On The View Wednesday, a politically volatile discussion arose over a Texas judge’s decision to uphold an anti-abortion mandate that requires women to see the ultrasound of their fetus before they can terminate their pregnancies. Elisabeth Hasselbeck spoke passionately in favor of the requirement. “To me, it doesn’t make sense why you wouldn’t!” Hasselbeck exclaimed. “Why you would ask for an X-ray for those things or an ultrasound but not in this case? ” “It is such a tremendous decision,” Walters fired back. “I think that in order to even think about having an abortion, to give up a child that is obviously unwanted, that’s why you’re doing it…with so much fear of what you’re doing and guilt…then to have to go and be forced to hear, to see the fetus, to hear the heartbeat, to put more guilt on you, I think is heartbreaking.”

The View‘s Elisabeth Hasselbeck is none too happy with how the folks at NBC handled last night’s GOP debate in Florida, calling the debate “crappy” and accusing the network of displaying an anti-Republican bias.

HBO’s Bill Maher paid a little visit to E!’s Chelsea Lately, where he revisited a certain pesky little story that has been following him around for nearly a year now. Maher told host Chelsea Handler that his February 2011 joke involving The View‘s Elisabeth Hasselbeck and CBS’ Lara Logan had not been in reference to the sexual violence Logan endured while covering the uprising in Egypt. Maher, for those who don’t remember, joked that the U.S. should trade Hasselbeck for Logan, who had been captured the day before.

With the pressure hitting the Herman Cain campaign increasing as his sexual harassment accusations give way to new philandering claims, the debate over whether his personal failings should matter in politics was the topic du jour at The View. Somewhat surprisingly, it was Whoopi Goldberg who seemed to care the least about his personal life, noting that “as long as you are not boning the country,” she didn’t mind the action on the side. And with that, Goldberg got bleeped, and finally has something in common with Ann Coulter.

On Tuesday’s The View, Elisabeth Hasselbeck confronted Bill Maher over a joke he made about her in February, suggesting that America send her to Egypt in exchange for Lara Logan. The confrontation was a little awkward and her co-hosts — most notably Joy Behar — kind of left her out to dry.

Yesterday morning, Bill Maher appeared on the set of The View and instead of a convivial discussion about the topics of the day or a promotion of whatever book he was trying to sell, co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck confronted the provocateur over what she deemed an inappropriate joke in what was a pretty uncomfortable interview. Cut to last night’s setting of The Late Show where host David Letterman asked Maher to explain what happened.

The View discussed New Jersey Governor Chris Christie‘s potential run for the White House and the touchy subject of Christie’s weight took center stage. Whoopi Goldberg asked the audience if they could see him as president. The crowd unanimously responded no. When asked why, the Governor’s “heftiness” was cited as a chief reason.

When the liberal Joy Behar and the conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck are in complete agreement against you, then you know you’re really in trouble. Congressman Anthony Weiner’s ongoing ordeal has united the The View co-hosts, and when you throw in the fact that Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd agree with them too, according to these ladies it’s unanimous: Weiner must resign, and as soon as possible.

File this under the “duh” category. The former aide to Sarah Palin and author of the new book Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of Our Tumultuous Years, Frank Bailey, is making the rounds promoting his tale and happily unleashing the most outrageous statements possible to draw himself attention and sell books.

Alex Jones, a controversial radio host and friend of Charlie Sheen, appeared on The View today to discuss Sheen’s strange behavior, however, Jones managed to squeeze in some very off-topic conspiracy theories that left co-hosts Barbara Walters, Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Whoopi Goldberg struggling to maintain control. It’s not surprising that Jones does not have many fans on the right or the left, being a prominent 9/11 Truther and a peddler of other conspiracies, thus many wondered why he was invited to appear at all?

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is proving he’s not afraid of anyone on his media tour, and after escaping some recent comedic and serious interviews virtually unscathed, he was now ready to enter the lion’s den known as The View. The most interesting moment came when Barbara Walters may have caught Rumsfeld a little off-guard, as she twice asked Rumsfeld if he wanted to apologize to the families of soldiers who died during the Iraq war.

