Chris Hayes Equates Gingrich Worker Committing Voter Fraud With 70 ACORN Convictions For It

Not just fuzzy math, shabby too.

Chris Hayes, guest hosting on "The Rachel Maddow Show" Thursday, opened a segment with the words, "From the Department of Shameless Schadenfraude." Department of Feeble Attempts at Moral Equivalence would be more accurate. (video after page break)

The ever-perky Hayes, MSNBC's answer to Katie Couric, lip-smacked his way through a description of Newt Gingrich condemning the now-deservedly defunct ACORN in a September 2009 op-ed.

In the op-ed, titled "The real ACORN scandal: Its enablers," Gingrich wrote, as quoted by Hayes --

... this is not ACORN's first documented violation of the law. ACORN has a long history of engaging in voter fraud. Seventy ACORN staffers in 12 states have been convicted of voter registration fraud by adding such notables as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to the voter rolls.

... ACORN is in fact the political dirty tricks muscle of liberal Democrats. ...

Republicans should propose and Democrats should support a thorough, independent investigation of ACORN'S octopuslike structure, including all of its associations with organized labor and its sources of federal funding.

To which Hayes added, "Because obviously any politician who funnels money to an enterprise that commits voter fraud needs to be scrutinized. Heck, penalized. So, hmm, interesting. I wonder what Gingrich of 2009 would say about this admission by Gingrich of 2011," Hayes asked, followed by a clip of Gingrich interviewed a day earlier --

Oh, it was just a mistake. We hired somebody who turned in false signatures. I mean, we turned in 11,100, we needed 10,000, but 1,500 were turned in by one guy who frankly committed fraud.

Gingrich was referring to his failure to qualify for the Virginia primary ballot, which he blamed on a paid signature collector turning in 1,500 fake signatures. "So, when it's ACORN," Hayes responded, "call in the federal government to investigate the political dirty tricks muscle of liberal Democrats. When it's Newt's own campaign (Gingrich's remarks heard again), oh, is that all? Well then, never mind."

And if 70 people from the Gingrich campaign end up convicted of voter fraud, by all means, call in the feds. Heck, even a fraction of that might be evidence of a pattern -- unless you're an MSNBC host still smitten with the voter-fraud felons and child-prostitution enablers at ACORN.

Also worth noting from Thursday's Maddow show was a tongue-tied Hayes struggling to describe scientists discovering the cause of the winged frenzy that inspired Hitchcock's "The Birds." In particular, Hayes' imaginative take on the word "foggy" (1:24 in a clip I placed on YouTube) is worth a gander, one of several verbal challenges he encountered.

Hayes was one of four former members of the notorious lefty JournoList to appear on the show that night, along with Ezra Klein, Spencer Ackerman and Dave Weigel. Surprisingly, Ackerman refrained from making baseless accusations of racism against conservatives, nor did he urge that any be shoved through a plate-glass window, if only rhetorically.