Now that former CNN host Lou Dobbs has been freed of his duties with his former network, he has been making the rounds on other networks - Fox News "The O'Reilly Factor," Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" and now with his long-time rival's show CNBC's "The Kudlow Report." 

One of the issues debated among a panel consisting of Dobbs, host Larry Kudlow, former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and CNBC CME Group reporter Rick Santelli on Nov. 19 was the issue of wage stagnation - which Dobbs blamed on outsourcing, immigration policy and technological advancement.

"I believe that the issue of unemployment in this country and job creation fundamentally will have to be taken on as a matter of government policy," Dobbs said. "It will also have to be taken on as a matter of business leadership. As to the idea that wages have been stagnant in this country for 35 year, point of fact, we have to understand what the causes are."

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NBC's Matt Lauer, on Tuesday's Today show, actually asked Lou Dobbs, formerly of CNN, if he and the network parted ways because he was "too conservative" and if CNN was okay with Dobbs' push for immigration reform when he was attacking George W. Bush but wasn't happy when Dobbs started slamming the Obama administration on the issue, as he queried the former CNN host, "You got much less kickback from CNN than when you started to speak out about the policies of Barack Obama. So, was this an issue that CNN wants to appear neutral but maintain a more liberal stance?" [MP3 audio available here]

For his part Dobbs claimed the home of the very liberal Rick Sanchez "made it very clear, they wanted the network to go middle of the road and to be very neutral."

The following is the full transcript of the entire segment as it was aired on the November 17, Today show:

Former CNN host Lou Dobbs stuck to his guns when questions were raised if he was forced out at CNN in an interview with Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly.

However, Dobbs did make one distinction - how his detractors decided to pile on when he was critical of President Barack Obama instead of former President George W. Bush. He elaborated on this on Fox News Channel's Nov. 16 "The O'Reilly Factor."

"I discerned more of a difference between then, which was under the Bush administration, whom I was criticizing and now when it is the Obama administration and an entirely different tone was taken, not so much in the case of CNN management certainly, because there is no - my contract is very explicit. I have absolute editorial control. What I reported is what I chose to report."

Lou Dobbs left CNN after years of tensions between him and the network's brass, who consistently objected to his outspoken, often controversial reports. But the issues that seem to have annoyed CNN execs most were ones on which Dobbs took a conservative stance.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that CNN President Jonathan Klein offered Dobbs an ultimatum a few months ago: "Mr. Dobbs could vent his opinions on radio and anchor an objective newscast on television, or he could leave CNN." Klein reportedly complained about Dobbs's reporting on the Birther movement over the summer, and his outspoken opposition to illegal immigration.

According to the New York Post, one "TV insider" said Dobbs was "polluting the CNN brand" of purported political objectivity. Klein issued a statement saying Dobbs had decided to "carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere."

Newsweek senior editor Jerry Adler on Thursday posted a bizarre poem on the publication’s website, mocking Lou Dobbs for leaving CNN and insinuating that the cable anchor might be crazy: "So wily Lou has picked the locks That kept him in his padded box And tiptoed off, in just his socks." [Punctuation original to the poem.]

Adler, whose poem reads like a cross between Dr. Seuss and Calvin Trillin, also trashed Dobbs and his viewers for opposing illegal immigration: "A network just for frat-boy jocks? Where aliens are put in stocks And viewers pelt them with big rocks Before each half-time show?" [Emphasis added.] He concluded by speculating on Dobbs’ future: "Could it be UPN, or Cox? They’d have to open up Fort Knox We know Lou’s crazy, like a Fox."

In addition to composing poetry, Adler also famously made this pronouncement about the environment on December 31, 1990: "It's a morbid observation, but if everyone on Earth just stopped breathing for an hour, the greenhouse effect would no longer be a problem."

Leave it to that bastion of grace and class that waxes poetically on a nightly basis about the wrongdoings of Republicans or conservatives ad nauseum known as MSNBC host Keith Olbermann to do Lou Dobbs resignation from CNN up just right.

Olbermann on his Nov. 11 "Countdown" broadcast honored Dobbs 30-year CNN career by naming him his "third worst person in the world."

"The bronze to Lou Dobbs, who tonight, as of tonight, has just quit his CNN show," Olbermann said.

Although it isn't quite clear why Olbermann decided to bestow that honor upon Dobbs, if for no other reason than for his decision to resign, Olbermann cherry-picked portions of Dobbs resignation speech from the Nov. 11 broadcast of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" and even ad-libbed in his comments (actual transcript of Dobbs here).

Confirmed: Lou Dobbs announced his resignation from CNN on his Nov. 11 broadcast. Transcription at bottom.

Has Lou Dobbs been forced out at CNN by the left-wing attack machine and other liberal forces? Quite possibly.

According to New York Times reporters Brian Stelter and Bill Carter, CNN's Lou Dobbs will announce his resignation from CNN on his Nov. 11 show.

