Walker said that Gingrich will focus on delivering a strong conservative message that “will be positive.” He also addressed a recent Wall Street Journal piece by Karl Rove that said, as O’Brien summarized it, that the race is now between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, and that keeping his head above water is going to be “impossible for Newt Gingrich” as he focuses on a “Southern strategy.” Walker said Gingrich’s focus is much farther-ranging, and includes efforts in Ohio and California as well as the South.

RELATED: Newt Gingrich Calls For SuperPAC To Correct Errors In Anti-Mitt Romney Bain Film

“Sounds expensive,” said O’Brien.

“It is expensive,” Walker agreed.

“How much money do you have?”

“Well, we’re doing pretty well, money-wise.”

“Like, a number?”

“I don’t follow the numbers day-to-day,” Walker responded. “We/ve been doing very well online, raising money online. Even yesterday, now that the inevitability is broken, the fact is that money is flowing to other candidates. We’re seeing an upswing in our online contributions as well.”

But negative campaigning, he later added, is essentially turning off the base, so don’t expect Gingrich to resort to that again. He issued them before, Walker added, to fight against the negative ads launched against him.

Watch, via CNN:

bob walker!

I don’t support the suspension, but I do see how the tweets could be taken out of context and seemingly support gay bashing. I have disagreed with Martin before, actually a few times. We have grown used to respectfully disagreeing with one another, and that’s something our society could use more of. Let me say this: there is no excuse for advocating violence against anyone, particularly homosexuals, at any time. And it’s not surprising that Martin’s irreverent sense of humor and off-the-cuff style of tweeting could be easily taken out of context. He frequently jokes about violence, but that’s far from advocating it. To wit, Roland’s Cookout Rules, which detail how cookouts are “conducted at his house”: “If your kid gets out of line, check ‘em before I do. My house, my rules. Ass whippings are bountiful if they start disrespecting adults.”

Martin wasn’t advocating violence to gays any more than he was to children. But a cursory look at a random tweet plucked out of a long conversation can easily be misconstrued. And while one may not find him funny (after all, he’s not a professional comedian), that doesn’t mean his brand of comedy is offensive, or, worse, worthy of character assassination. Martin has consistently and fervently spoken out against sexism, racism, homophobia, and trashy reality TV shows that reinforce negative and demeaning stereotypes.

It wasn’t until Martin offered a second (and some say more sincere) apology that GLAAD did what they should have done in the first place: offered to meet with him. Why rely solely on tweets to determine whether a man should lose his job without first hearing him out? There was no reason for that.

GLAAD Doesn’t Practice What it Preaches

Look, I get it. GLAAD is fully focused on helping to rid our society of the type of homophobic, violent, and misogynistic remarks that have contributed to an environment where gay teens are cajoled, bullied, and are “three times more likely to be depressed than their heterosexual counterparts.” We should all commend them for their diligence in such matters. No child should have to live in fear, and no parent should raise a child thinking it’s okay to instill such fear in someone else.

So it’s unfortunate that some of those same violent and misogynistic remarks that GLAAD fights valiantly to scrub from networks big and small are sometimes welcomed by GLAAD — depending on whom the remarks are directed toward and who is saying them.

In April a blog by the name of JoeMyGod won GLAAD Media’s ‘outstanding blog’ award. Run by Joe Jervis, the blog is well-known for comparing conservatives to Nazis and having misogynistic comments littered in its comments with no hint of a moderator. Commenters rarely one-up Jervis himself, the epitome of civility:

“One thing about the kapo bootlickers at GOProud, we alway$ know where their prioritie$ lie,” Jarvis wrote in regard to GOProud’s support of the extension of the Bush tax cuts. The Daily Caller notes that “[d]uring World War II “Kapos” were concentration camp prisoners who worked inside the camps on behalf of the Nazis. Jarvis often tags articles about gay Conservatives with the word ‘kapo’….”

It’s unfortunate but understandable that GLAAD can’t rid these horrible words from our society. But the least they could do is choose to not honor someone who spouts them on a regular basis. That much I think they can accomplish.

H&M Wasn’t Courting Men

Never mind the fact that the David Beckham ad in question wasn’t directed toward men. Dream Hampton, a prolific journalist, noted that 83% of social media mentions regarding the ad were made by women. This wasn’t because men forgot to tweet that night. Research by a British retailer found something not too surprising: men traditionally buy their own underwear from age 19-23, from age 24 to 33 their underwear shopping decreases tremendously, and when they hit age 44 it’s nearly nonexistent. All this to say what an H&M marketing intern could tell you: H&M was going after female shoppers, plain and simple.

GLAAD is a Bully

Even Hollywood, typically very supportive of GLAAD, has begun to tire of their antics.

In October GLAAD began a “call to action” asking its members to petition Universal and director Ron Howard because at one point in the movie The Dilemma, Vince Vaughn’s character calls electric cars “gay.” Howard refused to pull the scene, responding: “I don’t strip my films of everything that I might personally find inappropriate. It is a slight moment in The Dilemma meant to demonstrate an aspect of our lead character’s personality, and we never expected it to represent our intentions or the point of view of the movie or those of us who made it.”

When Bruno, a satirical film about a flamboyant gay journalist, came out GLAAD’s senior director of media programs said, “Sacha Baron Cohen’s well-meaning attempt at satire is problematic in many places and outright offensive in others.” Meanwhile Elton John agreed to sing a part in the movie and Aaron Hicklin, editor of Out, a gay and lesbian lifestyle magazine, said of the film: “[it does] something hugely important, which is showing that people’s attitudes can turn on a dime when they realize you’re gay.”

See, GLAAD’s problem is that they have become a victim of their own success. Instead of focusing on how they can organically change minds and influence our culture to become more accepting of the LGBT community (a very worthy mission), they’re too busy overusing their influence to boycott, censor films, and have folks suspended and fired. What do these suspensions and firings accomplish? Who is benefited by such actions aside from GLAAD being able to claim another head on their Wall of Shame?

Just for the record, GLAAD, this rebuke isn’t based on your views; it’s based on your lack of principles.

RELATED: Donald Trump Blasts Santorum As A Loser: ‘He Wants To Be President? Give Me A Break’

In this installment of the great Trump-O’Donnell feud that seems to have no end in sight, the latter hits all the scheduled stops on the Trump track: that Trump has no money, that his show is a false way to inflate an ego, that he is a laughable excuse for a human being and one day, it will actually hit him. Pointing out Trump’s comments in an interview with CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield in which Trump says that he would like a Cabinet job out of Romney “where I negotiate with some of these countries, because they’re taking our lunch.” He added that he did not want America to “keep losing our jobs to China.”

