair to those who succeeded--including the dyslexic firefighter Frank Ricci, who hired tutors to help him pass and whose name adorns the case. The lack of minority success does not necessarily signify the presence of racial prejudice. The best way to rectify such a situation is to make sure the next test is truer. An appropriate 21st century standard should be proof of actual discrimination against specific individuals.

What, exactly, does he mean by "make sure the next test is truer"? If the test was flawed, the logical thing to do would be to throw out the results. But then, logic doesn't seem to be Klein's strong suit.