"Just One More Thing, Sir," as Columbo pulled from his trench coat a copy of the Roberts Rules of Order

Some further notes on Rep. Joe Wilson:

• Far be it to defer to Daily Kos diarists writing that we should focus more on the fact that Rep. Wilson lied. Oh, c'mon, guys, this is pure schadenfreude over here. Let's just enjoy the moment for what it is: watching a political douche blowhard twist slowly in the wind...
• Speaking of Joe Wilson being the liar, he gets nailed for it by my favorite political critique source Politifact.com. Wilson is insisting that Obama and the Democrats are pushing to provide health care to illegal immigrants: is still now insisting it, when he 'apologized' in the media for his outburst he still claimed the health care bills were providing coverage for illegals. But read that Politifact link: that 'coverage' is not found on the pages the chain emails and astroturf talking points claim it's on. Politifact can't find anything supporting the claim illegals will get anything from the health care bills at all.
  Here's the deal on Politifact: it's managed by the St. Pete Times, a respectable paper that wins it's fair share of Pulitzers (one for Politifact!) for investigative reportings. I grew up in the Tampa Bay area and I've read the Times. I trust this publication more than any other media source (plus, any media corporation that p-sses of Bill O'Reilly has to be doing something right).
• And an interesting side note: Politifact's research has 11.9 million illegals living in the U.S. at the moment and 6.8 million are uninsured. Wait: there's 5.1 million illegals who ARE insured??? How the hell did THAT happen?
• There's been some blogger discussion about how the British Parliament - the closest democratic institution to our own - has a solid history and even a tradition of back-bench heckling, and that if the Brits can heckle, why not the U.S.?
  Andrew Sullivan discusses this, and almost immediately points out that even with the heckling there's one unbreakable rule: You can't call someone a liar: "...Once the opposition starts yelling "You lie!" they have essentially abandoned the deliberative process, by questioning the good faith of a speaker. Without an assumption of good faith or a factual rebuttal, just calling someone a liar abolishes the integrity of the debating process..." So Rep. Wilson wouldn't even get away with it in Parliament.
• As for Wilson's Democratic opponent Miller getting truckloads of campaign funds from just five seconds of Wilson's faux pas? According to the Kos people who track this stuff: Miller has raised $170,000 within the last 24 hours just on the ActBlue fundraiser itself. Political observer Charlie Cook now considers this a race: while he considers it unlikely Wilson will pay at the polls another year away from this, Miller now has the funds to make this a decent fight.

Edit: Oh, yeah, one more thing:

• If that little amendment idea about lies not being protected speech I've been pushing the past few years had made it into law, Wilson would be toast by now...