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.”

There has been a lot of high-minded chatter among the political media elite deriding the proliferation of presidential debates this election cycle. As CNN prepares to air the 19th Republican Primary debate tonight, Starting Point anchor Soledad O’Brien wondered if this GOP reality show is a good thing. Roland Martin argued that the debates have been revealing, noting “If we didn’t have 19 debates, trust me, Rick Perry would still be in this race.”

Politics is a name game. It is about who you know– at least in the sense that knowing who the players are in this elaborate dance that defines how we govern ourselves as a nation is critical to successful analysis. And then there are anomalies like Tim Tebow, black holes of cable news time and energy that, through no fault of their own, become fault lines along our political geography.

SNL’s Weekend Update had Michele Bachmann on for her swan song following her disappointing finish in the Iowa caucus on Tuesday. Although she was bummed that her time as a Republican candidate was over, she was much more excited about being able to blink “for the first time since this all started.” Seth Meyers quizzed her about her statement that God told her to run for the presidency, and Bachmann placidly acknowledged that it may have been a mass text.

When Michele Bachmann dropped out yesterday after coming in a disappointing sixth place in the Iowa caucus, it piqued the Mediaite staff desk’s curiosity about who had made recent predictions about the Congresswoman’s success in the Hawkeye State.

On the heels of her distant sixth-place finish in the Iowa Caucuses, and the announcement that she had canceled a planned visit to South Carolina, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann held a press conference Wednesday morning to announce that she is ending her presidential campaign. With the likely end of Rick Perry‘s run, Bachmann’s move presents an opportunity for surging Rick Santorum to consolidate the social conservative vote.

After finishing a disappointing sixth place in the Iowa caucuses, gathering just 6,073 votes — or 5% of the total — Rep. Michele Bachmann announced Wednesday morning that she would be holding a news conference in Des Moines, Iowa, at 11 a.m. There were no details given on the nature of the presser.

So. Now that the results of last night’s Iowa caucus are in and we can all celebrate with / mumble about the winning candidates accordingly, let’s focus a bit on those who didn’t fare so well in The Hawkeye State. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who took in 5 percent of yesterday’s days, and Texas governor Rick Perry, who brought in 10.3 percent, have both decided to cancel appearances in South Carolina.

In one of the closest races in recent memory, in which, as numbers rolled in, the lead depended sometimes on as little as 15 votes. With the full assessment of the votes in, it is now clear that Rick Santorum eked out a double-digit (in actual votes, not percentage points) victory over Mitt Romney, with Rep. Ron Paul in third place followed by Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Rep. Michele Bachmann rounding out the top.

During MSNBC’s Iowa Caucus coverage, The Huffington Post‘s Howard Fineman divulged to Chris Matthews that Michele Bachmann‘s “inner circle is in the process of telling her it’s time for her to drop out.”

As I was (briefly) watching Fox and Friends this morning, I heard Republican presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) reference the “morning-after abortion pill,” the second time I’ve heard a GOP candidate mention the mythical drug in the past week. Host Steve Doocy failed to correct Bachmann, and although this bit of misinformation hasn’t spread much yet, I’d like to dispel it before it attaches itself to the media’s uterine wall. Any interviewer who hears this phrase has a duty to correct it.

Are there any politics junkies out there? The type that are getting all jittery as they anxiously refresh Twitter and flip between cable news channels? The poor souls who keep looking at their watch, wondering how they could possibly wait a full day to hear those sweet caucus results? Well, then I have a quick hit for you; the results for the Iowa Coffee Bean Caucus. Consider this the methadone to tonight’s black tar heroin.

On CNN’s Starting Point Tuesday morning, Soledad O’Brien and Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann got into a tussle over “gotcha questions” ahead of today’s caucuses. “You have taken a lot of flak for some of your very strong social issues, where you stand on them, and I want to talk about some of them,” O’Brien pressed. “Your stance on homosexuality — and want to read a little bit of what you said — You said, at the Educators Conference in 2004, ‘Gays live a very sad life,’ and that ‘it’s part of Satan’ And that’s quote. You’ve taken a lot of flak for that. Do you pull back on any of that?”

