You can call Chris Matthews anything you want — “dimwitted political hack” would be entirely appropriate — but please don’t insult an entire profession by calling Chris Matthews a “journalist.”

On March 30, Kaufman County, Texas, district attorney Mike McLelland and his wife were shot to death at their home. Five days later, Chris Matthews invited Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center onto MSNBC to promote speculation that McLelland’s murder was committed by the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang.

In other words, the important thing about this crime — the thing that made it worth eight minutes of national network air time — was that it gave Chris Matthews a chance to stoke the paranoia of MSNBC viewers with the bogeyman specter of dangerously violent racists who (as all MSNBC viewers know) are the core constituency of the Republican Party.

Fast-forward 11 days, and Chris Matthews is completely discredited by the latest headlines:

What? It wasn’t scary white supremacists highlighted in an eight-minute MSNBC segment? Nobody that Mark Potok warned us about? Not even a Tea Party member? No, a disgraced lawyer with a personal grudge:

A former justice of the peace who had been prosecuted for stealing computers was arrested Saturday on charges of sending threatening e-mails to officials in Kaufman County, Texas. Authorities are reportedly prepared to charge disgraced lawyer Eric Lyle Williams, 46, with three murders that had inflamed fears that members of a white supremacist prison gang were targeting law enforcement officials.

Kaufman County District Attorney Mike McLelland, 63, and his wife, Cynthia McLelland, 65, were shot to death two weeks ago at their home, two months after Assistant District Attorney Mark E. Hasse, 57, was shot to death in a parking lot near the county courthouse. Haase had prosecuted Williams last year, and McLelland had told investigators that they should focus on Williams as a suspect in Haase’s murder.

Williams’s law license was suspended after he was convicted of the theft charges. He was arrested early Saturday and is being held in the Kaufman County jail on $3 million bond. Williams will be charged with three counts of capital murder, Dallas CBS affiliate KTVT reported, citing unnamed sources. . . .

Read the whole thing at Viral Read, and don’t ever try to tell me that Chris Matthews is a “journalist.” That’s an insult.

UPDATE: KFAA-TV in Houston reports the latest news that MSNBC and Chris Matthews will ignore:

News 8 has learned that 20 weapons were recovered from a unit at a Seagoville self-storage locker in connection with the unsolved Kaufman County murders.

Sources said the locker had been rented on behalf of former Kaufman County Justice of the Peace Eric Williams, who is curently jailed on unrelated charges.

A source tells News 8 federal investigators are conducting ballistics tests on the weapons, which are similar to those used to kill Kaufman County prosecutor Mark Hasse on January 31 and District Attorney Mike McClelland and his wife Cynthia, who were found dead at their home on March 30.

Sources said investigators also seized a Ford Crown Victoria sedan from the storage facility that was allegedly purchased by Williams back in February under a false name.

Sources said they have surveillance video of that vehicle driving into and out of the McLellands’ neighborhood on the day they were slain.

Remember: Murders are only important to MSNBC when they can be exploited to advance a political agenda.

Chris Matthews won’t say another word about this case — unless it can be proven that Eric Williams is a Republican.

UPDATE II: Ed Driscoll quotes Buffalo Springfield (a rock band from the Sixties, in case you youngsters were wondering) and I believe the word for this is, “Heh”:

UPDATE III: Headline by Doug Hagin at Daley Gator:

MSNBC: When you want your

news completely fabricated

Patterico is on the story, which is now a Memeorandum thread.

UPDATE IV: Linked by Moe Lane — thanks! — and welcome, Instapundit readers!

Meanwhile, I’ve added a new post: How the Left’s Online Meme Machine Helped Create a Murder Myth in Texas





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