“The job you want is United States Trade Representative,” O’Donnell helpfully explained to Trump, adding that it was a Cabinet-level position, and that he would have a lot of problems with the confirmation process. “The Chief of Staff of the committee [a job O'Donnell once held] would learn everything there is to know about you… you will be asked in writing about your history of drug use, illegal drug use, and when is the last time you used them.” If that wasn’t enough, “not every little thing in your tax returns becomes public, just the really bad things.” O’Donnell added that he didn’t think that would bother Trump so much since he has a job where “you pretend to fire people who don’t actually work for you,” but that he would have a problem with a ~$200,000 a year salary because “you can’t live on that.”

But that, O’Donnell concluded, was irrelevant, because “Mitt Romney would never pick you to negotiate trade deal with the Chinese,” and that the Romney family wouldn’t hire Trump to “wash their cars.” “Romney knows you’re a buffoon, and unconfirmable joke, America’s biggest loser,” he concluded, before condemning Trump to his perch back on Twitter.

The segment via MSNBC below:

RELATED: Game Changer? Rick Santorum Wins Colorado Caucus

“I have nothing against Rick Santorum, he seems like a nice guy,” Trump told Van Susteren, before noting that Santorum lost by 19 points– “a record in the Senate for the incumbent.” He then went on to compare Santorum to a “student who gets thrown out of high school for bad marks but then wants to go to the Wharton School of Finance,” a school Trump knows quite well. “He ran, he lost by a tremendous amount,” Trump continued, adding that he could see that Pennsylvania voters “obviously weren’t happy.”

Van Susteren tried to play the role of Santorum and respond that “in 2006, the year he was beaten by 19 point by Senator Casey, they lost 23 of 33 seats, but in Pennsylvania, five conservative districts” and the governorship. Trump accepted that that might be, but he did not seem convinced at all that this was a sufficient justification for his lose. “How do you lose like that?” He asked rhetorically, “maybe it’s time to get into a different business, be a lawyer.” His tone on the matter got increasingly aggressive, culminating in him saying “somebody beat him by tremendous numbers and all of the sudden he says he wants to be president? Give me a break!” Trump did conclude on a conciliatory note, however, allowing for the opportunity that “maybe, over the course of time, he would be a great candidate and a great president.”

The segment via Fox News below:

RELATED: Sean Hannity And Ed Schultz Locked In Feud Over Osama bin Laden

“Sean Hannity thinks there are tapes showing President Obama saying that he didn’t want to get the world’s #1 terrorist, Osama bin Laden?” Schultz explained, playing a clip of Hannity on his program arguing that “if he had it his way” the President would have never found bin Laden. He then elaborated on today’s exchanges between himself and Hannity, in which Hannity explained that he believed that without enhanced interrogation techniques, no one would have found bin Laden. “He’s very wrong, and I’ve got the tape to prove it,” Schultz said on his TV show.

He then played a clip of Deputy National Security Advisor John Brennan flatly denying that waterboarding or enhanced interrogation had anything to do with finding bin Laden, as well as a clip of President Obama promising that finding him was his top priority. What’s more, Schultz continued, “Hannity spent eight years propping up a president who admitted he didn’t care about capturing bin Laden,” he said, suggesting exactly the same thing Hannity had about President Obama about President Bush because of comments that President made that he was “not that concerned” about the individual bin Laden (which did not preclude dismantling the organization responsible for 9/11). nd on that now, clearly hoping for a response, Schultz concluded: “your move, Mr. Intellectual Honesty.”

The segment via MSNBC below:

RELATED: Joe Scarborough Slams Birth Control Mandate: The Catholic Church Is Being Attacked By Far Left

O’Reilly began by explaining the situation– the federal government calling for Catholic-run medical institutions to provide birth control, and making a deal with Haffner that, should he be correct about the mandate forcing Catholics to provide birth control, she would have to return to the Factor while, otherwise, he would go to her church and try to convert people. Father Morris agrees to tag along (“great, you just made it worse” O’Reilly jokingly retorted), adding his serious point: that it was “not an issue about contraception, it’s an issue of religious liberty.” O’Reilly agreed, adding that he didn’t understand what the “beef” was with the government– “respect the religious teaching of their system.”

Rev. Haffner responded that the problem was that the government was only compelling the churches to provide insurance so that their employees could buy birth control– not for the church to provide it themselves. Father Morris jumped in to add that the morning after pill would also be included and calling it an “abortive agent,” adding that he could not see the government doing the same with a Muslim hospital should pork meat be found particularly healthy.

As the segment ended, O’Reilly reiterated that the Church “has a right to make its own rules,” to which Rev. Haffner replied in a heated end to the segment that she thought “the Catholic Church has to deal with its own sexuality problem” anyway, to which O’Reilly retorted that the reverend was “way off topic” with the comment, adding a second threat to give her congregation a visit.

The segment via Fox News below:

In his latest video, O’Keefe operatives secretly tape Minnesota election workers explaining how they can register people like “Timothy Tebow” and “Thomas Brady” to vote by mail, without showing any ID, and how easy it is for someone to obtain an absentee ballot under false pretenses. If you can stand the idiotic smugness (heh, heh, Tim Tebow! Thomas Brady!), check it out, and pay attention to the questions O’Keefe’s operatives ask:

The premise of O’Keefe’s investigations into “voter fraud” is that it’s easy for someone to fraudulently register to vote, and consequently, to cast fraudulent votes. The idea is that the only way to preserve democracy is to enact strict voter ID laws that have the added benefit of disenfranchising millions of voters who tend to vote Democratic. The Brad Blog‘s Brad Friedman, who makes a habit of dismantling O’Keefe investigations, explains why, even if you accept everything O’Keefe’s video says as true, such laws wouldn’t help at all:

1) While one can indeed register to vote (in most places) without showing an ID via third party, what O’Keefe fails to mention in his video, is that the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 already requires those who do not register in person to provide ID when voting for the first time at the polling place. In other words, if “Thomas Brady” registers to vote via the registration forms received via O’Keefe’s video, he would be required, by federal law, to show an ID the first time he votes in person at the polling place. That is already federal law. O’Keefe must have forgotten to mention that in his latest “Voter Fraud Investigation” video.

2) To work around the above point in order to commit voter fraud, one could, after committing a felony by fraudulently filling out a voter registration form, go ahead and commit another felony by voting via absentee ballot without having to show an ID, as also discussed in the video (at least in states which allow easy, “no-excuse” access for that type of voting.) It would, indeed, be possible, in this way, to commit voter fraud, if one wished to risk the very high penalties for committing yet another felony. What O’Keefe fails to mention in his video, however, is that the polling place Photo ID restrictions that Republicans have been pushing for, and which this video is obviously meant to support, would do nothing to prevent this absentee voter fraud!

