On Thursday night’s edition of Current TV’s The Young Turks, host Cenk Uygur blasted CNN’s Erin Burnett (again) in a segment called “Sh*t Erin Says,” accusing the OutFront host of “right-wing talking points and scaring retired people” during an interview with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). At issue was Burnett’s suggestion that an increase in taxes on capital gains and dividends would hurt retirees, when such income is overwhelmingly made by millionaires.

They grow up so fast, don’t they? Online political media giant Politico turns five years old today, and to celebrate, the site posted a video roast by some quotable notables in the political media world. While the site has arguably earned the right to toot its own horn at least once every half-decade, did they really have to overshadow the birthday of Saved By The Bell actress Tiffani-Amber Thiessen?

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales was a guest on Erin Burnett OutFront Tuesday night, and said that while he’s a believer in protecting copyright, and believes that the system in place — where a copyright holder tells a site to take something down — works best, he’s against “placing all kinds of burdens on community-generated” sites, which burden them with the impossible task of policing everything that their users are doing.

Republican Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum has made a name for himself for his constant sporting of a sweater vest on the campaign trail. Now, his campaign is seizing the opportunity and offering embroidered “Santorum 2012″ sweater vests as a clever fundraising effort.

Last night on The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert spent the better part of the first half of his show mocking a late-night failure by Erin Burnett to properly “flick” a graphic from one touchscreen to another. It quickly got Burnett’s attention, apparently, as she had a few corrections for the fake news host tonight– and a challenge for him to come flick along with her.

Stephen Colbert took CNN’s Erin Burnett to task for her lackluster “flicking” abilities on their election studio’s touch screen, and showed her how it was done. “Erin, you clearly need a lesson in advanced flickology!” Colbert exclaimed.

Do you remember those all-nighters in college, during finals period, where everyone would mellow out for a bit before heading out for a cup of coffee and then have a collective caffeine-induced laughing fit over nothing in particular? Prepare to get nostalgic, because that is apparently what happened to the CNN Election Center crew around 1:30 AM tonight as they waited for election results, and a Magic Wall mishap sent the show spiraling out of control.

Former senator John Edwards is trying to have his trial delayed (again), this time citing an undisclosed medical issue. CNN’s Erin Burnett sat down with network legal contributor Paul Callan (And with a bottle of booze on her desk. Get it, girl.) to discuss this latest wrinkle in the case against Edwards.

It’s amazing, in the world of ratings, how many different conclusions can be drawn from the same set of numbers. Someone can be winning a nightly battle in “total viewers,” but lose in the 25-54 year-old demo. An anchor may be up a certain percentage from a year ago, but be down compared to the previous month. There are so many opportunities for twisted language and clever turns of phrases that when networks come out with their year-end ratings press releases, there’s room enough for everyone to just say wonderful things about their own shows, and not have to bring up those on rival networks.

Former Vice-President Dick Cheney appeared as a guest on Erin Burnett OutFront Tuesday night, and hit on topics ranging from what President Barack Obama should have done with the downed drone in Iran to his thoughts on the Arab Spring. Cheney told Burnett that it was his understanding that President Obama had three choices when he learned about the downed drone — sending in people to recover it, destroying it with an airstrike, or asking for them to return it. While Cheney believed the first option would have been very difficult, he told Burnett that the second would have been a much better option than what the President eventually did.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) appeared as a guest on OutFront Tuesday night, and he took the occasion to destroy Newt Gingrich as a self-centered egomaniac who will cause more problems than he will solve if he’s elected President. King pulled no punches, saying that Gingrich, “does not have the capacity to control himself,” and charging him with an inability to stay focused.

When you see Erin Burnett‘s 7 p.m. show Monday night, know that she’s putting a little more effort into this particular program — she’s broadcasting live from the United Arab Emirates, where it will be 4 a.m. local time. The show will feature interviews with UAE prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and a protester who was just released from jail after an eight-month term. Burnett also visited a police symposium that addressed terrorism and how to coordinate Middle East police departments in dealing with it. In the midst of preparing for a show halfway across the globe, Burnett graciously took some time out from her show prep to talk about the fun associated with world travel, the excitement of not sleeping for three days, and her plans on adding to her extensive miniature camel collection.

Herman Cain‘s complete mind lapse on Libya today seems to have raised more eyebrows than even his sexual harassment scandal, but at least one news anchor is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. On her program today, Erin Burnett offered that she, for one, did not believe he knew nothing about Libya, but that “his mind is so busy with what’s going on and he’s so exhausted…that he’s not able to function anymore.

