CNN contributor and Editor-in-Chief of Big Journalism Dana Loesch took a lot of flak over the weekend for her declaration of solidarity with the four Marines who videotaped themselves urinating on the corpses of alleged Taliban fighters, in which she said “I’d drop trou and do it too.”

Countdown host Keith Olbermann and liberal watchdog Media Matters, among others, have called for CNN to fire Loesch over the remark, and according to Big Journalism, even Politico is in on the act.

On Saturday’s CNN Newsroom, host Don Lemon spoke with political analyst Goldie Taylor about the controversy surrounding the four US Marines who videotaped themselves urinating on the corpses of alleged Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Taylor, a former Marine, took the opportunity to call out CNN contributor Dana Loesch, calling Loesch’s remarks “disgusting,” adding “to say you would ‘drop trou’ and do the same thing, I question someone’s integrity who would say something like that.”

The Senate, led my efforts from the office of Sen. Joe Lieberman, may call on Twitter to ban accounts run by Taliban officers and supports in Afghanistan from disseminating anti-NATO information. According to the UK Telegraph, Sen. Lieberman– who worked to have al-Qaeda projects banned from Google as well– has contacted the social network’s leaders in an effort to remove accounts that promote and celebrate Taliban attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has never been known as a paragon of excellence in the human rights realm, but this recent video of Afghan police humiliating a man dressed in make-up and women’s clothing for their own amusement truly brings that reality home. The video– which, the Daily Mail notes appears to have come from an Afghan news source– shows the man pleading to be released and protesting his innocence of any crime while the police make him remove outer clothing and fake breasts.

Pakistan is blaming NATO aircraft for gunning down roughly two dozen soldiers at two separate military posts near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. President Asif Ali Zardari harshly condemned the attacks, and in retaliation Pakistan has closed off border crossings that were previously used by NATO forces to ship supplies to troops from Afghanistan.

On Fox News Sunday this weekend, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) continued the tradition of politicizing foreign policy by accusing President Obama of politicizing foreign policy, telling anchor Chris Wallace that “Iraq and Afghanistan is being run out of Chicago, not Washington, in terms of decisions.” Graham also beat the familiar drum that “Israel has been thrown under the bus” by the administration, falsely claiming that the President’s “standing in the state of Israel is very low,” despite the fact that 81% of Israelis approve of his policies.

During a diplomatic meeting, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton joked with Afghani President Hamid Karzai about Republican frontrunner Herman Cain and his comments about “Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan.”

MTV co-founder Tom Freston has an unusually optimistic view of Afghanistan. “People assume that when the U.S. leaves, the Taliban will just resume control, but Afghanistan has become a different place,” he told New York Times‘ David Carr. Freston, who spent 17 years at the helm of MTV Networks, eight or so months as president at [...]

CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux has been on the ground in Afghanistan for nearly a week on a military embed. Since her arrival in Kabul on September 8th, she has conducted a series of interviews with those most intimately involved in attempting to move Afghanistan forward, both reporting from the region on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and on the Base attack from the region that had occurred the day before.

Malveaux, then, has something of a unique perspective on the various attacks that unfolded today around 1:30 p.m. local time in Afghanistan. Taliban suicide bombers targeted several high-profile locations, including the U.S. Embassy, NATO headquarters, an airport, and an area near a local high school. So far, seven have been killed in the attacks and ensuing violence, including Afghan police officers and civilians, and seventeen have been reported injured. Current reports also have three of the four attackers are dead.

While defending the United States’ current military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, Senator John McCain acknowledged that most Americans are not in favor of further military intervention in the Middle East, and discussed how changing mores in the region have affected the influence of terrorist groups.

Real Time may be on break, but Bill Maher took a respite from his hiatus to visit Jay Leno and give him an update on how he’s been feeling about President Obama’s moves lately. After a few quick jokes about Sarah Palin and Rep. Michele Bachmann, Maher got to the President, with whom he is very dismayed. “I’m skeptical when he gives a speech because, where is the follow-up?” Maher suggested, noting that he did like the speech President Obama gave on Thursday but didn’t trust it all that much.

According to the Guardian, NATO has come forward in claiming responsibility for the death of BBC journalist Omaid Khpalwak. The 25-year-old Afghan stringer was one of 22 killed earlier this summer in an attack on the government buildings where he worked in Afghanistan’s southern Uruzgan province. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and subsequent [...]

In order for the nation-building operation in Afghanistan to be successful, most of those involved in the operation can agree that American soldiers on the ground need to express the maximum possible respect for the people and culture of the land, as Taliban sympathizers argue the U.S. forces are occupying without being welcome. This seems to be a bit of a stretch of that philosophy, however: Marines there have been told not to “fart audibly” in front of Afghans.

