Here’s the (very entertaining) timeline:

• Thursday, September 3rd, 11:18 PM: Glenn Beck calls for his Twitter followers to send him information on “CASS SUNSTEIN, MARK LLOYD AND CAROL BROWNER” (all caps in the original, which is honestly a bit much).
• Friday, September 4th, 3:36 PM: Dave Weigel reports on all of this.
• Sunday, September 6th, 12:05 AM: It becoming clear that Van Jones is a crazy 9/11 Troofer and a generally not-particularly-mainstream fellow, he resigns as Green Jobs Czar (via AoSHQ).
• Sunday, September 6th, 10:14 AM: Keith Olbermann declares a Crusade against Glenn Beck (via Verum Serum).  This is to be an epic war of battle between Olbermann and Beck, yadda yadda.
• Tuesday, September 8th, 8:21 AM: Media Decoder hesitantly points out that media-on-media wars may not be the smartest things in the world; and is treated to a righteous, stylized response from Olbermann himself.
• Tuesday, September 8th, 8:22 AM to 9:46 AM (time indeterminate): Somebody in either MSNBC or GE notices that Olbermann is calling for a Crusade.
• Tuesday, September 8th, 9:47 AM: Olbermann calls off the Crusade (via Newsbusters & Instapundit).

There is, of course, no evidence whatsoever that GE sent Olbermann was off to bed without his binky.  Personally, I’d have enforced a timeout and Olbermann being made to write out ten things that he liked about Glenn Beck, but that’s just because I’m a dad now.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Evidently, the following passage from this story, is supposed to terrify me:

As head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, [Cass] Sunstein, a Harvard Law School professor, would be the arbiter of debates on rules for auto safety, environmental protection, union organizing and dozens of other issues. Some critics question his commitment to imposing tougher standards on companies.

“Progressives have expressed concern because Professor Sunstein’s long track record on regulatory issues is decidedly conservative,” said seven law professors in a Jan. 26 paper published by the Center for Progressive Reform, an Edgewater, Maryland, academic policy research organization.

“We fear that Cass Sunstein’s reliance on cost-benefit analysis will create a regulatory fiefdom in the White House that will deal with needed regulations in very much the same way that the Bush administration did,” Rena Steinzor, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, said in releasing the report.

God forbid that we should be engaged in cost-benefit analysis when examining whether new regulations pass the laugh test. I mean, the world would go to Hell in a handbasket if we suddenly decided to be sober and responsible, wouldn’t it? To be sure, I am not banking on Sunstein emerging as some kind of force for deregulation during the Obama Administration. But do his attackers not understand the absurdity of their attacks and the way those attacks are phrased?