On Tuesday morning’s Starting Point, host Soledad O’Brien led yet another discussion of the Obama administration’s decision to give non-church religious employers one year to comply with the Preventive Services Mandate, which some claim is an “attack on religious liberty.”

O’Brien did a good job of challenging that false premise, but allowed guest Rep. Marcia Blackburn (R-TN) to slip in the lie that the mandate covers the “abortion pill.”

The lie that emergency contraception is the same as the “abortion pill” RU-486 has just completed the jump from the minds of Republicans like Michele Bachmann, to Fox News opinion programming, to the broader mainstream media. On Sunday morning’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos sat mute as columnist George Will repeated the lie that the Obama administration’s Preventive Services Mandate would force religious employers to “provide…abortion-inducing drugs.”

Surging Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is the bright, shiny new center of the media universe, and that dynamic is already paying dividends. At a campaign event in New Hampshire, Santorum stripped away all of the Frank Luntz-approved happy talk about health care, and exposed Republican attitudes about health care to the cold light of day. He mocked the idea of having “something for everybody,” and clumsily equated health care inequality with freedom.

There were quite a few tense moments during Bret Baier‘s great Fox News interview with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney Tuesday night, especially when the subject turned to the individual health insurance mandate that Romney signed into law as Governor, but which he now opposes at a national level. When Baier pressed Romney, the cracks showed a little bit, as the candidate said, with an exasperated laugh, “This is a very unusual interview.”

Just when things were going so well for Mitt Romney, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has to come along and throw a wrench into the works. Romney overtook former frontrunner Rick Perry in a Fox News poll, but a favorable quote from President Obama‘s spokesman isn’t likely to be helpful. Carney was asked about the pending lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, and buttressed his response by quoting Romney as saying that the individual mandate was “a conservative idea.”

On his show today, Chris Matthews asked his panelists to name President Obama’s biggest mistake in office. Howard Fineman, Editorial Director at the Huffington Post, suggested it was none other than the controversial health care reform bill pushed through the Congress last year.

The term “Obamacare” is about as loaded a word as you could possibly imagine in the age of opinion media. On the right, it’s used as a way to not just deride the Obama administration’s efforts to reform health care, but also runaway spending and “big government.” On the left, it’s seen as a tell that whomever is using that particular term watches Fox News or listens to Rush Limbaugh. Well, during a town hall appearance today, President Obama weighed in on the term, and let his audience know that its use doesn’t bother him at all. Reclaiming the word?

Michael Steele‘s semi-regular visits to The Rachel Maddow show are becoming must-see cable news TV, if only because of how much obvious fun the pair have when they debate each other. This week, Steele and Rachel Maddow revisited the health care debate, searching for a way to “rejigger” the system in a way that both sides could agree on. Steele’s opposition to overhauling the entire system proved difficult for Maddow to negotiate with.

House Speaker John Boehner opened debate last night over the House budget proposal, and also created a font of compelling video clips for us to enjoy today. We’ve already shared Rep. Speier’s sharing of her own experience with an abortion, and now we have a much lighter and perhaps more cynical example of congressional discourse: Rep. Anthony Weiner asking his GOP congressional counterparts who oppose “government controlled health care” to give up their own health care coverage that is provided by the federal government. Gotcha?

The House of Representatives are currently debating a new bill put forth by the GOP that was originally titled “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.” Not surprisingly, the debate quickly became heated over the merits of the bill, and whether or not it in fact kills jobs. But things got most interesting when Rep. Anthony Weiner took the podium and said: “For all of you sitting and watching at home, playing the drinking game where you take a shot every time a Republican lies; you better get a designated driver.”

Buried in a segment on CNN’s The Situation Room Tuesday was a nugget of naked hypocrisy, courtesy of Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). Debating the GOP’s kabuki health care reform repeal theater with Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fl), King was asked by Wolf Blitzer if he would follow the example of freshman Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Il) and refuse his taxpayer-funded health insurance.

Last Week, PolitiFact designated the term “government takeover of health care” as its “lie of the year”.  While this title certainly holds some surface merit (the final Congressional product does not denotatively constitute a takeover), the way in which PolitiFact dismisses the Republican attack line as a total fabrication is troubling.  Furthermore, PolitiFact brushes off [...]

