Rep. Paul Ryan‘s calls for fiscal austerity have not exactly been met with cheers around The Ed Show, as is to be expected. But on the program last night, host Ed Schultz took a look beyond the politics to Rep. Ryan’s interview with Catholic network EWTN, and how the Congressman has explained discrepancies in thought between himself and the church. Joined by Prof. Michael Eric Dyson, Schultz argued that Rep. Ryan’s reliance on the Church for charity was an easy way out, and Dyson argued that taking away safety nets was “antithetical to the fundamental issue of Jesus.”

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus is waiting on Newt Gingrich and Rep. Ron Paul before his party can officially say the general election has begun. This he told Jessica Yellin on John King USA last night, when asked repeatedly why he would not exercise the power of his position and just tell the last two remaining Republican candidates to go away. “People are tired of folks in Washington telling them what they should do,” he explained, responding that he wanted voters to decide whether Rep. Paul and Gingrich should remain in the race.

In his final New Rule of the night, Bill Maher got around to the weeks-old controversy over the “pink slime” that’s been in our meat for all these years. And Maher observed that in all the backlash to this gross additive, many Republicans have attempted to defend the meat industry and insist there’s nothing wrong with the slimy substance. He opined that this, like so many other contemporary issues, should not be so political, and bashed the GOP for taking a contrarian position on what he said were fairly non-controversial topics.

With Mitt Romney finally all but the official Republican nominee for president this year, Jon Stewart was hoping for a substantive debate about issues between the two candidates. Needless to say, he was far from getting that– instead, Diane Sawyer asked Romney if he was funny, a question President Obama himself had answered on the network himself. While the two candidates were evaluating their own humor, Stewart decided to weigh in himself, as a seasoned comedian.”

The curious case of Ted Nugent‘s Mitt Romney endorsement and subsequent possibly-violent comments against President Obama are taking up prime real estate over on MSNBC, spending some of the day researching the relationship between Nugent and Romney and, tonight, with Lawrence O’Donnell dedicating his Rewrite segment to the mystery surrounding who approached who in this most bizarre of political unions.

After his interview with Mitt Romney on the economy and dog politics, Sean Hannity dedicated a segment today to his theory that First Lady Michelle Obama is making subconscious connections between her husband and Jesus. In a segment where Hannity read out a segment of the Bible that reminded him of the First Lady’s words, panelist Michelle Malkin took the opportunity to give Romney some campaign advice: stop calling President Obama a “nice guy.”

As Piers Morgan noted towards the end of his chat, Robert De Niro isn’t particularly fond of interviews. Nonetheless, De Niro sat with Morgan and answered a range of questions about all sorts of topics: America’s economic future, how to pull it together, the Buffett Rule, Trayvon Martin, and his favorite living actors. De Niro seemed optimistic for the nation, but hoped the divisiveness in political talk would not diminish the optimism of the nation.

ABC News’ Diane Sawyer acquired the first exclusive interview with Mitt Romney and his wife Ann since the former governor of Massachusetts became the de facto nominee for the Republican Party. While the interview tackles many different issues and specifics, in a clip released tonight, Sawyer asks both Romneys for a short message to President Obama. Mitt Romney’s? “Start packing.”

Ann Romney has been getting far more airtime in recent days, between the attacks on her by Hilary Rosen to, now, an upcoming interview alongside her husband Mitt with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer. The interview, which touches on a number of controversial subjects, will air in part at 6:30 ET tonight and 11:35 ET on Nightline, had the Romneys also answering questions about Seamus Romney, the famous dog Mitt Romney once admitted to tying to the roof of the car on family trips. Responding to the concern of many that the practice was cruel, Romney assured Sawyer, “the dog loved it!”

Now that Rick Santorum is out of the race, Mitt Romney‘s most formidable roadblock to winning the Republican nomination has been removed. However, Newt Gingrich is still running for president despite the almost-insurmountable odds against him. The Republican party and the media have pretty much accepted that the general election has started and the GOP is fully getting behind Romney, but Gingrich is calling for his former conservative rival to lend him his support to keep his message alive.

Given its objective to cover the week’s biggest news stories, the Hilary Rosen/Ann Romney feud took up plenty of time on Fox News Watch today, as the panel explored the connection between Rosen and the White House and the perceived fallacies of her logic. On the program today, Jim Pinkerton and Judith Miller noted that 35 visited to the White House made her more than a friend to the administration, while Kirsten Powers argued that, by Rosen’s logic, First Ladies Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton shouldn’t have a say in politics, either.

Rachel Maddow thinks there is a political struggle against women, but Ann Romney‘s employment status has little to do with it. On her program last night, Maddow explained that the debate over who loves their moms more seemed to her something of a smokescreen to the actual problems with Republican policies on women, and not just on abortion– Republican Congressmen calling the Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay Act a “nuisance” can’t be helping much, either.