Friedman explains that he’s “currently on the road and don’t have enough time for his idiocy as is,” so I generously made time for this idiocy, and found out that even O’Keefe’s absentee scenario is false. According to Minnesota election law, anyone registering by mail must either provide a verifiable driver’s license/state ID number, or the last four digits of their Social Security number. If those items don’t match state records, or if the registrant checks that third box, they are sent a notice informing them that they have to register using the same requirements as in-person registration. Those requirements are:

(1) presenting a driver’s license or Minnesota identification card issued pursuant to section 171.07;
(2) presenting any document approved by the secretary of state as proper identification;
(3) presenting one of the following:
(i) a current valid student identification card from a postsecondary educational institution in Minnesota, if a list of students from that institution has been prepared under section 135A.17 and certified to the county auditor in the manner provided in rules of the secretary of state; or
(ii) a current student fee statement that contains the student’s valid address in the precinct together with a picture identification card; or
(4) having a voter who is registered to vote in the precinct, or who is an employee employed by and working in a residential facility in the precinct and vouching for a resident in the facility, sign an oath in the presence of the election judge vouching that the voter or employee personally knows that the individual is a resident of the precinct.

So, if O’Keefe wants to register Tim Tebow to vote in Minnesota by mail, he needs to either create a CIA-worthy document trail for him, featuring a valid, verifiable state ID number or Social Security number. Otherwise, fake Tim needs to show ID, or get another registered voter in that precinct to swear (and sign) an oath before an election judge, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, attesting to the identity of the bogus Tebow. That’s quite a bit different from O’Keefe’s claim of “without identification requirements of any kind.”

The truth is, submitting fake voter information is easy, but successfully registering fake people is incredibly difficult, and casting fake votes is even harder. Doing either of them enough times to affect the outcome of an election is a near-impossibility, and certainly not worth the penalty.

Passing a law that imposes a requirement that many of your opponent’s supporters don’t meet, however, is effective, and when you get people to believe garbage like this, downright simple. It’s easy to vote for other people to go get something that you already have.

RELATED: Breaking: Roland Martin Suspended By CNN For Offensive Super Bowl Tweets

The Twitter story, taking place on Super Bowl Sunday, has been recounted many times, but for the unacquainted: Martin tends to tweet teasing jokes about sports very often– whether it be his various sports feuds with Touré or his soccer jokes to Piers Morgan. Last Sunday, his tweets were inclined more toward the latter, and he made clear he objected to David Beckham, a soccer player, interrupting his Super Bowl with his underwear. Many, including GLAAD, took the tweets to be an attempt to incite violence against gay men who would find Beckham in his underwear an attractive image. Martin apologized and explained himself: he was actually mocking soccer fans during a football game, not homosexual males. The context of the tweet– one before it with the tag “#superbowl” about actually buying Beckham’s underwear line, and one after mocking Piers Morgan for liking soccer– seems to corroborate Martin’s point, debatable though it might be. After what it called “careful deliberation,” CNN announced today that they would be suspending Martin.

This sparked its own outraged response from many who remembered several offensive comments made by CNN contributors that resulted in no such punishment– most notably Erick Erickson and Dana Loesch, the former for, among other things, threatening to “pull a shotgun” on a census worker and the latter, among still other things, encouraging Marines to urinate on corpses, for America. Naturally, the fact that a comment using the word “ish” in a description of David Beckham appears to pale in comparison to them, resulting in many expressing confusion as to what CNN’s standards really are. Despite appearances, there is a method to the apparent madness of suspending Martin while letting other commentators, most notably the Tea Party wing of CNN (even if Erickson may dispute this) run amok.

This reaction was mostly on the left though; the right, rather than try to take down Martin’s colleagues, reacted with exasperation at the outrage towards Martin. Gay conservative group GOProud founder Christopher Barron defended Martin by noting that he, too, made fun of the same ad. Glenn Beck admitted his distaste for Martin’s comment in general while defending his right to make a joke. “Free Roland Martin!” writes the Daily Caller‘s Jim Treacher, imploring GLAAD to “relax” over Martin’s “stupid” tweets. Newsbusters’ Brent Bozell called the entire ordeal “hilarious” and found the tweets among Martin’s “least offensive.” John Nolte at Big Journalism makes clear that he disagrees ideologically with much of Martin’s opinions, but “the thought of trying to silence him is anathema to everything I believe in.”

RELATED: CNN’s Roland S. Martin Livetweets Dave Chappelle’s Strange Comedy Set

As a conservative, Nolte is right that silencing Martin for his tweets is anathema to conservative philosophy, though he argues this point on First Amendment grounds. But beyond the philosophical ideal of pure freedom of expression, the underlying double standard that regulates “elite” correspondents is a fabrication, in many ways, of what conservatives perceive as the “elite left.” The answer to why Martin is punished when Erickson is not is that they belong to two separate classes of pundits– “elite” and “non-elite.” Non-elites are not expected to speak or behave in any particular way. These are categories that conservative philosophy patently rejects, particularly post-neoconservative philosophy inspired by liberatarianism and Palinist populism in equal measure. Much of that rejection comes from a more hearty understanding of freedom of expression, but also from the perpetual feeling that they belong to a permanent second class of thinkers– thinkers that can get away with saying more outrageous comments at the expense of their reputations in the greater media.

This sort of mindset is a relic of the withering “Old Media” empire, and it is not new: the Dan Rathers of the world must have surely squirmed at the idea of Geraldo Rivera ever being taken seriously, the panic that must have swept Newsweek when some gift shop employee with an email list broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Even in the post-internet world, old media has done its best to maintain boundaries that no longer make sense. There are “journalists” and there are “bloggers;” “public intellectuals” and “muckrakers.”

And Martin is only the most recent in a string of apparent media “elites” punished for seeming human, while “non-elites” enjoy much more extensive freedoms. Slate columnist Dave Weigel left his perch at the Washington Post for privately employing the use of, among other epithets, the colorful Nixonian term “ratfucking.” Weigel belonged to a class of people not permitted to speak that way, and was nominally relocated to a class that could. The story is one of the few of its genre that ends well, with Weigel still the best of the hard-nosed reporters at the Washington Post Co. Martin’s story is still incomplete, but falls along similar lines, the difference being that he exposed his own silly language without the help of FishbowlDC.

RELATED: GLAAD Demands CNN Fire Roland Martin Over David Beckham Tweet

Conservatives are often quick to argue that the double-standard on what is acceptable in the public discourse is one of ideology. That Martin’s story so acutely defies that– particularly in light of the comments of some of his conservative colleagues– shows that many conservatives can see the game in action but have historically had a hard time identifying the players. In this sense, Martin has the wind at his back– and, perhaps with the support of the conservative media community, CNN may recant and keep a valued and original voice on the airwaves that may just come back with newly-acquired wisdom on where the true divides in media actually lie.

Burnett was one of the first people to eyeball Friess standing on stage next to Santorum following his victories in Tuesday night’s caucuses. She said, after recognizing him, that she wondered if there was something fishy going on, because of rules about collusion between SuperPACs and candidates.

