Since his “liberation” from the American Enterprise Institute, David Frum is enjoying some newfound freedom. Among the superpowers that other Republicans lack is the ability to take a shot at radio host Rush Limbaugh. On Reliable Sources yesterday, the question of the “appropriateness” of President Obama‘s Limbaugh name-check came up again, and Frum took the opportunity to put the radio host’s audience numbers in perspective. While Limbaugh claims a “weekly audience” of 20 million, Frum cuts his influence on American politics down to size.

MSNBC anchor David Shuster, while not technically on the “White House beat,” has lots of experience covering the White House both from within and without. In the balance of our interview, he offers insights into the process that differ significantly from what we’ve heard in other Inside the White House Press Corps interviews. As promised, here is my full interview with Shuster, in which he discusses covering the White House, lazy reporters, interviewing space aliens, plus the first two parts.

MSNBC’s David Shuster has been absent from Twitter for a little over a month after taking heat from MSNBC for unloading on costume journalist James O’Keefe. In this second preview from my interview with Shuster, I asked him how he feels about the “Free David Shuster” campaign, and Twitter in general.

Since it was fresh in my mind, I also asked him about the interruption-filled Brett Baier interview of President Obama.

Outgoing White House Communications Director Anita Dunn made a parting strafing run at Fox News on Friday, calling the network out for airing misleading crowd footage, jumping the gun on an announcement of a Presidential interview and letting its opinion tail wag the news dog. In doing so, she heavily name-checked her should-be successor, The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart. Fox News’ spokespeople responded swiftly, passively and aggressively.

As we reported yesterday, the eagle eyes of The Daily Show noticed that Sean Hannity substituted news footage from the 9/12 rally for last week’s much-lower-attended Super Bowl of Freedom. The effect was to make the latter event seem like a much bigger deal than it was.

On the heels of what might be the beginning of a truce between Fox News and the Obama administration, the White House is now calling out another major news organization. Late last night, the White House’s Recovery Implementation Office released a detailed rebuttal of what it called a “misleading” report by the Associated Press. While the AP hasn’t been stripped of its legitimacy, the reaction does seem a little bit harsh.

On Thursday night, Fox News reported that the “Obama administration” had taken its “first concrete step” in treating Fox News Channel like it’s not a real news organization, excluding them from a press event. Through our own reporting, Mediaite has learned that Fox News’ report of this incident was, at best, incomplete and self-serving, and serves as a neat encapsulation of what Robert Gibbs told us the first time we asked him if the White House was “bullying” Fox News.

For all the talk about the White House squaring off against Fox News, it’s easy to forget that it is essentially the job of any White House Press Secretary to mitigate the media’s handling of the administration and “work the refs.” We’re seeing it now, but let’s remember that we’ve been here before, in the not so distant past, but on the other side of the aisle: President George W. Bush routinely called out NBC and MSNBC for blurring the line between “news” and “opinion.”

Does Bill O’Reilly think Fox News favors the Republican party?

Maybe not, but he almost said as much last night on The O’Reilly Factor, during a segment about the ongoing feud between Fox News and the White House.