With the Catholic Church up on arms over the proposed mandate to hospitals regarding contraception, Bill O’Reilly spent a second tonight parsing out the problems the Church has with the policy. To discuss the current disagreements between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church, O’Reilly set up a full-clergy panel with Fox News’ Father Jonathan Morris and Executive Director of the Religious Institute Debra Haffner that began in a friendly tone, but ended with Rev. Haffner calling for the Catholic Church to “deal with its own sexuality problems,” which led to O’Reilly calling her “way off base.”

After a heated segment on the calls by conservative groups to have Ellen Degeneres removed from a JC Penney ad campaign, Bill O’Reilly invited regular Bernie Goldberg on to talk about the fight between Planned Parenthood and the Susan G. Komen Foundation, to showcase “the other side of intolerance.” But Goldberg had a few words to say about Degeneres, too– namely, that “there is a strain of bigotry running through conservative America” that he was just “sick of.”

Bill O’Reilly had a particularly pro-Hollywood night tonight, as far as The Factor is typically concerned. After a segment in which he defended Clint Eastwood from claims that his Super Bowl ad was subliminal Obama campaign propaganda, O’Reilly had on Sandy Rios of Family-Pac Federal to explain the call from conservative group Million Moms to get Ellen Degeneres fired as JC Penney spokeswoman, and he was not happy with their argument. “I don’t think that’s the spirit of America,” he objected to Rios, who argued that Degeneres represented immorality.

While the Occupy movement is mostly subdued in the various places it awoke in the rest of the country, the protesters at Occupy Oakland, partially motivated by historic local tensions with police there, are clashing with police in the streets, and on The O’Reilly Factor last night, host Bill O’Reilly discussed the potential good that can come from these protests with guests, who did not manage to convince him to embrace the movement.

One thing that remains clear from this discussion on The O’Reilly Factor: Bill O’Reilly and Geraldo Rivera do not agree on solutions to help the poor. The two began a conversation prompted by Mitt Romney “misspeaking” about his concern about the poor, and took a turn towards solutions for them, before O’Reilly and Rivera began to disagree on requirements for birth certificates.

Sarah Palin has been increasingly vocal as the Republican process has gone on in telling Republican primary candidates to refrain from vicious attacks on each other and keep their criticism strictly on the President. On The O’Reilly Factor tonight, the former Vice Presidential candidate told Bill O’Reilly that she wanted to see the candidates stay away from vicious attacks, saying her experiences on a presidential ticket made her understand why voters appear more “disenchanted” now than ever.

Last Tuesday was not a good election for Newt Gingrich. After sweeping South Carolina, he presumptive frontrunner lost Florida to Mitt Romney, badly. And he didn’t even call Romney to congratulate him. Despite his private failing, though, Charles Krauthammer told Bill O’Reilly tonight that Gingrich’s speech this time around had significantly less “whining,” and that could bode well for the former Speaker all the way to the convention.

Earlier today, yet another unlikely character parachuted into the news cycle by making an incendiary political comment– this time, the legendary Miss Piggy blasted Fox News, joking that accusing the Muppets of being anti-corporation was “like accusing Fox News of being, you know, news.” This slight did not go unnoticed by Bill O’Reilly, who called Miss Piggy out on the Factor‘s “Reality Check” segment earlier today.

A few years ago, Newt Gingrich advocated for making English the official language of the nation to prevent people from speaking “the language of the ghetto.” In the context of his proposal, many, including Geraldo Rivera, think it is indisputable that he meant Spanish, and on The Factor last night, Bill O’Reilly countered that he could just as easily have meant Farsi.

Bill O’Reilly and Bernie Goldberg aren’t usually the ones first in line to heap praise upon their competitors over at CNN, but last night they had nothing but good words for Wolf Blitzer‘s performance as moderator of CNN’s latest Republican debate, particularly in shutting down Newt Gingrich. Unlike John King, who Goldberg suggested was trying to “start a food fight” with his question on Gingrich’s marriages, both host and guest agreed that Blitzer was attacked for asking a legitimate question, and that the audience at home was on his side.

On tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, Bernie Goldberg took a stab at analyzing the new presidential race landscape since the game-changing Newt Gingrich win on Saturday, and what it means for Gingrich’s media-attack-focused campaigning. Goldberg noted that there was a consensus among voters that the media was talking sides, but that well could easily be depleted– but even if it were, Mitt Romney had an uphill battle to generate similar enthusiasm for himself.

Ann Coulter is getting pretty tired of Newt Gingrich. Coulter appeared on The O’Reilly Factor tonight to discuss Gingrich’s rise (and her candidate, Mitt Romney‘s, decline) and went straight for the strategy that has been most successful for the former Speaker: attacking the media. Calling it “abusing a real issue,” Coulter provided a fiery defense to the reporters Gingrich had attacked and likened his frivolous attacks on the liberal media to Jesse Jackson talking about racism.