Last night comedian Bill Maher appeared on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell and took on Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck and a new rival he was amused to learn he was feuding with: co-host of The View Elisabeth Hasselbeck. He seemed most disturbed with O’Reilly’s President Obama interview and labeled it “unpatriotic” to conduct an interview in such a way.

In the days following the massacre in Tucson, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has become a focal point in the media conversation about the shootings. A confluence of events has linked Palin to the shooting, despite a lack of any evidence of a causal link. Aside from some ludicrous backstopping by an aide and a partial email to Glenn Beck, however, the normally loquacious media supernova has been uncharacteristically silent on this issue.

Well, it’s pretty clear WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange can get himself booked on The View.

The hosts chuckled at TIME‘s selection of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg as Billionaire Person of the Year, conceding that, sure, Facebook is clearly a global big deal and Zuckerberg’s obviously smart.

But the Viewsters say the guy who’s really POTY-worthy is Assange.

Is Anderson Cooper getting a jump on starting a beef with his soon-to-be rivals of daytime television? The future star of Anderson saw the ladies of The View mock the House Weeper-elect John Boehner on Monday, but he wasn’t laughing along. No, the CNNer slapped the women onto the RidicuList, his PG-rated version of Keith Olbermann‘s Worst Person in the World. “Since when did the ladies on The View turn into Dr. Evil from Austin Powers?” he asked with disappointment.

While a weepy 60 Minutes interview with Speaker-elect John Boehner had CBS claiming that real men do cry, the real women of The View are also crying—with laughter. After showing the teary clip to their audience, the ladies began to discuss what they’d just seen. Barbara Walters went first. “This guy has an emotional problem,” she said. “Every time that he talks about anything that’s not ‘raise taxes,’ he cries.”

Whoopi Goldberg may have just won the title of the TSA’s most rigorous celebrity supporter in this late-autumn junk-touching scandal. After admitting she didn’t mind a good “squeeze” to Mike Huckabee last week, the View co-host took a hard line of attack on the proposed TSA “Opt-Out Day” protest scheduled for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. That event was not only rude, Goldberg contends– it was terrorism.

This afternoon, American treasure Stephen Colbert poked fun at View co-hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg’s extreme reaction to Bill O’Reilly in the best possible way: by mock-storming off of their set.

Aaron Sorkin, creator of the West Wing and writer of the much-anticipated Mark Zuckerberg biopic The Social Network thinks Facebook is bad. Sorkin appeared on The View this morning and told the ladies there that the social networking site is “divisive.”

Needless to say, the women of The View (who have all probably been called some variation of ‘witchy’ in their day) took some time today to weigh on Christine O’Donnell‘s “witchcraft” remark. Elisabeth Hasselbeck tangled with Joy Behar over whether it was even fair to be discussing O’Donnell’s witchy history.

We see more and more reality shows now than ever, and that means more and more reality “stars.” But which reality TV stars have become actually famous? Here’s our list of the top 10.

Note: to make the list, you had to get your start on a reality show that you technically couldn’t get famous for anyway – American Idol or Project Runway contestants, for example, don’t make the cut.

After sitting down with President Obama this morning on The View, co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck visited Hannity to share her thoughts on the experience, and had plenty of positive things to say about the President– aside from his politics, that is. Somewhat surprisingly, Sean Hannity agrees– and praises Obama for choosing to appear on the program.

President Obama made his much-anticipated appearance on The View today. Actually, I’m not really sure how anticipated it was, per se — my Twitter feed was pretty dead through the hour. But it was definitely discussed! People were worried that an appearance on The View was beneath President Obama. Turns out it may have been one of the better hours he has spent.

Our friends at Gossip Cop have cracked open a potentially huge story that perfectly captures the divided nation in which we now find ourselves. During the much criticized taping of The View this morning, President Obama revealed that he does not have Justin Beiber on his iPod. Given that Bieber is a Canadian pop star, this clearly has Foreign Policy implications.

Some pretty crazy things have been happening on The View lately, and the show is about to get even more interesting. That’s because President Barack Obama is scheduled to appear as a guest on this Thursday’s broadcast, becoming the first sitting president to ever appear on a daytime talk show.