Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor ruled the night on Wednesday, most notably, beating Brian Williams‘ Rock Center on NBC, according to Nielsen ratings. O’Reilly scored 2.88 million total viewers Wednesday, while Rock Center managed 2.613 million. This is the second time that O’Reilly has come out on top of Rock Center, beating them once before on January [...]

Believe it or not, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is still a person that makes the news in 2012, getting his own segment about whether he should be giving lectures at universities on tonight’s O’Reilly Factor. Host for the night Laura Ingraham noted that Farrakhan had spoken at UC Berkeley, and interviewed attendant Jasmyne Cannick for a take on why anyone would listen to him. Cannick noted that she found his words resonated and he had a right, but argued Farrakhan was only a public citizens because of the media, and he chose to stay out of that spotlight.

The news cycle took a very sharp turn this week as the focus of national attention shifted from Rush Limbaugh to a video of President Obama in his college days praising and hugging Harvard Law Professor Derrick Bell. On last night’s O’Reilly Factor, Geraldo Rivera finally weighed in, making the case to Bill O’Reilly that the tape is not a huge deal for two main reasons: it was unfair to “try to make Derrick Bell’s shoes fit Barack Obama,” and making Bell out to be a radical in the first place was a shaky argument.

The interminable non-story of the time Rush Limbaugh called someone a “slut” and then the news cycle had to freeze in place for a week seems to (hopefully) be in its sunset, but given the end-of-week timing on the comments, it was only tonight that Bill O’Reilly and Bernie Goldberg got to the story. Neither host nor guest seemed particularly impressed by Sandra Fluke‘s argument, but they were impressed by how the Democrats used her to dominate the news cycle.

Ann Coulter returned to The O’Reilly Factor today to discuss her candidate Mitt Romney‘s victories last night and the challenges he may face in the future, and she defended him by process of elimination, pointing out the flaws of the other candidates and wondering aloud when they will drop out. She also addressed the issue of Rep. Ron Paul possibly colluding with Romney to land his son a spot in the potential 2013 Cabinet, something she disproved to herself by noting that Rep. Paul “was also soft on Herman Cain.”

Mitt Romney earned himself two victories last night that solidified him once again as a frontrunner, and tonight paid a visit to Bill O’Reilly to discuss how he saw the battle for the nomination coming and whether he was prepared for attacks from Team Obama. Romney noted that attacks were both helpful and hurtful to his campaign in the primary and both attacked and defended super PACs, and left O’Reilly shocked that he had not previously mentioned that he gave much of his parents’ inheritance away.

With gas prices increasing at a perilous rate, Bernie Goldberg took a look on tonight’s Factor at the way the media has been reporting the story, and found the stoic disposition of many broadcasts to clash starkly with the emotional accounts from when the same news came to America during the Bush administration. As he told Bill O’Reilly tonight, he concludes that the difference in passion in reporting was attributed to the fact that “too many journalists today are acting like stenographers and not reporters.”

Brit Hume is surprised at the extent to which Rick Santorum has decided to embrace a social conservative platform, eschewing economics and foreign policy for taking a strong stance against contraception and pre-natal care. On tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, he told Bill O’Reilly he was surprised to the extent that Santorum spoke about his faith, and did not expect it to play very well with most Republican voters.

Perhaps because the topic is taking over so many headlines or perhaps because it is Ash Wednesday, Bill O’Reilly dedicated a segment of his program today to Rick Santorum‘s recent comments on religion, on Satan threatening America. For this topic, he had two men of faith on the program: Pastor Robert Jeffress and Father Edward Beck, and it was not the priest from Santorum’s church who supported his comments.

Glenn Beck spent part of the week in Rome, talking to cardinals at the Vatican and uniting global Tea Party leaders. On The Factor tonight, he told Bill O’Reilly he was up to building a global coalition, one he hoped to be of “individuals against the machine [George Soros] is trying to build.

Over the years, Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart have developed a somewhat unexpected respect for what each other does, though they more often than not disagree on their exact political arguments. Last night was somewhat of an anomaly, in that O’Reilly assessed Stewart’s view of President Obama and Mitt Romney and, for the most part, agreed– President Obama, O’Reilly noted, was a “brilliant man,” while Romney had problems “feeling the positions conservatives espouse.”

Dick Morris started off the week on Monday by going after ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, a former colleague of his during his tenure with President Clinton, for being a “paid Democratic hitman.” That comment was made on Hannity, and tonight Morris was on The O’Reilly Factor, where host Bill O’Reilly made him elaborate on his point and chastised him for claiming there was an exchange of money between Stephanopoulos and the Democratic National Committee.

Tucker Carlson has been making the rounds on Fox News today promoting a massive investigation by his site The Daily Caller on Media Matters for America that exposes the close nature of their relationship with MSNBC and many mainstream media reporters and editors. On The O’Reilly Factor tonight, Carlson elaborated on some of those points, particularly pointing out Washington Post writers Eugene Robinson, EJ Dionne and Greg Sargent as taking cues from the organization.

Glenn Beck isn’t one to make the same mistake twice, and when Bill O’Reilly told him to clean himself up to be on his show, he took it seriously, donning a velvet sport jacket and bringing out a wine glass and the 2010 Joe Klein era pipe for tonight’s show. The topic tonight was President Obama’s birth control mandate, which Beck insisted was a sign that the President “is interested in radical transformation.”

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.