Pegged on the media frenzy surrounding Newark Mayor Cory Booker‘s comments about President Barack Obama‘s attacks on Mitt Romney‘s record at Bain Capital, Rev. Al Sharpton had a fiery segment with former RNC Chairman Michael Steele and Gov. Ed Rendell. Sharpton ended by questioning Booker’s comments, while Steele encouraged them.

MSNBC host Chris Matthews slammed the Sunday morning institution Meet the Press on his program on Monday. He said that Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker’s engaged in “sabotage,” disabling a major attack on former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s tenure with the private equity firm Bain Capital. But what is perhaps most shocking is how quickly the attacks on Bain have come apart when one prominent voice too many departs from the preferred line on Bain. With the Bain attacks on life support, the Obama campaign may find itself having to break out its strongest attacks against Romney far earlier than it would have preferred.

Ken Bennett, Arizona’s secretary of state, made headlines late last week following an interview in which he said it’s “possible” he’d take President Barack Obama off the state’s ballot without birth certificate confirmation from Hawaii. Responding to his request, Hawaii officials said there are further steps Bennett needs to take — including proving that he need such confirmation.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker caused quite a stir when he criticized President Barack Obama‘s attack on Bain Capital. Rather inevitably, Mitt Romney‘s campaign has released an ad featuring Booker (who is an Obama surrogate). The message: even the president’s own party is turning against him.

Humorist, Libertarian commentator, and “the one who talks,” Penn Jillette, launched into an epic rant about what he saw as President Obama and his administration’s hypocritical views on marijuana laws in the country.

I’m sorry, not hypocritical. Beyond hypocritical.

Rep. Barney Frank is poised to become the first member of Congress in history to be in a same-sex marriage soon, and while his party, particularly in his home state of Massachusetts, had much to do with the rights of same-sex couples to marry, the chief executive of the Democrats (and the nation) is not invited. The reason, Rep. Frank told C-SPAN? “It would ruin the party to have the Secret Service.”

The release of portions of the White House’s visitor logs on Monday show that Obama administration officials took several meetings with registered lobbyists in January. The President himself took some heat in February of last year when it was revealed that he met with lobbyists outside of the reach of the regularly disclosed White House visitor log. This should not be newsworthy but for the President’s oft-broken 2008 pledge to limit the access of registered lobbyists to his administration. Amid a contentious presidential election when nothing seems sacred and all offenses appear to be fodder for political attacks, President Obama’s political opponents should restrain themselves when confronted by the powerful urge to make hay of these meetings. To do so would be to embrace a foolish attack on America’s very system of government.

“[Cory] Booker would rather be seen on Oprah’s couch than in City Hall,” former Newark mayor Sharpe James remarked of a successor he once defeated long ago, before he became a convicted felon, to the Star-Ledger shortly after leaving jail. Mayor Cory Booker– the media darling, the movie star, the executive of a post-industrial tragedy of a city– has always had an image of being just a bit on the safe side for a New Jersey politician, a little too much of a goody two-shoes. Perhaps knowing, perhaps otherwise, the Mayor tore off the yoke of of a pristine reputation from his chest yesterday in what many are considering a “gaffe”: attacking the President of his party (and his nation) with the vocabulary of a true New Jersey politician. And by turning the Democratic National Committee against him, Mayor Booker may have just put potential 2012 gubernatorial rival Gov. Chris Christie in checkmate.

Former Bush White House Press Secretary and host of The Five, Dana Perino, appeared on Fox & Friends on Monday to discuss what she described as “two broadsides” by Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker and former CNN anchor Campbell Brown who chided the Obama campaign for their attacks on Bain Capital and their outreach to women voters respectively. Perino said that instead of taking this friendly advice, the Obama campaign decided to “basically trash two of their friends.”

During an appearance on Meet the Press, Newark Mayor Cory Booker decried “nauseating” campaign tactics coming from both parties, singling out in particular attacks from the Obama campaign on Mitt Romney’s private sector experience at Bain Capital. Well, Booker slightly backtracked from his remarks on YouTube, explaining that while he may have an issue with how negative the race has become, he thinks Romney’s ties to Bain Capital are certainly fair game for the Obama campaign, and even encouraged them to look into the Republican candidate’s business past.

It’s only a matter of time before this presidential race turns nasty. And while everyone in the media has their popcorn makers ready for the inevitable ad war, both campaigns have, so far, acted as deterrents for some of the more highly charged rhetoric in the campaign. Mitt Romney publicly shut down the idea that he would capitalize on Reverend Jeremiah Wright to attack President Obama. Chris Matthews predicted on his show today that the likely 2012 winner will the the candidate who goes further in getting negative against their opponent.

