Today, Fox News host Megyn Kelly vehemently defended California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman (R), whose housekeeper of nine years, Nicky Diaz Santillan, came out last week claiming that Whitman employed her for nine years and knew she was an undocumented immigrant, but turned a blind eye. Whitman has flatly denied Diaz Santillan’s allegations, saying she stopped employing Nicky Diaz Santillan as soon as she learned of her immigration status shortly before she decided to run for governor in 2009. However, Diaz Santillan’s lawyer produced a 2003 letter addressed to the Whitman family from the Social Security Administration stating Diaz Santillan’s name didn’t match her Social Security number. The letter included a handwritten note from Whitman’s husband, suggesting the family knew of Diaz Santillan’s status.

In her interview Diaz Santillan attorney, Gloria Allard, Kelly insisted that the Whitman family had no legal obligation to do anything upon receiving the letter:

KELLY: There was a red flag raised and they asked Meg Whitman to follow up on it. But Gloria as you know, legally, legally, she had no obligation to follow up on that letter. And if she had questioned her maid, Nicky Diaz, about her legal status after Nicky had provided her with a drivers’ license and a Social Security Number and asserted under the penalty of perjury that she was in this country legally, Meg Whitman could’ve been subject to a discrimination violation.

ALLARD: Well I totally disagree with you –

KELLY: No, that is a fact! That is a factual statement of the law.

Watch it:

However, the website of Kelly’s employer provides a different interpretation of the law. According to an article posted on the Fox News website in 2007 entitled “What to Do If You Get a No-Match Letter From Social Security Administration” an employer must follow “reasonable steps” outlined by the Department of Homeland Security upon receiving what is commonly referred to as a “no-match letter.” Those steps do include verifying the employee’s documents and asking the employee to resolve the situation. But, according to Fox News, “The bottom line is that the discrepancy will only be considered resolved when and if the information sync with the records of SSA or DHS.” “Discrepancies are to be resolved within 90 days of receiving a no-match letter,” instruct Fox News. “If they are not, the employer can take action to terminate the employee; or ‘face the risk that DHS may find that the employer had constructive knowledge that the employee was an unauthorized alien and therefore, by continuing to employ the alien,’ be found in violation of the law.”

It’s true that by firing Diaz Santillan, Whitman and her husband could’ve opened themselves up to a potential discrimination lawsuit. However, nowhere on the Fox News website is this warning issued. Instead, Fox News coverage of no-match letters usually is reported from an angle that simply presumes that employers will fire employees who can not clarify their immigration status after receiving a no-match letter attached to their name.

Chances are if the tables were reversed and Whitman’s opponent, Jerry Brown (D-CA), was being accused of receiving a no-match letter concerning one of his employees, Kelly would not be so understanding of the legal quandary that no-match letters present to employers.

Finally, Kelly overlooks the irony of the situation. Whether or not Whitman knew Diaz Santillan is undocumented in 2003 or in 2009, and whether or not the Whitman family did the “right” thing concerning the no-match letter, her immigration platform doesn’t line up with her own experiences with the immigration system. Whitman rejects comprehensive immigration reform and a path to legalization in favor of a militarized border and a harsh crackdown on immigrants and those who employ them. “If we don’t hold employers accountable, we will never get our arms around this [illegal immigration] problem,” said Whitman. However, if Whitman can’t even hold herself accountable for hiring an undocumented worker how can she hold others accountable?

A new 60 minutes/Vanity Fair poll raises an important point about the prospect of an escalating military conflict between the U.S. and Iran. Respondents were asked “Which one of the following would be most likely to cause you to support a U.S. war with Iran?”

It’s an oddly phrased question, but one which nevertheless indicates pretty strongly that Americans are not in favor of a U.S. war with Iran. I suspect that those who are in favor of a war with Iran understand this, which is why they like to talk exclusively about “air strikes,” “military strikes,” or my favorite, “surgical strikes.”

