Conservatives around the blogosphere widely agree, Rick Perry had a bad night and the consensus for his ‘jump the shark’ moment came when he gave a long-winded, stammering response to Mitt Romney, who had disputed Perry’s charge that he was ‘Obama-lite’: “I think Americans just don’t know sometimes which Mitt Romney they’re dealing with,” Perry [...]

Earlier today, we reported on the Twitter war of words between actor Alec Baldwin and fiery conservative pundit Michelle Malkin, sparked by Malkin’s mockery of Baldwin’s activism for the late Troy Davis, and escalated by the actor’s return volley. Along the way, Malkin retweeted several vile messages that came, not from Baldwin, but from other users angry with her. Readers of The Blaze, however, might come away with the impression that Baldwin tweeted a racist attack on Malkin, if they didn’t look too closely.

Last night was a tender one on twitter for those following the Troy Davis case, not least of all for Alec Baldwin, who holds court over a notoriously prolific account and had spent much of the early evening spewing tweets about the execution. His busy and at times opinionated stream eventually caught the attention of conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who had been keeping tabs on the case herself. Things devolved quickly from there.

Conservatives in general, and Fox News in particular, have gone to town on Politico like a rumpspringa tour bus over their “Is Rick Perry Dumb?” headline from yesterday. However, after watching three separate Fox News segments on the article, featuring guests Tucker Carlson, Michelle Malkin, and Laura Ingraham, I’ve noticed that while Fox guests are certain Politico is biased, and/or really, really wish people would call President Obama dumb, too, none of them offers even a syllable in defense of Perry’s intellect.

On Fox & Friends Tuesday morning, co-host Steve Doocy teased a segment on Politico‘s “Is Rick Perry Dumb?” article by calling them “that lefty website,” and wondering if Politico had ever run a headline like that about a Democrat. In the actual segment, Doocy asked conservative radio host Laura Ingraham to weigh in on the article, and she didn’t really push back against Politico‘s alleged bias, or even the notion that Perry might be dumb.

Politico published an article today that openly questioned whether or not Texas Governor Rick Perry was an intellectual light weight, or pointedly, is he dumb? Megyn Kelly followed up on this report today, asking conservative news analyst Michelle Malkin whether or not it was a fair critique of the GOP front runner. In response, Malkin damned Perry somewhat with a faint defense, predictably calling it a left-wing media smear, then following up by saying “compared to what?!”

Pat Dollard, a contributing journalist to Andrew Breitbart‘s “Big” websites, reported via his Twitter feed that the University of Arizona had told him that the White House was involved in creating t-shirts with the slogan “Together We Thrive” for the Tucson Memorial in January. Both the White House and the U of A denied this in January, but in light of this fresh allegation, I decided to check with White House Press Secretary Jay Carney at Tuesday’s briefing.

One by-product of Ed Schultz‘s attack on Laura Ingraham, and subsequent apology and suspension, is that it gave his former MSNBC colleague, Keith Olbermann, an opportunity to answer for some of his own past wrongdoing. As he tweeted condemnation of Schultz’s remarks, he was confronted with some of his own. His responses provided a neat [...]

At last year’s CPAC convention, Andrew Breitbart and I had a much-publicized dustup over conservative dress-up artiste James O’Keefe (he of the undercover NPR “sting” video), concerning the racial overtones of O’Keefe’s choice to wear a pimp costume in the intro to his ACORN videos. That encounter didn’t go so well, but this year’s CPAC offered a fresh chance to discuss the issue. During a long lunch with Breitbart, liberal filmmaker Lee Stranahan, and liberal blogger Mike Stark, I finally got an answer to my question.

Conservative lightning rod Michelle Malkin took to the Twitter Tuesday morning to lash out at fellow conservatives Karl Rove and Tucker Carlson over their “misogynist mockery” of Sarah Palin, and to throw in a jab at “lib pantywaists” for good measure. After consulting my 1930s dictionary, I was properly offended, but Malkin’s tirade seems to have had at least some effect, extracting a Charlie Sheen-blaming apology from Carlson. But isn’t there a word for using feminine traits as insults?

When Rahm Emanuel won his campaign to be mayor of Chicago yesterday, many people were curious to hear the reaction of his former boss, President Obama. Many other people, though, were curious to hear the reaction from @MayorEmanuel, the foul-mouthed fake Twitter persona that’s become so popular that the real Emanuel offered a “$2,500 or $5,000 personal contribution” to charity for the writer’s identity. Sure enough, the Twitter feed delivered last night, entertaining many…including Michelle Malkin who ended up getting in a joking fight with the fake Emanuel. However, this morning, she’s ended up in a real fight trying to prove she knew it was a joke.

The nation is closely eyeing the loud Wisconsin union protests that have pitted workers against the state’s Republican governor, Scott Walker– or, as Jon Stewart described him tonight, the “pleasant, casually-dressed man” out to turn the unions into merely “a bunch of people wearing identical t-shirts.” On tonight’s Daily Show, Stewart tried and failed to see Walker’s side of the story, but was far more outraged with comparisons to the Egyptian revolts or 9/11, especially when there’s always Charlie Sheen.

