Via Mediaite, skip to 3:00 for the big smear. So, Mr. Daleiden, when did you stop beating your wife?

Actually, that’s giving CNN too much credit. Asking this guy if he beats his wife would at least be a specific charge. All Daleiden gets here from Alisyn Camerota to support the claim that he and his colleagues at the Center for Medical Progress are “violent extremists” is that they have “ties” to Operation Rescue — or rather one “tie.” The president of OR sits on CMP’s board of directors. How that proves that Daleiden himself or anyone else at CMP has engaged in violence is left unclear; at a minimum, you would think Camerota would at least note, as Mediaite did, that “Operation Rescue” in its current incarnation is actually a splinter group of the original OR and that there’s another, different splinter group that’s more commonly associated with radicalism. Even if CMP had condoned violence in the past, how would that discredit any of the sting videos they’ve released? If the Black Panthers recorded police brutality with hidden cameras, would the cops’ behavior be excused because of the Panthers’ radicalism? If you’re going to try to discredit an outfit on camera, at least do your homework and make the accusation aggressively, not casually float the idea of violence in a classic “critics say” vehicle designed to make an otherwise spurious charge fit to be aired.

On the upside, at least CNN’s publicizing the videos … even as they’re working hard to provide cover for Planned Parenthood.