“I’m wondering,” Burnett asked, “If you think that was appropriate… that you continue to spend so much time visibly with him? Or maybe you think that it’s just transparent?”

Friess explained that the answer was simple. The lawyers told them that they just can’t talk about the SuperPAC, which is fine with Friess, because all he does is write a check and then leave it to others to run the organization.

“In fact,” Friess said, “Newt came up to me the other day and made some remark about one of the ads, and I said I don’t even see the ads. I’m not the hands on guy. I like writing the check and I turn it over to the guys that make it happen, much like the way I ran my business. My success came up not because of my brilliance, but because [of] the people I was fortunate enough to surround myself with.”

Burnett later asked about the level of Friess’ success, noting that plenty of media outlets have been referring to him as a billionaire, a designation he contends.

“A few weeks back, someone called me a billionaire. My wife comes up and she says, ‘Honey, you’re not squirreling money away are you?’ So I want to clear that up,” Friess said, laughing. “They say, ‘How do you want to be introduced?’ And I say, ‘How about billionaire wannabe?’”

The entire interview will air on OutFront at 7 p.m. Watch a clip of Burnett’s interview with Friess below, courtesy of CNN:

According to the report:

“29.3% of South Carolinian adults could not “accurately identify who the current vice president—Joe Biden—is. Almost one-quarter (23 percent) couldn’t remember who the vice president is; 3.3 percent supplied the incorrect name; and 3 percent named Dick Cheney.”

Biden has often had to deal with significant percentages of the American public being unaware he is the Vice President. In 2010, a Pew Research Poll found that 41% of Americans could not identify Biden as Vice President.

(h/t Daily Caller)

Basically, Bolling theorized that the only reason the Obama Administration has gotten into this birth control fight with religious groups is because it’s part of a secret plan to hurt Mitt Romney.

Wait, what? I’ll let him explain:

BOLLING: Can I just throw a conspiracy theory out here? Here’s what I thought. I was sitting at home this morning, I watched it. I saw [Santorum's] win. Then I listened to all the talking heads say, ‘Oh my gosh, Obama really screwed up here. This is a great opening for Conservatives and the Right.’ and it dawned on me-

BOB BECKEL: Screwed up on what?

BOLLING: Good point. Going after this Obamacare, making sure Catholic employers are required to provide sterilization and abortions and whatnot.

BECKEL: Alright.

BOLLING: So, it dawned on me, what if they were trying to derail this big Romney train that won Florida handily, that won Nevada handily. They go, ‘How are we gonna break up this train? How are we gonna break the Right up?’ And they did. They picked the very, very right side, partisan issue.

So, let me get this straight. President Obama’s staff got worried that Mitt Romney was doing so well that they made a deliberate decision to piss off our nation’s Catholics so that other Christians will also be pissed off and will want to get him out of office which will cause them to vote in the primary but, since they’re religious, they’ll vote for Rick Santorum instead of Romney which will hurt Romney’s momentum so that he won’t be able to beat Obama. Uh huh. Let that stew in your heads a bit.

After listening to the whole thing, Bob Beckel looked at Bolling and responded, “You know something, there was somebody on the grassy knoll in Dallas too.”

Andrea Tantaros, however, was much more accepting of the theory, positing that the Democrats want to talk about social issues like this Catholic thing until the election instead of other topics. That makes a whole lot of sense too. Clearly the Democrats are driving this conversation which is why they have their favorite media network devoting an entire segment to it on every show. You know what network I’m talking about; Fox News.

Perhaps in a helpful attempt to make Bolling’s theory seem more rational, Greg Gutfeld followed it up with a rambling, stream of consciousness analogy comparing Mitt Romney to Marsha Brady’s boyfriend in the episode of The Brady Bunch where she gets hit in the nose with a football.

Basically, this was a very confusing couple of minutes of television. And you can watch it all, courtesy of Fox News, below:

Platshorn, who spent some three decades in a federal prison for smuggling marijuana, shares that, when he was released, “the last thing I expected to do was become an activist.” And yet, he’s now become something of a poster boy for the movement to rally senior citizens around marijuana.

RELATED: Hey, Here’s That Video Of Joan Rivers Smoking Pot On National TV You Asked For

His generation, Platshorn says “invented marijuana as it’s known today,” and he wishes they’d be more educated about the ways cannabis can treat their physical ailments without the unpleasant — and sometimes lethal — side-effects of other medications.

Check it out, via CNN:

RELATED: Lawrence O’Donnell Targets Asian Actress In Hoekstra Ad, Calls For ‘Dirty Politics’ Boycott

And, so. Here’s this:

My co-worker Jon Bershad was watching this video with me, and he brought up another routine that has a very similar “point,” but was executed quite differently. In Improv Everywhere’s (recently re-released) “Meet A Black Person” sketch, the group set an actual, real-life Black Person™ up in Aspen, Colorado — a place, the video notes, that is but 0.44 percent black. He then proceeded to introduce himself to many white people enjoying a nice ski vacation.

Have a look:

Ha! And cringe! And more ha!

Now, I think Ackerman’s point here (and I’m sure you’ll happily and graciously let me know if you think I’m over-analyzing) is to do more than simply point out ignorance regarding Black History Month and famous black figures throughout history. This bit seems to focus on a wider-ranging ignorance and awkwardness that exists between two groups, as well as point out the manner in which people can sometimes live in a homogenized bubble with very little awareness of or interest in anything that exists outside of that. And that’s ripe for humor. Awesome concept; I’m on board. But. There are problems.

First, I’d like to ask Ackerman (whose work I’m, admittedly, not familiar with) if setting this up at a well-known Mormon school (called out by name in the video) is a deliberate choice. Is this supposed to be commentary on Mormons? Religious education? Religion in general? Conservatives?

And I’d also, you know, like to ask Ackerman about his use of blackface. The video notes that only three people said something about Ackerman not really being black, and that he finds this disturbing. But… why? Was this one of the video’s goals – to try and see whether (mostly) white BYU students would be able to read a dark person as being “not black”?

I guess I’m left with more questions than laughs.

What do you guys think, though? Was the video funny? What worked, what didn’t? And what, my dears, is your take on his use of blackface?

h/t Dave Ackerman, via BuzzFeed

“It can walk or whatever you call that,” CNN Newsroom anchor Brooke Baldwin quipped.

On CNN.com, Jennifer Rizzo describes the features of the, er — creature:

Designed to carry 400 pounds of equipment, travel up to 20 miles at a time, and move at speeds as fast as 10 mph, the LS3 is meant to fit into a Marine or Army unit in a “natural way,” the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency said in a news release.

I call it nightmare fuel — and so does the rest of the Abrams Media office, who stopped what they were doing and let out a collective “what the what?” Instead of handling heavy payloads, perhaps we should sic it on Taliban fighters — because it would be super effective…and now, I need to start thinking happy thoughts.

