Moyers had delivered a scathing denunciation of Rove, making the Turd Blossom sound just like his nickname.

Karl Rove figured out a long time ago that the way to take an intellectually incurious draft-averse naughty playboy in a flight jacket with chewing tobacco in his back pocket and make him governor of Texas, was to sell him as God's anointed in a state where preachers and televangelists outnumber even oil derricks and jack rabbits. Using church pews as precincts Rove turned religion into a weapon of political combat — a battering-ram, aimed at the devil's minions, especially at gay people. It's so easy, as Karl knew, to scapegoat people you outnumber, and if God is love, as rumor has it, Rove knew that, in politics, you better bet on fear and loathing. Never mind that in stroking the basest bigotry of true believers you coarsen both politics and religion.

Sounds to me like Moyers should get the Nobel Piece (of My Mind) Prize for ripping Rove a new one. And every word of it God's Truth.

At the end of his righteous rant, Moyer says "even as reports were circulating that he himself (Rove) had confessed to friends his own agnosticism" and "you have to wonder how all those folks on the Christian right must feel discovering they were used for partisan reasons by a skeptic, a secular manipulator."

This is what the ombudsman takes issue with. How can Moyer say such a thing? Getler asked. How dare he base such a statement on "reports were circulating?" Harumph!

Moyers responded with a blog entry providing sources.

There were several references to it online as well as in print journalism last week. The San Antonio Express News, which knows Rove well, wrote in an editorial (August 14): "The White House will miss his indubitable political acumen. What other agnostic could have mobilized hundreds of thousands of conservative Christians behind a political banner?" On TheAtlantic.com ("No One Like Karl Rove," August 13) Marc Ambinder wrote: "I could be wrong here, but I distinctly recall conversations with Rove friends who’ve told me that his struggles with faith did not lead him to Jesus Christ. Yet he knew and understood how to interact with (and manipulate, at times) the standard-bearers of the evangelical Right and the Catholic conservative intellectual elite....." James Moore ("The Rove Goes on Forever": http://www.huffingtonpost.com ) wrote that "[Rove] told his friend Bill Israel years ago that he was agnostic and that ‘he wished he could believe, but he cannot.’"

But here is the rich part -- Rove called to complain:

"If someone says he is a believer, why is that not accepted? He (Moyers) has decided he will be the judge and the jury about whether I'm a believer. He attributes this to unknown parties and then defends it in a letter to Chris Wallace, with no personal interface with me at all. How does the San Antonio Express know? They don't. They don't know me well. He (Moyers) then relies on a blogger who says 'I could be wrong here.' Well, he is wrong." Rove calls Moore an "incredible left-wing ideologue." Bill Israel, he says, "was once my teaching assistant. He was no more a close friend of mine than the man in the moon. I attend church in my neighborhood and here in Washington. I was married in church, worship in church, tithe to the church. My faith is my business. This is just beyond the pale."

Beyond the pale? Karl Rove complains about beyond the pale?????

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!

Stop me before I die of laughter!

Gosh, Karl, you wonder why the world doubts that you are a true and faithful follower of the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth? You can ask that with a straight face?

And you wonder how anyone else's religious beliefs can be called into question? Anyone? Like ... oh, say ... Bill and Hillary Clinton perhaps?

The ombudsman then quoted a long string of mostly right-wing emails complaining about Moyers, as if to prove his point. Here's two samples:

I am outraged and disgusted at the recent incoherent ravings of Mr. Moyers on PBS. Obviously, he actively hates the President of the United States and more viciously hates Mr. Rove and I guess anyone else who is not a rabid liberal. ... I happened to have seen Bill Moyers' commentary on Karl Rove. His holier-than-thou posturing and frankly stupid comments on Rove and Bush (and religious Christians in general) cast Moyers as the intellectually inferior of those he desperately attempts to malign. He unwittingly reveals that liberals are not tolerant nor frankly intellectually gifted as advertised.

The ombudsman asked PBS to justify Moyers' piece. The response, essentially, was to tell him to go find something else to whine about:

"As we stated last month in our reply to your (previous) inquiry, 'the title of the series, Bill Moyers Journal, signals to viewers that they can expect to encounter the strongly reasoned viewpoints of Bill Moyers and his guests.' ... Mr. Moyers is not hiding anything from viewers; his show is not a 'nightly news' program where the format standards are more narrowly defined. It is completely appropriate for him to express his informed analysis."

Mr. Getler, after complaining about how he has to spend so much time dealing with Moyer, wrote one of the longer ombudsman pieces you will ever find.

I have a suggestion for him. If the task is that onerous, find another line of work.