"Lou Dobbs, the longtime CNN anchor whose anti-immigration views made him a TV lightning rod, plans to announce Wednesday that he is leaving the network, two network employees said," Stelter and Carter wrote. "A CNN executive confirmed that Mr. Dobbs will announce his resignation plans on his 7 p.m. program. His resignation is effective immediately; tonight's program will be his last on CNN. His contract was not set to expire until the end of 2011."

Many industries rely on migrant labor, but that is no excuse for news networks to advocate a path to legalization for illegal aliens, or - worse - to excuse employers who simply look the other way.

Yet, CNN's Jason Carroll did both in a segment for "American Morning" Nov. 5.

"You hear it, not just in the farming industry, but in the restaurant industry as well and so many of these industries - the garment industry - you know, this is what these people are looking for," Carroll said after delivering his pro-immigrant report. "They're looking for immigration reform. They feel like their businesses will go under if someone does not find a way to make some of these people who are here working, who are undocumented, and get them into some sort of legal status."

Carroll had interviewed Rob Valicoff, an apple farmer in Yakima, Wash., who owes thousands in fines because his workers' papers weren't in order. Valicoff said he checks their paperwork, but it's not a "guarantee."

Recently a lot of hubbub had been made about the possibility that the peaceful tea party protests and some conservative voices would stir up emotions that could lead to violence. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was even one of those sounding that alarm.

But what has gone unsaid by those same voices has been the possibility of violence against those who might take a position antithetical to that of the left.

Case in point: CNN's Lou Dobbs. Dobbs, who has been the target of a smear campaign by the left-wing noise machine, told his radio audience on Oct. 26 that his home had been shot at three weeks earlier. (Unabbreviated audio available here)

CNN featured pro-illegal immigration activist Isabel Garcia of Tucson, Arizona on two programs on Wednesday night, and inadvertently caught her giving inconsistent answers regarding a 2008 protest where she participated in the beating and decapitation of a pinata effigy of Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona [audio clips from programs available here].

Correspondent Soledad O’Brien featured Garcia in the first segment of her ‘Latino in America’ miniseries at 9 pm Eastern, where she was labeled as an “unapologetic champion of people many Americans love to hate- illegal immigrants.” After detailing her involvement with a high-profile deportation case, O’Brien stated that Garcia had “nothing to do with creating the pinata and only picked it up to defuse” the anti-Arpaio protest. The CNN correspondent cast a sympathetic light on the activist by noting how she has apparently received death threats for her work.

As Mike Bates documented on Monday night, CNN’s Rick Sanchez likened Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio to the segregationist “Bull” Connor during an interview on Monday’s Newsroom: “Like Bull Connor in 1960s, you’re going to sit there and tell the feds, you don’t care what they say, you’re going to do it your way and you're going to do it when you want to do it?” However, earlier in the segment, Sanchez also hinted that the sheriff was acting like a Nazi in his operations against illegal immigrants: “There are twenty-five years of laws and standards used by police departments where they’re real careful about probable cause, so that we don’t create a Gestapo environment in this country” [audio of both the Gestapo reference and the “Bull Connor” label available here; video at right].

The anchor first accused Arpaio of arresting people at random in his immigration raids: “What about the other people that- who you interfered in their lives simply while you were looking for someone else?” When the sheriff denied that he had, that “the others that were illegal, we put them in jail because they have committed other crimes,” Sanchez made the Nazi reference:

On his segment of today's CNN Newsroom, anchor Rick Sanchez went for the hat trick, likening Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to the infamous Theophilus “Bull” Connor, Birmingham, Alabama’s late segregationist police commissioner who ruthlessly used police attack dogs and fire hoses to thwart 1963 civil rights demonstrators, no fewer than three times.

[SEE also Matt Balan's related post, with video.]

Sanchez prefaced his interview with the Arizona sheriff:

Well, perhaps not since Bull Connor whose aggressive police tactics against blacks in the South sparked civil rights legislation in 1964 has our country seen a showdown like the one going on right now between Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio and Washington, as in the feds.

Is Fox News Channel president Roger Ailes about to score another big name personality for his fledgling off-spin business channel? According to The New York Times television and digital media reporter Brian Stelter, News Corp's (NASDAQ:NWS) Fox Business Network is considering adding CNN "Lou Dobbs Tonight" host Lou Dobbs to its lineup.

"The business channel is also keen on another administration critic, Lou Dobbs, who met for dinner with Mr. Ailes last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting," Stelter wrote in a piece for the Oct. 12 Times about the growing divide between Fox News and the Obama administration. "The shift for Fox News - the favorite network of the Bush administration, now the least favored one of the Obama administration - has financial implications for the News Corporation, especially given the network's status as a growth engine in a perilous time for media companies."

