Scott Wong, at PhxBeat, explains that the black guy with the gun outside the Obama Health Care Town Hall meeting in Phoenix was just affirming his Second Amendment rights.

Neatly dressed in a white shirt, black tie and gray slacks, the man, who only gave his first name as Chris, also had a pistol holstered at his side as he engaged in heated debates with those rallying in support of Obama’s heath-care reform plan.

A Phoenix police spokesman said plainclothes detectives were monitoring about a dozen protesters carrying guns, though no one broke any laws or was arrested.

Arizona is an “open-carry” state, which means anyone legally allowed to have a firearm can carry it in public as long as it’s visible. A permit is required if the weapon is carried concealed.

“Because I can do it,” Chris said when asked why he brought guns to the rally at 3rd and Washington streets. “In Arizona, I still have some freedoms left.”

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Newsbusters Kyle Drennen caught MSNBC red-handed engaged in some racially-charged and highly misleading reporting.

On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer fretted over health care reform protesters legally carrying guns: “A man at a pro-health care reform rally…wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip….there are questions about whether this has racial overtones….white people showing up with guns.” Brewer failed to mention the man she described was black.

Following Brewer’s report, which occurred on the Morning Meeting program, host Dylan Ratigan and MSNBC pop culture analyst Toure discussed the supposed racism involved in the protests. Toure argued: “...there is tremendous anger in this country about government, the way government seems to be taking over the country, anger about a black person being president….we see these hate groups rising up and this is definitely part of that.” Ratigan agreed: “...then they get the variable of a black president on top of all these other things and that’s the move – the cherry on top, if you will, to the accumulated frustration for folks.”

Not only did Brewer, Ratigan, and Toure fail to point out the fact that the gun-toting protester that sparked the discussion was black, but the video footage shown of that protester was so edited, that it was impossible to see that he was black.

1:34 video

Newt Gingrich reduces Ron Allen to helpless silence.

Tuesday evening on the convention floor in St. Paul… MSNBC’s Ron Allen said to the former Speaker, “But to be fair, her resume is not something we’re familiar seeing with presidential candidates.”

This didn’t sit well with Gingrich who strongly replied:

It’s stronger than Barack Obama’s. I don’t know why you guys walk around saying this baloney. She has a stronger resume than Obama. She’s been a real mayor, he hasn’t. She has been a real governor, he hasn’t. She’s been in charge of the Alaskan National Guard, he hasn’t. She was a whistleblower who defeated an incumbent mayor. He has never once shown that kind of courage. She’s a whistleblower who turned in the chairman of her own party and got him fined $12,000. I’ve never seen Obama do one thing like that. She took on the incumbent governor of her own party and beat him, and then she beat a former Democratic governor in the general election. I don’t know of a single thing Obama’s done except talk and write.

Newt then challenged Allen:

I’d like you to tell me one thing Sen. Obama’s done.

With that, Allen retreated, and said:

Thanks very much, Mr. Speaker. I’m going to leave it there. I’m not going to argue the case. Thanks very much.

1:05 video

Even avowedly-liberal Bill Maher found Chris Matthews’ and Keith Olbermann’s commentary on Barack Obama’s acceptance speech unusual.

The coverage after, that I was watching, from MSNBC, I mean these guys were ready to have sex with him.

video

If you believe Larry Sinclair, those guys have got a chance, too.

Keith Olbermann put “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” on his stereo, turned the volume up on high, and proceeded to explain to MSNBC’s viewers that Donald Rumsfeld was being McCarthyite by criticizing defeatism, and that Rumsfeld’s urging courage and endurance made him like Neville Chamberlain, while persons outside government, demanding appeasement, retreat, and surrender in the face of militant Islam were really all courageous Churchills.

Rick Moran already has performed the obligatory task of shredding Olberman’s nonsense in detail.

I will just observe mself that Olberman’s rant was delivered in a tendentious and partisan tone, and included insolent rhetoric, absurd allegations and expressions of wildly subjective opinion utterly and completely incompatible with the role of a supposedly objective commentator.

For example:

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to flu vaccine shortages, to the entire “Fog of Fear” which continues to envelope this nation – he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies, have – inadvertently or intentionally – profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emperor’s New Clothes.

The spectacle of another empty-suit talking head climbing atop his electronic soapbox, and striking heroic poses, while insulting a variety of individuals in the current administration who left seven figure jobs heading up major business organizations to work in government as “profiting and benefiting, both personally and politically” from a syntactically confused melange of leftwing paranoid fantasies was particularly contemptible.