Last month’s Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll showed that Americans “were about evenly divided” on the question of whether the U.S. should undertake “military strikes” on Iran as a last resort, after diplomatic and sanctions efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program had been exhausted. It would be interesting to see how those numbers change if “military strikes” was changed to “war.”

Because war is what it would be. The idea that the U.S. or Israel will deal with the problem through a few days or weeks of air strikes should be put to rest. Given the suspected extent of Iran’s secret nuclear program, and how they are believed to be dispersed around the country and buried in hardened facilities, it will be very difficult to ascertain at what point the program has been sufficiently degraded.

The negative consequences of strikes on Iran, on the other hand, will probably become pretty clear very quickly, as virtually every study conducted on the scenario has indicated. Among those likely consequences is an Iranian regime even more committed to obtaining a nuclear weapon, and an Iranian public even more supportive of it.

As Ali Gharib astutely observed the other day, talk of “air strikes” are for Iran what “cakewalk” was for Iraq — the false idea that, through large-scale preventive military action, the U.S. can accomplish its goals with a minimum of fuss. It was a fantasy then, and it’s a fantasy now.

The truth is there’s only one way that the issue of Iran’s nuclear program will be dealt with to the international community’s satisfaction: Inspections. The question is whether those inspections will be carried out by UN inspectors under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or by U.S. troops under the auspices of an American military occupation of Iran. And those who are now pushing the U.S. toward another disastrous military intervention in the Middle East shouldn’t be allowed to pretend otherwise.

As ThinkProgress has previously noted, conservatives have for months led a hateful campaign against the expansion of a local Islamic center and mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. This campaign has been endorsed by high-ranking Republicans such as the state’s Lt. Governor, Ron Ramsey, who last month, wondered aloud whether Islam was a religion or a “cult.” The center was even the target of an arson attack in August.

Mosque opponents have turned to the legal system to bring a lawsuit against its founders, seeking an injuction to stop the construction. Now, Joe Brandon Jr., the lawyer for the opponents, argued in court during a recent appearance that stopping the expansion of the mosque would not violate of the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion because Islam isn’t a religious faith but rather a seditious movement seeking to impose “Sharia law” on the United States:

Mosque opponents say that Islam is not a real religion. They argued in a Rutherford County courthouse last week that the world’s second-largest faith, with its 1.6 billion followers, is actually a political movement.

Opponents say local Muslims want to replace the Constitution with an Islamic legal code called Shariah law. Joe Brandon Jr., a Smyrna,, Tenn., lawyer representing a group of mosque opponents, argued that the proposed mosque is not a house of worship. He said the Rutherford County Planning Commission erred when it approved the mosque. Brandon wants an injunction stopping the mosque. “Shariah law is pure sedition,” said Brandon in his opening statement Monday.

In stoking fears of “Sharia law,” Brandon Jr. is taking his lead from former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who just last month called for a federal ban on the non-existent threat of Sharia being imposed on the United States.

Yet the lawyer’s attempt to de-legimitize the Islamic faith and portray it as a totalitarian ideology seeking to take over the country is failing to win over even fellow conservatives. John Whitehead, “president of the Rutherford Institute, a conservative religious liberty group,” told The Tennessean that Islam meets the dozen criteria that the IRS sets out for what defines religious status for an organization. “I can guarantee you if they go to people who are Muslim, their beliefs will be very sincere,” Whitehead said. Mat Staver, “chairman of the First Amendment advocacy group Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law,” warned that if the mosque’s opponents succeed in getting the expansion stopped by deligimitizing Islam as a religion, churches could be the next target of legal action. “”There will be losers in this, and one of them could be you,” he said, referencing Christians opposed to the mosque.

It should be noted that even if the patrons of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro weren’t worshippers of a faith but rather political activists — and it goes without saying that they are not — they would still have the constitutional right to do that. The first amendment prevents the government from passing any law “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Thanks to those rights, all manner of odious speech is constitutionally protected, just like the offensive language being used by the mosque’s opponents.