Using insightful analytical phrases like "bunch of BS" and "that kind of crap," Sarah Palin made her debut on Fox News as a commentator last night! Sorry to say: missed it. But Bill O'Reilly, on whose show Palin appeared, said later the whole thing was really "no different from interviewing Chuck Schumer." Hmm.

On the home front, D.C. has been picked as a possible host city for soccer's World Cup in 2018 or 2022. (That sounds exciting, if you care about soccer, but so have Baltimore and Philadelphia and Boston and Los Angeles and Seattle and 12 other cities. Even Tampa Bay.)

A D.C. Council committee has voted to run the city-funded Circulator bus across one river—the Potomac—but not another—the Anacostia. At-large Councilmember Kwame Brown says he'll fight the fight to get a new route that runs down Pennsylvania Avenue SE to Southern Avenue SE. In a news release, he explained he could not "in good conscious" vote to extend the bus into Virginia while D.C. residents are still waiting.

Metro is holding its third and final day of a "right-of-way" safety workshop today. “Last year we had two employees die as a result of accidents on the tracks and last month we had a train miss a safety inspector because the train operator violated safety procedures,” says Michael Taborn, Metro’s acting chief safety officer. “It is imperative that we strengthen our safety procedures for the thousands of Metro employees who have access to our tracks. Their lives are on the line each and every day.” Is three days enough?

Amen to this sentiment in today's Washington Post: "Let's stop praising Mark McGwire to the skies for finally revealing the world's worst-kept secret—that he used steroids during his storied major league career." No Hall for you!

The Pew Research Center released some interesting survey results yesterday showing that African-Americans are upbeat about African-American progress. Thirty-nine percent of blacks say the "situation of black people in this country" is better than it was five years earlier—compared to 20 percent who said the same in 2007. Fifty-four percent of blacks also said that Barack Obama's election has improved race relations (note: among whites, about a third thought his election had improved race relations, while 45 percent said it has made no difference).

I wonder: What would the survey have shown in the District?

Jackson was featured in a five-minute segment midway through the O'Reilly Factor, as proof, according to host Bill O'Reilly, of "the staggering hypocrisy of the left and media that enables the far left to do these things."

Some backstory: On June 5, Lou Chibbaro Jr. reported in the Washington Blade that Jackson had only recently registered to vote in the District and that he listed his residence as a one-bedroom apartment in the Whitman, a Mount Vernon Square condo building. That, of course, is germane because he is (a) a proponent of a referendum on a District law and (b) required to be a registered District voter to do so. Earlier this week, Chibbaro added to his report, reporting that virtually no one at the condo building had seen Jackson and that Jackson is maintaining his residences in Maryland.

On Wednesday, at a hearing before the Board of Elections and Ethics, Jackson took time to decry the disclosures, calling them a threat to him and his family and an attempt to intimidate him and other same-sex marriage opponents.

On O'Reilly, he continued his protestations.

"Well, Bill," he started, "they hacked into my records, found out when I registered to vote in the District of Columbia. They printed in two newspapers my home address and the addresses of houses I own in the Maryland region, outside D.C. And there have been e-mails that have gone forth saying they want to destroy my church. Kind of amazing, isn't it?"

"It isn't," O'Reilly replied. "I'm not amazed by it." He then brought up his own recent troubles, where he's come under fire for his years of vitriol toward Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller, leading some to suggest culpability in his brutal murder. Hypocrisy, he said: "You don't hear a word about people like you, and they're printing your name in the paper!"

Jackson continued: "You know, Bill, people are looking for privacy, and they say their rights need to be protected. And on the other side, unlike the civil rights movement...[which] operated with a Christian spirit, this minority is going to rise up and impose their will on the majority. And they don't care that I've got young adult daughters and a wife. They don't care what happens to my family. They just want it their way, and they'll intimidate you or me into submission if they can."

"How are you handling all this, as a man of God?" O'Reilly asked. "Are you forgiving them? Are you angry with them?"

Replied Jackson: "Well, I am praying for them and forgiving them. Bill, this is very much a spiritual battle in my view, and I look at Martin Luther King Jr. as the ultimate model in terms of his public resistance to oppression, and I think that this is going to deepen our faith roots if you will. But very sincerely, I cannot answer back, obviously, with the same kind craziness that they're operating with. But I'm glad that you've had me on tonight so that we can expose the fact that folks are saying one thing then doing something totally hypocritical on the other side."

Cue Bill O'Reilly, tough guy: "I know you can't do anything, but I can. And if anybody bothers you or your family, and if you believe that anybody's putting you in danger or doing anything against you church, I want you to call me immediately. And we will deal with those people, because we are going to defend people like you."

Then O'Reilly gave Jackson "the last word": "Thing that I'm so concerned about is that this kind of thing has a chilling effect on people standing up for their rights. Once people see what's happened to me, they say, 'Shoot, I'm not going to get involved. I'm not going to say my piece.'"

"That's why they do it to me! That's why they do it to you!" O'Reilly interjected. "And it's not the American way. It's un-American."

LL will make but one comment. OK, two. (1) You're fitting your wife and young adult daughters in a one-bedroom condo? (2) Obtaining the address and date of registration for a District voter by no means requires any "hacking." Any person is free to visit the offices of the Board of Elections and Ethics (441 4th St. NW, 2nd floor, south wing), walk into the waiting area, log in to a public computer terminal, and look up that information for any voter in town. In fact, call 202-727-2525, ask real nice, and they might even look it up for you. And land records? Those are public, too.

Open government: Very, very American.

Last Thursday, Barack Obama appeared for the first time on Bill O'Reilly's "The O'Reilly Factor." The Fox program uses a nice bit of that Rotational-Movement-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named to package the interview:

"'Factor' Exclusive," reads the online teaser. "Obama in No Spin Zone for first time." The video splash also identifies the spot as a "Factor Exclusive."

Wouldn't it have been embarrassing if some other news outlet totally scooped the Factor, scoring the first Obama interview with the Factor before the Factor?

Fact: Based on a number of factors, the O'Reilly Factor is still the best O'Reilly Factor of all the O'Reilly Factors.

The O'Bama interview will continue on tonight, tomorrow, and Wednesday. If I'm lucky, O'Reilly will repeat my new favorite line, which I intend to shamelessly appropriate as my own: "I'm asking this as an American as well as a journalist."