The most biased interviewer that President Obama faced on Sunday was surely Univision's Jorge Ramos, whose advocacy for illegal aliens is flagrant. Objectivity is not in his vocabulary. Neither is "illegal." Jerry Kammer of the Center for Immigration Studies explained:

In his latest, widely-distributed newspaper column, headlined "End of the Honeymoon,'' the influential anchorman finds it "discouraging" that the president is not including illegal immigrants in his health care plans. Referring to Obama's health care speech last week to Congress, he criticizes the president for language he finds offensive.

Writes Ramos: "It surprised me greatly that in his speech, Obama used the words 'illegal immigrants' to refer to the undocumented. That is the language that many enemies of immigrants have previously used. During his presidential campaign Obama took great care to call them 'undocumented,' not 'illegal.'

Much of the reaction in the blogosphere to Andrew Breitbart's column yesterday at the Washington Times has to do with the BigGovernment.com proprietor's promise that "It ain't over yet."

Fair enough. But Breitbart asserted what I believe is a bigger point. It isn't just that the establishment media would have ignored the story if James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles had attempted to put it out there on their own. Breitbart believes that Big Media would have actively worked to bury it and to discredit its authors. There's little doubt that Andrew is absolutely correct.

Here are the passages from his Times column where Breitbart makes this point (bolds are mine):

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) appeared on MSNBC around 3:40 p.m. EDT today to defend Rep. Joe Wilson's (R-S.C.) claim that President Obama was lying about Democratic health care reforms not ensuring "public option" coverage of illegal immigrants. [MP3 audio available here]

King explained at length about Democrats voted down Republican amendments to put in place an enforcement mechanism to check the legal status of public option applicants.

Of course at the end of his interview, Shuster was unmoved, sticking to his guns that Joe Wilson "was lying" and insisting that Republicans were more interested in making political hay out of the illegal immigration question than safeguarding taxpayers from subsidizing illegal immigration:

In a Sunday "uh-oh" review of 2010's electoral landscape as it applies to nationwide congressional races, the Associated Press's Beth Fouhy insulted GOP voters while effectively implying that they are the only ones who oppose ObamaCare, "reckless spending, and high debt."

The foundation of Fouhy's piece is a fear that Democrats may be in peril of losing their House majority in 2010. Funny, when they were in the minority and gaining ground in national sentiment, I recall that the press meme was "Democrats Gaining!" Now that they're in control and faltering, it's "Democrats in Danger of Losing (Somebody Do Something)!" The perspective always seems to be about the rising or falling fortunes of Democrats, which of course serves to validate the contention of those who say that the establishment press is the mouthpiece of the Left and the Democratic Party.

Now let's look at Fouhy's infuriating fulminations (red underline is mine):

Thursday night, the Associated Press reported on the Baltimore ACORN sting carried out by James O'Keefe of Andrew Breitbart's new BigGovernment.com web site. A paragraph near the end of the report is virtually a de facto commercial for the controversial group.

As to the sting itself, in case you missed it -- in two devastating videos originally posted here that you must see, O'Keefe and Hannah Giles posed as a pimp and prostitute who, as summarized in original Fox News coverage, told officials at ACORN's Baltimore office that they "wanted to secure housing where the woman could continue to maintain a prostitution business."

ACORN said Thursday that it has fired the two employees who are seen on tape telling O'Keefe and Giles the following, among a host of sickening howlers:

Noting how the Palmetto State "has a history of rowdy politics" and that Rep. Joe Wilson (R) has made himself  "the latest in a legendary line of South Carolina politicians who appeared to revel in renegade behavior,"  the Washington Post's Philip Rucker and Ann Gerhart turned to South Carolina Democratic operatives Don and Carol Fowler to smear Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) in their September 11 front-pager entitled "The Gentlemen From South Carolina."

Rucker and Gerhart turned to the husband-wife couple -- he was a Clinton era DNC chairman and she is the current South Carolina state Democratic chairwoman -- to practically tag-team in slamming Wilson. Rucker and Gerhart also acknowledged some Palmetto Democrats' brushes with political infamy before cuing up Don Fowler to quip that he thinks "it is something in the water."

Yet nowhere in their story did Rucker and Gerhart note Don Fowler's gaffe from August 2008, when, on a flight from the Democratic Convention, he made an inappropriate joke involving hurricane victims in New Orleans (video embedded above at right):

After plugging his latest column in a September 10 post on the magazine's Swampland blog, Time's Joe Klein (shown in file photo at right) pegged Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) as "vile" before defending taxpayer-funded health care for illegal immigrants:

On this whole question of whether illegal immigrants will be included in  the plan, which caused the vile Congressman from South Carolina to shout "You lie" when the President said they wouldn't be covered. Why shouldn't they be? After all, when an illegal immigrant cuts his hand while chopping cabbage and goes to the emergency room, the rest of us pay for it. Isn't the point to expand the risk pool as much as possible, to lure the insurance companies into concessions and lower prices?

I know it 's not going to happen. Congress will never vote to subsidize the health care of those who arrived here illegally. But, given the fact that we're already subsidizing them through the back door, it does make sense, doesn't it?