Glenn Beck has taken his GBTV operation to Texas, but just because he isn’t near his friend Bill O’Reilly doesn’t mean he will neglect to visit the Factor. O’Reilly returned to Fox News tonight to discuss Monday’s debate and give every candidate reviews, and Rep. Ron Paul got by far the worst of it as Beck shushed the candidate and told him he sounded like Osama Bin Laden.

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.”

Bernard Goldberg‘s semi-weekly segment on The O’Reilly Factor today focused on the New York Times calling Mitt Romney one of the “whitest” candidates to ever run. Bill O’Reilly began the segment with a joking tease that Goldberg was, in fact, the whitest guy he knew– one that Goldberg took as a challenge, and disputed by brandishing a photo of himself with rapper Ice Cube. “See, here I am with Ice T,” he said, unfortunately. Happy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day!

South Carolina Democratic Party Chair Dick Harpootlian objected earlier in the week on MSNBC to today’s Republican primary debate. Unlike the rest of America, he was not just objecting to the concept of having the watch the same candidates of the past year or so talk about the same things for another two hours– he considered it objectionable to have a debate on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and “ignore” the holiday. On tonight’s Bill O’Reilly, Harpootlian began to make the case, but was promptly silenced…

Last night’s O’Reilly Factor began with a question near and dear to the heart of anyone trying to follow the 2012 race for the White House: “is the presidential election a joke?” Bill O’Reilly did not mean it in a colloquial way, however, but in the sense that comedians and pop culture had just as much of an effect on voting than substantive issues. To that end, O’Reilly asked, how would the overwhelmingly liberal swing of the media affect the way people perceive 2012 candidates?

On Thursday’s O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly strongly pushed back against a report by ABC News’ World News Tonight that he had advanced the narrative that First Lady Michelle Obama was an “angry black woman.” “ABC News didn’t tell the audience it got its clip they used on me from the far-left web site Media Matters which is in business solely to smear non-liberal media people,” O’Reilly opined.

If you have turned on Fox News during any hour of the day in the past several months, you know who Eric Bolling is. The host of Fox Business’s Follow the Money and co-host of The Five can be seen on nearly every program– from Fox & Friends to filling in on The O’Reilly Factor, and his swing-for-the-fences opinions have made him as popular as he is controversial on the network. Bolling opens up to Mediaite about how he ended up in the cable news business, his favorite television moments, and what plans may be in store for the future.

Jodi Cantor‘s new book The Obamas has stirred some controversy over its claims that the First Lady proved somewhat problematic in terms of her image. On The O’Reilly Factor tonight, Bernie Goldberg admitted that the story of Robert Gibbs losing his patience with the First Lady’s extravagant clothing was “doesn’t shock me,” but upon debating further her image as a “Marie Antoinette” type, Bill O’Reilly came to her defense.

With less than four hours until some polls open in New Hampshire, Charles Krauthammer visited Bill O’Reilly tonight for his last-minute take on what would happen there but, most importantly, how South Carolina could shape the field as it narrows, particularly with Newt Gingrich “on the loose,” and Krauthammer joked, no longer seeming to care about winning the race.

Bernie Goldberg and Bill O’Reilly are longtime critics of the New York Times for much of their coverage of politics, and for what they perceive to be an unacceptable left-wing slant. On tonight’s Factor, Goldberg noted that a number of conservative attacks on President Obama have been deemed “racist” by the left– when, in his perception, the left gets no such scrutiny when they attack black Republicans.

Navy SEAL Chris Kyle is, almost without a doubt, the single most interesting person to appear on cable news in some time. With 150 kills in his pocket, he is America’s most lethal sniper, and he has quite the number of stories to tell. On tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, he told Bill O’Reilly how he rationalized killing these terrorists individually, his only regrets, and the story of when he had to knock out Jesse Ventura.

Earlier in the week, Rick Santorum complained that he had not been invited on The O’Reilly Factor, and after his rumble tonight with Bill O’Reilly, he may have regretted calling the host out. O’Reilly was fair but extremely firm, not challenging Santorum’s views on birth control and gay marriage but challenging Santorum to explain exactly how he would avoid being painted as an extremist.

With the Iowa caucus less than 24 hours away, there is still some hesitation in the media that the caucus, not being an actual election and being somewhere in the Midwest, isn’t entirely representative of the nation. On tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, media critic Bernard Goldberg took on precisely this claim from Andrea Mitchell, suggesting that it was only acceptable in the mainstream media to say Iowa wasn’t representative of the nation because it was white. “We’re not going to hear that South Carolina… is too black,” he argued.