President Obama’s traditional Super Bowl interview has come and gone, leaving barely two hours before the nation takes a forced respite from politics to watch the New York Giants take on the New England Patriots in what is growing to be a rivalry of several chapters. The President sat down with Matt Lauer this year in the White House and chatted about the likelihood of a good game tonight, but also answered questions about tension between Israel and Iran and made a pitch for why he deserves a second term.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared on Face the Nation today to talk about the Republican presidential race and something about the Super Bowl. Giuliani didn’t endorse any particular candidate in the race, and while he admitted he personally admires all of the candidates in the field (though I’m guessing that doesn’t include Ron Paul), he’s concerned with how much they have been attacking each other during this primary season.

Now that the attacks have sharpened between GOP candidates, many in the media are lamenting (or outwardly championing for Democrats’ sake) the possibility Republicans will cannibalize one another and leave the nominee just a political carcass that a DNC intern could lead President Obama to victory over. Not quite.

On of the main tenets of Eric Bolling‘s show Follow the Money is that a free market economy is fairer and more successful than one administered by the goverment. Tonight, Rep. Charlie Rangel ventured onto the program to make the opposite case: that government jobs were in some ways more attractive, because minorities and women experienced less discrimination.

Jesse Jackson, Sr. is worried for the safety of the President. The Reverend made his way to Martin Bashir‘s show today, where he was asked to comment on Republican disrespect of the president. And while the conversation began on the topic of acceptable political discourse, literally within the same sentence Jackson turns around and warns of the possibility that “somebody shoots an AK-47 in the White House.” Huh?

Congressman Allen West spoke at a Florida GOP dinner last night, and had some fighting words for Democrats who are trying to mark Florida in the win column this November. He declared it a “battlefield” for citizens to stand on and tell the Democrats that their message is not going to resonate with the citizens of Florida. West called out not just President Obama, but Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and fellow Floridian Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

Vice President Joe Biden spoke to a conference of House Democrats in Maryland today, and in discussing the SEAL Team raid that successfully took out Osama bin Laden, he admitted that he advised President Obama not to carry out the mission because “we have to do more things to see if he’s there.” The vice president gave an insider account of the internal discussions in the White House before the order was officially carried out.

The State of the Union address is a once-in-a-year opportunity for mockery for Jon Stewart. With the President going over his past successes and future plans, there was plenty to go over: The Osama Bin Laden opening, the large amounts of tax credits, and the bad joke that made the First Lady force an awkward smile.

Rep. Barney Frank may find the 2012 Republican primary as wildly entertaining as most anyone else following the campaigns has, but he is still a little worried that the Democrats may suffer from this. This he told Lawrence O’Donnell on tonight’s The Last Word, where he explained that part of the blame for close-minded political rhetoric was voter demand, and that Democratic desire to cooperate has led to more gridlock in Congress.

Newt Gingrich‘s campaign has taken a few hits in recent weeks, and the candidate is working to reclaim the lead in time for Iowa. Yesterday the Gingrich campaign announced a new venture that panders to the all-important demographic of household pets. “Pets for Newt” will be launched shortly in an effort to show off “Gingrich’s love for animals.” This new venture naturally caught the attention of the Red Eye crew, who poked fun at the candidate for it.

Bill O’Reilly opened his show announcing a particularly exciting interview double-header today– yes, 2012 Republican candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich would be on the program, but not before an extended interview with his former nemesis, former President Bill Clinton. O’Reilly got the former President’s opinion on just about every political topic in the news today, but, naturally, the most fascinating tidbits of the interview related to Gingrich and his ability to win the nomination. President Clinton had a thought or two on this.

Judging from today’s headlines, Herman Cain has some serious explaining to do to his wife, Gloria, as yet another women has come out publicly alleging an affair with the Republican presidential candidate. It was the top story on tonight’s Last Word, and Lawrence O’Donnell noted that there was much Cain had to apologize to his wife for. But the affairs were low on the totem poll for O’Donnell, who recalled a comment by Cain that black voters who registered Democrat were “brainwashed” into doing so. It turns out Gloria Cain is a Democrat, and likely voted for Obama in 2008.

The man who has been catapulted into the spotlight as the single most important political character in the collapse of the Congressional Supercommittee on the budget is still saying no to any and all taxes. Grover Norquist the Americans for Tax Reform head who, despite not being a public servant or member of the media, keeps having fingers pointed at him for pulling the strings in the Republican Congress was on Meet the Press today and explained, once again, that his tax pledge was not with him but “the American people”

Who is Grover Norquist? The anti-tax personality has seemingly blown up into a Republican superstar/Democratic bogeyman out of nowhere, as some members of the committee blame his organization, Americans for Tax Reform, and the pledge many Republicans signed not to raise taxes for the committee’s failure. Norquist appeared on The Situation Room today in response to the super-committee’s failure and his alleged role in the affair, which he couldn’t help but call “sort of funny.”