Michele Bachmann has a new ad airing in the lovely state of Iowa (Lucky Iowans. I’m sure they were just dying for another campaign ad right about now). The ad, her first television commercial in months, is called “America’s Iron Lady” and it’s exactly what you think it is from that title.

…unless you’re imagining some kind of super hero thing with Bachmann as a crime fighting woman made of metal. In that case it’s nothing like what you think.

As Kimberly Guilfoyle put it in the opening of today’s Five, “the knives are out for Ron Paul.” With his Iowa poll numbers surging, the other GOP candidates have gone on the offensive, providing a number of colorful, anti-Paul quotes. The Five hosts had some cutting utensils of their own, discussing how Paul’s less mainstream ideas were “sinking” his chances of becoming President or even getting the nomination.

The story of how Rep. Michele Bachmann‘s top man in Iowa somehow ended up defecting to the Rep. Ron Paul camp several hours after attending a Bachmann campaign rally is still a work in process, slowly evolving out of a he-said, she-said that now includes rebuttal from the candidate herself. Rep. Bachmann and campaign manager Susan Geddes spoke to Eric Bolling today on Your World and once again insisted that she had personally heard from Sorenson that he was paid to defect, the same claim Geddes subsequently made to Bolling.

Iowa State Senator Kent Sorenson may have become one of the most important characters in the Iowa Republican primary saga literally overnight with his somewhat surprising appearance at a Rep. Ron Paul rally last night, endorsing that candidate while still serving as the State Campaign Co-Chair of Michele Bachmann for President. He had more than a few questions to answer today to Megyn Kelly, who asked him several difficult questions about his move, including whether he was paid to make the switch.

On the tail of Rep. Michele Bachmann herself denouncing rival Rep. Ron Paul as “dangerous” on Fox News, it appears that at least one of her campaign co-chairs seems to disagree. Yes, it’s true: Iowa State Senator (and Iowa Bachmann Campaign Co-Chair) Kent Sorenson appeared at a Rep. Paul rally earlier tonight, and endorsed a candidate on whose campaign he is not on an official leader.

We may have seen the first glimmers of the “Santorum Surge” as the non-stop Rep. Ron Paul coverage takes it toll on the candidate, but as Rep. Paul continues to be the frontrunner, the onslaught of “is Ron Paul electable?” questions trudges on. This round of questioning went to Rep. Michele Bachmann, once the frontrunner in Iowa herself, on tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, where Eric Bolling asked her whether she could vote for Rep. Paul. She mostly refused to entertain the question.

When you’re running to be the next President of the United States, it’s generally a good idea to make sure people are able to vote for you. But in a surprise twist in this already twisted-up campaign, both Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry will not be on the ballot when Virginia Republican voters go to cast their vote for their party’s nominee, meaning the primary in that state will boil down to a contest between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.

Yesterday, a gay robot somehow managed to free himself from the set of Bravo’s The A List and gain access to a Michele Bachmann rally in Iowa.

GOP candidate Michele Bachmann was a guest on Fox and Friends Wednesday morning, and confirmed reports that she had received a phone call from Evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, asking her to drop out and throw her support to either Rick Santorum or Rick Perry.

Michele Bachmann appeared on Meet the Press earlier today, and in the middle of talking about her chances in Iowa next month, David Gregory brought up the uncomfortable exchange she had with Newt Gingrich during last week’s Republican debate. Gingrich accused Bachmann of “not getting her facts correct,” and Bachmann responded by calling his comments “outrageous,” insisting she is a serious candidate for the presidency.

There was something for everyone in Thursday night’s Fox News Republican debate, from Newt Gingrich‘s “history lessons” to Rick Santorum… existing. The Red Eye panel took a swing at recapping the debate last night, and covered all the bases– from the fashion sense of the “pervy dude at the Kiwanis club who corners you and has had too many beers” to the sweets Greg Gutfeld thinks of when he listens to Rep. Ron Paul.