With this weekend marking the beginning of the Summit of the Americas in Colombia, President Obama has been making the rounds on Latin American television, and sat down with Univisión’s Enrique Acevedo in Colombia last night to talk immigration, drug policy, and racial tensions in America. He promised to “try to” pass immigration reform within the first year of his second term, and conceded that, while he did not think drug legalization “is going to be the answer,” “I don’t mind a debate” about it.

Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich appeared on Fox News Sunday today, and he was equally candid and honest about his chances of getting the GOP nomination at this point, as well as the tough financial situation he finds himself in currently with the campaign. Brit Hume asked Gingrich if it looks like they might go broke, but Gingrich denied that, saying whatever money troubles he has are not that bad.

On CNN’s State of the Union today, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz continued to argue that the Republican party is waging a war on women with hardline policies on important social and health issues. Going down a whole laundry list of positions the GOP has taken on issues concerning women, Schultz concluded that the Republicans are being “callous and insensitive” towards women.

Mitt Romney‘s strong wins in Maryland, Wisconsin, and Washington D.C. seems to have finally convinced even many doubters that he will be the Republican party’s presidential nominee. And if Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are hoping for any 11th-hour miracles involving a large swath of superdelegates switching their vote, they may not be so lucky, because many of these superdelegates are now publicly coming to terms with the inevitable.

Earlier this week, Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus tried to compare the “War on Women” narrative to caterpillars, confusing many. To Rachel Maddow, it was yet another sign that the men of the Republican Party really seem to lack an understanding of the objections to the way they discuss women’s health, but this she didn’t see as a blight on the whole party, but an error in branding: why have Priebus out on the fore of this issue when Sen. Lisa Murkowski has such a proven ability to connect with the women of her party?

Rick Santorum has come out against a lot of things that seem like battles left unfought, but it is perhaps his decision to call for prosecution of porn stars that has gotten him the most opposition, though mostly from people in the media speculating that this may be an unpopular position. Finally, however, the workers most affected by his “war on porn” have come out in defense of their craft, calling for voters to send Santorum their favorite porn videos on Twitter, to make a political statement in defense of their craft.

With a moderate Republican as frontrunner and the question of how to woo independents while keeping the far right charged up loom for Mitt Romney, the running mate he chooses becomes all the more important. Given his history with Romney– defeating him in Iowa, for one– Mike Huckabee is facing the running mate question now, as well, asked on Fox & Friends today whether he would contemplate a run. He barely answered the question, instead opting to keep quiet on what he would say before any of the candidates ask him.

This is a story that has been written before: late last summer, specifically, when it appeared Newt Gingrich‘s rapidly imploding campaign wouldn’t make it to the fall, when everything from losing most of his staff to being accused to using non-American t-shirts as swag to buying his Twitter followers made the idea of him winning any state delegates seem a joke. Gingrich stayed in and surprised everyone, and his camp appears to be insisting they will do the same once more. Of course, it is much harder to stay in the game when Mitt Romney has more than half the delegates he needs to win the nomination, making a non-brokered convention win a statistical impossibility or Gingrich.

With the Republican Party slowly but surely coalescing around Mitt Romney, Jon Stewart began his show today looking for some semblance of enthusiasm for the frontrunner among Republicans, and finding not all that much– from former President George H.W. Bush to Sen. Marco Rubio to his wife, Ann. He found so little, he rewrote a few previous Republican campaign slogans to reflect this level of enthusiasm.

Ann Coulter is not one to toe the party line, no matter how much of a conservative she is, and today on The O’Reilly Factor she proposed to host Bill O’Reilly that Republicans calling for Sen. Marco Rubio to be on the presidential ticket alongside Mitt Romney were “pandering” to Latin Americans and squandering a good chance. Of course, Coulter proposed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as a good Vice President, but, more confusingly, she tossed out the name of Republican Sen. Jon Kyl.

The news that Mitt Romney was building an elevator for his car took many following politics by surprise, whether it being because of the political implications of such a choice or simply because such a thing as a “car elevator” exists. On tonight’s O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly joked he had no idea what was going on with elevator either, asking “What’s wrong with Mitt Romney?” and wondering how he came up with “all kinds of crazy stuff.”

With the news that Sarah Palin will be hosting Today tomorrow in direct competition with Good Morning America guest host Katie Couric, many are revisiting their 2008 interview/battle. Senator John McCain, who had the best seat in the house to Palin’s national debut, commented on her return to daytime TV on Hearst radio today, saying it will be “interesting to see” and joking, “if you live long enough, anything can happen.”

During a lengthy interview on Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer asked Vice President Joe Biden his impressions of the Republican presidential race so far. Last month, Biden quipped during a Florida fundraiser, “God love them, as my mother would say. I hope they have another 20 debates.” Biden started his answer by chuckling and recalling some advice from his grandfather that the winds are always changing and one team can easily beat another depending on the day.