The Congressional Super-Committee which rose out of last summer’s debt deadlock in Congress has a deadline approaching, and it appears nowhere near cutting a budget deal with hours to the deadline. With that in mind, both the Democratic and Republican chairs of the committee– Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, respectively–took to the Sunday talk show circuit to explain their impending failure, with Sen. Murray blaming Republicans for not having a mentality of “shared sacrifice” while Rep. Hensarling argued Democrats wanted to raise taxes exorbitantly.

With the possibility of making it to a primary increasingly slim for Herman Cain as he faces a number of sexual harassment accusations, Charles Krauthammer visited Bill O’Reilly tonight to give a review of his press conference. Krauthammer was impressed with Cain’s “high wire act” but warned him that he had made one mistake that had surfaced before– accusing the Democrats of having something to do with the story surfacing, after his chief of staff previously accused the Perry campaign of the same.

On CNN’s State of the Union today, former Obama advisor David Axelrod expressed his frustration on Congressional inaction on many important issues related to the economy and, more specifically, the inability of Republicans to come together with the president on issues they normally agree with.

As Justin Bieber, the pop confection who made “Blagojevich hair” look cool, inches ever so close to adulthood, he will yearn to participate in that sort of depraved activity that leaves most adults who indulge it morally bankrupt: politics. And as he discovers this political identity within him, he will begin to say polarizing things like “I don’t really believe in abortion” and “there are some senators who should really be in jail.” This time, Bieber is in hot water for expressing the latter sentiment– against, of all people, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.

Democrats are not the reason the Tea Party exists. But by ignoring the Tea Party — or in many cases, mocking it — until it was far too late, Democrats were ill-prepared to deal with the fallout that led to an unmerciful electoral defeat in the 2010 midterm elections. For instance, at one point Democrats were doing Republicans’ work for them. They figured tying the Tea Party to Republicans would yield a negative reaction from voters. Nope, not really. Instead, the Tea Party energized the Republican base and created the wave that rode the GOP to victory.

On Fox News Sunday today, Congressman Eric Cantor clarified remarks he made last week about the Occupy Wall Street protests and expressed personal concerns with some of his colleagues who have been publicly allying themselves with the movement in going after big business and the financial sector. Chris Wallace played a clip of Cantor saying he was “worried” about the Occupy Wall Street “mobs” that have been spreading throughout the U.S.

With the 2012 elections looming, the media has dedicated much of its time these past few weeks to figuring out the ultimate Republican field to challenge President Obama. On her program today, Rachel Maddow warned that to worry too much about who would actually end up on the ballot would be dropping the ball, because it was the financial infrastructure behind the Republican Party, led by Karl Rove, that would be doing the heavy lifting, and has already begun to do so.

O’Reilly Factor producer Jesse Watters is more commonly found confronting random college students (and Rep. Ron Paul), but tonight, Bill O’Reilly let him free in the halls of Congress to inquire of Rep. Maxine Waters several items of note, namely why she wants the Tea Party to “go straight to Hell.”

Perennial Green Party candidate/professional election spoiler Ralph Nader is starting to get his voice back just in time for the 2012 elections, and while he has been clear that he isn’t running this time around, he is looking for Democrats to give President Obama a primary challenge. On The Last Word tonight, Nader railed against “your corporate masters” and the “two-party dictatorship” to Lawrence O’Donnell, who managed to only get about one question in: why do people think of Nader as a tool with which Republicans keep getting reelected?

Ralph Nader, Cornel West and 45 other “distinguished leaders” have joined forces in search of a “recognizable, articulate” candidate who could pose a challenge to President Barack Obama as he campaigns for reelection. Never a content Democrat, Nader says it’s “very unlikely” that he will run himself, and that this challenge is not meant to hinder Obama’s chances of reelection. “I just want all these liberal, progressive agendas to be robustly debated. Otherwise, there will be a de facto blackout of their discussion,” he told the Washington Post yesterday.

Earlier today, we told you about Democratic strategist James Carville‘s CNN.com op-ed piece, which offered some characteristically blunt advice for the President: “Panic!” CNN’s John King aptly described Carville’s advice as “the political version of a family intervention.” Carville explained that dire times call for more drastic measures, opining that it is high time the White House demonstrates to the American people that it “gets it” by supplying “something different” — like, for example, holding people accountable.