On Wednesday night’s Colbert Report, conservative auteur and would-be Bizarro Captain Stubing James O’Keefe came perilously close to ensnaring host Stephen Colbert into his latest sting, an email effort to defer the cost of his so-called NPR sting video through online donations. Colbert saw through the plea as a ruse to associate himself with an unsavory criminal element, but didn’t ask the obvious question: how did O’Keefe compose a five page fundraising email to pay for an NPR video, and not offer his donors a frickin’ tote bag?

Ex-NPR CEO Vivian Schiller has made her first public remarks since her ouster, telling the International Women’s Media Foundation in Washington D.C. that she’s “not done” with a career in media. “I certainly plan to stay in journalism.”

Schiller resigned this month in the messy aftermath of a video “sting operation” conducted by James O’Keefe, which caught two NPR executives on hidden camera making critical comments about the Tea Party.

Ongoing discussions about whether NPR has a liberal bias usually end up revolving around the question of whether the multi-platform news network merits partial funding from governments grants and the (federally funded) Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Now, a deeper look into NPR’s finances shows the nonprofit outlet stands to make a “modest margin” this year.

Steve Inskeep, host of NPR’s Morning Edition, took to the Wall Street Journal in an attempt to clear up a common misconception about NPR: That most of its audience leans to the left. In fact, Inskeep says, most of the media platform’s radio listeners identify as “middle of the road” or “conservative.”

Congressman Jim McGovern says if Republicans are serious about defunding NPR–instead of focusing their time on more pressing matters–he says “we should be fair and balanced in the way we do it,” and take funding away from Fox News as well.

In a speech on the House floor, Rep. McGovern, of Massachusetts, says cutting funding for NPR over its content is a “lousy” way to make decisions, but “if my Republican friends insist on going down this road,” he said, Fox News should be included as well. McGovern said Fox “continued to employ several prospective Republican candidates” giving them “hours and hours of free airtime.” The representative said federal funds should not be used for advertising on Fox.

Who needs Jon Stewart for ironically detached and comedic commentary on political absurdities? With The Daily Show on break, Rep. Anthony Weiner (a former summer house share buddy of the Comedy Central fake newsman) took to the House floor and fearlessly ripped the House GOP for their vote to defund NPR. And who did Weiner choose to play the victims? None other than Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers the hosts of NPR’s weekend show Car Talk.

James O’Keefe, the self-described investigative journalist behind the NPR sting video, appeared on Reliable Sources and told Howard Kurtz that he was motivated to look into NPR after they improperly handled the firing of former contributor Juan Williams. Kurtz questioned whether O’Keefe’s journalism tactics were unethical, but O’Keefe argued his form of investigative reporting was necessary to seek and find the truth.

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer has had enough of the “liberal arrogance” when it comes to defending NPR and the government subsidy it receives. NPR’s Nina Totenberg valiantly attempted to defend her organization’s news coverage and disputed they were a “bunch of lefties,” yet Krauthammer wondered “if the product is so superior, why does it have to live on the tit of the state?”

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, both of whom work / have worked for Public Affairs Television, joined together to write a post for the Huffington Post, defending NPR against “another assault from the its long-time nemesis — the right-wing machine.” Unless you’ve been flying idly through the Milky Way with a goddess or two in tow, you’re likely aware of the undercover video, posted by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe‘s Project Veritas, showing former NPR executive Ron Schiller making negative, and highly unprofessional, remarks about Tea Party members and the Republican party.

Yesterday, an in depth analysis was done on the NPR sting video from James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas group. By comparing the unedited footage with the version widely circulated, the analysis concluded that that Project Veritas’ editing of the tapes was “questionable” and “deceptive” enough to be “unethical” by journalism standpoints. This really shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who’s followed O’Keefe and the other “investigative journalists” he’s inspired from either political ideology. What is surprising, however, is who did the video analysis. It was completed by The Blaze, the news and opinion site founded by Glenn Beck.

Regular visitors to the Huffington Post have quite a surprise waiting for them on the homepage: the debut of the site’s newest contributor, right-wing web proprietor Andrew Breitbart. Yes, that Andrew Breitbart. While Breitbart had been involved in the creation of the site, he had yet to procure a byline. But now he has taken his battle to “fight back against the left and its accomplices in the mainstream media” straight to their home turf– and if commenters are any indication, he is receiving a rather warm welcome.