Watch the segment — if you dare — via CNN below:

Observe:

Schultz then fired off a missive to Hannity on Twitter, challenging his rival host to, “show his ‘tape’ proving the President didn’t want Bin Laden dead,” followed by the extra-long hashtag “#obamaderangementsyndrome.” Hannity responded by repeating the hashtag, then saying that, “even u can figure this out, he did NOT support gitmo, EIT, Rendition, without which no Bin laden.” He later accused Schultz of being desperate and in need of attention.

Schultz, however, may just be smart. It’s not the first time that he has gone after his competitors. But today, after kicking up a bunch of dust by attacking an anchor on a rival network — and getting Hannity to respond for all of his 242,000 Twitter followers to see (Schultz has about 37,000 followers) — he artfully noted (twice) that he will address this issue at 8 p.m., on The Ed Show.

And that, no matter what you think of Schultz, is what one calls “sticking the landing.”

“Mitt Romney won all these contests last time,” Stoddard told host Tamron Hall, saying that even the Missouri primary — essentially a non-binding “beauty contest” that Santorum dominated — was still a good bellwether state to put alongside Minnesota and Colorado. “This is very hard for [Romney] to explain away… It is not just a sign that Rick Santorum is resonating with social conservatives. It is a sign that the people who turn out to these things are rejecting a coronation of Mitt Romney.”

Stoddard added that it’s going to take “a lot of money and fighting back” for Romney to eventually walk away the overall victor. “I’m not saying he’s not going to win the nomination,” she concluded. “It just got a lot harder.”

Watch a clip of the exchange below — as well as commentary from Michael Smerconish — below, courtesy of MSNBC:

RELATED: Donald Trump Slams Rick Santorum On Early Start: ‘I Don’t Get Rick Santorum, I Don’t Get That Whole Thing’

“I’ve taken a gander throughout the Republican media, conservative media, and all over the place, and they are shocked. They’re literally shocked. The Republican establishment had no idea this was percolating out there. I can’t believe how insulated they are. I mean I know they’re insulated. I know they’re inside the Beltway. I know they have their own world in which they live, but to look at the reaction they’re having today, to see how shocked they are that Rick Santorum has come out of what they thought was an impossible position equivalent to nowhere, is an incredible thing.”

Influential Republicans weren’t the only ones getting Limbaugh’s scorn. He also took shots at anyone foolhardy enough to lay the credit for the victories at his door.

Last week, some were wondering if Limbaugh had slipped a secret Santorum endorsement into his show by ending a broadcast, right before the Florida primary, with the assertion that all of the GOP candidates were “guilty of some transgression somewhere against Conservatism…except Santorum.” Already there are media figures theorizing that this could have contributed to last night’s results. Over at The American Spectator, Jay D. Homnick put it in no uncertain terms, writing a column called “Thank Him, Santorum!”

Limbaugh wasn’t going to accept this though, positing that this line of thinking didn’t give enough credit to Santorum or Limbaugh’s listeners:

“Of course, the Drive-Bys are crediting me for this.

…

It can’t be the candidates. It can’t be that Santorum’s connecting with voters. It can’t be that, no, no, it can’t be that Santorum’s resonating with Republican voters, the conservative base. It can’t be that the conservative base just isn’t happy with Romney. It can’t be any of that. No, no, no. It has to be that the Republican base is a bunch of mind-numbed robots sitting out there waiting for marching orders from me.”

Limbaugh argued that the reason for Santorum’s win was simply that Republican voters are “engaged” and can tell that he is the “least corrupted,” not because Limbaugh told them to vote that way.

Of course, Limbaugh wasn’t going to turn down all of the credit. In the end, he agreed that it was probably a “mixture of both.”

Listen to the clip below:

(h/t The Daily Rushbo)

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Joy Behar was furious at the decision, calling it “totalitarian.” “It smacks of forcing somebody to confront something that they have already decided they don’t want to deal with,” Behar opined.

Hasselbeck defended her rationale for supporting Texas’s policy.

“I’m going to take my personal feelings about abortion out of this, but from a medical perspective- and I’ll ask this of anyone- you wouldn’t necessarily go in to get, I don’t know, say, a cyst removed or tooth extracted or a kidney that had to be, you know, examined and have surgery on, you would never go through any medical procedure without looking at an ultrasound!” Hasselbeck explained. “Seeing an X-ray and the physician by no means want to do that procedure, go ahead with it without looking at the scientific evidence.”

“Here’s what bothers me,” Whoopi Goldberg interjected. “With an elective surgery — got to take my gallbladder out — they’re not going to show you the gallbladder! If you want to see stuff, you ask your doctor. The thing that bothers me is what Barbara said, women who make this decision, it is not easy…sometimes they have to have an abortion because they can’t afford it. This does not come with anyone saying, you know, if you keep the baby we’ll help you out financially.”

Sherri Shepherd candidly shared that she had experienced multiple abortions and that society was sending mixed signals to women.

“The thing that concerns me with this is like you said, it’s a very difficult thing, but you have so many people out there protesting and they go ‘we don’t want you to have a baby.’ A lot of girls out here have babies and then we say ‘we don’t want you to have a baby’ but then they don’t have that abortion, they see the fetus, they go back home but we let you go. We don’t want you to go to Planned Parenthood to get birth control. We don’t — we want to — hold on a second. but then, you know, do we want you to have the safety net of food stamps? Then we’re the same ones that keep saying you keep having these babies and you’re not taking care of the babies. We stop at the picket signs so it’s so difficult — I’m speaking as a girl who had a lot of abortions and I swear to God if they had showed me a fetus I possibly would wouldn’t have but I would have put my child in a lot of situations that wouldn’t have been good because I didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with having a child. It was real difficult…it’s such a hard thing.”

Watch the segment below via ABC:

Joe Hildebrand

Joe Hildebrand began by tweeting “I just want to say I think it’s great that Sydney Airport is providing so many jobs for the mentally handicapped.”

This prompted a reasoned, articulate rebuke from columnist Stella Young, herself a disabled Australian. Her column was noteworthy in that it eschewed shaming, or demands for firing, in favor of a simple plea for empathy: (the whole thing is more than worth a read)

Like the countless people who make thoughtless jokes about disability, I don’t think Joe Hildebrand was conscious of the ableism inherent in his silly joke. But it was there. And the thing with speaking from a position of privilege is that you’re not often asked to think about how your language affects other people – and when you are, it seems everyone jumps up and down complaining about how the system is oppressing their freedom of speech, with little thought for those whom the speech routinely oppresses.

Much like the homosexual community has to deal with people (okay, mostly teenagers – the rest of us have finally cottoned on that it’s more than a little bit homophobic) referring to things that are a bit shit as ‘so gay’ in our post-ironic society. I find it hard to imagine Hildebrand referring to the staff at Sydney Airport as ‘so gay’ – so why is it still okay for disability to be treated as synonymous with subpar performance?

