A day after controversy broke out over Hustler‘s publication of a parodical explicit photo of conservative pundit S.E. Cupp performing oral sex, Larry Flynt responded to his critics, dismissing them as “the prudish and delusional right wing,” who need to “get a life” and “find another horse to beat.”

House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (d-CA) made news this week when she called for the extension of Bush-era tax breaks for families making less than $1 million. President Barack Obama, however, supports extending tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000. The Washington Post editorial board took notice and called the Minority Leader out on her definition of “middle class.”

“Nobody wanted to go after Walter Cronkite,” writes David Brinkley in Cronkite his new biography of the beloved CBS newsman. The book “dents his halo,” Howard Kurtz writes in The Daily Beast. Today, Cronkite’s stunts would have the likes of Kurtz himself calling for him to step down.

On Tuesday, we reported that a vial of President Ronald Reagan‘s blood was up for auction on eBay, much to the chagrin of Reagan’s former doctors. Thursday morning The Washington Post reports, via Twitter, that the sale has been cancelled and the vial will be donated to a foundation, presumably the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation in California:

A Fox News spokesperson has responded to the new survey from Farleigh Dickinson University which found that Fox News viewers are the worst-informed on domestic and international current events, while NPR listeners are the best-informed, slamming the school’s “weak” academic reputation and “frivolous” polling.

A new development to report in the decades-old case of missing child Etan Patz: Authorities in New York are now investigating a man who is claiming a role in the 6-year-old’s 1979 disappearance.

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly released a statement today sharing that the man is currently in custody and that more details will be revealed later in the day.

BBC television personality Larry Paxman testified before a British government panel inquiry Wednesday, claiming that CNN host and former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan shared specific instructions on how to hack into people’s cell phones.

One day after Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) got into some heat for telling MSNBC that presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s tenure with private equity firm Bain Capital consisted of “raping companies,” Fox News analyst and Catholic priest Jonathan Morris wrote that the Obama administration’s contraception mandate constitutes an “obvious raping of our First Amendment rights.”

In today’s edition of First Amendment Fails: Wired reports that New York state proposed legislation would require New York-based websites (like this one!) to “remove any comments posted on his or her website by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post.” Uh-oh. Watch out, Mediaite commenters!

The upcoming cover of Time magazine features a young Mitt Romney with his mother, Lenore Romney. “Raising Romney,” the headline reads, for a feature about his mother’s 1970 Senate run. Summed up on the cover, the story’s premise: “When Mitt was 23, his mother ran for Senate. How that race shaped his life.”

Former major league baseball star and notoriously nonsensical tweeter Jose Canseco was profiled today by Grantland as the bulky slugger begins his stint with an independent ball club, the Worcester Tornadoes. Besides discussing his breakfast regiment and new career, Canseco randomly veered into politics, taking the time to blast presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney as a “joker” who believes in “bullshit” about fixing the federal deficit.

New York Daily News columnist S.E. Cupp is the subject of a shocking and tasteless photoshop job in a recent print issue of Hustler Magazine. The image below depicts Cupp engaging in a sexual act under the headline “celebrity fantasy.”

A new survey from Farleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind finds that people who watch no news at all can answer more questions about international current events than people who watch cable news outlets like Fox News and MSNBC. The survey also finds that Fox News viewers are the worst-informed on domestic and international current events, while NPR listeners are the best-informed.

Here at Mediaite, our daily routine relies heavily on multiple television sets playing a multitude of cable news programs that provide fodder for our reporting and occasionally snarky commentary. It’s safe to say that this website, and our jobs, would not exist without the television set. But there’s another device we daily take for granted: the remote control.

Rawr! Lad mag Maxim has announced its rankings for the annual Hot 100, “The Definitive List Of The World’s Most Beautiful Women”, which this year made a popular vote open to its readers. While many of the usual suspects made the list — like Leonardo DiCaprio‘s ex-girlfriend Bar Refaeli and Daily Show correspondent Olivia Munn — readers awarded Stephen Colbert the list’s #69 position. Wink.

Several weeks after President Obama‘s completed “evolution” on gay marriage, a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, to be released later today, shows that the announcement seems to have had very little effect on voters. NBC reports that the poll shows a combined 17 percent say the president’s announcement makes them “much more likely” or “somewhat more likely” to vote for him in November. That’s compared with a combined 20 percent who say they are now more likely to vote for staunchly anti-gay marriage Republican Mitt Romney.

Yesterday we wrote about Penn Jillette going off on President Obama. However, he wasn’t the only entertainment icon to give his (negative) thoughts on a 2012 presidential candidate. Bruce Willis did an interview with Esquire Magazine. In it, the actor explained that he’s grown tired of interviews because he knows that he’ll say something he shouldn’t like dissing Mitt Romney.

So much for thinking that drug legalization was a lightning-rod issue that no mainstream politician could ever support without facing major backlash. A new poll from Rasmussen reports that “a solid majority of voters nationwide favor legalizing and regulating marijuana similar to the way alcohol and tobacco cigarettes are currently regulated.” That “solid majority” constitutes 56% of the Likely Voters polled by Rasmussen. 36% of Americans are opposed to legalizing and regulating.

A massive expose in the L.A. Times on Tuesday resurrects the political attack on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s wife Ann Romney and her expensive hobby of keeping and riding dressage horses. The L.A. Times reveals a lawsuit that the Romney’s had to settle in which the extent of their addiction to pricey hobby riding. However, while the L.A. Times refrains from drawing political conclusions from their expose, those conclusions had been made in the past by other media outlets that sought to shed light on Ann Romney’s pecuniary habits.

In an editorial published Tuesday, former MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan warns of the possibility of racially charged violence if George Zimmerman is acquitted in the murder trial of Trayvon Martin. Buchanan links the possibility of Zimmerman’s acquittal to the 1992 trail of several L.A. police officers who were cleared of charges in the beating of Rodney King that provoked a week of wide-spread violence.

The Daily Caller reports that Friday afternoon at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs Food and Global Agriculture (mouthful!) symposium, U2 singer and humanitarian Bono declared that even though “we are broke,” we need to increase foreign aid budgets. And to those who disagree? Well, Bono says you’re all “brain-dead, heart-dead ideologues or controversialists.”

Politico’s Dylan Byers reports Monday that Rush Limbaugh‘s radio show saw a ratings drop in several key radio markets last month, following the firebrand’s Sandra Fluke “slut” scandal. In the age 25-54 demographic, Limbaugh’s ratings fell 27 percent in New York City, 31 percent in Houston-Galveston, 40 percent in Seattle-Tacoma, and 35 percent in Jacksonville, according to Politico’s industry source.

Campbell Brown, former news anchor for CNN and NBC, has an op-ed in today’s New York Times calling out President Obama for sounding too “paternalistic” and “maddeningly off point” when he talks about women in this economy. She advised that the president to drop his “tone that can come across as grating and even condescending,” explaining that many women don’t want to be “patted on the head” by politicians pandering to them, they want “a chance to succeed based on their talent and skills.”

As we previously reported, hip-hop artist and mogul-of-many-things Jay-Z told CNN Monday that he supports President Obama‘s recent decision to back same-sex marriage, calling it “the right thing to do.” Now another successful rapper, T.I., has joined the chorus, telling MTV this week that “you should be able to do whatever you want to do.”

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has come out publically and called for a friendly PAC planning to run an ad against Obama linking him to his controversial pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright to abandon that ad. Romney reportedly said that he worries his campaign will be portrayed as an “attack campaign” running against President Barack Obama as an individual rather than against his record as President.