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.

Across the morning shows, everyone seems to be talking about Mitt Romney’s “very poor” comments from Wednesday, including the crew at Fox & Friends, who welcomed Angela McGlowan and Juan Williams to the show on Thursday to discuss the fallout from the comments.

In a segment asking whether media coverage of the GOP election is biased, Fox & Friends showed a clip of Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, expressing the need for an alternative to Newt Gingrich because of “desperation” among the Republican elite.

GOP presidential Lazarus Newt Gingrich has been riding high on the strength of his Birth of Newt Nation moment at Monday’s Fox News debate. On Saturday morning’s Up with Chris Hayes, host Chris Hayes revealed yet another clip of Gingrich exploiting his knack with racially resentful conservatives, a clip that Hayes said “is so racist, it makes me want to curse on air.”

Juan Williams received some of the most visceral reaction of anyone during Monday’s Fox News Republican debate when asking Newt Gingrich to explain his comments on child janitors. On tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, he reacted to some of the fallout: namely, Chris Matthews claiming that Gingrich had pronounced his name in a “racially charged” way. Williams didn’t touch the race issue, but did say that he believed the audience looked at him during that as a “strange character.”

Even the most die hard of Bob Beckel fans out there would have to admit that today was a good day to have Juan Williams subbing in for him on The Five. Williams was back from his time moderating the debate in South Carolina last night and he and his co-hosts started off today’s broadcast debating his now-infamous showdown with Newt Gingrich. While Williams was the first to admit that this moment worked out better for Gingrich than he (he compared it to being “dunked on”), when asked how he felt the candidate answered his question, he argued that Gingrich didn’t answer it at all.

A big moment of last night’s debate came when moderator Juan Williams and Newt Gingrich argued over Gingrich’s comments that many have seen as condescending towards blacks. However, Williams really should have been offended due to Gingrich’s incredibly insensitive pronunciation of the word “Juan.” At least, that’s the opinion of Chris Matthews who accused Gingrich of a racial motive in the way he used Williams’ name.

On Tuesday afternoon, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly welcomed a panel of Republican voters to the show, leading them in a discussion on last night’s debate in South Carolina — with special focus, of course, on Newt Gingrich‘s interaction with moderator Juan Williams.

At Monday night’s Republican Presidential Debate on Fox News, former Sen. Rick Santorum delivered a series of gut-busting punches to Mitt Romney, both on style and substance, over a pro-Romney SuperPAC ad that accused Santorum of voting to allow felons to vote. Santorum lit into Romney over the ad’s misleading style, and laid a neat trap for him on the substance of the policy in question.

With a debate being held on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, it was inevitable that one of the candidates would compare himself to the legendary activists and, predictably, it was the candidate who had done it before: Rep. Ron Paul. Paul took a question from Juan Williams about the race disparity in the legal system and took the opportunity to ad that Dr. King opposed Vietnam, and thus may have also opposed the Iraq War.

Newt Gingrich has said several things on the campaign trail that raised eyebrows from a race perspective: his idea to turn young children into janitors, for example, or calling President Obama “the food stamp president.” It all came back at him tonight via Juan Williams, who asked, repeatedly, whether Gingrich saw the comments as “particularly offensive” or whether he understood why it sounded like “you’re belittling people.” Gingrich’s short answer? “No.”

On Thursday morning’s Fox and Friends, Eric Bolling asked why bombshell revelations from the Jodi Kantor book The Obamas, like supposed tension between the East and West Wing and the Secret Halloween Party That Wasn’t A Secret, were “not exposed by the White House press corps.”

Fox News contributor Andrea Tantaros‘ diagnosis: “most reporters” are “lazy and liberal.”

Following Mitt Romney‘s decisive victory in New Hampshire, Fox News political contributor Bill Kristol poured cold water on the Republican hopeful’s win, noting that turnout was remarkably low. “I think that’s worrisome to Republicans,” Kristol observed.

President Obama has been arguing recently that not only is the economy going to take more time to come away from the crevasse, but that it would take more than one term and even more than one president to deal with the problem. Chris Wallace reminded viewers that Obama said himself he would be a one-term president if the economy didn’t turn around, and discussed Obama’s handling of the crisis with the panel.