On her radio show today, Laura Ingraham tackled Andrea Mitchell‘s defense of NPR in the wake of the recently-released undercover video showing former NPR executive Ron Schiller making negative remarks about Tea Party members.

The NPR sting video which led to the departure of CEO Vivian Schiller as well as the resignation of the man in the video, former executive Ron Schiller. It has also, according to 22 journalists from NPR News, “done real damage” to the entire organization. In an open letter, they write that they were “appalled” by Ron Schiller’s comments caught on tape.

Let’s face it– liberals are going through a bit of a rough patch. With President Obama resuming military trials in Guantánamo and NPR in complete disarray, Jon Stewart wanted to “pour one out” for the “liberal homies” down on themselves for the bad day. And by “one,” he means a handcrafted pot of homemade gourmet salad dressing– right onto his lap.

Piers Morgan is turning out to have a knack for uniting otherwise natural enemies. To discuss the current mess at NPR prompted by comments former NPR employee Ron Schiller made about the Tea Party being racist, Morgan got NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard to share airtime with James O’Keefe mentor Andrew Breitbart, and while their rhetorical paths did not cross, they both gave Morgan some important insight into the story.

It’s rare to find a segment where Sean Hannity is having a hard time getting a word in, but Ann Coulter made it tough for him tonight as she railed against, of all people, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker for, among other things, failing to be on television “every night” and getting prank-called by a fake David Koch. While her general line of attack was “Chris Christie would have done it differently,” Coulter cited polls showing Walker’s popularity dropping significantly since the union wars.

The New York Times has confirmed with executives at PBS that they too were tricked into having lunch with some of James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas flunkies. This, of course, means that, like with NPR, they were presumably video taped in secret. So, if you woke up this morning desperately hoping that you could, one day, discover what the senior vice president for development at PBS has to say during lunch conversations with potential donors, then you could be in luck! Hoorah!

Former NPR contributor and current Fox News talking head Juan Williams is criticizing his former employer for being, as he phrases it, an “all-white organization” that hasn’t experienced much success including reporters who are Latino and/or black.

With continuous resignations in the wake of the NPR hidden camera sting operation, the Morning Joe panel discussed whether NPR should continue to be federally funded, but did not seem happy to have to talk about it. Sitting in for Joe Scarborough, Mike Barnicle summed up the opinion of most on the panel when he suggested “talking about NPR, it’s ridiculous. It’s tedious.”

Ron Schiller, the NPR executive who resigned in the wake of this week’s undercover video scandal, has announced that he’s backing out of his new job–which he accepted ahead of the controversy–as director of the Harman-Eisner Artist-in-Residence Program at the Aspen Insitute.

Poynter’s Jim Romenesko reports Aspen Institute communications director Jim Spiegelman sent an e-mail saying “Ron Schiller has informed us that, in light of the controversy surrounding his recent statements, he does not feel that it’s in the best interests of the Aspen Institute for him to come work here.”

Cokie Roberts made an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe to discuss the undercover video produced by James O’Keefe‘s Project Veritas, showing a former NPR executive making several negative and dismissive comments about Tea Party members.

Well it is officially a bad week for individuals named Schiller who used to work for NPR. First there was Ron Schiller, who was caught in a hidden camera video sting making negative comments about conservatives and Tea Partiers, and now NPR’s Media Reporter David Folkenflik has revealed via Twitter that CEO Vivian Schiller (no relation to Ron) has been forced out by the board at NPR because of this controversy.

Yesterday a secretly recorded video tape was released on the Internet that depicted NPR executives touting liberals while bashing conservatives and Tea Partiers. While the executives on tape have since resigned, it was only a matter of time until the last personality caught in an NPR controversy was asked to opine on this controversy, and its fair to say that Juan Williams did not hold back.

The fallout from the undercover video of NPR executives began with NPR’s response and now Mediaite has learned that NPR is soon to release the following statement.:

Most of the early reporting on the so-called “sting” of NPR executives by operatives of James O’Keefe‘s “Project Veritas” identify O’Keefe as the person behind the ACORN videos, describing him as a “conservative activist,” “master of the video sting,” even a scare-quoted “investigative journalist,” and while some reports included references to O’Keefe’s arrest for an incident at Sen. Mary Landrieu‘s office, all but one omitted any mention of O’Keefe’s plot to strand a female reporter on a boat loaded with sex toys and hidden cameras.