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.

Last night Jon Stewart interviewed Fox News’ Juan Williams and while the interview that aired on The Daily Show focused on Williams’ bitter end with his former employer NPR, the really juicy parts of the conversation took place in portions that appeared exclusively online. The lengthy conversation between the two demonstrated a mutually respectful tone and a truly fascinating discussion about the current state of journalism and political discourse, which led to Stewart comically noticing “we’re two very smart people.”

Fox News’ Juan Williams is currently making the media rounds to promote his new book, Muzzled: The Assault On Honest Debate, and, as such, offered a quite candid interview to Philly Mag‘s blog.

Williams delved into some of the fallout surrounding his dismissal from NPR after sharing that he felt uneasy seeing people in Muslim garb at airports, including a comment former NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard made about his having stayed at NPR as long as he had because it “gave him cred” with the mainstream media.

It’s been a long year for Juan Williams since his controversial firing from NPR last October, but he, as Bill O’Reilly predicted at the time, managed to get back up and publish a book about his struggle. Williams visited The Factor last night to promote that book, Muzzled, and confessed some of the problems NPR had with his relationship with Fox, among them that he was told not to say he worked for NPR on TV and that they did not appreciate him “legitimizing” the network.

It seemed like kind of a sleepy news day today. So sleepy that Bob Beckel spent the entire last segment on Fox News’ The Five playing video poker on his cell phone. Even when the show was covering a story about a Department of Homeland Security video that featured all white actors playing the terrorists (a perfect Fox News story if I ever heard one), only guest host Monica Crowley seemed to have the energy to muster up the expected outrage. However, there may have been one notable part of that segment as Beckel seems to have accidentally dropped the F-bomb.

Juan Williams appeared on Fox & Friends and told Brian Kilmeade it was laughable that Media Matters is considered a charitable institution when they are dedicated to silencing honest debate. Kilmeade was shocked that Media Matters searches for disgruntled Fox News employees to help with their campaign against the network, and now Williams and other Fox personalities seem ready to fight back.

Herman Cain seems to have no interested in ending his newly-minted feud with Jon Stewart. On The O’Reilly Factor tonight, Cain came out swinging against Stewart again– who initially courted Cain’s wrath by making fun of his claim that bill longer than 3 pages would be vetoed automatically– explicitly stating that, although Stewart’s “Amos and Andy” voice was offensive to him, he wasn’t playing the race card. But Stewart had a problem, he asserted, with him being a “black conservative.”