Hildebrand’s tweet is offensive because it uses disability as a shortcut to mean “crap”. And in doing so, he reveals a subtle and no doubt unconscious contempt for disabled people that is still rife in our culture. At best, it displays a blatant ignorance of the very real barriers faced by people with disability, some of which, ironically, are employment and air travel. At its worst, it assumes that jokes like these are okay – because they’re not about anyone important. Perhaps it’s assumed that people with intellectual disabilities won’t ‘get it’ anyway. That they can’t be hurt by a joke they don’t understand.

Young’s message appeared to have gotten through, as Hildebrand retweeted a link that described the piece as “passionate and articulate.”

Yeah, not so much. Hildebrand followed up that tweet with these:

Just want to say how sorry I am for using the words “mentally handicapped” in a tweet. That was really retarded of me.

Just want to say I’m sorry for offending so many people by using the word “retarded” in a tweet. That was really Irish of me.

Sorry I just offended so many people by using the term “Irish”. Just having a blonde moment.

Then, just to be sure everyone knew he was specifically spitting on Young’s rebuttal, he retweeted this:

@mostlyFilth @Joe_Hildebrand your series of faux pas today has been pretty gay.

If Hildebrand is anything like Rush Limbaugh, the courage he displays in the face of the mentally disabled, the wheelchair-bound, the Irish, and the gay ought to stand him in good stead with his audience.

This brand of “defiance” crops up quite a bit here, but the thing that people like Hildebrand or Rush Limbaugh fail to realize is that what they call “language policing” is really just an attempt to let people know when they’re being assholes, and affording them the opportunity to stop.

(h/t Kate Doak)

Martin, who spent Sunday evening live-Tweeting the game and several commercials, made a remark about an H&M commercial for David Beckham‘s line of men’s underwear. The ad, for those who missed it, features close-ups of the soccer player clad only in a pair of briefs.

“If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad,” Martin Tweeted, “smack the ish out of him!”

Martin insisted he was taking a jab at soccer fans, not the gay community. For your reference, here’s his original comment, including the Tweets that came directly before and after:

On Monday, Martin published a statement on the matter on his website:

Fam, let me address the issue that some in the LGBT community have raised regarding some of my Super Bowl tweets yesterday.

I made several cracks about soccer as I do all the time. I was not referring to sexuality directly or indirectly regarding the David Beckham ad, and I’m sorry folks took it otherwise.

It was meant to be a deliberately over the top and sarcastic crack about soccer; I do not advocate violence of any kind against anyone gay, or not. As anyone who follows me on Twitter knows, anytime soccer comes up during football season it’s another chance for me to take a playful shot at soccer, nothing more.

At this time, the duration of Martin’s suspension is unknown.

Additional reporting by Alex Alvarez.

RELATED: Los Angeles School Removes Entire Staff Following Second Allegation Of Sexual Abuse By Teacher

According to an attorney for one of the plaintiffs involved in the case, a third teacher — whom MSNBC has not named, as there is currently no confirmation that this person is to be formally charged — is said to have “participated” in the acts allegedly committed by teacher Mark Berndt.

In addition, The Los Angeles Times is reporting that one of the alleged victims of the second teacher, Martin Springer, has now recanted her story:

The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was ongoing, said one of two two alleged victims had changed her story in the last few days.

Springer has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Have a look, via MSNBC:

Wall Street, of which Mayor Bloomberg is a billionaire alum and continues to rely on for his tax base, should be thankful and conciliatory, not defiant and obtuse. Yet in response to Occupy Wall Street protests, we get this:

“Instead of vilifying our most successful businesses, we should be supporting them and encouraging them to remain in New York City,” expressed John Paulson, a billionaire hedge fund trader, in a press release that also described his “$28 billion, 120-person fund as an exemplar of the American Dream.”

That’s not the mark of a man who is in touch with the reality so many Americans are currently facing.

And even though Wall Street received one of the biggest bailouts in history from the current administration, they support Mitt Romney (a millionaire alum) by a 5-1 margin, while President Obama fuddles with a foreclosure crisis he can’t avert, and is hastening to approve a weak multi-billion dollar settlement with lenders over foreclosure abuses. If that weren’t enough, President Obama is suggesting that he is willing to waive certain requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley in order to motivate corporations to hire new workers. This defies logic for two reasons:

(1) Relaxing rules that were just passed by Congress to better regulate public companies will only lead to all stakeholders — businesses, consumers, and Congress itself — realizing there’s no commitment to regulatory change.

(2) Worker productivity, the measure of output of each worker, has been high for years as the economy struggled through a recession and businesses cut back on labor expenses. But it really couldn’t get much higher, because there are only so many hours each employee can work — the manufacturing sector saw, “the largest quarterly gain in hours worked since the fourth quarter of 2005,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Businesses are bound to start hiring once consumer demand returns to its regular levels. No amount of administration kowtowing or rule bending will change that. And increasing consumer demand starts with consumer confidence (which, by the way, has increased for five straight months, something the administration does deserve credit for), not allowing businesses to do as they please.

Ironically, at a time when there couldn’t be both better timing and a better platform in which to deliver an economic message with populist zeal, the administration has wasted its opportunities: Occupy Wall Street has brought income inequality to the forefront of politics for months; the GOP frontrunner, Mitt Romney, pays one of the lowest tax rates of any major presidential candidate in the last 25 years; the man who trails him, Newt Gingrich, wants to enact a tax plan that would have Romney paying a 0% rate on the far majority of his income (which is capital gains and is currently taxed at a 15% rate). Next thing you know, Gingrich would be suggesting the government pays millionaires to earn an income. As I noted in an article last month, most taxpayers don’t have that much capital gains — only 1.4% of taxpayers’ incomes mostly consist of them. So Newt’s plan is fully focused on the 1%. But what about the rest of us?

It’s past time that President Obama tell the American people what’s in it for them. Because the 1% is not looking to save him.

It is that penchant for unvarnished spleen that has earned Uygur the following he has, but has also led to some backlash among liberals. He doesn’t apologize for it, and frequently warns viewers that they’re going to get that unfiltered view, no matter the subject. For what it’s worth, I’d rather know what someone honestly thinks than not, but in this case, Cenk is jumping the gun a little bit, and goes too far, and in the wrong direction, in his criticism of the President.

Cenk cites polling data that shows overwhelming (58%) support for the Preventive Services Mandate among Catholics, with 52% supporting its application to religious employers like hospitals and schools. Another survey shows that 99% of reproductive-age women have used contraception, and 89% of fertile, sexually active women who do not want to become pregnant are currently practicing it. His conclusion is that this is an “enormously winning issue,” so “why on God’s green Earth” would the administration compromise?

