The Drudge Report was beaming out the news to computer stations nationwide: Hollywood's Democrats were meeting in Beverly Hills on Dec. 2 for what was dubbed a "Hate Bush" event, aimed to "prevent the advancement of the current extremist right-wing agenda."

The Drudge item sparked a small media boomlet about the Hollywood left, including a spot on CNN's "Crossfire," where I sat across from Paul Begala as he tried to claim, "This has right-wingers in a tizzy. They seem to believe that only tobacco, chemical and oil lobbyists ought to be politically active."

Begala's outburst was just plain silly, and no surprise there. The inference was that somehow the Republican right is attempting to stifle Hollywood's freedom of speech. I endeavored to explain to my liberal host that far from being in a tizzy, Republicans supporting the president's re-election should be positively giddy about the political activism materializing in Tinseltown. It may ensure a Bush victory next year.

It is the reasonable -- i.e., serious -- liberal who should be in a tizzy. The radical left -- no, let's be clear, the nutty left -- is taking over their movement.

Let's recall a few ridiculous snippets of the Hollywood left's geopolitical genius:

1. In an HBO interview with Bob Costas, filmmaker Michael Moore insisted that Osama bin Laden is currently being hidden by the U.S. government: "He's back living with his sponsors (in Saudi Arabia) ... I think our government knows where he is, and I don't think we're going to be capturing him or killing him anytime soon."

2. In an MSNBC interview before the war, actress Janeane Garofalo was asked who was more of a threat to world peace, President Bush or Saddam Hussein. She found no moral difference between them: "They are both very threatening to world peace, and to deny that is to be incredibly naive." In August, as she guest-hosted on CNN, filling in for Begala (and how appropriate was that!), she asserted that "Team Bush is more radically corrupt than Richard Nixon ever tried to be ... It is, in fact, a conspiracy of the 43rd Reich."

3. In the current issue of Entertainment Weekly, actor Sean Penn suggests Britney Spears should reconsider her words of support for President Bush, since the war was waged only for "3,000 white elderly males!" (Which ones? Who knows? Who cares?)

Not since the 1992 campaign has Hollywood been so eager to enter the political arena. The difference between then and now is that in '92, Hollywood's liberals were comprehensible; the crowd grabbing the headlines today astounds in its ignorance. Continued...