Mr. Jones And Me

Chalk one up for the Wingers, Obama's "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones has resigned his post after it was discovered Jones signed a 9/11 truther web petition in 2004.

Jones, who denied agreeing with the petition and issued an apology last week, said he was a victim of health-care reform opponents.

"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me," Jones said in the statement. "They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide."

"But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future," Jones said.

The Jones controversy centers on a 2004 petition he signed on a Web site that said: "A call for immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11 attacks to occur."

An administration source told CNN that Jones did not carefully review the language on the petition.

The truth is Van Jones didn't go down because of health care reform, but because the activist group he founded, Color of Change, went after Glenn Beck's advertisers on FOX News. It didn't matter that Jones left the group two years ago. The Wingers set out to destroy him, found their avenue of attack, and got their pound of flesh.

The bad guys won here, certainly. You go after the hate merchants like Glenn Beck or El Rushbo, you'd better bring an ironclad defense and your top game, otherwise you end up like Van Jones. That's how the game is played. They're not above destroying a man's career or life over something like an advertising boycott, especially if the person is related to the Obama administration.

As you can imagine, the usual suspects are crowing over their victory. With Jones folding within a couple of weeks, Dave Weigel goes over the next group of heads that the Wingers are looking to collect:

As he makes a real impact in pushing conservative fringe attacks on Obama administration officials into the mainstream, Glenn Beck’s Twitter feed has become a must-read. In a message from last night, Beck told his followers to “FIND EVERYTHING YOU CAN ON CASS SUNSTEIN, MARK LLOYD AND CAROL BROWNER.” They are, respectively, the nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer of the FCC, and the Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change. Browner was also administrator of the EPA for all eight years of Bill Clinton’s presidency.

Beck’s ostensible purpose here is to expose the “czars” who’ve been appointed by the president. Sunstein stands out like a sore thumb, as he’s been tied up by holds and filibusters for months, and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) only filed for cloture on his nomination at the start of August.

While Sunstein definitely will be attacked, my money's on the next target being Mark Lloyd, as he's the guy that represents the most paranoid threat that the Wingers have: that Obama is going to shut down right wing talk radio.

You smell that? It's 1994 and the chum's in the water. The sharks are circling. The Obama Derangement level just kicked up a notch.

[UPDATE 11:25 AM] As Digby sums up:

Wow. "Extremist views and coarse rhetoric" have no place in the public debate? Some people don't seem to have gotten the memo.

I certainly hope this makes it quite clear that consistency is not something Obama should count upon from his enemies. Indeed, I fully expect that the next time the Republicans take office they will launch several investigations of the previous Democratic administration (assuming they haven't already taken over congress, in which case they will begin while he's still in office.) They do not observe the self-imposed rules the Democrats put upon themselves. That should be obvious by now.

As for Jones, he says he signed that Truther petition without really reading it and thought he was signing something that merely requested further investigation. Who cares? We have people in the congress right now who assert that the president is an illegal alien and that the Democrats are going to euthanize old people. it's hard for me to give a damn about some stupid petition from a few years ago.

Doesn't matter. Attack Democrats for doing what you have done yourselves. The Republican attack plan hasn't changed since Newt Gingrich.