Vinnie Politan, host of HLN’s Prime News, rebounded nicely from a Tuesday night low of 45,000 viewers in the 25-54 year-old demo to capture his second straight second-place finish in the 6 p.m. time slot, besting Al Sharpton and John King with 208,000 demo viewers on Friday night (he pulled 204,000 on Thursday). In fact, Politan’s demo numbers were behind just Rachel Maddow‘s for the highest among non-FOX News shows. He had better numbers than any show on HLN and CNN, and even took down the mighty MSNBC late-night specials.

Erin Burnett pulls no punches, no matter how adorable her interview subjects are. Tonight may have been a particularly difficult challenge to keeping her guest honest, though, as she sat down with one of the cutest analysts in American politics (apparently?) tonight: Sesame Street’s Elmo. The cheery creature was delighted to discuss his career and propose an innovative solution to political stalemates in Washington: play dates.

A day after having a Republican debate thrown into the mix, normalcy returned, somewhat, to the cable news ratings, with CNN falling back on its pre-debate numbers and FOX regaining a stranglehold on the top spot. There was, however, some notable movement buried in the ratings.

During CNN’s pre-debate coverage, Erin Burnett was audibly drowned out Occupy Vegas protestors that shouted down her commentary by chanting “Banks got bailed out! We got sold out!”

CNN’s Erin Burnett sat down with GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain on her show, where the two engaged in the requisite discussion on Cain’s 9-9-9 plan and, of course, whether he is “the flavor of the month” or here to stay. He insists, of course, on the latter. “I am for real,” he told Burnett. “This is Herman Cain. They will know that I am in this to win it. I am not in this to try and raise my profile or get a TV show.”

On her show this evening, CNN’s Erin Burnett and her guest, Newsweek/Daily Beast columnist John Avalon, discussed GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain’s “momentum” as he continues his campaign.

The two circled back to Burnett’s interview with Cain, during which he shared that he only has “several hundred thousand dollars” at his disposal.

Young Turks host Cenk Uygur, soon to join CurrentTV as Keith Olbermann‘s lead-in, lit into freshly-minted CNN OutFront host Erin Burnett over what he saw as a smug, fact-challenged segment ridiculing the Occupy Wall Street protest. Uygur delivered a blistering critique of Burnett on The Young Turks this week. When I asked him about the media’s coverage of the protests, he had praise for some, but slammed Fox News, and called much of the mainstream media’s reporting on this “abhorrent.”

When Erin Burnett said she’d be traveling far and wide to find her stories during promos for her new show OutFront, she wasn’t joking. Burnett’s debut this evening took her to Pakistan and China and sat her down with both Secretary of Defense Leon Pannetta (on national security) and Donald Trump (on Amanda Knox?). But it was her foray to the Occupy Wall Street protests where the show found its voice: going to where the news is, trying to get answers from newsmakers, and fighting misconceptions.

Piers Morgan stopped by the set of his CNN colleague (and former Celebrity Apprentice guest) Erin Burnett‘s new show to wish her… well. “Total, abject failure.” In the nicest way possible, of course. Burnett, you see, had tried to get Morgan fired from the reality show competition by telling host Donald Trump that he was, as Morgan joked, a “repulsive human being.” “You and Jim Kramer. Stuck the knife straight in my back,” he continued. “So I’ve just come to wish you total, abject failure.”

The premiere of CNN’s new show Erin Burnett: OutFront is only a few days away and one of the big dogs at the network, Wolf Blitzer, has recorded a video message for his new colleague. In it, Blitzer tells Burnett just what someone would want to hear right before starting a new job; namely that she’s not going to ever leave the office.

How fun!

Ron Suskind‘s new book Confidence Men has been making waves for its unflattering portrayal of an Obama White House replete with sexism and incompetence. Now, Suskind himself is in the spotlight… along with CNN’s Erin Burnett and a singer from Detroit. Sit back, grab a box of Jujubes, give us some, and then allow us to explain the strange, sad saga of Erin Burkett….

Details have finally emerged about Erin Burnett‘s new CNN show, revealed just now via the former CNBC hosts twitter feed. Burnett tweeted out a link to a 10 second promotional video that announces the title of her new show, OutFront, also revealing a gritty-but-cool-yet-still-accessible graphics package and soundtrack that befits the new CNN program for 7PM. No specific debut date was announced, though her tweet did say “in September.”