On today’s Fox News Sunday, the impact of the overall economic situation in the country on the Presidential elections was at the forefront of discussion, and Juan Williams and host Chris Wallace got into a heated discussion over the impact of Occupy Wall Street on the national discourse, one in which Williams, interrupted, did not feel he was given fair time.

Today has not been a particularly good day in publicity for Newt Gingrich on the Sunday talk show circuit. After This Week featured a particularly derisive George Will, the Fox News Sunday panel went to town on him, beginning with Brit Hume highlighting his many vulnerabilities, Juan Williams comparing him to a Thanksgiving Day parade float and only Bill Kristol putting in a good word for the former Speaker.

On Fox News Sunday today, Bill Kristol threw cold water on Herman Cain‘s presidential candidacy, arguing that regardless of his popularity among conservative voters and whether or not his sexual harassment scandal will end up helping or hurting him, there was very little chance in the first place he was ever going to be the Republican nominee.

No one’s response to the leak Herman Cain sexual harassment settlements has gone particularly well. However, while all of the race talk that flared up instantly might have seemed particularly unhealthy, it’s now looking like the most self-destructive comments came from the Cain campaign itself. Last night, Cain’s campaign manager Mark Block completely broke Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment by directly accusing Rick Perry’s campaign for the leak. This has not gone over well with many Conservatives. The reaction could best be summed up by The Five‘s Eric Bolling as he announced that he was “praying” that the leak actually came from the Left.

A few days ago, Herman Cain made headlines when he said that he didn’t “believe there is racism in this country today that holds anybody back in a big way.” Shockingly, some people disagreed. Two of those people are Cornel West and Tavis Smiley who have spoken out against Cain a number of times including during their appearance last night on The O’Reilly Factor when they said he was “trivializing” a serious issue.

Fans of The Five can throw their hands in the air (perhaps even waving them like they just don’t care) and rejoice to the news that Fox News has announced that the 5pm panel show has become a permanent fixture on the cable news dial, thus increasing the chances that we will one day see the Bob Beckel/Eric Bolling fist fight we’re all so eagerly awaiting.

On Fox News Sunday today, Chris Wallace and panel debated the targeted killing of U.S. citizen and al-Qaeda member Anwar al-Awlaki and whether or not it was within the legal rights of the United States government to carry out that military action. Wallace highlighted the position taken by some liberals and conservatives that since al-Awlaki was an American citizen, he should have been subjected to the American justice system instead of being taken out on foreign soil.

On Fox News Sunday today, Chris Wallace and the panel talked about Rick Perry’s future chances to secure the GOP nomination after his less-than-impressive showing during last week’s debate. Brit Hume started out by arguing that Perry not only stumbled, he “really did throw up all over himself in the debate at a time when he needed to raise his game.”

Fox News in-house Democratic analyst Bob Beckel flummoxed his The Five co-stars yesterday with a racist remark about Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal that comes right on the heels of his invocation of “Chinamen” on the same Fox program. Speaking about the Republicans’ lack of a formal response to tonight’s presidential address, Beckel reminisced about Jindal’s 2009 post-SOTU response, saying, “It reminded me of a call center ad from Mumbai.”

Finger-pointing is perhaps Capitol Hill’s most beloved pastime, though some may argue that in light of America’s first credit downgrade and a month of financial gridlock, it has evolved from hobby to obsession. Mediaite has already looked at some of the media figures whose profiles have risen and fallen over debt crisis, but who were they blaming to get there? The answer is a hodgepodge of President Obama the Tea Party, and, given it’s 2011, a surprisingly frequent President Bush references.Below are some highlights in the Political Mediasphere Blame Game over the past month that say little about who is actually to blame for our current economic roles (other than, of course, “everyone”) and a lot about how easily recyclable political narratives can be.

The ongoing drama over the debt crisis most cable news outlets to bring out a-list rosters yesterday, which worked out well, since a last minute agreement led to some spirited discourse over the reported compromise between President Obama and congressional GOP. No debate was more spirited than that on Fox News between conservative host Sean Hannity and left of center analyst Juan Williams,who discussed the agreement in a uniquely heated, fair, balanced and entertaining way.