Today’s Fox News Sunday panel took on recent attempts by a conservative Super PAC to bring Reverend Jeremiah Wright back into the news to link him and his views to President Obama. Karl Rove, a Super PAC leader of his own, said that bringing up Reverend Wright now, four years after it was dismissed as a viable campaign tactic by John McCain, is a “stupid” tactic for the Republicans to take and they should back off of that line of attack.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi predicted on ABC’s This Week today that the Democrats will retake the House of Representatives in November after two years of being in the minority. George Stephanopoulos recounted to Pelosi the claims of Speaker John Boehner that if the election is about the economy, the advantage goes to the Republicans. Pelosi was quick to contrast Obama’s economic record with what she perceives to be stonewalling on the part of Congressional Republicans.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker sat in on today’s Meet the Press panel, and during a long discussion on the economy’s impact on the 2012 presidential election, Booker made it clear he thinks the election should be focused on the economy and not on “nauseating” “crap” that has been dominating the news cycles recently. He condemned not just the Republicans’ attacks on Reverend Wright, but Democratic attacks on private equity firms to hit Mitt Romney.

Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod appeared on CNN’s State of the Union today to discuss a discarded Super PAC ad proposal that was trying to bring President Obama‘s old pastor Reverend Wright back into the race. Some liberal pundits have been saying that because conservatives think Wright is fair game, Mitt Romney‘s Mormon faith should be on the table as well. Axelrod was quick to repudiate any attacks on Romney’s religion, and contrasted the Obama team’s handling of that issue with how Romney’s team has handled the Wright situation.

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.”

Speaking at a Republican party event in South Carolina over the weekend, Florida Senator Marco Rubio called President Obama a divisive leader, and accused the Commander-in-Chief of being a “very different person” now than he was in 2008. Rubio told the crowd that he has “not seen such a divisive figure in modern American history than we have over the last three and one-half years.”

Almost two weeks after President Obama announced his support of marriage equality, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People voted this weekend to officially endorse gay marriage. The social issue has proved to be a divisive one in the African-American community. All but two of the members of the NAACP’s board voted in favor of a resolution yesterday that would affirm the organization’s “support [of] marriage equality consistent with equal protection under the law.”

This weekend’s NATO summit in Chicago has already attracted some unsavory behavior from protesters, as the AP reports today that three protesters have been arrested for conspiracy to commit acts of terror after police discovered a plan to make Molotov cocktails to throw into the Obama Campaign headquarters and Mayor Rahm Emanuel‘s house, an arrest their defense attorney called “propaganda to create a climate of fear.”

President Obama, at least in part, soured on the media in his public statements recently, telling the graduates at Barnard College that America has to overcome the challenge of a media where “good news doesn’t sell as well as bad news.” On Fox News Watch today, the panel analyzed his statements, somewhat shocked that a President most on the panel perceived to have benefitted from a media bias in 2008 would turn on the press.

Hilary Rosen, whose profile as a pundit was raised perhaps the highest of any other during the peak of the “War on Women” contraception and motherhood debate, told CNN today that she “hated” the term “War on Women” and found the concept “disturbing.” Rosen, on a panel to debate women as a political constituency with Margaret Hoover and host Christine Romans, explained that it did not make sense to “think of women as a constituency– we are the majority,” and she and Hoover agreed that, as far as the economy goes, women are just as much at its mercy as men.

Comedian Jon Lovitz has somehow become a Fox News media darling after a comedy rant against President Obama over tax policy, and he made his way Thursday night to Hannity after appearances with Megyn Kelly and Bill O’Reilly earlier this week. Hannity thanked him for his “refreshing” honesty, asking whether he has felt a backlash and, of course, giving him a hard time for voting for President Obama the first time around. Lovitz wouldn’t say whether he has decided to, but he wasn’t particularly happy with the President’s language as of late.

The story of a Super PAC planning on resuscitating Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a campaign issue has raised questions on both sides of the aisle– from the ethics of doing so to why the mainstream media avoided the topic. On Fox & Friends this morning, Jonah Goldberg noted that he found in the mainstream media a “deep, nagging insecurity” about the way they handled the 2008 campaign, one that has made them somewhat hesitant to bring up issues from 2008 that could politically help the President.

It is 2012 and the nation faces a brand new presidential election, but somehow Rev. Jeremiah Wright has become, once again, a focal point in the campaign, due in some part to a Super PAC proposal the New York Times dug up suggesting hammering that point into the political consciousness of voters. On last night’s Ed Show, host Ed Schultz argued the fairness and relevance of bringing up Wright again, and how Mitt Romney may be exposing himself to attack over his Mormon faith if he allows his campaign to go after Wright.

Watching the prim, polished Rachel Maddow show as it exists today– MSNBC’s flagship– it’s hard to recall the days Rachel Maddow was a radio host first and foremost, with some gigs on TV on the side. Her first regular stint on national television was on The Situation with Tucker Carlson– a news opinion program that preceded both Wolf Blitzer‘s The Situation Room and Jersey Shore‘s Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino, and eventually became simply Tucker, giving way to a series of programs before ceding the 9PM MSNBC spot to Maddow herself.