The Morning Joe team continued its ongoing discussion on the White House’s controversial — and, now, changing — birth control mandate, with host Joe Scarborough urging people not to turn an issue about government interference in religion into a discussion on contraception. This debate, he told his colleagues, is farther-ranging than a specific health care issue.

With last week’s unsurprising failure of the deficit “Supercommittee” came a threat by President Obama to “veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending” triggered by the committee’s failure. at today’s White House briefing, Press Secretary Jay Carney quashed speculation by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) that the President had left some “wiggle room” to rejigger those triggered cuts away from defense.

On Thursday, conservative undercover journalist James O’Keefe released the second installment of his “To Catch A Journalist” series, a takeoff on Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” sting aimed at discrediting mainstream journalists. His first swing, at Sam Stein, missed badly, and his second attempt, aimed at NYU Prof. Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky, brings the count to 2 and 0. Prof. Rosen, however, responded to O’Keefe’s attack with some revealing information about O’Keefe’s “investigation.”

On Monday, we reported on a new investigation from James O’Keefe‘s Project Veritas that seeks to discredit Rutgers Professor Jeff Keefe and the think tank he does research for, The Economic Policy Institute, using surreptitious recordings with a Project Veritas “decoy.”

In an exclusive interview with Mediaite, O’Keefe defended his tactics, and his decision not to publish exculpatory recordings of EPI officials refusing his operative’s advances.

In an interview with Mediaite yesterday, James O’Keefe defended his false assertion that a journalism professor told him that Sam Stein “get(s) sources drunk” to get a story out of them. After our interview, a reader emailed us to point out that O’Keefe’s Project Veritas was accused of doing the very same thing, on steroids. [...]

On Monday, we reported on a new investigation from James O’Keefe‘s Project Veritas that seeks to discredit a Rutgers professor and the think tank he does research for, but the main thrust of the piece, as the title “To Catch A Journalist” suggests, was an attack on The Huffington Post‘s Sam Stein. In an exclusive interview with Mediaite, O’Keefe defended his false assertion that an old journalism professor of Stein’s accused Sam of getting his sources drunk, and responded to criticism of his reporting.

James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas appear to have a new institution in their sights with a new hidden camera video project titled “To Catch a Journalist: Part One.” The video is first in what appears to be series, and is superficially successful in raising questions about Jeff Keefe, a Rutgers professor who appears to offer to kill an economic report if it would help defeat an anti-collective bargaining vote in Ohio. O’Keefe also aims to smear The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, but falls far short of the mark.

The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein appeared on Morning Joe today, to 1) send the crew into a veritable fit of giggles with his accompanying headshot and 2) discuss what the results from last night’s special election in Anthony Weiner‘s former district may mean for Barack Obama and Democrats in general.

“You nationalize it to a certain extent,” said Stein of the results. And when you do? The numbers don’t look great where Obama’s base and popularity are concerned.

President Obama took to the White House briefing room podium Friday afternoon to take questions regarding the earlier collapse of the debt crisis negotiations between the administration and the GOP. A rather pedestrian press briefing suddenly turned spirited with last question posed by Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, who asked about market reaction on Monday. Mr. Obama seemed passionate, if not…well, pissed, with Speaker Boehner and other GOP leadership for the stalled talks.

There are plenty of theories as to why the current Congressional debt talks appear on the outside to be something of a complete failure. Most Americans have probably concluded that Congress is incompetent, or that partisanship has given way to too much emotional and ideological strife. But for Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson, the answer is obvious: “Congress will not vote to put the economy in the black is [sic] because the country is in the hands of the black.”

FishbowlDC’s Betsy Rothstein has the inside line on a bit of good-natured hazing that’s being inflicted on The Daily Caller‘s Matthew Boyle. The DC‘s media writer, Jeff Poor, has changed his Twitter avatar to a cheesy pic of Boyle in retaliation for Boyle’s “douchey” use of a screenshot from a TV appearance as his Twitter pic. While the TV screenshot avatar is a popular subject for needling among non-TV media peeps, does using a TV spot to promote yourself really qualify you for a Massengill Award™?

While we were all enthralled by the epic Weinergate saga, a different tale of unsecured weaponry went virtually unnoticed. On Thursday’s The Big Picture, liberal radio and TV host Thom Hartmann discussed a recent call by Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn for aspiring terrorists to exploit weak US gun control laws. Hartmann debated the topic with The Weekly Standard‘s Daniel Halper and Jamie Weinstein of The Daily Caller, who didn’t object to closing the loophole, but weren’t that fired up about it, either.

With the momentous news that Osama bin Laden has been killed, Saturday’s White House Correspondents Dinner feels almost like an event from a bygone era. Still, for those of you who still remember the dinner, but have already seen President Obama‘s blistering Donald Trump routine, or Seth Meyers‘ dry-roasting of the media like so many [...]

Remember when Sarah Palin said she’d run for president if no other candidate wowed her? Chris Matthews saw it, as did the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein and USA Today’s Susan Page…and all three of them read Palin’s “maybe” as “she’s doing it.”

There are some liberals who are freaking out about Fox News’ move to the front row of the Brady Briefing Room. Not helping matters was Bill O’Reilly‘s joking suggestion that he and Sean Hannity “hog-tie” Major Garrett and go tête-à-tête with Robert Gibbs themselves.

If it helps at all, I can personally vouch for the fact that nothing like this will ever happen. But even if it did, I don’t think it’d be such a bad thing.

It may sound corny to some, but Helen Thomas is never very far a way from my thoughts, but the occasion of the White House Correspondents Association’s re-assignment of her iconic front-row center seat in the Brady Briefing Room provided me with the impetus to speak with Helen for the first time since her controversial retirement. I called her this afternoon to reconnect, and to get her reaction to the news. I was surprised to learn that my call was the first she’d heard of it. Her reaction, and those of some of our colleagues, after the jump.

Speculation about the GOP’s 2012 nomination has been running rampant since, well…President Barack Obama‘s election. But only recently has a new name started getting attention: Jeb Bush. While much of the media devote endless attention to Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, Boston Globe columnist Joshua Green asks, “Why not Jeb Bush?“

The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein made history last year by becoming the first blogger to ask a question at a presidential news conference. Since then, he has burnished a fine journalistic reputation with hard work and honest reporting. In this installment of Inside the White House Press Corps, Sam talks about that first presser, the Nico Pitney-Dana Milbank dustup, covering the White House, and really delivers the goods on embarrassing TV habits.

Air America has folded — again, but, it seems, permanently. Two dominant reactions seem to have emerged: Disappointment that a liberal, progressive radio empire couldn’t make it, and an utter lack of surprise. The LAT’s James Rainey blamed Air America’s failure on “Bad radio. Boring radio. Preachy radio”; as the NYT’s Brian Stelter noted, Daily [...]

Even though the release of Game Change has made it seem like a relic, it was only Friday when former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani stated that there had been “no domestic attacks under Bush. Robert Gibbs responded with a dose of reality, but he hadn’t had a chance to react to Rudy’s later clarification (through a spokesman). I asked Gibbs about it today, and he just seemed glad that Giuliani had cleared up the most glaring omission.

At today’s White House briefing, Huffington Post’s Sam Stein asked Robert Gibbs about Rudy Giuliani‘s remarks on ABC’s Good Morning America. Gibbs succeeded where George Stephanopoulos failed, calling Rudy out for his inconsistent statements on civilian justice for terrorists, and observing that much of what Hizzoner said didn’t “quite gibe with reality.” You might say he took Giuliani to Schooliani.

It’s the end of the year, the time for handy lists and timelines recapping the touchstones of the past 12 months, freezing them in our ever-shortening collective memory.

Of course, some people just have to be different. Mediaite contributor and White House reporter Tommy Christopher pulls back the curtain on covering politics in 2009, and shares photos and videos that have never been seen before. Find out who the Secret Service did manage to keep out of the White House, what Joe Biden told his young mentorees, and much more.

Just this week the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), which runs the White House pool has started letting Talking Points Memo, Salon, and the HuffPo in to share the pool duty. A number of establishment people are up in arms about “blurring the line between news and punditry even further.” Should we be worried the inmates are taking over the (clubby) asylum?