Last night on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Newsweek’s Howard Fineman not only unfairly characterized the Texas redistricting that Tom DeLay engineered, he didn’t even seem to know the facts surrounding DeLay’s re-election challenge:

FINEMAN: Let’s assume he does win the primary, and I think he probably will. Then he’s going to have a pretty tough House race in the fall against a guy that, you know, he didn’t beat overwhelmingly last time around, in a district that’s changed, because DeLay, in his hubris, perhaps, when they were redrawing the district lines in Texas a couple of years ago, said, Eh, take some Republican voters away from me. Let’s spread them out in other districts. I can win this no matter what. Well, I think now he probably wishes he’d drawn the lines a little differently for his own district.

When Fineman said, “he’s going to have a pretty tough House race in the fall against a guy that, you know, he didn’t beat overwhelmingly last time around,” he was referring to Nick Lampson, the Democrat who is challenging DeLay in the general election. The only problem with Fineman’s analysis is that Nick Lampson did not run against Tom DeLay in 2004. DeLay’s challenger in that election was Democrat Richard Morrison, whom he defeated 55%-41%.

Second, Fineman said that DeLay would be seeking re-election “in a district that’s changed” since “last time around.” Wrong again. Those changes had already gone into effect “last time around,” which is why DeLay only won 55 percent of the vote. Fineman seems to think DeLay is going to have a tougher time this year. Please. The man drew his own district, making sure to include enough solid Republicans to get re-elected. His toughest challenge was this primary, and he passed with over 60 percent of the vote.

Ian Schwartz at Expose the Left has the video. Also, don’t miss Ian’s thorough debunking of the latest report from Media Matters, which purports to prove that MSNBC’s Hardball is a conservative-leaning show. How, you ask? By counting left-leaning guests like Dana Milbank and Fineman himself as “neutral.” Nice try.