Fox News Backtracks From Terrorist Fist Jab Statement

Fox News must be longing for the campaign days of 2004. Swiftboating presidential candidates used to be so easy and fun. Where have the good times gone for the cable mouthpiece of the GOP?

Fox News second-tier anchor E.D. Hill refered to Barack and Michelle Obama's fist pound moment as "a terrorist fist jab." Many people were taken back by Hill's "fair and balanced" reporting. Hill issued a public retraction.

HILL: Want to start the show by clarifying something I said on the show last Friday about an upcoming body language segment. Now, I mentioned various ways the Obamas' fist pump in St. Paul had been characterized in the media. I apologize because unfortunately, some thought I personally had characterized it inappropriately. I regret that. It was not my intention. And I certainly didn't mean to associate the word "terrorist" in any way to Senator Obama and his wife. Now, today, the senator is talking about the economy.

Obama haters desperately want to link the Democratic nominee with terrorism. There was the madrassa nonsense that was debunked by CNN.

But reporting by CNN in Jakarta, Indonesia and Washington, D.C., shows the allegations that Obama attended a madrassa to be false. CNN dispatched Senior International Correspondent John Vause to Jakarta to investigate.

He visited the Basuki school, which Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.

"This is a public school. We don't focus on religion," Hardi Priyono, deputy headmaster of the Basuki school, told Vause. "In our daily lives, we try to respect religion, but we don't give preferential treatment."

Vause reported he saw boys and girls dressed in neat school uniforms playing outside the school, while teachers were dressed in Western-style clothes.

"I came here to Barack Obama's elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa ... like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Vause said on the "Situation Room" Monday. "I've been to those madrassas in Pakistan ... this school is nothing like that."

The bogus madrassa story was spread by the Hillary Clinton campaign. Hillary supporters were caught falsely accusing Obama of being a Muslim. If Fox News is backtracking then this attack is losing steam. Fox News and conservatives are going to have to stick to usual talking points like tax and spend liberal. Which won't pack much of a punch. Republicans have spent and run up a record deficit.