Consider this a sequel to their now infamous clip featuring the crazy white guy with a gun at the Obama town hall who, um, wasn’t white. Here too viewers are missing a key fact: Just what did the petition say that Jones signed? Shuster, very curiously, doesn’t seem to know, even though (a) he’s moderating a segment about it on a national news channel and (b) you can find it online with 30 seconds of Googling. Quote:

An alliance of 100 prominent Americans and 40 family members of those killed on 9/11 today announced the release of the 911 Truth Statement, a call for immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur. The Statement supports an August 31st Zogby poll that found nearly 50% of New Yorkers believe the government had foreknowledge and “consciously failed to act,” with 66% wanting a new 9/11 investigation.

This wasn’t an accusation that Bush didn’t take the intelligence warnings about an AQ plot involving planes seriously enough. Very specifically, it claimed that he knew and let it happen. Shuster admits during the clip that Jones should have been canned if he supported the latter theory — while leaving it perfectly ambiguous for the audience whether he did or not. Good work.

Oh, weighing in on the liberal side here: Jane Hamsher, who seems to find perfect moral equivalence between Birthers and people who whitewash terrorism by accusing the U.S. government, in all seriousness, of conspiring to commit mass murder of its own citizens. If you missed Tom Maguire’s post about her yesterday, read it now. Her defense of Jones, as Maguire memorably phrases it, really does amount to arguing that VJ’s no crazier than the rest of the left. Which, in her defense, may have the virtue of being true.