The issue of abortion has found its way back into mainstream political conversation, thanks to last week’s controversy involving the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation attempting to stop funding Planned Parenthood because abortion is one of many medical services they provide, only to go back on that when people started getting in uproar over it. The panel on Fox News Sunday today discussed the controversy, with host Chris Wallace asking how much their actions were politically calculated.

Piers Morgan got to sit down with Rep. Ron Paul last time and ran the gamut of topics– from Mitt Romney to the Congressman’s exercise regimen. Rep. Paul was relaxed and cheerful to be there, but was taken a bit by surprise when Morgan tried to explain Rep. Paul’s position in the race, and found himself comparing Rep. Paul to Sylvester Stallone.

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.

Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking website Politifact.com revealed its 2011 “Lie Of The Year” today, which is the essentially true claim that Republicans voted to end Medicare. While Politifact is taking heavy fire from liberals over its ridiculous decision, the site’s editor Bill Adair took to the airwaves to explain the award, and told a whopper of a lie himself on CBS News’ The Early Show Tuesday morning, while also demonstrating the central fallacy of the award, all in the same sentence.

Rick Perry spoke of his fun moment with fellow candidate Mitt Romney last night when Romney joked to Perry that they should hold a ten thousand dollar bet to settle once and for all whether Romney is a flip-flopper on the health care individual mandate or not. Perry said he thought it was “out-of touch” for joking about betting with that much money, considering that his wealth has been a sticking point with voters all throughout the campaign.

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.”

Newt Gingrich is now the Republican frontrunner, and as is the custom with presidential frontrunners nowadays, let the media hazing begin! Rachel Maddow was the latest pundit to examine the Gingrich candidacy on her show tonight, but instead of merely focusing on the same minor scandals as everyone else, went one step further and accused Gingrich of running scams by promoting himself to various groups in order to amass a great deal of money.

Fading former GOP frontrunner Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has released another ad that makes Natural Born Killers look like a meditative Sunrise Earth episode. The ad, entitled “Romney’s Remedy,” hits Mitt Romney‘s health care record (and viewers) with a barrage of overwrought jump-cuts, an apocalyptic film score that includes cannon fire, and some snippets of a sketchy study from a conservative think tank. After this ad, Perry supporters will be wishing for a “clean underwear” mandate.

90 miles and decades removed from the United States, the island of Cuba persists as a stubbornly living relic of the Cold War, excommunicated from the Western world just enough to make everything from its music to policy to its health care system a mystery. It was to explore this latter element that CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta found himself Havana last week, from where he told Mediaite his first impressions and expectations on the island, and worked on an upcoming documentary on swimmer Diana Nyad‘s attempt to traverse the stretch of water from Havana to Florida.

The Department of Health and Human Services really established that America’s private insurance companies must allow access to preventive health care needs to women. Free H.I.V. screenings, free counseling, even free breast pumps are covered under the plan which could start as soon as next August. Stephen Colbert is predictably outraged over this, declaring last [...]

It didn’t take long for Rep. Allen West‘s fundraising email calling DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz a series of harsh insults– “vile, despicable, unprofessional… not a lady… coward”– to set fire to the blogosphere and, predictably, it has not taken Rep. West too long to issue an apology. As accusations of sexism mounted against him, the Congressman told reporters today that he “just apologized” for the email personally.

Well, this story is like a wacky screwball comedy! Only less so because it’s actually really depressing. North Carolina man James Verone considers himself “a logical person” so, when the 59 year old developed some troubling medical problems including a growth in his chest and had no medical insurance, he decided on the best way to get help; he robbed a bank. Not wanting to cause any more than the requisite amount of trouble though, he only stole $1.

Call it a preemptive strike, if you will. Yesterday, in anticipation of today’s presidential announcement by Mitt Romney, Western Representation PAC announced it would be launching StopRomney.org, a movement for conservatives opposed to the former Massachusetts governor’s 2012 candidacy. The group’s official description: Conservatives in America deserve to feel passionately about their Presidential nominee, and [...]

As far as Medicare has been able to wheedle itself into the public consciousness as a 2012 campaign issue, much of the media has put Republicans on the defensive for attempting to slash funding that would go to health care. It appears the Democrats’ time, at least at the Washington Post, as arrived, as the paper ran a scathing editorial harping on Democrats for “effectively scaring seniors as a political tactic” and Republicans for playing along.

President Obama did a town hall at Facebook headquarters today and got a rousing response. The audience was receptive and he (and moderator Mark Zuckerberg) seemed to be enjoying themselves. However, just like in a job interview (which this kind of was, if you think about it) Obama was eventually asked about his faults. We’ve got his winding response. And, no, he didn’t say that he “sometimes tries too hard.”

Last Friday, Ed Schultz took his show on the road to visit Bill Maher‘s Real Time, and the volume on set as he faced off against former RNC chairman Michael Steele got, of course, predictably loud. Today on his program, Schultz rebutted the blogosphere (including your humble Mediaite) for accurately chronicling said volume, not denying it, but asking his audience, “What do you want me to do?”

On Laura Ingraham‘s radio show today, former Senator Evan Banh discussed his vote for President Barack Obama’s plans for health care reform.

Although he voted for the bill – or, as he phrased it, he voted to “try and accomplish the things that were good in the bill, and then hope to change those things that were either absent or needed to be corrected in the bill” – he admits he has some qualms with it, particularly with the notion that it will keep health care costs down.

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?

Rachel Maddow‘s patience with Fox News appears to have finally fully waned. Having spent a good amount of time on her program calmly arguing her side of the story in an attempt to debunk the loudest voices of her rival network, Maddow has now begun an all-out counter-campaign of concern for the “stupidifying effect” of having Fox News broadcast and watched on American airwaves, beginning with the “death panels” and arriving at the “leftist caliphate.”

We are in an “extremely serious constitutional crisis” according to Rush Limbaugh. With yesterday’s ruling by a federal court in Florida that the entire Health Care law should be thrown out, the White House has to figure out its next move. If President Obama doesn’t uphold the ruling, it will be another move by, what Limbaugh calls “an increasingly lawless president.”

Optimists of the country take note! In the wake of the tragedy in Arizona, could it be that our nation’s leaders and media figures may actually try to turn down the hate. First people from both parties united to appreciate President Obama’s memorial speech. Then a plan was set in place to end the partisan seating arrangements that have, for years, plagued State of the Union Addresses like the awkward gender split at middle school dance.

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 [...]

“I’m thinking starting it with ‘Pooh’ is not a good idea,” said Megyn Kelly, attempting to pronounce PPACA, the acronym for the Health Care Law’s new name, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Both she and Alan Colmes were pretty unimpressed. The two had an interesting conversation about the powers of branding and the necessity for a “sexy” moniker.

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.”

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.