On last night’s episode of Hannity, host Sean Hannity covered Lara Logan’s attack in Egypt, bringing on conservative pundit and writer Michelle Malkin to weigh in. In describing Logan’s attack, Hannity mentioned a detail from The New York Post that hasn’t been widely reported, not to our knowledge anyway: That Logan’s attackers cried “Jew! Jew!” until she was eventually rescued by a group of women and members of the Egyptian military.

The most recent of several smears centered on the t-shirts that were distributed at the Tucson memorial alleges that the slogan “Rocking America and Rocking the Vote” was printed at the bottom of the shirts.

Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism has promoted the completely unsourced claim, but Mediaite has confirmed that it is, indeed, made-up nonsense.

A focal point of the effort, by some, to cast Wednesday’s “Together We Thrive” memorial to the victims of the Tucson mass shooting in a negative light has been the t-shirts that were distributed to the crowd. Businessman Kevin Wright, owner of Florida-based Thundershirts, sees the shirts in a different light, though. He’s selling copies of the “Together We Thrive: Tucson and America” shirts in an attempt to raise money for the victims, and getting hate mail for his trouble.

Among attempts by some conservatives to cast last night’s “Together We Thrive” memorial for victims of the massacre in Tucson in a negative light were suggestions that the White House was involved in designing and distributing t-shirts at the event. While that notion has already been partially debunked, we looked into the rumors, and besides a frank denial from the White House, we’ve uncovered some relevant details about the shirts, which were, infact, distributed by the University of Arizona.

Neil Cavuto‘s parade of random guests continued yesterday when he invited onto his program John Smallwood, who offered his thoughts on Obama’s plan to extend unemployment benefits. John Smallwood is, of course, the guitarist of a “variety rock and roll band” that recently lost an employee, thanks to Obama.

The back-and-forth between Bristol Palin and Countdown host Keith Olbermann continued Friday morning, as Palin hit a local Alaska radio show to discuss her “Worst Person in the World” win. While the eldest Palin daughter was generally a good sport about the whole thing, hosts Bob & Mark laid it on pretty thick, and secured agreement from Palin that Olbermann is, indeed, a “dick.”

Bristol also displayed a willingness, even an eagerness, to appear on Countdown and let Olbermann take his best shots at her.

Amid the white hot coverage of MSNBC’s indefinite suspension of Countdown host Keith Olbermann, furious speculation has emerged. Is this Olbermann’s Waterloo? Does Keith still have the juice to weather the maelstrom? Does the whole thing scream “Comcastic?”

One wrinkle that hasn’t been explored: Could the whole thing be a publicity stunt? Was 11/5 an inside job?

Well it looks like the GOP Civil War might be getting even bigger. On the night that Christine O’Donnell won the Republican Primary, Karl Rove rained on her parade by slamming the Sarah Palin backed candidate for being “nutty,” then feeling the right-wing heat himself. This engendered an unusual backlash towards rove from host Sean Hannity and guest Michelle Malkin. Today, Palin joined the anti-Rove chorus only to be joined by Rush Limbaugh

Tea Party (and Sarah Palin) favorite Christine O’Donnell‘s surprise victory over establishment candidate Mike Castle in Delaware last night brought celebration among conservative hosts like Sean Hannity.

But Karl Rove came on the Fox News show to rain on the parade – slamming O’Donnell for being “nutty,” then feeling the right-wing heat himself.

The political rhetoric coming from some GOP officials right now on immigration might make one believe that skyrocketing crime rates are a direct result of illegal aliens. But as Rachel Maddow pointed out last night, not only are crime rates way down, but so too are the number of illegals apprehended at the Arizona border. Maddow points out some specific reports that have spread around right-of-center websites that seem to be straight up lies. Yes, its yet another patented “Scaring White People” segment, that is quite effective.

Earlier this week, Raul Castro agreed to release 52 Cuban political prisoners. The release came after bilateral talks with Spain and was prompted in large part by activist Guillermo Fariñas‘ 130-day hunger strike, who, upon hearing the news, thanked the people of Spain and called off the hunger strike. Naturally, the largest anti-Castro Cuban American blog on the web would be fuming about this outrageous development.

On last night’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann awarded Bill O’Reilly the bronze in Worst Persons for accusing liberals of being embittered at the hotness of their “most hated” women. I was all ready for Keith to tee off on O’Reilly for furthering some of the right’s piggish attitudes toward women, and maybe establish the premise that hotness is a prerequisite for conservative women to succeed. Yeah, not so much.

In what seems to have become an annual rite, there’s a new list out counting down the top 20 conservative hotties (new media edition), and while I have great appreciation for conservative new media hotties, and I love Countdown, I’m not a big fan of this effort.