The Pentagon has released the names of the 30 servicemen who lost their lives when a Chinook helicopter was shot down over Afghanistan earlier this month.

As such, we’re now able to learn more about the men, one as young as 21, who died fighting for their country. CNN has interviews with some of the loved ones left behind — definitely worth a watch if you have a moment.

CNN’s John King assembled a panel yesterday to discuss whether the recent credit downgrade and the devastating loss of specialized troops in the ongoing war in Afghanistan mark these as the worst days of Barack Obama‘s presidency. He brought on a couple of individuals who know a thing or two about following presidents as they [...]

In light of the recent credit downgrade announced this weekend by the S&P (and the stock market plunge that has since followed), President Obama is speaking publicly from the White House today at 1pm. Sources reveal that he will also speak of the tragic weekend news of the downed Black Hawk helicopter in Afghanistan that led to over thirty deaths of US servicemen, many of whom who were members of SEAL Team Six.

ABC’s Martha Raddatz reports a helicopter crash in Afghanistan has killed 31 Americans, including as many as 25 Navy SEALs in one of the worst single-day U.S. losses of life since the war began. Raddatz says a senior military official told ABC News early this morning that a total of 38 people were on board the Chinook helicopter when it crashed overnight in the eastern Afghan province of Wardak. Initial reports indicate up to 25 Navy SEALs were on the aircraft at the time.

Rep. Paul Ryan took the House floor today to rail against what he considered “accounting tricks and budget gimmicks” by those attempting to carve out a budget that reduced spending. Among those, he explained, were the supposed “cuts” to defense spending that cut from predicted future spending in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he argued were not any different than repealing a bill proposing to “cover the moon with yogurt.”

New York Times correspondent Sabrina Tavernise had the assignment of covering an event Wednesday at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. She’s used to working with Times photographers, but never expected to see the face of Joao Silva, the Timesman who lost his legs and suffered massive internal injuries when a land mine exploded underneath him in Afghanistan last fall. As David Dunlap and James Estrin write in today’s Times, Tavernise “spotted a very familiar face in the crowd. Mr. Silva, wearing a T-shirt with the exclamation ‘Pow!’ written across the front, was already on the scene. He was smiling. He was walking on his prosthetic legs. And he was taking pictures.” One of those pictures is featured on the front page of today’s paper.

Michael Hastings went from crafting headlines to being one himself when he wrote “The Runaway General,” his now-infamous 2010 Rolling Stone article on General Stanley McChrystal. The profile included criticism of the Obama administration that McChrystal claimed had been “off the record,” and which eventually resulted in the General’s resignation. The story may have cost Hastings further access to high-ranking military officials, but it garnered him a book deal with Little, Brown.

Now, however, it would appear that Hastings’ book deal with the publisher has been canceled.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham does not approve of President Obama’s latest foreign policy strategy, arguing that the President’s decision to withdraw 30,000 troops from Afghanistan “may have undercut the momentum’ we achieved in the last year. “Things were moving in the right direction,” Graham suggests, but now he believes all might be lost.

President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan set the stage for a fun debate on Fox News Watch between conservative commentator Cal Thomas and liberal commentator Alan Colmes. Given that no one seems happy with Obama’s plan for Afghanistan, Thomas senses a “disturbance in the liberal force” and playfully referenced Colmes as Jabba the Hut. Yet even if liberals are upset with Obama now, Thomas is confident the media will fall back into line by election time.

Jon Huntsman is well-traveled and, as it turns out, exceptionally polite – even willing to compromise certain beliefs for the comfort of his hosts. Take a look, for instance, at this rather charming anecdote from Real Clear World.

Given the current debate in Washington over the War Powers Act and presidential authority in declaring military action, TIME Magazine decided to make the Constitution the focus of their 10th annual history issue, asking “Does it still matter?” Andrea Mitchell had TIME Managing Editor Rick Stengel on her MSNBC show to explain why they chose that particular cover story, which is guaranteed to raise some eyebrows on the left and right.

Cable news ratings, June 22, 2011:

•President Obama‘s address to the nation Wednesday night disrupted program schedules and gave Fox News an average 460,000 viewers 25-54 throughout prime time. HLN, which had extended coverage of the Casey Anthony murder trial, was second with 330,000, and MSNBC fell to fourth with 223,000. During the eight o’clock hour, Fox averaged more than half a million viewers in the demo, while MSNBC averaged 244,000.