There are a lot of lies told each calendar year, and more so during election years. So as 2010 comes to an end, PolitiFact looked back and determined which one they thought should be their Lie of the Year. And the winner (or loser?) is: “A government takeover of health care,” a phrase they say was instrumental in stopping “President Barack Obama‘s ambitious plan to overhaul America’s health insurance system.”

When you think “Andy Griffith,” one of the first things you associate with that name may well be “All-American.” The iconic Andy Griffith Show, its fictional setting of Mayberry, N.C. that’s become shorthand for small-town utopia…even Griffith’s picture on his Wikipedia page is him getting the Presidential Medal of Freedom, for crying out loud. So why’d Bill O’Reilly take issue with him on the Factor last night?

The latest survey conducted by Quinnipiac University’s Polling Institute has found that for the first time, a majority of respondents believe the U.S. should not be involved in Afghanistan. 50 percent of the American voters polled are opposed to the war, while 44 percent answered that the U.S. is “doing the right thing” in Afghanistan.

Better late than never? Rachel Maddow expressed some, um, relief last night that the Dems have finally decided to start campaigning ahead of this year’s midterms…six weeks from now. Said Maddow: “Democrats! Campaigning! On good stuff they’ve done! I know right!”

In 2008, an ailing Senator Ted Kennedy gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention that focused, in part, on the political issue closest to his heart: health care. “This is the cause of my life,” he said, adding that he hoped one day soon, “will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American—north, south, east, west, young, old—will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege.”

But according to former President Jimmy Carter, Kennedy himself is to blame for Americans’ lack of coverage.

Many Republican legislators have suggested that the recently passed health care reform plan (“Obamacare”) is a bad idea that will hurt the nation, but it hadn’t yet been articulated that this result was intentional until this soundbite: Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, explaining the concept of “adverse selection” in insurance buyers, claims that “the plan is for this plan to fail.”

To announce the arrival of the new HealthCare.gov, President Barack Obama took to the internet to release today an instructional video on how to use the website for information on the new health care bill and personalized insurance options. Since he has “pretty good health insurance” at the moment, he went through the steps of finding insurance as if he were in the financial position he was as a newlywed.

Right-wing media watchdog Newsbusters and influential conservative uber-blogger Ed Morrissey are taking exception to a “Libtalker Meltdown” by my White House press colleague Bill Press. What kind of Toxic Talk did Bill engage in to draw fire from the right? Reacting to a new poll that says 6 in 10 Americans lack faith in President Obama, Press called Americans “spoiled” and “impatient.” I’d say he was being kind.

Even when he was in office one got the sense that the best thing about George W. Bush was his wife and daughters. Recently former First Lady Laura Bush made some headlines after declaring her support for Elena Kagan, President Obama’s choice for SCOTUS. And now their daughter Barbara — normally the quieter of the twins — has gone on record supporting health care reform.

This is what I get for skipping all those Partisan Whiners Anonymous meetings. Apparently, there are liberal whiners who think the term “Obamacare” is offensive, and conservative whiners who think the whining is a big deal. Specifically, liberal whiners objected to the use of the term on ABC’s Political Punch blog, so they changed it. Then, conservative whiners objected, saying Jake Tapper was “banning” the word from Political Punch. I’d like to gavel this meeting to order.

Ivanka Trump entered the political fray on a Tucker Carlson-hosted Hannity last night, and after plugging her new book on how not to be lazy when looking for a job, took a scathing look at the current state of the Obama administration that has her fearing for the future of her children.

Chris Matthews has some serious questions about the Democratic propaganda machine. If Barack Obama managed to pass the cornerstone legislation of his presidential campaign with health care and was enormously popular when elected, where is the Democratic party to back him up when Republicans attack his policies?

Chris Rock is not exactly America’s top political pundit, but his fresh perspective on the left during his appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher yesterday he provided insights on topics the professionals often overlook. Democrats, he argued, have to develop some thick skin. Being Chris Rock, he followed that up with the claim that true racial equality would only be achieved when America has a “dumb black president.”