Uygur played a clip from Tuesday’s Morning Joe, in which senior Obama adviser David Axelrod talks about such a compromise, and he’s right on target throughout 99% of the segment, concentrating on the need to extend the protections of the Preventive Services Mandate to all women, while respecting the “concerns” and “prerogatives” of religious organizations. The competing interests here are equal protection for millions of women, versus religious accommodation, not religious liberty. The First Amendment does not grant churches the right to impose their beliefs on employees who serve the general public.

Where Axelrod slips up is in saying that “we certainly don’t want to infringe on religious liberty,” which tacitly validates that disastrous, fallacious frame. There’s nothing wrong with accommodating the wishes of these organizations, as long as the rights of women aren’t also compromised. Conceding this “religious liberty” argument is the problem. It is this argument that makes this a losing issue for the President, and it is the administration’s failure to seize the framing of this issue as an equal protection argument from the outset that has led to this controversy.

Even greater than the administration’s failure, though, is the mainstream media’s, in the same regard. Even when they’re pushing back against it, the “religious liberty” frame is still the dominant reference point in this discussion, because squeaky religious wheels are getting all of the ink. If every mainstream newscast explained the mandate the way Cenk did at the beginning of this segment, and if the cable networks sought guests who are among the women being denied these services (surely, they exist), this thing would be playing out quite differently. Right now, it’s a reverse witch hunt, with religious leaders (and lots of their left-leaning followers) tying themselves to stakes of their own making.

The fact is, aside from Axelrod’s slip-up, the White House has consistently, if not aggressively, responded to this controversy with the appropriate set of priorities. As long as any eventual compromise recognizes those priorities, there’s nothing wrong with it. Unfortunately, there’s no compromise that will turn this into a win (the mainstream media has turned this into Obama vs. Church, rather than Church vs. Women), but if one can be reached, it’s the generous thing to do.

Here’s the clip, from Current TV:

Yes, Obama decided to flaunt his hatred of our nation by filling its most sacred building with child scientists (which, as we all know, is the worst kind because their youth probably means they’re also cool with gay people). He then asked one of them, a boy named Joey, if he could test out his giant weapon. The two then mercilessly desecrated the interior of the building by shooting a marshmallow right into the wall. I’m not sure, but the Apologizer in Chief probably used the gun to spell out the word “SORRY” in Mandarin.

The White House has released footage of the event, presumably to mock us good Americans. Some fools have already wrongly described it as being “cute” and “funny.” However, those of us who know that “scientists” are all evil socialist bought and paid for by George Soros know that “cute” is just another word for “evil.”

Watch below:

I have followed the Court’s Citizens United decision particularly closely because my dad, Floyd Abrams, was one of the lawyers who argued it (for free, incidentally) in the Supreme Court, on behalf of Senator Mitch McConnell. Their challenge was to a part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law that barred corporations and unions from engaging in what they argued was classic political speech — producing and showing a movie on television that criticized a candidate for President and spending money for ads that support or denounce that candidate. They prevailed in a divided 5-4 ruling. Subsequently, and not surprisingly, the ruling became one of the most controversial opinions of our day, with many on the left denouncing the ruling as a fundamental threat to our democracy.

Let me say at the outset that I don’t entirely agree with the position my dad took in the case. He sought and got a broad ruling striking down major parts of the statute. In my view, the Court could and should have decided the case on far narrower grounds, thereby avoiding the need to overturn some past Supreme Court rulings (On a personal note, I have also been amazed at the vitriol directed at my civil libertarian father from the left over his defense of a constitutional principle he firmly believes in. Defend a Nazi’s right to march? No problem. Defend the most repugnant members of our society’s right to speak? Absolutely. Defend a corporation’s right to engage in the political process? Inexcusable). But my personal view on the nuances of the ruling is beside the point. This is about what the ruling said and didn’t say, what it did and didn’t do. And about how so many in the media keep getting the ruling and its impact dead wrong.

There are two media myths and inventions that are most commonly cited.

Myth 1: The Court invalidated disclosure requirements in political advertising, thereby allowing donors to remain anonymous.

Wrong. The Court ruled just the opposite and upheld, by an 8-1 vote, the McCain-Feingold requirement of identifying donors.

Myth 2: That the Court’s ruling in Citizens United opened the door to wealthy individuals like Sheldon Adelson to pour millions of dollars into PACs.

Wrong again. The Citizens United ruling had NOTHING to do with the ability of individuals to spend their money to support candidates. That had been decided back in 1976, when the Supreme Court decided that the First Amendment protected the right of individuals to make unlimited independent expenditures supporting or opposing candidates for federal office. In Citizens United, the Court ruled that corporations and unions were entitled to the same rights. It wasn’t that long ago, after all, that the Swift Boat ads, legally paid for by individuals, soiled John Kerry during the 2004 campaign.

But reading the New York Times, Washington Post and watching MSNBC in particular, it is hardly surprising that the public would be confused. On January 9, in a front-page piece on the influence of Newt Gingrich supporter Sheldon Adelson, the Times inaccurately reported that Adelson’s $5 million donation to a pro-Gingrich SuperPAC “underscores” how the Citizens United case, “has made it possible for a wealthy individual to influence an election.” On January 14th, a column by Gail Collins asserted that, “all these billionaires would not be so worrisome if the Supreme Court had not totally unleashed their donation-making power in the Citizens United case.” The opinion, in fact, did nothing of the sort. I don’t know if it’s sad or just troubling that the Times issued two corrections on the earlier piece, including the year Citizens United was decided, but none on its repeated and major error about the ruling itself.

The Washington Post has done no better. On January 11th, Dana Milbank, writing of Adelson’s $5 million donation to a pro-Gingrich SuperPAC, asserted that it was, “the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision which made such unlimited contributions possible.” And on February 5th, E.J. Dionne Jr. blamed Citizens United for permitting, “the brute force of millionaires and billionaires … to have their way.”  The Post published a letter from Floyd Abrams today highlighting the error, but without a formal correction.

It seems this faulty analysis has worn off on MSNBC host Chris Matthews as well, since he, too, regularly misreports the case’s ruling. “Under this new court ruling, Citizens United, your opponent can run a terrible campaign and relentlessly destroy your reputation without putting your fingerprints on the ad,” Matthews said. “You don’t have to say, ‘I’m Mitt Romney and I paid for this ad.’ So now in Iowa, where the people don’t like negative campaigning, you can run the bombing campaign or destroy your opponent without having your face or voice associated with it. That’s what Newt wasn’t aware of. It’s his fault that conservatives like them have gone along with these court decisions, that have allowed big contributors, wealthy people to put unlimited amounts of money into negative campaigns without putting the name of their favorite candidate in the ad.”

This is a double dose of wrong, since the disclosure requirement in the law was upheld and the case had nothing to do with individuals. One might forgive Al Jazeera for getting it wrong and it’s not unusual to see partisan advocates misstate a ruling like this to further a political agenda, but the mainstream American media should have no excuse.

