March 12, 2013 02:22 PM UTC

O'Reilly Backpedals on Ferrandino Smears, Weakly and Too Late

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• by: Colorado Pols

Video of the O'Reilly Factor courtesy Media Matters:

Yesterday, FOX News' Bill O'Reilly responded to a blistering opinion piece in the Denver Post this weekend, where editorial page editor Curtis Hubbard responds to recent segments from O'Reilly about Colorado House Speaker Mark Ferrandino regarding civil unions and the death of a GOP bill insituting lengthy minimum sentences for first-time child sex offenders. Hubbard says that "O'Reilly's fear-mongering should offend all Coloradans. He was saying 'gay,' but what he wanted his listeners to hear was 'pervert-pedophile.'"

O'Reilly is hurt by this accusation, folks. Hurt.

O'REILLY: We described the speaker as "openly gay" because Americans don't know who he is and that description is used in almost every article ever written about him. And the reason we brought up civil unions is because Ferrandino objected to that vote being sabotaged by Republicans a few years ago, then he turned around and used the same technique to table Jessica's Law.

As we've recounted in this space, O'Reilly said much more than that. In these segments attacking Colorado House Speaker Mark Ferrandino, O'Reilly's obvious implication was that Ferrandino had sent "Jessica's Law" to its death in the State Affairs "kill committee" as retaliation for Republicans killing the civil unions bill in State Affairs during last year's special session of the legislature. As everyone in Colorado knows, Democrats swept the GOP from power in 2012, which is the only "retaliation" that mattered. What's more, Colorado already has very tough sentencing laws for crimes of this nature, sufficiently that both prosecutors and victims' rights groups opposed the bill.

Perhaps the worst was O'Reilly's interview with GOP state Rep. Libby Szabo, where Szabo flat-out claimed to O'Reilly that Ferrandino was "obviously protecting somebody" with the killing of "Jessica's Law." Between that statement and everything O'Reilly said about Ferrandino's sexual preference and motives, it's unmistakable what impression he wanted his millions of conservative viewers to have.

O'Reilly should just own up to these allegations. Whatever he says now, he left no ambiguity about them.