Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough paid a visit to The View Thursday morning. After introducing him, host Barbara Walters pointed out that his “better half” and “best friend,” co-host Mika Brzezinski, was seated in the audience.
Walters kicked things off by pointing out that Scarborough, a Republican, wasn’t too enthused about the party’s presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney. “I’m not excited,” he agreed. “I’m just not excited about Mitt Romney.”

As many of our readers know, Phillip Phillips has become the latest American Idol champion, but apparently, not all of our readers wanted to know that. One of them shared hi feelings with us about our publication of the results without some sort of “Spoiler Alert” for West Coast Idol fans who hadn’t seen the broadcast yet. By way of apology, I would like to offer a tip of my hat to the gentleman for writing an awesomely angry email whose existence is surely worth the offense, and then some.

MSNBC host Ed Schultz told Thomas Roberts on Thursday that he thinks it would be a good thing for Democrats if Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker retained his seat in an upcoming June 5 recall. Schultz also claims that Wisconsin’s voters could be turning out to retain a “criminal” in the governor’s mansion.

Apparently 2012 is the year of the virgin athlete! We Americans just can’t get enough of these wacky kids with their thick necks and hairy palms. First, Tim Tebow became a national sensation and now we’ve got Lolo Jones, a track and field star getting ready for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. As a country, we respect these people for their perseverance, commitment, and faith. Mostly though, we’re just glad that, after high school, we’ve now found jocks we’re getting laid more than.

Will Cain and Roland Martin took to CNN this morning to discuss Mitt Romney‘s comments in his recent Time magazine interview, in which he said he would bring the unemployment rate down to 6 percent in his first term. Cain advised against pegging policy decisions to specific unemployment numbers, while Martin clashed with him, arguing that Congress projects unemployment will drop to that number regardless.

On Thursday, Morning Joe welcomed authors Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein onto the show to discuss their new book, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism. As the discussion turned to clashes between the two major parties and the “tribal politics” they partake in, host Joe Scarborough called out the two authors for “acting as if the Democrats are the only keepers of honesty and truth.”

Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio appeared on Fox & Friends on Thursday where he discussed his version of the DREAM Act, Hispanic voters and their reluctance to embrace the Republican party and the candidacy of Mitt Romney. Earlier, Romney had praised Rubio on Fox & Friends. When asked about this, Rubio responded that Romney was doing a good job of advancing the cause of the GOP and said a Romney presidency “is going to be about making and keeping America special.”

On Fox News’ Red Eye Thursday morning, Greg Gutfeld and his co-panelists took on the controversy brewing over smut magazine Hustler featuring conservative columnist S.E. Cupp in a photoshopped sexually-explicit photograph. Gutfeld thought Cupp should sue the magazine for defamation. “This picture could be on the internet forever, and it could be viewed without the context of the article, meaning that thing could…be viewed without context. You don’t know it is made up. Why can’t she sue? Why can’t this be defamation? If it is words it can be defamation, but in pictures it is not?” Gutfeld asked incredulously.

Fox Business Network Host John Stossel appeared on Fox & Friends on Thursday, where he discussed an upcoming special in which he investigates the lives of the poor in America and discovers just what level of deprivation there is in this country in 2012. Stossel said that “to be poor in America is to live a life better than most have lived through history.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney appeared on Fox & Friends on Thursday where he further detailed his proposal to get unemployment below 6 percent before the end of his first term. He responded to President Obama who said that Romney was outlining policies that echoed those of former president George W. Bush. Romney said “These are new problems that were created by President Obama.”

Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, the current chairman of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, flipped out at California seniors over a flyer entitled “Bowles! Simpson! Stop using the deficit as a phony excuse to gut our Social Security!”

In a rather colorful letter dated April 6th, Simpson urged the group to “read the damn report” on Social Security, dubbing them “greedy geezers” for using people as a “tool and a front for your nefarious bunch of crap.”

BBC television personality Larry Paxman testified before a British government panel inquiry Wednesday, claiming that CNN host and former Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan shared specific instructions on how to hack into people’s cell phones.

During Wednesday evening’s edition of CBS’ Late Night with David Letterman, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly sat down for an interview that touched upon Dick Cheney, the 2012 election, and — like last week’s Letterman interview with Brian Williams — whether the president will receive more credit for his accomplishments.

Whatever they’re putting in Jay Carney‘s birthday cake, I want some. During a gaggle aboard Air Force One today, the just-47 White House Press Secretary woke up a sleepy press corps with a rant about fact-checking Republican talking points that, relatively speaking, nearly veered into Sam Kinison territory. Quoting from a recent MarketWatch commentary, Carney told the press “do not buy into the BS” about the Obama spending record, and that “doing so is a sign of sloth and laziness.”

Today was Harvard College’s Class Day, the day before graduation proper dedicated to sending off the class of 2012 with some lighthearted (but from the heart) advice and a prayer or two at Memorial Church. This year’s graduates had the privilege of being sent off by now-SNL alum Andy Samberg, who tried to give graduation advice but ended up just imitating Nicolas Cage and singing a Backstreet Boys song.

Penn Jillette visited Hannity today to expand on comments he made earlier this week on his podcast about President Obama– comments that got Sean Hannity‘s attention as Jillette made the point that, had President Obama been prosecuted under his own drug policies, he never could have been President.

Ed Schultz hosted a fairly full panel today on a fairly incendiary topic: the birther movement and how Republicans appear to have, at least on some state levels, adopted elements of the far right into the establishment. The discussion on whether the birther movement was representative of the mainstream Republican Party went pretty smoothly, with most of the panel agreeing that some fusion had taken place. Then conservative talk show host Steve Deace mentioned the President’s jobs record, and all four people on TV started shouting at each other simultaneously.

Arguably the biggest singer in America, Rihanna, popped by American Idol tonight to send off the two finalists, Jessica Sanchez and Phillip Phillips, into the real world of the music industry, performing her hit single “Where Have You Been?” Rihanna, who has a reputation for excessively loud, elaborate, and colorful performances, didn’t disappoint on the lighting and backup dancers front.

The American Idol season finale happened tonight, and the show that made Kelly Clarkson and Adam Lambert stars has passed the crown on to crowd favorite Phillip Phillips. After a dramatic season and long finale crossing the bridge over past the 10PM hour and featuring stars like Rihanna and Season 3 winner Fantasia Barrino (and [...]

This week’s “Weekdays with Bernie” segment was a little bit of everything on the difficult week the Obama administration has had, from Press Secretary Jay Carney fumbling over a question about President Obama’s support for Occupy to the White House’s response to Newark Mayor Cory Booker calling the reelection campaign against Bain “nauseating.”

“The most famous plumber in the country” is unhappy with Vice President Joe Biden‘s comments that being a private businessman doesn’t qualify you to be president any more than being a plumber. For some reason, Samuel “Joe The Plumber” Wurzelbacher chose as a venue to air his grievances PoliticsNation, where he found more common ground than one would expect with Al Sharpton about the fundamentally flawed tax code.

One day after Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) got into some heat for telling MSNBC that presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s tenure with private equity firm Bain Capital consisted of “raping companies,” Fox News analyst and Catholic priest Jonathan Morris wrote that the Obama administration’s contraception mandate constitutes an “obvious raping of our First Amendment rights.”

On Tuesday night, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz topped his CNN 8pm competition, Anderson Cooper’s AC360 in both demo and total viewers. With his 177,000 demo numbers, Schultz’s The Ed Show had more viewers than CNN and HLN’s entire programming block between 5pm and 11pm.

With Facebook’s public shares declining speedily in value after the IPO last week, many investors who bought into the stock and have lost large amounts of money are wondering whether legal causes of action exist against Facebook and those who put the corporation on the market, especially given media reports that inside knowledge of the stock could have helped investors predict the fall. On Fox News today, Stuart Varney asked Judge Andrew Napolitano to assess the possibility of a successful class action lawsuit in this case, one that Napolitano predicted could be one of the biggest in history.

Despite our earlier report to the contrary, Rev. Al Sharpton actually has mentioned the Trayvon Martin case since the emergence of new evidence in the case against accused murderer George Zimmerman. He did it Monday night, and the segment he devoted to it goes a long way toward explaining why the progressive media’s coverage of this case has waned for the moment.