NBC’s Michael Isikoff seems to have become the network’s Citizens United “expert,” since he addresses it in so many of his appearances. According to Isikoff, “the ‘independent’ SuperPACs –thanks to last year’s Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case — can collect unlimited amounts from wealthy donors and directly from corporations. This gives them the latitude to potentially spend even more money than the presidential campaigns themselves, which are still constrained by official limits of $2,500 per donor.” It’s true that Citizens United changed the law with regard to corporate spending, but the opinion did not change the law on an individual’s ability to “spend even more money than the campaigns themselves.” Before and after Citizens United, individuals could give unlimited amounts to outside groups. On January 10th, leading up to the New Hampshire primary, Isikoff and Reverend Al Sharpton engaged in a conversation on MSNBC, in which both men demonstrated a misunderstanding about the ruling by repeatedly talking about the supposed impact on the ability of wealthy individuals to impact elections.

Last month, Isikoff enhanced Matthews’ misunderstanding of the opinion’s impact on disclosure:

Matthews: It seems to me, Michael Isikoff, that this is going to be message out
of Iowa, the power of these third party or SuperPACs, where you don’t have
to put the candidate’s name on it, you don’t put the names of the
contributors on it, the money is unlimited, and you can basically destroy
your opponent if you have got enough rich friends. Legal, right?

MICHAEL ISIKOFF, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Absolutely, under the Supreme
Court ruling Citizens United last year.

So is there any argument at all to support their claims? Not on the case’s impact on disclosure requirements. But on the effect on individual donors, the strongest argument is a sort of psychological one articulated by law professor Rick Hasen, who concedes that, yes, it is true that individuals could donate unlimited amounts before Citizens United, (he points out that George Soros gave $23 million to help John Kerry), but because a “legal cloud” hung over what were referred to as 527′s, some might have been reluctant to dump huge sums into them. Well, that hardly serves as cover for the myriad of journalists and media figures claiming as a matter of fact that Citizens United opened the door for the Sheldon Adelsons of the world.

This case has led to some heated dinner conversations in the Abrams household, but in the media that debate often appears to be based on a ruling that never occurred. How many times have I heard people wonder aloud how Citizens United could have treated money as speech? It didn’t. It held, as NYU Professor Geoffrey Stone pointed out in the Huffington Post, that when the government regulates money, “because it is being used to enable free speech it necessarily raises a First Amendment issue.” Can a corporation really receive First Amendment protection? The New York Times Company, The National Broadcasting Company and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting among many others, sure think so.

You may disagree with the opinion, you may think that expanding the ability of corporations to fund campaign messaging is a true danger, or just, as I do, that outside money is a major concern for our democratic system. But that doesn’t change the fact that the political chattering set ought to be far more concerned and outraged by the indolence, indifference or just bias, that has led to the widespread misinformation by the media about what the court actually considered and ultimately ruled.

“There’s somebody else who, who actually defended me that I’d like to mention: Bill O’Reilly from Fox News,” DeGeneres said. “I already sent you out a tweet to thank you.” She played a clip from Monday’sThe O’Reilly Factor before thanking him again, then adding:

“And you didn’t really make it clear if you were going to shop at JCPenney or not, but if you do, you can use my employee discount any time you want. That’s for you Bill. Thank you so much.”

Later in the show, guest Julie Bowen, star of Modern Family, said she had some plans beyond just thanking O’Reilly. “I never thought that I would want to make out with Bill O’Reilly,” Bowen said. “It turns out today is the day.”

Watch a clip of Ellen’s thank you below, followed by Bowen’s desire to make out with the Fox News host:

And Bowen’s proclamation:

The main thrust of Olbermann’s commentary is that the resignation of Komen senior VP Karen Handel is not enough to restore the broken trust of women who support, and rely on, the charity to keep politics out of the fight against breast cancer. It’s a sentiment that has been echoed far and wide in the media. Handel and Co. have tried to portray the stunning backlash against the decision as bullying, but that’s a bit like Nelson Muntz crying when someone punches him back. Against the wishes of its supporters, the Komen board wielded their fundraising muscle to made a political statement. The impulse to protect Komen, because it has become so ubiquitous, so identified with its cause, too pink to fail, underscores the importance of restoring that trust.

Olbermann’s comparison of the right’s coordinated attacks on Planned Parenthood to McCarthy-style witch hunts is based on Komen’s original rationale (or pretext) for the defunding, the partisan congressional investigation launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL). More broadly, though, the right’s campaign against women’s health care probably has a better historical analog in the religious Inquisitions of the Middle Ages. Not content to target abortion rights, Republicans have widened their attack to include contraception, the vaccine for cervical cancer, and in this instance, breast cancer screening and prevention, all in service of imposing their own morality on women’s health care.

Where Olbermann crosses the line is in his presumptuous stewardship of Susan Komen’s memory, an inappropriate intrusion into another’s personal grief. “Mrs. Brinker has dishonored both her sister’s memory, and this essential cause,” he said, in an obvious and manipulative attempt to shame Ms. Brinker. Keith Olbermann, as far as I know, never met Susan Komen, and really has no claim to her memory.

This misstep does illustrate an important facet of this controversy, though. I never met Susan Komen, either, but as someone who cares deeply for a great number of people with breasts, that name does mean something to me. Until now, it has meant thousands of little pink yogurt tops, and pink towels at NFL games, and ribbons, and all things breast cancer awareness. As this controversy played out this week, though, it made me wonder, if that all goes away, what’s there to replace it? Some will find Keith Olbermann’s declaration that this “witch hunt” will “kill some women” overwrought, but for those whose only access to health care is often from Planned Parenthood, that’s a very real possibility.

A great arachno-American once said “With great power comes great responsibility,” and it is the stewardship of that responsibility, in her late sister’s name, that Nancy Brinker ought to think about before she decides to make it into a big, pink political football.

Here’s the clip, from Current TV:

“Where’s it raiiiining, Lindsay?” Doocy, a former weatherman, asked, after positioning Ellingson on the west coast and Lima in the east.

“It looks like it’s raining down here,” she said, waving her hands around Los Angeles, “and up there.”

“And what do you think is happening in the middle?” Doocy asked.

“It’s really dry,” Ellingson said.

Doocy then turned his attention to Lima, who noted that, in New York, “it’s quite dried for now,”

“Quite dried for now,” Doocy repeated, nodding.

He wasn’t done with the humor, though, noting that it’s “always hot” in Brazil, and later, after Ellingson said she loves Los Angeles and New York equally, added a pregnant pause in deeming her “bi…coastal.”

Doocy kicked it back to Brian Kilmeade and Gretchen Carlson, who joked about bras, before making a wonderful segue to senior White House correspondent Ed Henry, who admitted he had no idea how to follow the segment.

How’s it looking in your neck of the woods? You won’t get an answer from the clip below, but enjoy anyway, courtesy of Fox News: